Info-IBMPC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL ("Info-IBMPC Digest") (12/31/90)
Info-IBMPC Digest Sun, 30 Dec 90 Volume 90 : Issue 217
Today's Editor:
Murph Sewall <Sewall%UCONNVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Today's Topics:
Murph's VAPORWARE Column for January 1991
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Date: Thu, 27 Dec 1990 21:09:30 EST
From: Murph Sewall <Sewall%UCONNVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: Murph's VAPORWARE Column for January 1991
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the January 1991 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
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.)
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End of Info-IBMPC Digest V90 #217
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