SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET.UUCP (08/31/87)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the September 1987 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
Personal Laser Printer (Not From Apple).
Apple is taking its own sweet time about introducing the
Quickdraw rather than Postscript driven "Personal
LaserWriter" (see the November and December 1986 Vaporware
columns), but General Computer has announced its own 300 dot
per inch, 6 page per minute, Quickdraw graphics Personal
Laser Printer ($2,599). The printer is based on the Ricoh
print engine and is built by Oki. It will operate with any
SCSI equipped Macintosh and supports all applications except
those such as Pagemaker and Cricket Draw that output
Postscript code. Print spooling is not supported and a hard
disk is recommended; the printer operates substantially
faster with a Mac II or an SE with a 68020 accelerator
board. - InfoWorld 3 August
Walk Mac.
Colby systems, makers of the "Flat Mac" laptop plans a
November introduction of a modular, portable Macintosh
system. The basic 68000-based model will contain three
expansion slots (some possibilities a 68020 accelerator and
a video card for a large screen display). The basic unit
will be $4,995 with standard backlit LCD display and
optional gas plasma display ($1,995), 40 Mbyte hard disk
($1,500), and portable printer ($499). Apple's own lapMac
is now said to be at least a year away; look for an advanced
laptop with state-of-the-art gadgetry not presently in
production. - InfoWorld 3 August and PC Week 11 August
The "Four-Slot."
A Mac SE that will not be bundled with a monitor and which
will have 4 expansion slots (hence the code name
"Four-Slot") is said to be imminent. One rumor is that the
new model will come standard with a 68020 (and the Mac II
will begin shipping with the 68030). - InfoWorld 17 August
Mac II Add-Ons.
Apple Computer says an Ethernet adapter card for the Mac II
will be available in the fourth quarter for $699. Supermac
Technologies arrived at MacWorld with a 24-bit color card
that allows users to access the 16.8 million available
colors on the Mac II. However, Supermac declined to project
a release date or price for the board.
InfoWorld 17 August
Mac Buyers Pay Top Dollar.
Noting that "there is not much price sensitivity in the Mac
market," Borland recently introduced Reflex Plus at nearly
triple the price of the original program. Borland has not
found the bargain software pricing strategy it pioneered for
MS-DOS applications effective in the Macintosh market. If
other developers reach the same conclusion, expect typical
Macware to continue to retail for $200 to $300 or more (a
prospect that may sell a lot more IIgs's).
InfoWorld 17 August
HyperCard PC.
An IBM PC version of Apple's new Macintosh HyperCard (see
last February's column) program launched just a few weeks
ago at MacWorld may be on retail shelves before the leaves
turn. Owl International's clone for the PC will run under
Microsoft's Windows 2.0. A PS/2 version which will be able
to exchange data with the Macintosh program is promised by
the end of the year, and a version with additional features
is planned for the OS/2 operating system. Apple vice
president Jean-Louis Gassee expressed some doubt about the
technical feasibility of duplicating Hypercard's
functionality in an MS-DOS environment. - PC Week 18 August
Look Ma, No Graphics Shell.
Ashton-Tate plans to release by the end of October desktop
publishing software for MS-DOS machines that does not need a
graphics shell such as Windows or Gem. The $295 program
will require at least 384K of RAM and a CGA, EGA, Hercules,
or Hercules Plus graphics card. - InfoWorld 10 August
8-9-10?
Lotus Release 3.0 should arrive in time for late Christmas
shoppers. The protection system will be "less cumbersome,"
but Lotus does not plan to drop copy protection altogether.
- InfoWorld 10 August
Erasable CD's.
Electronics giant Philips NV has announced the creation of a
new compact disk material that should be capable of being
erased and rewritten up to 1,000 times. The technology is
based on principals disclosed in last July's Vaporware
column. Bob Gaskin, a senior analyst for industry watcher
Dataquest, says that the 1,000 erase and rewrite limit will
be a problem for business which desires a medium that can be
rewritten indefinitely (meaning at least 50 million times).
- Random Access 25 July and InfoWorld 27 July
A Mac Attack.
Dataquest Inc., a San Jose based industry research firm, and
other surveyors of the corporate world indicate that
business plans to purchase Macintoshes during the coming
year at approximately twice the fraction of the installed
base. The increased managerial interest in the Macintosh
accounts for recent introductions of Mac programs based on
products initially marketed for the PC. PC developers who
have recently announced new Macware include Lotus, Ashton
Tate, Versacard, Microlytics, and MacNeal-Schwendler.
- PC Week 18 August
World's Fastest Portable Micro.
Compaq is testing an 80386 portable computer with a 20 MHz
processor (most current 386 machines operate at 16 MHz).
The soon to be released "luggable" will have a much smaller
"footprint" than today's Compaq Portable II.
- InfoWorld 10 August
After the PS/2.
The first model in IBM's "personal system" generation to
follow the PS/2 may appear as early as next February, but
most of the line, including the least expensive models,
won't be announced until 1990. - PC Week 18 August
OS/3?
Microsoft's OS/2 80286 multitasking operating system
scheduled for "early 1988" is still months from reality and
already rumors about the release date for the 80386
operating system are in the air - early in 1989? Will the
operating system be ready before the OS/2 line is obsolete
(see the previous item)? - PC Week 11 August
Micro Centerfold?
Look for Microsoft's founder and chief whiz-kid, Bill
Gates, in a forthcoming issue of Playboy - as an interview
subject, not posing for a photo layout. By the time the
interview is published, Gate's company should have released
Excel for the PC, PC Works, Windows 2.0, and Chart 5.0
- PC Week 28 July and 18 August
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ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu Murphy A. Sewall
BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin.
UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL University of Connecticut