Sewall@UConnVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (12/28/90)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the January 1991 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$15/year U.S. - $18/year Canadian
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
Permission is granted to copy with the above citation
These are rumors folks;
we reserve the right to be dead wrong!
New Super Floppy Standard.
IBM failed to introduce the expected 2.88 Mbyte floppy on
it's PS/2 Models 90 and 95 (see last September's column).
Insiders contend that is because IBM had decided to leapfrog
the 2.88 Mbyte density altogether in favor of 20 Mbyte
"floptical" (see the September 1988 column) technology. IBM
has been negotiating with super floppy vendors Brier, Insite
Peripherals, and Citizen America. One well-known industry
rumor monger claims Big Blue already has more than 300,000
drives in inventory. When offered, the new super floppy
standard is expected to be read/write compatible with
today's 720K and 1.44 Mbyte disks.
- PC Week 26 November and InfoWorld 3 December
IBM's 3.5 inch Rewritable Optical Drive.
IBM also is expected to offer a multifunction optical drive
that can use both 127 Mbyte rewritable disks and 122 Mbyte
read only (OD ROM) disks. The $1,600 drive which should
begin shipping before the crocus bloom has an average seek
time of less than 66 milliseconds and a sustained write
capability of 128K bytes per second. Media will be
available from Sony, Maxell, and Verbatim.
- PC Week 19 November
New Intel CPUs.
Intel will begin to broaden the i486 chip line beginning
early in 1991. The first new i486 to appear will be the
long awaited 50 MHz version (see October's column) followed
within a few months by a 66 MHz or 100 MHz version. Later
in the year Intel plans to introduce a "stripped down,"
lower cost version to compete with AMD's 80386 clone CPU.
The scaled down i486 could include a version without the
math coprocessor or without the internal cache. A low-power
i486 (for use in portables) is under development but
probably won't be available until 1992. Sometime during the
first half of the year, an enhanced version of the i860 RISC
processor is expected, and sample quantities of the i586
(with 64-bit data path and an internal cache as large as
256K) are likely to appear late in the year.
- PC Week 10 December
Mac System 7.0.
Beta testing for the new Macintosh operating system is
proceeding better than Apple's fondest hopes. Only two
months ago (see November's column) indications were that the
product might not ship until April's showers had become
May's flowers, but now it appears that it may be available
as soon as this month's MacWorld. - InfoWorld 10 December
Mac Portable Plans.
1991 may become Apple's year of the laptop. In addition to
the new machine slated for introduction during MacWorld (see
last month's column), a 7 pound 8-bit color notebook and
possibly even a 2 pound hand-held model are expected by next
Christmas. The small portables probably will include a
compact trackball being developed by Logitech. The Logitech
trackball will make moving the cursor without lifting either
hand from the keyboard possible. The hand-held Mac is still
in preliminary stages of development and may not appear in
1991. - InfoWorld 3 December and PC Week 10 December
Macintosh Clones at Last?
Apple is said to be negotiating with at least two companies
to license Macintosh ROM technology (apparently the older
128K or even 64K ROM code). - InfoWorld 26 November
IBM's 386SX Laptop.
IBM's 20 MHz 80386SX Laptop (see last month's column) is
scheduled for introduction on 27 February. It may not have
a hard disk, but use a 20 MByte "floptical" drive (capable
of reading and writing current 3.5 inch floppies) instead.
- InfoWorld 3 December
SPARCtop?
Sun Systems probably will be the U.S. marketer of the
Korean-built 13 pound Trigem Bright Light SPARC portable
with a list price of about $10,000. - InfoWorld 19 November
No New Apple II.
The day after the introduction of the Macintosh LC (the
"Apple II killer"), Apple USA President Robert Puette was
quoted as saying that Apple was phasing out the II line.
Apple quickly issued a clarifications saying "We plan to
continue to enhance the existing product line through
updates to system software and peripheral add-ons... we have
no plans at this time to introduce new, standalone Apple II
models." The statement went on to say that forthcoming Apple
//e card for the Macintosh LC is an example of a
compatibility strategy that "...will preserve customer's
investments in Apple II, while allowing them to move to new
technology platforms if they wish." - A2 Central December
Level 2 PostScript Printer.
Data Products Corporation plans to begin shipping a six page
per minute Level 2 PostScript printer this month, less than
two months after Adobe's formal announcement of the
specification. The Data Products LZR 660 (list $2,995) uses
a Sharp laser print engine and Weitek's high performance
RISC controller. The RISC controller along with Level 2
reduces the time needed to actually print text and
graphics. Other advantages of Level 2 are better half-tone
specification and improved memory management. The LZR 660
also will support composite characters permitting users to
create their own character sets. RS-232, Centronics, and
RS-422/AppleTalk interfaces are standard.
- InfoWorld 3 December
XGA vs 8514/A.
Graphics card manufacturers say that it will take one to
three years to duplicate IBM's recently introduced XGA
graphics specification (see last August's column). XGA (at
1,024 by 768 pixels in 256 colors) appears to compete
directly with the 8514/A display standard but analysts say
that XGA is better for windows while 8514/A has advantages
in CAD (line drawing) applications. The real question is
how quickly XGA will replace VGA. XGA's text is said to be
too small on 14 inch monitors, and cost effective 16 and 17
inch monitors aren't expected for at least 18 months.
- InfoWorld 3 December
64-bit Color.
Stratvision Paint, a $695 Macintosh program with 64-bit
image processing and transitional capabilities is scheduled
to ship this month although neither printer nor display
hardware is yet available for 64-bit color. The leap to
64-bit color technology is necessary to give designers more
gradations of colors when performing color separation.
Strata Inc. of George, Utah expects Apple to move toward
support for 64-bit color. - InfoWorld 3 December
MS-DOS 5.0
Microsoft could ship the new DOS version (see last
November's column) by March or April. The update has a more
graphical shell than the current 4.01 along with enhanced
memory management and task switching. The venerable Edlin
line editor will finally be "retired" in favor of
Microsoft's QuickBasic editor. DOS 5.0 also contains Mirror
and UnFormat utilities licensed from Central Point
Software. - PC Week 3 December and InfoWorld 10 December
DR DOS 6.0
Digital Research Inc. plans to stay a step ahead of
Microsoft by releasing DR DOS 6.0 within a few months after
MS DOS 5.0 becomes available. The major new feature from
DRI's alternative will be elimination of the 640K barrier
altogether along with true (preemptive) multi-tasking.
- PC Week 26 November
One Less Competing Interface (Forever Vaporware).
Microsoft has dropped PM/X (Presentation Manager for Unix
announced as a joint effort with Hewlett-Packard at 1988
Comdex). The "look and feel" of PM is embodied in the Open
Software Foundation's Motif, but OSF chose to adopt DEC
Windows application programming interface (API) over
OS/2's. - InfoWorld 3 December
Windows Under OS/2.
Microsoft is said to be reconsidering its plan to offer a
"binary compatibility layer" (BCL) for Windows in OS/2 2.X.
The BCL would permit Windows applications to run
automatically under OS/2, but Microsoft is concerned about
support problems that may develop for Windows applications
that don't strictly adhere to programming specifications and
may not operate properly under OS/2. Windows applications
will still be able to run in the DOS compatibility box.
- PC Week 3 December
First Pen-Based Application.
The first application for the forthcoming keyboardless
"palmtops" (see September, October, and November columns)
will be demonstrated for the Boston Computer Society this
month by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston (remember
VisiCalc?). Guess what? It's a spreadsheet (gee, you
weren't surprised). - InfoWorld 3 December
ProKey Updates.
ProKey Plus 5.1 and ProKey for Windows will ship on 21
January. More than 20 enhancements, including an event
schedular to perform tasks when the user is away, have been
added to the popular keyboard macro recorder/processor.
- InfoWorld 26 November
Late Presentation.
The Windows version of Aldus Corporation's Persuasion
presentation graphics package failed to meet its original
year-end shipment date. Company officials explain that more
time is needed to refine the program code and test output
device drivers. Aldus now plans to ship Persuasion 2.0 in
the second quarter. - PC Week 26 November
Office Vision/2 LAN Delayed Again.
Sources say that the LAN version of Office Vision didn't
ship before the end of 1990 so it could be tested with OS/2
1.3 Extended Edition. A March release date is the new
target. - InfoWorld 10 December
Mirrored NetWare Late Too.
Novell appears to still be at least a year away from from
delivering its "System Fault Tolerance" (SFT) mirrored
server technology. Originally announced in 1985 for
delivery in 1986 (a cousin to Windows?), the product is
expected to finally begin beta testing this year.
- PC Week 3 December
Microsoft Desktop Publishing.
Microsoft plans to compete with PageMaker and others for the
desktop publishing under Windows market with their own
product, codenamed Voodoo, which will enter beta testing
before summer. - PC Week 19 November
WordPerfect for Windows.
WordPerfect for Windows, due to ship within the next three
months, will provide the same functionality as WordPerfect
5.1 for DOS. The graphical interface is more intuitive and
will make it easier for users who infrequently use word
processing. The Windows version has a new feature called
"Button Bar" which lets users assign frequently used
commands to buttons on the screen. - PC Week 19 November
New IBM Wordprocessor.
IBM is expected to retire DisplayWrite this month with a new
$495 processor that may be named WysiWrite, WordSmith, or
Signature (perhaps something else). Actually, it's XYwrite
4.0 (which IBM purchased exclusive rights to). Windows and
Presentation Manager versions are expected to follow the
initial DOS offering. - InfoWorld 26 November
Last AutoCAD for the 80286.
Release 11 of AutoCAD due this March from Autodesk Inc. will
be the last to support 80286 machines. The program is
described as simply becoming too complex to run at
acceptable speeds on those platforms. - PC Week 26 November
/s Murph <Sewall%UConnVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.Edu> [Internet]
or ...{psuvax1 or mcvax}!uconnvm.bitnet!sewall [UUCP]
+ Standard disclaimer applies ("The opinions expressed are my own" etc.)