SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (04/29/89)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the May 1989 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$15/year
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
Permission granted to copy with the above citation
Fifth Anniversary.
This is the 5th anniversary issue of the Vaporware column.
May '84 - the earliest Apple IIx (became the IIgs) rumors.
May '85 - Jazz for the Macintosh is late (and disappointing
when it finally did arrive) and IBM PC-2 rumors
prove unfounded (or Big Blue got "cold feet?").
May '86 - Rumors of a cartridge that makes an Atari ST
Macintosh compatible (if you can find an Apple
dealer who'll sell genuine ROMs) and announcement
of the Migent "Pocket Modem" (both products now
exist).
May '87 - Details about Andy Hertzfeld's "Juggler" (became
MultiFinder) for the Macintosh and the
introduction of the nicely designed, but too late,
National Semiconductor 10 MIP, 32-bit 32532
processor (twice as fast as anything from Intel or
Motorola).
May '88 - More details about the Intel 80486 (now known as
the i486), Motorola announces a 33 MHz 68020
(never made it into a Macintosh), and MIPS
Computer Systems announces the M3000 family said
to be 20 times as fast as a VAX 11/780.
Son of SCSI.
The American National Standards Institute X3T9.2 Committee,
commonly known as the SCSI Committee is nearing completion
of a new SCSI-2 standard. Formal adoption of the new 32-bit
data path (the existing SCSI path is 8-bit) is expected in
1990 or 1991. The new standard offers a maximum transfer
rate of 40 Mbytes per second (the existing standard is 4
Mbytes), and features "command queuing" - a way in which a
controller can accept new commands while executing previous
ones. Interfaces for SCSI-2, which is upward compatible
(current SCSI devices will work on SCSI-2 interfaces), are
already being advertised by some vendors.
- PC Week 10 April
16 Mbyte Floppy Disk Drive.
Panasonic is preparing to ship a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive
with a storage capacity of 16 Mbytes per disk. The
Panasonic 3511 drive is SCSI compatible and has a 60
millisecond average access time and a 2M-bit-per-second data
transfer rate. The drive can achieve its extremely high
capacity only with special 35,000 bits per inch (542 track)
metal disks developed by Panasonic, but it can read disks
written on lower capacity (2 Mbyte) drives. The 3511 will
be available in limited quantities this month with mass
production scheduled to begin in July. The drive will sell
to manufacturers for about $500. - PC Week 20 March
PS/2 Model 55SX Delayed.
Quality assurance problems have delayed the introduction of
IBM's 80386SX (the 16-bit bus version of the 32-bit 80386
processor) replacement for the PS/2 Model 50. IBM has
recently been embarrassed by a spate of defective Model
70-A21 machines failing at customer sites and, naturally,
wishes to avoid a similar experience. The new announcement
date, assuming production problems can be resolved, is May
16. the Model 55SX is expected to list for between $3,000
and $4,000. - InfoWorld 10 April
Accelerated Mac II?
Motorola has announced a 50 MHz version of its 68030 CPU.
The 12 MIP chip is a reduced geometry version of the 33 MHz
version of the same processor (the 68030 also is available
in 16 MHz and 25 MHz versions). The semiconductor industry
has not produced cache RAM chips with the 12 to 13
nanosecond access times needed to support a processor
running at 50 MHz. However, Motorola's technical marketing
manager for the microprocessing group, Jim Nutt says that a
one-wait-state design using 25 to 30 nanosecond SRAM will
still yield 10 MIP performance (approximately 2.5 times the
speed of the new Mac SE-030 and Mac IIcx). Apple is
expected to increase the speed of the Mac IIcx to 25 MHz - a
50% performance boost - in August (the SE-030 later in the
year). Sample quantities of the 50 MHz 68030 are priced at
$650. - InfoWorld 10 April
Fastest 803836.
The newly announced 33-MHz version of the 80386 CPU is the
last of the line (Intel's new processors are the i486,
previously known as the 80486). Notably absent from the
manufacturers showing 33-MHz PC's at last month's Comdex
were both IBM and Compaq; both are expected to release
models later this year. - PC Week 10 April
Prototype i486 PS/2.
The day after Intel's formal announcement of the i486 (aka
80486), IBM held a "technology" demonstration of a 25 MHz
version of the new processor (a pre-production sample
delivered in March) in a modified PS/2 Model 70 (upgraded in
only three hours). Preliminary benchmarks indicate double
the performance of the Model 70-A21 (25 MHz 80386).
Subsequent models of the i486 are expected to clock at 50
MHz, although IBM engineers are said to have been running
one at 64 MHz in a Boca Raton lab. Although i486 systems
are expected to be priced at $15,000 to $20,000, Brian
Roemmele, president of a New Jersey consulting firm, expects
competition to drive the price below $10,000 by 1991.
- PC Week 10 and 17 April and InfoWorld 17 April
PC Compatible Mainframe.
Intel and Prime Computer have announced joint development of
a "Emitter Coupled Logic" (ECL) implementation of the i486
processor design. The ECL i486 should be available as early
as 1992 and is expected to deliver 120 MIPS (eight times the
performance of the 50 MHz microcomputer version).
- InfoWorld 17 April
Apple IIgs+ and "Budget" Mac.
An enhanced Apple IIgs, with an improved user interface
toolbox and more built-in memory (but no mention of
increased processor speed), may appear as early as this
month's AppleFest. Apple insiders are saying this new
version will be the last member of the Apple II line. John
Sculley has been quoted once again as promising a "budget"
Macintosh Plus compatible for "under $1,000." Might that
product be a MacCard for the IIgs (see January's column)
creating the "Golden Gate" computer first described in last
November's column?
- BRCC Scarlett March and Random Access 1 and 8 April
Mac Compatible ROM's for the Masses?
Chips & Technologies (famous as a maker of PC-clone ROM
sets) has just about finished a set of Macintosh ROM clones,
and clone system software also is nearing readiness for
announcements. The chips are just what owners of Atari
MacCartridge (May 1986 column, see above) and the makers of
BlueMac and Akkord's "Jonathan" (see last month's column)
need. Akkord will begin shipping Mac clones (without ROM's
while awaiting customs clearance) within four months. Chips
& Technologies ROM's are expected to retail at about $100
and Akkord is planning a retail price for Jonathan
(initially a Mac+ compatible without ROM) at $800.
- PC Week 17 April
PC Compatible "Calculator."
Atari is set to begin shipping the CPC Folio, an 8 inch by 4
inch by 1 inch pocket PC compatible very similar to the
$2,000 Pocquet (last month's column). The Atari, which will
operate for six to eight weeks on three AA batteries, will
retail for $299. The one-pound CPC Folio includes a word
processor, dairy, calendar, calculator, communication
program, and Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet in ROM. The
128K of RAM is large enough to permit a spreadsheet of up to
127 columns by 255 rows. The supertwist LCD can display 8
lines of 40 characters or act as a "moving window" for an 80
by 25 character screen.
- InfoWorld 20 March and Random Access 1 April
NeXT OS Release 1.0
One software developer, working with the developer's version
of the NeXT operating system (currently Release 0.9) says
"Today, it crashes every 30 minutes. Two weeks ago, it
crashed every 30 seconds. That's a logarithmic rate of
improvement." It remains to be seen whether all of the
remaining bugs can be swatted by the scheduled delivery date
of the first general release (called 1.0) of the operating
system scheduled for 1 July. - InfoWorld 10 April
New Quickdraw Features.
Apple will be adding the ability to create and manipulate
scalable outline fonts to QuickDraw. The new feature will
give Macintoshes with as little as 1 Mbyte of memory many of
the same features as Display PostScript. - PC Week 3 April
AppleLink Macintosh Edition.
Apple and Quantum Computer Services are promising to make an
AppleLink (Personal Edition) available for Machintosh users
before the start of Summer. - InfoWorld 20 March
Programmable Mouse.
Enough of this debate about whether computer mice should
have one, two, or three buttons. Later this month, Prohance
Technologies will begin shipping their 40 key Powermouse 100
($195). Frequently used commands such as copy, erase, and
format can be executed from the mouse (without users having
to shift their hands to the keyboard). The Powermouse 100
works with IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2 and compatibles and includes
preprogrammed definition tables for Lotus 1-2-3.
- InfoWorld 3 April
Supermicro Supercomputing.
By 1991 Intel plans to deliver a prototype of its massively
parallel Touchstone supercomputer. The long term goal is to
build a 2,000 CPU system using Intel's i860 RISC processors
(code-named N-10 before being announced in March - see
February's column) each with the number crunching power of a
Cray-1, to deliver a total performance 1,000 times more
powerful than anything now available from Cray. The $28
million prototype for the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency will probably have "only" 512 processors.
- Business Week 17 April
Extended Data Services for DOS LAN Stations.
In a moderate change in strategy, IBM is placing more
emphasis on OS/2 Extended Edition as a server product. IBM
says it is committed to providing "Remote Data Services"
under OS/2 which will permit DOS workstations to utilize
Extended Edition's data access facilities. Thus, network
sites can install Extended Edition on a network server while
permitting workstations to continue using DOS.
- InfoWorld 17 April
Plastic Energy.
Rumor has it that the LapMac (when it finally appears) will
be very heavy (17 pounds) due to the weight of the battery
needed to make it truly portable. That problem may be
greatly reduced once commercial versions of plastic
batteries become available. Plastic batteries were
discovered at a Japanese university a decade ago but have
languished in laboratories all over the World awaiting an
application suitable for their capacity. Plastic power
packs for laptop computers which can hold a charge (shelf
life) for years are expected to be one-third the weight of
conventional batteries. - PC Week 3 April
IBM's Color LCD.
IBM and Toshiba have jointly developed a 14 inch, 16 color
Thin Film Transistor (TFT) active matrix display with a
resolution of 720 by 550 pixels. An IBM spokesman said
plans have not yet been made for a specific product using
the display. Toshiba executives say not to expect a color
laptop until 1991.
- PC Week 27 March and Random Access 1 April
Optical Memory.
NEC has announced the first practical optical memory. While
this first chip stores only 1,000 bits, that is about the
capacity of the first silicon DRAM chips of the early 70's.
Optical memory processes as well as records, much as a human
eye, but unlike the imaging chips in a video camcorder, the
image can be retained almost indefinitely while consuming
very little power. - Business Week 24 April
Lateware.
More than a year after its first preview, Lotus's Notes, a
workgroup productivity product, remains at least six months
away from release. The OS/2, DOS Windows software is a
workgroup information manager closely related to Lotus's
Agenda, a personal information manager. MicroPro, maker of
Word Star, has filed suit against the subcontractor hired to
develop a Macintosh word processor. The as yet unnamed
program (Mac Star?) is on indefinite hold. MicroPro has,
however, announced Word Star 5.5 with some additional
desktop publishing-like features. OS/2 Presentation Manager
applications are few, but Microsoft's OS/2 product marketing
manager, Mark Mackaman, says 7 more applications will be
added to the 3 now available within three months. He also
noted that 370 of 850 announced OS/2 applications now are
shipping.
- InfoWorld 27 March and 17 April and Random Access 14 April
/s Murph
I bought the latest computer;
it came fully loaded.
It was guaranteed for 90 days,
but in 30 was outmoded!
- The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT
FAX it to me at: 1-203-486-5246tsouth@pro-pac.cts.com (System Administrator) (04/30/89)
Concerning the latest Vaporware quote on the GS+, I again was faced
with the fact that we, as Apple ][ family owners, are constantly
forced to hear the babbling of columnist fortelling the demise of
the Apple ][ line.
This is really irritating, and even though Apple continues to keep
their hush-hush policy I wish for once that they would state whether
or not such-and-such release is going to be the last in the line or
not.
Of course, we are not likely to see this, but I can dream that some
day Sculley will appear at a press conference just to announce that
Apple cares and will continue to support the single most revolutionary
computer which the personal market has ever seen.
Todd South
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