SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (12/03/89)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the December 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
Macintosh Inc?
The wildest recent rumor is that Apple will split into two
separate companies (modeled after the successful spinoff of
software developer Claris). The Apple IIgs is so closely
identified with the name "Apple" that the Macintosh producer
will need a new name (if not "Macintosh," maybe "Grove?").
- Thanks to MacUser reader Mark Munz
Monster Mac.
Apple submitted a bid on a Defense Department contract for a
"Worldwide Information System" which requires delivery of
25-MIP workstations within 60 days (early January 1990).
The prototype behind the bid is said to be a Mac built
around a 33 MHz Motorola 88000 RISC chip.
- InfoWorld 6 November
PM Lite.
IBM is working on a smaller (than 2.5 Mbytes) PC-DOS based
Presentation Manager now known as "PM-Lite." As with
Windows 3.0 (still forthcoming - see last month's column),
PM-Lite will permit applications of greater than 640K and
offer 286 and 386 "protected mode." The advantage to
developers would be that applications could be ported
directly to OS/2 (not so with Windows applications).
Current plans are for a summer (if at all) 1990 release.
Many developers have expressed the opinion that PM-Lite will
be too little, too late, and have already committed to
developing applications for Windows. In a related
development, IBM officials say that a future version of OS/2
(1.2) will permit users to disable the DOS compatibility box
and other functions such as the print spooler so that the
Presentation Manager (and a single application) will run in
only 2 Mbytes.
- PC Week 30 October and InfoWorld 30 October and 6 November
IIgs HyperCard.
The rumored IIgs HyperCard (see last August's column)
currently is scheduled for delivery by March. The plan is
for compatibility with HyperCard 2.0 stacks. Could the long
awaited Macintosh FST (File System Translator) be part of
the package? Will this product be momentous enough to
warrant the planned "splashy announcement" (see last month's
column)? - MacWeek 31 October
Pocket Encyclopedia.
Selectronics, makers of handheld dictionaries and spell
checkers, has announced plans for a six ounce, handheld
electronic Random House encyclopedia containing 10 Mbytes of
information. Selectronics expects to ship during the first
quarter of 1990. - Random Access 4 November
Unified Unix?
AT&T and the rest of the Unix International group have
resumed discussions with the rival Open Software
Foundation. AT&T which recently introduced Unix System V
release 4.0 has expressed an interest in selling its Unix
Software Operation. The Open Software Foundation's proposed
version, called OSF1, is at least a year away (see last
month's column). Common ground between the two groups
include the Motif user interface and method for handling
multiprocessing. Analysts expect the negotiations to lead
to a "Super Unix" with System V.4 as the base operating
system and Motif as the user interface.
- InfoWorld 6 November and PC Week 13 November
NeXTware.
Now that the operating system is a reality (see October's
column), WordPerfect, Lotus, and Informix have announced
plans to develop software for Steve Job's Black Box.
Borland, Microsoft, and SAS International are "officially
considering" investing in NeXT software.
- PC Week 6 November
i486 Bugs.
By now Intel should be shipping i486 chips without the
floating point glitches (problems with some trigonometry
routines and zero divide error handling). Although data
errors occur only in rare circumstances, users would not
necessarily know they had taken place. Mike Swavely of
Compaq says he expects everyone's shipments of i486 systems
to be delayed until after Christmas. - InfoWorld 30 October
i860 Bugs.
Unresolved problems with the memory-management unit of
Intel's i860 RISC chip may delay workstations (such as
Olivetti's) designed around the chip until the second half
of 1990. - PC Week 6 November
Portable i486.
A company named Dolch has announced the first i486-based
portable. The unit will have a 100 Mbyte hard disk and
three AT type expansion slots. The proposed price is
$13,000. - Random Access 11 November
Well-Rounded Word Processing.
Emerald City Software will soon deliver a $99.95 companion
product for the Adobe Type Manager (ATM). Emerald City's
Type Align is a desk accessory that permits users to draw an
arc or freehand curve to be used as a baseline onto which
characters can be directly typed. Type Align can create
type that is skewed, has the appearance of being in
perspective, along with many other special effects. The
program works with all Postscript fonts including Adobe's
complete type library. - InfoWorld 6 November
Darn Computer.
Some observers think that laptop computers look like small
sewing machines. According to the Financial Post in
Toronto, International Sentinel of Canada has purchased the
rights to the Singer name for use on a forthcoming laptop
computer. Price and performance are expected to be sew
sew. - Random Access 4 November
Getting in Edge-wise.
Leading Edge returns from Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) with an
MCA 80386SX (Model 55 clone), an i486 EISA system, and three
laptops (8086, 80286, 80386SX). The computers will be
manufactured by Korean-based Daewoo Telcom for delivery in
early 1990. - InfoWorld 30 October
New Versions of Ventura Publisher.
Xerox will follow its announcement of Ventura Publisher for
OS/2 with a Windows version as well as an upgrade to the
existing GEM DOS product. - PC Week 13 November
1-2-3/G (Continued).
The Presentation Manager version of 1-2-3 (see last month's
and August's columns) is in beta test. The good news is
that it's packed with features that even version 3.0 doesn't
have (3-D stacks in as many as five windows, 702 rows by
32,000 columns by 702 sheets, and a utility called the
Solver for sophisticated financial modeling). The bad news
is the minimum memory requirement is 5 Mbytes!
- PC Week 13 November
R.I.P.
Apple recently buried 2,700 unsold Lisa computers in a Utah
landfill. Sun Remarketing purchased nearly 5,000 Lisa's for
resale several years ago and continues to support the
product, but Apple got a better taxbreak by destroying the
one time breakthrough technology computers than by giving
them away to schools or third-world countries.
- InfoWorld 23 October
QuakeWare!
Hardware engineers have noted that hard disks are not
designed for magnitude seven earthquakes. They warn that
Silicon Valley users can expect an unusually large number of
hard drive failures in the coming months. Of wider interest
is the condition of component drives stored in Northern
California warehouses. Thorough testing on delivery and
serious attention to disk backup is recommended for any hard
drive purchased during the next year that may have been in
The Bay area for game three. - PC Week 30 October
/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.)