SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (03/29/88)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the April 1988 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
IIgs+.
Next month inaugurates the fifth year of this column which
began with rumors about the Apple IIx (which eventually
became the IIgs). It seems only fitting to mark the
anniversary by opening with the rumors about where the Apple
II line goes from here. Although Apple's Vice President for
Development, Jean-Louis Gassee, has been quoted as saying
that there would be a successor to the IIgs, little else has
appeared in print. Here's what's been gleaned from the
electronic networks (PLATO, USENET, Genie, Compuserve, etc.)
and an Apple developer and IIgs beta tester who works in
Connecticut. Apple will announce a successor to the current
IIgs (a gs+?) as earlier as Applefest in May, but more
likely in '89. The clock speed will be either 5.36 MHz
(Apple's preference), 7.6 MHz (if there's sufficient "noise"
from developers and user groups), or even 12 Mhz
(longshot). Other than being faster, the new machine will
offer 512K RAM as standard and 256K of ROM. Upgrades from
the present IIgs (via motherboard swap) will be available
for between $300 and $500 (depends on what speed processor
finally is adopted).
Apple's Compact Disk.
A read only compact disk drive, called the Apple CD SC, will
ship in May for $1,199. One disk will hold well over half a
gigabyte (more than 550 Mbytes) with an average access time
between 400 and 500 milliseconds. When first shipped, the
product will support only the Macintosh native file
structure and Apple II ProDOS. Support for the High Sierra
CD ROM standard is expected (as a software upgrade) by
midsummer. Among the products that will be available on the
drive will be a new version of Grolier's Academic American
Encyclopedia ($395, also available this month for 512K
MS-DOS computers).
- InfoWorld 7 March and Hartford Courant 16 March
Tandy in Full Court Press?
Both Texas Instruments and Tandy are preparing to market
Macintosh clones. Both would like the other to be first
(and bare the brunt of a likely copyright infringement suit
by Apple). At least two Asian companies also are said to
have developed Mac clones. Tandy also has a PS/2 clone
awaiting the lawyers' okay. Is Radio Shack ready to go to
court with Apple and IBM at the same time?
- InfoWorld 22 February and 7 March
Sun Killer.
Atari is expected to introduce two business oriented
computers at the Hanover Computer Fair in West Germany this
month. One will be a 68030 based scientific workstation
based on the Unix V operating system. Either rumors that
this computer would be built around the Inmos T-800
transputer (last November's column) were inaccurate, or
Atari has an even more powerful machine (or a coprocessor
board) under development. The standard configuration will
include 4 Mbytes of RAM, an 80 Mbyte hard disk, and a 1,280
by 960 color display. The price will be under $5,000, some
say way under $5,000. Shipments in Europe aren't scheduled
until Fall and the U.S. introduction isn't anticipated until
next Spring. The second Atari will be the oft-rumored
complete desk-top publishing system - computer, laser
printer, and software - for under $5,000 (see last August's
column). - Random Access 6 March and InfoWorld 7 March
After NeXt.
Sun is rumored to be more worried about Steve Job's NeXt
computer (see Vaporware for January and March) than the
threat from Atari. If the NeXt machine actually is
announced, Sun will counter with an inexpensive SPARC
workstation (running Unix) to compete with it. Sun would
rather keep its machine in the lab because it is a
low-margin product that may simply draw sales away from
other Sun computers. - InfoWorld 14 March
New for Big Blue.
IBM says they plan to make major new product announcements
about every six months. The most recent are promised new
hard disk drives from a mini 2 inch, 50 Mbyte to a maxi 5.25
inch, 500 Mbyte. A 3.5 inch, 100 Mbyte model also is
expected. On the software scene, this summer should see the
arrival of several major pieces of OS/2 software: Wordstar
2000, Harvard Project Manager, Borland's Developers' Tools,
Quattro, and Paradox, and Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3 (which also
will be MS-DOS compatible). The new 1-2-3 will have an
"undo" key, record ("learn") macros, faster calculations,
and a 3-dimensional worksheet capability.
- Random Access 5 and 12 March and InfoWorld 14 March
Black Magic.
Ntergard, a Bridgeport, Connecticut start-up, has announced
a $150 MS-DOS wordprocessor that incorporates "hypertext"
features. The program, Black Magic version 1.12, requires a
minimum of 192K, a hard disk, and EGA display.
- Hartford Courant 16 March
Extended OS/2 (and Then Some).
Extended Edition 1.0 of OS/2, due in July, will come on 11
(that's eleven) 1.4 Mbyte 3.5 inch disks. In November,
Edition 1.1 will be delivered on 16 of the little floppies
(nearly 22.5 Mbytes). Like A/Ux, the preferred method of
delivery may be on a hard disk. - PC Week 23 February
Successor for the //c?
Rumors of a IIgs portable have been overheard in and around
Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. So far, they appear to
be mere trial balloons (is there any interest?). If Apple
can develop a satisfactory display for the LapMac (see last
month's column and below), a laptop IIgs may become a
reality as well. - Plato Net March
LapMac Screens on Order.
Apple has placed a large order with a Japanese manufacturer
for delivery of active matrix LCD screens in July. The
screens are said to be faster, cooler, and easier to read
than existing LCD displays. Some specs for the LapMac:
16 MHz 68000 processor, 2.5 Mbytes of RAM, an 800K 3.5 inch
disk, and a 20 Mbyte hard drive, all for about $6,000.
- PC Week 23 February and Random Access 5 March
Two-Side Laser Printing.
A new generation of laser printers offering automatic
two-sided printing may appear as early as this Fall for less
than $5,000. The printer engine, called the Canon LBP-8IIT,
is an upgrade of the LPB-SX now in use in the
Hewlett-Packard LaserJet II and Apple's LaserWriter II among
others. In duplex mode, the printer will produce four pages
per minute (essentially, the same speed as the eight pages
per minute of existing single-sided printers). The printer
is expected to weigh in at 60 pounds. - PC Week 8 March
New MacWare From Microsoft.
Microsoft plans to upgrade its entire Macintosh product line
by the end of this year. New releases that soon will be
announced include Excel 1.5 and Excel 2.0, Word 4.0, File
2.0, MacWorks 2.0, and enhanced versions of PowerPaint and
Mail. - PC Week 1 March
Zenith Laptops.
Around July 1 Zenith will begin shipping 80286 and 80386
laptops which will be even slimmer (about 30% lighter) than
the popular Z-183 laptops. - InfoWorld 22 February
Beyond the Mac III.
Motorola is already shipping beta-samples of it's new 88000
family of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set CPU)
microprocessors. The 88000 consists of two cache chips and
a CPU which will implement both integer and floating point
math, run at 17 MIPS with over 50 MIPS in parallel
processing mode. The two cache chips (one for instructions,
the other for data) allow data and instructions to move in
parallel into the CPU for more efficient processing.
- InfoWorld 22 February
Faster RAM Under Development.
The prospect of ever faster CPU's creates an obvious need
for faster memory chips. An IBM scientist made a
presentation to a recent International Solid-State Circuits
Conference which described 20 nanosecond DRAM (Dynamic
Random Access Memory) chips which are under development.
These chips will be about three times faster than the
current generation of DRAMs. Matsushita, Toshiba, and
Hitachi also presented experimental 16-megabit (that's 2
Mbyte) DRAMs at the same conference.
- InfoWorld 22 February
Color Macintosh Hardcopy?
Xerox has inked a marketing agreement with Macintosh
software developer Cricket. Cricket will produce Macintosh
and Windows-based graphics software to interface with, as
yet unannounced, Xerox color printers and film recorders.
- InfoWorld 22 February
Toward a "Positronic Brain?"
Computers the size of molecules - nanocomputers are measured
in nanometers (billionths of meters) - are one of the
hottest topics discussed in computer labs these days.
According to Eric Drexler of the Foresight Institute in Palo
Alto, California, the biggest problem is not designing or
making the machines; it's building assemblers to program
them with. The first nanocomputers probably will be little
more than complex proteins designed for bio-engineering
applications. More complex models will follow; the biggest
advantage is that reducing the size of computers
substantially increases their practical operating speed.
Mr. Drexler concedes that the technology is still about ten
years away but expects one day to be able to put a half a
trillion 32-bit CPU's in one water cooled cubic centimeter.
- PC Week 16 February
Integrated Home Entertainment.
NBC, United Artists, and United Cable have launched a joint
venture called the Interactive Game Network which will
develop a hand-held computer that will allow couch potatoes
to participate in televised game shows from the comfort of
their own living rooms. The technology is expected to be
marketed in 1990. - Random Access 27 February
---------------------
Disclaimer: I like my opinions better than my employer's anyway...
(subject to change without notice; void where prohibited)
ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu Murphy A. Sewall
BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin.
UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL University of Connecticut