SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (06/30/89)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the July 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
Who Needs OS/2?
Windows 3.0 (see February's column), scheduled for release
in the fourth quarter of this year, will let MS-DOS
applications run in as much as 16 Mbytes of memory. Beta
versions require an 80386 processor, but the released
product is expected to support '286 machines as well. The
user environment is an icon-based shell similar to OS/2's
Presentation Manager. Individual applications can address
more than the 640K normally allowed by DOS using the
processor's "protected-mode." Window's also can use disk
storage as "virtual memory" on systems with less than 16
Mbytes of installed RAM. - PC Week 5 June
Real HyperCard under MS-DOS.
Spinnaker Software is beta-testing a Windows application
that gives PC users full access to Apple's HyperCard
environment. Unlike PC hypertext programs, Owl's Guide and
Bright-Bill-Roberts HyperPad, Spinnaker's program,
code-named "WildCard," will read and write Macintosh
HyperCard "stacks" (transferred to MS-DOS disks or
downloaded from on-line services). WildCard supports
full-color bit-mapped images and, because it is compiled, is
said to execute at least 40 times faster than the current
version of HyperCard. WildCard is expected to be available
in September for under $100. - PC Week 29 May
Forthcoming IBM Hardware.
As reported in this column (March '89), the 33 MHz PS/2, to
be designated the Model 75, will have an enhanced MCA bus
capable of 12 to 15 million instructions per second (MIPS)
to be increased to 35 MIPS by year's end. Along with the
Model 90 (a "tower" model designed to be a server), the
Model 75 will have banks of 15 nanosecond cache memory and a
314 Mbyte hard disk. Models 75, 90 and (80386SX-based) 35
(see April's column) are scheduled for release this fall,
and i486 versions of the 75 and 90 are anticipated in the
first quarter of next year. Next April, IBM will once again
try to appeal to the home and education market (Son of
PCjr?) with an under $2,000 80386SX computer featuring a 40
Mbyte hard disk, CD ROM, a digital sound chip, and Microsoft
Windows. - InfoWorld 22 May and PC Week 5 and 12 June
The In-House Clone.
In a last ditch effort at survival IBM's typewriter division
is rumored to be preparing to announce a product line
code-named "Blue Grass," a low-end personal computer product
assembled from imported components and priced well below the
Model 30. In short, Blue Grass will be an IBM-PC clone with
an IBM nameplate! - InfoWorld 5 June
Forthcoming Macintosh Hardware.
Apple is expected to offer a 25 MHz Macintosh IIcx (perhaps
sporting a slightly different model name) with a built-in
8-bit color video adapter and a 030 Direct slot (see
February's column), mainly for third-party cache-RAM
products, as well as three NuBus slots in October (the date
depends on the release of the required operating System
6.0.4). The new machine will allow users to add less
expensive 1 by 9 memory modules and will only cost about
$1,500 more than a similarly equipped IIcx. Early next
year, the IIcx is likely to be superseded by a less
expensive 16 MHz version of the new machine. The next
generation of the Mac II line featuring six slots of a 20
MHz NuBus implementation (double the present speed) and a 33
MHz 68030 will debut next January. A low cost Mac using the
16 MHz 68000HC processor that will be in the long delayed
lapMac (finally coming in October?) is in the early stages
of development. - MacWeek 23 May and 6 June
Multiplatform Compatibility Package (MCP).
Bawamba Software is beta testing MCP, a series of libraries
that allow developers to quickly port their Macintosh
applications to the MS-DOS, OS/2 and Unix environments. MCP
incorporates the Open Look interface, developed jointly by
AT&T and Sun Microsystems, in order to provide an
alternative to the Macintosh interface and allay developers'
fears of "look and feel" litigation. In the process, MCP
makes the Open Look interface available on the Macintosh so
that developers can design applications which look the same
across all platforms. - InfoWorld 5 June
After NeXT.
There may be a NeXT machine with a Motorola 68040 CPU
(merely a processor switch) in the interim, but the NeXT
generation on the drawing board will use up to four Motorola
88000 RISC chips and feature a 1-gigabyte Canon
magneto-optical disc with a 30 millisecond access time for
mass storage. - InfoWorld 5 June
World's Fastest DRAM.
IBM's Yasu, Japan manufacturing plant has produced sample
one megabit memory chips which are two to three times faster
than current one-megabit RAM. The experimental CMOS chip
has a 22 nanosecond retrieval rate compared to the 65
nanosecond rate of the one megabit chips recently put into
volume production at IBM's Essex Junction, Vermont plant.
- InfoWorld 5 June and Business Week 19 June
Versatile FAX.
This August Solutions Inc. will ship a custom version of its
Macintosh Backfax software for the Tefax System from
Relisys. The Tefax system integrates the functions of a FAX
(attached to a Macintosh or stand alone), a printer, a
scanner (200 dots per inch), and a modem (up to 9600 baud).
The $1,595 Tefax system uses an RS232C interface and is
compatible with any 1 Mbyte (or more) Macintosh.
- InfoWorld 5 June
Color Portables.
This month's leaders in the race to offer the first color
laptops (see last December and January's column) are Sharp,
Mitsubishi, and Toshiba. The screens are based on a
thin-film, double-matrix transistor technology which
provides high display speed and superior contrast in
comparison to previous supertwist LCD screens. At $6,000,
the 12 MHz 80286-based Mitsubishi with an 11 inch VGA screen
will have the least expensive list price of the three. The
20 MHz 80386 Toshiba T5200 also has an 11 inch VGA display
and is expected to have an $8,000 base price but cost up to
12,000 when fully configured. Sharp's 20 MHz 80386 model
8000 with a 14 inch, backlit VGA display, 2 Mbytes of RAM
(expandable to 8 Mbytes), a 3.5 inch 2 Mbyte drive and a 40
Mbyte hard disk will cost about 10,000.
- InfoWorld 29 May and PC Week 5 June
Coming Soon?
A more "Mac-like" Word Perfect (2.0) featuring most of the
features of the MS-DOS version 5.0 is slated for year-end
release. FullWrite Professional remains on schedule for
year's end, but XyMac, based on XyWrite IV for MS-DOS which
is expected in the fall, may be a long time coming. SAS
Institute plans two Macintosh statistics products for late
summer named JMP (Professional for about $500 and "Start"
for less than $100). JMP features 3-D graphics, including
the ability to rotate the graphics, and is a completely new
program rather than a port of the well-known SAS statistics
package. Letraset is considering splitting Ready, Set, Go!
into two desktop publishing products (tentatively Ready,
Set, Go! Plus and Ready, Set, Go! Professional). A new
Print Shop for the Apple //e, //c, and IIgs similar to the
recently released new MS-DOS version is in beta-test and
should ship by October.
- InfoWorld 29 May and MacWeek 6 and 13 June
Still Waiting.
More than a year after Lotus president Jim Manzi proclaimed
that Unix versions of 1-2-3 would be forthcoming the company
has not settled on a release schedule for Unix, DEC/VMS, or
IBM mainframe versions. Microsoft announced it couldn't
make the planned end-of-June deadline for shipping the
Presentation Manager version of Excel, but did say they
expected a version for Hewlett-Packard's New Wave in the
fourth quarter. Shipping of dBase IV version 1.1 has
slipped into the third quarter (Ashton-Tate's current
bug-fix and work-around file for version 1.0 filled 1,500
lines on Compuserve at the end of May).
- InfoWorld 5 and 12 June
___________________________________________________________
(~~~~) / \
( 0 0 ) | (Prof) Murph Sewall <Sewall@UConnVM.BITNET> |
(| > |) ___/ Marketing Department <Sewall%UConnVM.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.Edu> |
( \__/ ) <___ School of Business ...psuvax1!uconnvm.bitnet!sewall |
(____) \_ U. of Connecticut *standard disclaimer applies* /
\__________________________________________________________/
(This .sig "borrowed" from Johnson Earls <Jearls@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu> Thanx!)