cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson) (09/26/89)
A long article follows. 268 lines, to be exact.
You've been warned.
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Well, no one seems to have posted feelings/obvervations on the San
Francisco Applefest, so here goes...
Opening Keynote by Jean Luc whatshisface. I always want to say it
Jean Luc Picard, but that's not right...
Lots of mumbling during the speach- I got the impression he
wasn't/isn't used to public speaking, but then again, he is a native
frenchman, I believe. He demonstrated the newish
appleshare capability of the GS, demonstrating how one could transfer
files from the Macintosh over to the GS with ease. Also an
impressive speed comparison betwixt old system (4.0) and system 5.0-
speed differential was impressive. He also demontrated a hands-off
mouse - one of those headsets that you wear on your head and use a
blow switch as the mouse button. This has been around for a couple
years, though. Also a demonstration of HyperStudio, strongly
educationally based- he showed some stuff off of applelink/america online.
*Very* interesting question/answer period. Yes, the first question
asked was Apple's commitment towards the Apple // line- He gave a
definate yes on the commitment/development that apple has towards the
Apple //. (applause from audience) 'Bout midway through, someone
finally asked the question I was going to- "Is the new ROM version of
the GS (rom version 3.0) the 'improvement' you mentioned last SF
Applefest?" Admist much mumbling/doubletalk, I pulled a yes out of
his answer. (methinks he's been in politics.) More observations of
this later on..
Someone from Western Digital (I'm pretty sure it was Bill Mench (sp?)
asked him why Apple hasn't had more commitment towards faster 65816's.
For some reason, this seemed to strike a raw nerve, with both sides
accusing the other of some sort of wrong doing. Mench's microphone was
shut off, and he was assisted back to his seat. Anybody know the
inside story on this?
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The Fest:
Several companies weren't there that have been- Claris, MediaGenic
(aka Activision) are two that I can think of at the moment. Claris
claimed budgetary reasons were the reason, which is easy to believe-
they moved into new facilities not too long ago. MediaGenic isn't
doing much for the Apple // line- my inside source tells me that they
didn't show because of Apple's lack of support...
Apple had the main area, as usual. They had a big box with all their
computers on the outside, everything from the //e to the Mac 2ci. I
didn't count them all, but it was a close race between the // line and
the mac line. The two new macs were there, the portable mac and the
IIci. They were drawing a crowd, but not much more than the Video
Overlay card, which was running a good demo with live video feed.
(Side note on the porta-mac: it's the best LCD screen I've ever seen-
absolutely *no* blurs when doing animation, and it's viewable from
almost any angle.)
Incider had its traditional software giveaway, along with the
ever-popular red foam balls. (one of these fests I'm gonna get one!)
ELS (educational learning services?) had a number of booths- I think
they had more square footage than Apple. They had fairly good deals
on all sorts of software. Beagle Bros. were showing their newly
acquired Styleware stuff; Applied Engineering had the Audio Animator;
CMS was pushing their removable cartridge hard drive system; Laser was
making a strong showing; Bose was making a fair amount of noise; First
Class had some good people behind the counter that could answer
technical questions. Applied Ingenuity had an internal hard drive for
the //c, replacing the drive, also a 3.5 drive for $179- lowest at the
show. H.A.L. labs was selling their Lisa 8/16 compiler, along with the
source code for Taxman (remember Taxman???) and a new newsletter,
Apple Technical (i think that's right). They had the first 2 issues
there, and it was worth the $5 per issue they were asking ($20 for 4
issues).
No, there weren't any new, smashing, exciting products that I could
see, but there were a number of interesting things that made the fest
worth going to. Seems somebody is always going to complain if there
isn't a new computer to play with. (well, there were, but those were macs...)
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Misc./Pseudo Random thoughts:
While manning the BCS (Boston Computer Society) Booth, I came up with
these interesting observations:
There are 9 flavors of Macintosh: 128, 512, SE, SE/30, II,
IIx, IIcx, IIci, PortaMac.
There are 5 flavors of Apple ][: ][/][+, //e, //c, //c+, //gs.
Drastic changes to the Mac: None. Color, slots, speed are
all basic improvements/repackaging. Nothing truly revolutionary IMHO,
as you can add all the speed, and color to an SE.
Drastic changes to the Apple: Well, where do you start?
][/][+: Basic flavor- easily upgradable to ][+ with new roms.
//e: Essentially a brand new machine- 80 col built in, 64k
on motherboard, memory expansion slot till 16megs (or more). This
machine was greatly helped by AppleWorks and Prodos
//c: Again, a brand new machine. Toted as being a portable
computer, but as nothing was available from Apple immediately, it was
used more as a luggable.
//c+: Probably Apple's response to the Laser 128X. But, pop
open the case, and you'll see it's another brand new machine. This
motherboard is _bare_ in comparison to the original //c, but runs 4
times faster.
//gs: This was a brand new machine. New processor, new
graphics modes, faster speed, detached keyboard/ADB. First machine to
come with a mouse. New OS, GS/OS.
No, this doesn't count the enhanced //e, the three (or four?)
motherboard swaps for the //c, nor the GS rom/motherboard swaps. But
it also doesn't count the half-dozen rom/motherboard swaps for the Mac.
Seems to me we've got the machine for the consumer (Mac) and the
machine for the hackers (// line). Ever wonder why it takes so long
for a new //?? to come out?
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GS Rom version 3 isn't as compatible as you think (surprise, surprise)
No, Nucleus won't run on it. You'll have to get the special Applefest
edition. Apple DTS called FTA up, and had them make the patches to
Nucleus so it will run. They had it running up in the Apple Technical
room as a Sound Demo. Yes, it's got good sound, but it's better as an
animation demo...
There are some other little nasty bugs that will reach out and grab
ya. Applied Engineering's GS Ram Plus won't work- with 1 meg
installed on the card, the Control Panel thinks it's got a little over
_7_ megs to play with. Yes, Applied knows about it, and will have
update chips within 2 weeks. (per this morning) Also, the Apple
Memory Expansion Card (the one that will work on any {ha} Apple)
doesn't seem to like the new roms either. It'll auto-format fine, but
when you access it, it will mutate and change it's name, as well as
mutilate the data on it. This could be a conflict betwixt the GS ram
plus/rom 3/memory card, because I don't think I tried the card without
the GS ram Plus in the machine. Also, GS/OS 3.0 seems to have a few
random bugs, although this could be caused by my hard drive. (Old
datamac, SASI interface).
I've got this funny little feeling that you're gonna find a fair
amount of GS-specific software that won't run on rom 3. Xenocide
doesn't like it either, but their copy protection routine could be the
problem there.
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In the conference New Games for the GS, a number of companies demoed
some impressive up-and-coming games. Biggest surprise I had was when
the Xenocide people annouced that FTA was going to write for them.
Here we have Xenocide with its "key disk" copy protection (that's
already broken 7 ways from tuesday), and FTA with Nucleus, a kick-ass
demo that knocks the socks off of everything else, and is PUBLIC
DOMAIN. Go figure.
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Here's something to contemplate. How about a GS+, with something like this:
"Mac Killer"
a 68000 running at 10-30 mhz
a 65832/65816 running at 5-15 mhz
couple of NuBus slots
3-4 AppleBus slots
disk port (3.5-5.25)
2 serial ports
1 parallel port
Analog RGB
Composite video signal
ADB port
2400 baud modem-on-a-chip
SCSI port
EtherNet port (oh, why not? We'll be going fast enough)
Built-in 20-80 meg hard drive
PMMU (paged memory management unit)
FPE (floating point engine)
2-4 megs built in
expandable to 32megs.
"layering" of displays, i.e, a text window on top, with graphic
modes underneath. Carry the concept of windows one step further.
You think this is impossible?
Hardly.
Look, the GS people have learned from the Macintosh- use a toolbox so
that you get away with mucking around with the motherboard, offer a
graphical interface with mouse for ease of use, etc. But don't do a
half-assed job. Do it right.
o NuBus runs at 25mhz or so, and supports multiple CPU's
o PMMU gives you TRUE multi-tasking on the hardware, not this
imitation Multifinder/Softswitch mess.
o FPE speeds up floating point calculations, the slowest part
of most programs.
o the Mac IIci is running at 25mhz, and they're talking about an
accelerator card for it.
o the Mac IIci can also access 32megs. This is straight from the
spec sheet, if you can find one.
Base the system around the 68000, mostly because you can get fast CPU speed.
NuBus slots so you can use multiple CPUs, additional displays, etc.
Modem-on-a-chip that you can just pop out and drop a 9600 baud modem
in when they become available
SCSI port for hard disks, scanners, and so on.
Ethernet (optional) for networking, and so we can compete with the
NeXt best thing.
PMMU so we can have a Macintosh program running in one window, and a
GS program running in another.
Uses 256,1meg, or 4meg simms. (This gives you _lots_ of options)
"Layering" of displays, so your software/OS doesn't have to worry
about windows. Let's have 10 layers: 40 col text/lo-res, hi-res, 80
col text/double hi-res, 3 or 4 for SHR and the other GS modes, one or
two for mac 72dpi displays, and use whatever is left for 144 dpi,
32bit color/grayscale layers.
Did I leave anything out? Oh yes- leave a couple empty rom chips for
expansion. How about a Unix chip for $100 that you just drop in and
gives you BSD 4.3 (or whatever the latest version is)? Or, how
about a rom that gives you full TCP/IP compatability, so you can have
your own Internet connection?
Time to develop? 2 years.
Price tag? $3-6K
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Once upon a time, when companies were imitated, they came out with a
better product that killed the competition. Today, they file suit,
and call that "protecting our investment."
---
"First thing we do, is kill all the lawyers."
===============
--Chan Wilson
"The vision of the future-- here, and now..." -- Sigue Sigue Sputnik
cwilson@nisc.sri.com or cwilson@nic.ddn.mil
`the center of the Internet Universe'
===============dlyons@Apple.COM (David Lyons) (09/27/89)
In article <CMM.0.88.622793792.cwilson@naurs2.NISC.SRI.COM> cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson) writes: >[...] >[Gassee] also demontrated a hands-off >mouse - one of those headsets that you wear on your head and use a >blow switch as the mouse button. This has been around for a couple >years, though. [...] Ah, but Video Keyboard hasn't been around: it lets you use the mouse instead of the keyboard in any GS application that supports NDAs. >Someone from Western Digital (I'm pretty sure it was Bill Mench (sp?) >asked him why Apple hasn't had more commitment towards faster 65816's. It was indeed Bill Mensch, and the name of his company is Western Design Center. The newsletter you mentioned is called "II Technical". (I read most of one issue, and there's certainly some interesting stuff in there, not counting a couple of gratuitous insults thrown at Apple.) >GS Rom version 3 isn't as compatible as you think (surprise, surprise) I tend to look at the situation from the *other* end: some applications have trouble running on a ROM 3 system. In most cases, this is because the application is doing something it shouldn't have been doing in the first place, not because of a ROM 3 problem. (In the case of Nucleus, I don't know what the problem was--I wasn't involved in any patches to it.) >[...] Also, the Apple >Memory Expansion Card (the one that will work on any {ha} Apple) >doesn't seem to like the new roms either. It'll auto-format fine, but >when you access it, it will mutate and change it's name, as well as >mutilate the data on it. This could be a conflict betwixt the GS ram >plus/rom 3/memory card, because I don't think I tried the card without >the GS ram Plus in the machine. The Apple memory expansion card works fine with the ROM 3 machines; this sounds very much like the 3rd-party card is decoding the address bus directly and causing a conflict in a certain range of addresses. >Also, GS/OS 3.0 seems to have a few >random bugs, although this could be caused by my hard drive. (Old >datamac, SASI interface). "Random" bugs? Please be more specific. -- --Dave Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc. | DAL Systems America--Apple Edition: DAVE.LYONS | P.O. Box 875 America Online: Dave Lyons | Cupertino, CA 95015-0875 GEnie: D.LYONS2 or DAVE.LYONS CompuServe: 72177,3233 Internet/BITNET: dlyons@apple.com UUCP: ...!ames!apple!dlyons My opinions are my own, not Apple's.
lvirden@pro-tcc.UUCP (Larry Virden) (09/30/89)
Network Comment: to #442 by dlyons@apple.com 1. What is the address, cost, etc. for II technical anyone? 2. I hear there are several other new startups for Apple technical info - anyone have the names, addresses, etc. of these folks? 3. I hear a nasty rumor that Call-Apple is about to go belly up if the new quarterly doesnt take off financially. Sigh. I have a HUGE collection of issues. I am going to be sorry to see yet another Apple II mag go.