Sewall@UConnVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (07/27/90)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the August 1990 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 granted to copy with the above citation
"Windows puts a stake in the heart of OS/2. I don't see
OS/2 going anywhere." - Sun Microsystems VP Bill Joy
MS-DOS 5.0
Beta testers say DOS 5.0, intended for release this fall, is
smaller, faster, and has an array of nifty new utilities.
The new version frees memory on 286 and 386 machines with at
least 64K of extended memory by relocating part of the
operating system above the conventional 640K address space.
On a 1 Mbyte machine, DOS 5.0 leaves as much as 630K for
applications while DOS 4.01 on the same computer allows less
than 584K. Virtual Memory windows in Windows 3.0 will each
gain about 40K according to Microsoft product manager Mark
Chesnut. Other features include a full screen editor,
replacement of GW Basic with Microsoft's Quick Basic,
context sensitive on-line help, and an "unformat" command
which allows users to recover hard disk data in cases of an
inadvertent format command. The final version also may
include memory management features that permit loading
memory resident software and network drivers in memory above
the DOS address space. - PC Week 2 July
Slimmed Down OS/2
IBM showed a five to ten percent faster version of OS/2
which takes less than 2 Mbytes of RAM at June's PC Expo.
Big Blue is shipping beta versions of OS/2 1.2 to
independent software vendors but has declined to comment on
a possible commercial release date.
- PC Week and InfoWorld 25 June
Windows 3.1?
Bill Gates told developers at July's OS/2 LAN Manager
conferene that Windows will be upgraded in "less than a
year." The new version will include True Type scalable-font
technology as well as size and performance enhancements.
- InfoWorld 16 July
Multiuser OS/2
Citrix Systems is developing a multiuser version of OS/2
that could challenge low-end Unix systems by offering small
businesses comparable capabilities for about one-tenth the
price. Citrix has licensed OS/2 source code from Microsoft
and hopes to offer compatibility with existing
character-based OS/2 applications and eventually
Presentation Manager applications. IBM has said that it
intends to provide multiuser capabilities in OS/2 but has
not said how or when. Citrix expects to ship late this year
or early in the first quarter of 1991. - InfoWorld 2 July
OS/2 NT
Microsoft insiders are predicting a multiprocessing version
of OS/2 completely rewritten in C by the first quarter of
1992. This operating system is tentatively known as OS/2 NT
(for "New Technology"). Meanwhile, Microsoft chairman Bill
Gates has acknowledged that the 32-bit OS/2 2.0 may not be
ready until next summer. Mr. Gates says, the long awaited
operating system will ship "certainly in the next six to 12
months. It's possible we won't make the (1990) target
date." - InfoWorld 2 and 16 July
Nine Times the Desktop.
Inner Media is planning to ship an OS/2 Presentation Manager
desktop expansion utility this month named "WideAngle."
WideAngle allows user to scroll horizontally across up to
nine replications of the standard Windows 3.0 display.
WideAngle requires only 60K of RAM and will be priced at
$129. - PC Week 9 July
Much Faster Laser Printers.
Adobe Systems head, John Warnock, says that within one year
his firm will ship a new printer controller based on the
MIPS R3000 RISC chip. The new controller and new version of
PostScript will run three to seven times as fast as current
Motorola 68020 models yet cost about the same.
- MacWorld July
HP IIP meets HP III.
Hewlett-Packard plans to announce the LaserJet IIID this
month. The new eight page per minute printer combines the
dual-sided printing capability of the model IID with the
graphics quality of the LaserJet III. The new printer will
retail for a few hundred dollars less than the $3,595 price
of the current LaserJet IID. Next spring, there also will
be a four page per minute meld of the LaserJets IIP and III
(the LaserJet IIIP, naturally).
- InfoWorld 18 June and PC Week 25 June
More Powerful RS/6000s.
Industry research analyst Brian Jeffrey of International
Technology Group predicts that IBM will effectively double
the performance of its RISC workstation line next year. A
family of more powerful systems as well as advanced low-cost
models are planned to debut next Spring. The new models
will drop the chip count from nine to five and the price to
as low as $4,000 for a 20 MIP diskless workstation.
- PC Week 25 June
Higher PS/2 Display Resolution.
Future PS/2's will support a new 1,024 by 768 display
standard called XGA which should be as commonplace in two
years as VGA is today. - PC Week 9 July
Unspun.
Apple has announced that it's Claris software subsidiary
will not be spun off as a separate company after all. The
change means that Claris will not develop for Windows 3.0
and Presentation Manager as aggressively as it might have
done. Claris will develop software for Windows and other
platforms only insofar as it helps link Macintoshes to other
environments. - PC Week 2 July and InfoWorld 2 and 9 July
Quicktime.
Apple is formalizing a cross-platform set of multimedia
standards called Quicktime and has announced plans to
incorporate better sound features, real-time image data
compression and television playable output into future
modular Macintoshes. According to Apple vice president Don
Casey, the planned technology will reduce the memory size
required for an image by up to 90 percent. Apple also plans
to selectively license the technology for inclusion in
future operating systems. - InfoWorld 25 June
Legal Clones of Mac ROM Chips.
Asian developers have finally succeeded in reverse
engineering legitimate clones for Macintosh ROMs. Rumor has
it that Apple may participate in a licensing agreement to
mass market Mac Plus level computers of Far Eastern
manufacture. - PC Week 9 July
Better Amiga to Macintosh Compatibility.
ReadySoft has announced A-MAX II and A-MAX II Plus for the
Amiga. The A-MAX II is a software update of the existing
A-MAX. The new software supports MAC digitized sound, MAC
formatted partitions on Amiga hard drives, and access to MAC
SCSI peripherals (scanners, hard drives, and printers)
through an Amiga SCSI port. A-MAX II Plus uses the new
software and also offers new hardware. The board contains
two MAC compatible serial ports and an AppleTalk-compatible
port. With the A-MAX II Plus, compatibility with MAC modems
and printers is improved, and the Amiga can run MIDI and
networking software permitting Amigas to join LANs along
with (or in place of) Macintoshes. Prices have not been
announced (A-MAX has a list price of $200). The A-MAX II
should be available in a few weeks, and the II Plus before
Christmas. - found in my electronic mailbox
Apple II Tidbits.
Apple has scheduled a press conference for this month,
probably to announce HyperCard IIgs which was shown, more or
less publicly, at the KansasFest developers conference.
Apple insiders have been using an HFS (Macintosh file
format) FST (File System Translator) on the IIgs for more
than a year. Now that it's starting to be shown to a few
outsiders, maybe it will included with the anticipated new
operating System 6.0. The Apple IIgs will disappear from
German price lists in September, and there's a report that
European sales personnel were unofficially referring to the
Macintosh IIgs even before John Sculley's address at April's
AppleVision. - found in my electronic mailbox
Secretive Spinoff.
Former Apple superstar programmers Bill Atkinson, Andy
Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat aren't saying what their new
spinoff firm, General Magic Inc., plans to make except that
it will bear the trademark "Personal Intelligent
Communicator." Apple, is General Magic's largest
shareholder, and retains a license to make and market the
resulting technologies. Apple spun off General Magic
because whatever the Personal Intelligent Communicator is,
it doesn't fit Apple's mainstream business.
- Wall Street Journal 12 July and InfoWorld 16 July
Luggable CRT Quality Color.
Dolch Computer Systems has announced 20 pound 80386 and i486
computers with 10-inch active matrix color displays. Due
for delivery this fall, the 25 MHz 80386 model will retail
for $7,995 and the 25 MHz i486 model will be $12,995. The
active matrix color display alone has a price tag of
$3,995. - PC Week 18 June
Batteries Not Included.
Airis Computer's $1,899 Model VH-286 6.5 pound laptop which
will begin shipping in September is most noticeable for its
ability to run more than 12 hours on 10 standard alkaline
C-cells as well as six to eight hours off a rechargeable
Nicad battery pack. The VH-286 price includes 2 Mbytes of
RAM, a 20 Mbyte hard drive with 256K hardware disk cache, a
2,400 baud internal modem, and 11 inch diagonal VGA
display. Traveling Software's Laplink is bundled with the
VH-286, and a 1.44 Mbyte 3.5 inch floppy is available only
as an optional external unit. Later this fall, AST will
offer a seven pound 386SX laptop in a 9 by 12 inch form
factor that also runs on alkaline batteries. The AST
machine will incorporate a 1.44 Mbyte floppy, a 40 Mbyte
hard drive, 2 Mbytes of RAM and a VGA display along with an
attachable trackball pointing device.
- PC Week 25 June and InfoWorld 2 July
Shirtpocket Computer.
Intel is designing an 80386-based hand held computer that
measures only 2 by 3 by 1 inch. The pocket computer
scheduled for release next year will support VGA.
- PC Week 9 July
Handwriting on the Computer.
IBM researchers have developed handwriting recognition
techniques that recognize discretely written characters
which are touching or even overlapping. The technique does
not yet recognize cursive script. Grid and Sony already
have machines with handwritten input, and Go and Aegis plan
to introduce models this fall. Rumor has it that, this
fall, Apple will offer a stylus input option as well. The
handwriting recognition software will be shipped by
Communication Intelligence Corporation. Perhaps Apple's
handwriting reader will be bundled with the new Mac laptop
being made by Toshiba? - InfoWorld 25 June and 2 July
Character Recognition Utility.
Ocron has begun marketing its optical character recognition
(OCR) engine to both software and hardware vendors as a
kernel that could be built into other systems. An OCR
utility within a word processing program could allow it to
translate a scanned or FAX image into a file that could be
edited. Perhaps Apple will adopt the Ocron kernel --
Apple's own flatbed scanner was spotted recently attached to
a IIgs (resolution up to 300 dots per inch), but the IIgs
software used with it is described as very buggy. Maybe
InWord, primarily designed for hand-held scanners (see
below), would work better?
- InfoWorld 2 July and a whisper to my electronic mailbox
Character Recongition Software for Apple II's.
This September, WestCode Software of San Diego will ship
InWords, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software for
the Apple IIe and Apple IIgs. The software developed by
Alan Bird of Better Bye and Timeout fame is designed
primarily for use with hand-held scanners. A price has not
been announced, but a company source indicated a figure in
the vicinity of $120 is probable.
- posted to America OnLine 11 July
Many Mbytes in a Small Package.
Quantum Corporation has announced 330 Mbyte and 425 Mbyte
hard drives built into a 3.5 inch disk drive form factor.
The SCSI versions of the Prodrive 330 ($1,350) and Prodrive
425 ($1,595) will be sampled in August with volume
production scheduled for November. Evaluation units of
AT-bus versions will become available in the fourth
quarter. - InfoWorld 2 July
Fast Magneto-Optical Drive.
Early next year, Ocean Microsystems expects to ship an
optical-magneto cartridge drive which claims access speeds
comparable to those of most IBM PS/2 hard drives. The Vista
130 will store 128 Mbytes per cartridge and has an average
access time of 28 milliseconds and a data transfer rate of
512K per second. The drive will be priced at about $3,000
and cartridges will retail for between $120 and $130 each.
- InfoWorld 16 June
Massive Storage.
The current Compaq Systempro supports up to eight internal
and 16 external synchronized 210 Mbyte drives for a total
capacity of 4.28 gigabytes. Now, Compaq senior vice
president Gary Stimac says the company will extend its
storage architecture to support a nearly tenfold increase in
capacity. Expect the Systempro to support up to 40
gigabytes of storage by the end of this year, or early next
year. - InfoWorld 9 July
What Happened to Norton Utilities 5.0
When Symantec acquired Norton earlier this year, the new
owners decided they didn't like the proposed packaging for
the next release of Norton Utilities. Version 5.0's
appearance has been briefly delayed while the box is being
made prettier. Norton for the Mac may not appear at all.
Apparently, Symantec plans to merge the best features of
Norton's features into a new release of their SUM Macintosh
utilities. - InfoWorld 2 July
Integrated Desk Set.
Zedcor is planning to release a $399.95 (specially reduced
from $400) set of seven integrated programs for the
Macintosh tentatively called "Desk." The package includes
Zedcor's 32-bit color paint and draw programs as well as
word processing, spreadsheet, charting, communications,
database, and calendaring functions. - MacWorld July
Ventura for Windows and OS/2.
A Windows 3.0 version of Ventura Publisher was shown at
June's PC Expo. The program has been rewritten to be a true
Windows product and is expected to ship early in the third
quarter. An OS/2 version will ship later in the third
quarter. - InfoWorld 25 June
Adobe Type Manager for Windows.
Adobe intends to ship their $99 rasterizing utility, Adobe
Type Manger, for Windows in September. - InfoWorld 25 June
PM SAS.
An OS/2 Presentation Manager version of SAS multivariate
statistical applications has been sent to beta testers at
over 200 sites. Users of the OS/2 product will be able to
take advantage of OS/2's multitasking, dynamic data
exchange, and graphic user interface. The OS/2 Extended
Edition Database Manager also is supported in the program
which is due for a fall debut. - InfoWorld 25 June
R:base Update in the Works.
Microrim has sent it's recently released R:base 3.0 back to
the lab to improve its speed and reduce its RAM demand.
Version 3.1 should be ready by late summer. According to
product manager Scott Fallon, version 3.1 will reduce RAM
demand from 520K bytes to fewer than 480K and also have
faster performance and an improved user interface. The new
version will retail for $795; upgrades will be free to
current users of version 3.0.
- PC Week and InfoWorld 25 June
Not Bug Free.
dBase IV version 1.1 (the "bug fix") has bugs of its own.
Look for yet another version by the Ashton-Tate developers'
conference in September. - InfoWorld 25 June
/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.)