Subject: MacWorld (early August) leads to Macnificent rumors :-)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the August 1988 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$15/year
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Permission granted to copy with the above citation
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
Mac Double II.
Golden Triangle has announced the Firepower processing board for the Mac II which will be capable of running Apple's forthcoming (in beta test at the moment) Macintosh real-time distributed operating system (called MR-DOS) independently of the host Mac II (which means it will not be necessary to dedicate a Mac II solely to file serving on an AppleTalk network). The Firepower board is available with a 16, 20, or 25 MHz 68020, 2 Appletalk ports, up to 4 Mbytes of RAM and 1 Mbyte of ROM. Manufacturer's prices for the Firepower board start at $2,500 in volume.
- InfoWorld 11 July
Clone a Mac II at Home.
Second Wave, makers of a 4-slot expansion chassis for the Mac-SE (last October), has begun shipping a similar chassis for the Mac Plus and will introduce a 6-slot Nubus unit at MacWorld that can be used to expand the number of slots in a Mac II. If it's outfitted with the Firepower board, a hard disk, and a keyboard, the Second Wave product can become a basic Unix workstation, or the combination could act as a network file server without any Mac II at all. If some enterprising firm (Phoenix Technologies? AST?) should decide to write Macintosh compatible ROM chips, the Second Wave expansion chassis plus the Firepower board could be turned into a Mac II clone. The price of the expansion unit which is scheduled for shipping this fall has not been announced.
- InfoWorld 11 July and a phone call from 2nd Wave 2 July
Color SE.
Perhaps next January's MacWorld will see the introduction of the new, three expansion slot, color Macintosh SE (see last October's column), as there are no indication that it will be unveiled at the Boston show in August. - InfoWorld 20 June
Not Much to Read (Only).
Apple evangelist Martha Steffen estimated that only about half a dozen different disks were available for the new Mac CD ROM by the end of June - a dozen if demo programs are counted. Most of those disks contain clip art or similar applications. A few more disks will be introduced at MacWorld in Boston this month, but the first real flurry of CD's for the Mac aren't expected until January's MacWorld. However, if High Sierra access software is delivered this month as expected, disks currently used by the IBM PC could become available as developers write Mac interfaces for them. - InfoWorld 20 June
Apple Connectivity to IBM
David Nagy, Apple's marketing manager for IBM communications products, has confirmed that a combined Token Ring adapter (see last month's column) and 3270/5250 terminal emulation board will be introduced in November for delivery next March. In addition, Apple plans to announce wide-scale support for IBM's Systems Network Architecture (SNA) communications protocols.
- PC Week 21 June and InfoWorld 27 June
Modern Jazz Blown Away.
Lotus has announced that Modern Jazz (last month and last May's columns) is one piece of vaporware that will never materialize. Apparently recently appointed Lotus vice president Frank King didn't believe that Modern Jazz would effectively compete with Microsoft's Works and so decided to concentrate on 1-2-3 Mac which is expected next year. Lotus plans to offer registered users of Jazz 1A upgrades to 1-2-3 Mac, but further details are not yet available.
- InfoWorld 20 June
MacWare That May Yet Exist.
Software Publishing Corporation has signed a joint agreement with D Graphics, Inc. to create a Macintosh version of the popular Harvard Graphics program. The, as yet unnamed, application will compete with Cricket Presents and Microsoft Powerpoint. Delivery won't be until next year. Another Mac graphics product scheduled for August publication is Photon Paint for the Mac II. This color application is capable of wrapping designs around 3-D objects and can add luminance to objects so that they appear to be lighted from a point source. Photon Paint's announced price is $299.95. Electronic Arts expects to release its $495 Studio 8 color paint program for the Mac II in September. The program is designed for graphics professionals and plans to compete directly with Supermac's Pixel Paint. Also, Acius is working on documentation for a prototype database named Skeleton that will make it simple for anyone to customize and have a full-featured Mac database application.
- InfoWorld 27 June and 4 July
Rewritable Optical Disc.
Advanced Graphics Applications joined the rewritable disc race (see June's column) by showing a "plug and play" 650 Mbyte drive at PC Expo in June. The Discus Rewritable uses 3M's optical media, plugs into an AT bus, and is scheduled to ship in November. The transfer rate at the demonstration was 5.5 Megabits per second with an average access time of 80 milliseconds. The announced price is $4,995.
- InfoWorld 27 June
Taking a Different Bus.
PC clone manufacturers led by AST Research president Safi Qureshey are attempting to agree on an alternative to IBM's Micro Channel Architecture (MCA). The alternate bus could be the Nubus standard used in the Macintosh II or an adaptation of the VME (IBM mainframe Virtual Memory Extension) electrical specifications. The move away from the IBM "standard" is based on dissatisfaction with MCA performance as well as the cost and difficulty of licensing
from "Big Blue." - InfoWorld 27 June
Twice As Fast.
Nexgen Microsystems is ready to ship a five chip processor that is Intel 80386 and 80387 compatible, but approximately six times faster than the Intel originals. Olivetti is likely to be the first to offer a workstation built around the Nexgen processor set early next year.
- PC Week 11 July
More Than Fifty Times Faster.
By October, Semiconductor maker, Wietek, plans to begin shipping their Abacus math coprocessor for Intel 80386 computers. The Abacus will come in 20 and 25 MHz versions and can be used as a stand alone math coprocessor in conjunction with Intel's 80387 math coprocessor. In a test on a 20 MHz Compaq 386 with both 80387 and Abacus coprocessors, only 9 seconds were needed to recalculate a program that took a PC-XT with an 8087 chip 470 seconds to
accomplish. - PC Week 21 June
VAX-on-the-Desk.
DEC is busy developing a desktop VAX workstation to compete with Sun, Apollo, and other marketers of high end work stations. The VAX-top will retail for around $15,000 and link to DECnet.
- PC Week 21 June
Who's Doing a Job(s) on Who?
One rumor has it that NeXt is negotiating a licensing arrangement granting IBM t e rig ts to all, or portions of, t e Palo Alto startup's Unix interface. owever, a rival rumor monger claims that the whole story originated at Apple in Cupertino.
- PC Week 21 June and InfoWorld 27 June
More "Unobtainables?"
Shipment schedules for the announced 25 MHz Intel 80386 computers from IBM, Sun, Compaq, and others my slip due to limited availability of microprocessors from Intel. Smaller PC producers are having difficulty getting even preproduction samples of the 25 MHz chips.
- PC Week 21 June
Blue Chips.
IBM has a license from Intel to manufacturer it's own 80386 chips. There is a rumor that Big Blue has an in-house version running at 60 MHz! Not surprisingly, IBM's engineers have received an internal memo directing them not to design any more 80286 systems. IBM appears well on the way toward solving their DRAM shortage as well with the discovery that they can produce 16 Mbit chips as easily as 4 Mbit chips and actually get a higher manufacturing yield as well. Those 16 Mbit chips (2 Mbytes) could make OS/2 Extended Edition (now said to require more than 3 Mbytes of RAM) practical after all.
- PC Week 11 July
Very Fast Laptops.
Harris Corporation announced plans to begin shipping a 20 MHz 80C286 in September. The Harris chip is the fastest '286 microprocessor yet announced. For 16-bit operations it actually offers faster software performance than the 20 MHz 80386. Because the CMOS technology of the 80C286 uses only one-third the power of 80386 and standard 80286 processors, the new chip is ideally suited for use in battery powered laptops.
- PC Week 28 June
Speaking of Laptops.
The LapMac rumors have been around so long they're becoming boring, but it might just show up in Boston at MacWorld, or next January's MacWorld... Meanwhile, Big Blue is rumored to be planning a public announcement of a battery powered, very compact, 80386 laptop in September.
- InfoWorld 11 July
Not Enough Advantage.
Ashton-Tate is completely rewriting Multimate Advantage for OS/2 but doesn't expect to be finished until late 1989. In the meantime, owners of the present product may be tempted by new versions of competing word processors. So, current Advantage users will be offered an "interim functionality improvement" (when is a new version not a new version?) before snow next reaches the Great Plains. Meanwhile, some of Ashton Tate's best programmers are said to be accepting jobs at Claris (to work on what?).
- InfoWorld 27 June and 11 July
IIgs-e? New IIgs ROM.
Now that wags are saying, in print, that "gs" stands for "goes slow," rumors are abroad that Apple is planning on putting Western Design's 65832 in the next IIgs. If true, it would mean that the IIgs+ chatter (see April's and June's columns) is wrong because production quantities of the 65832 aren't planned until 1990 (see last month's column). Could someone be planting the "a faster IIgs is coming" rumors to keep "the rest of us" from buying Amigas? Maybe the new IIgs ROMs in September will quicken the pace of the hardware a bit.
- InCider August
GS Works by Another Name.
A faster IIgs may be needed to make effective use of AppleWorks GS which was renamed from GS Works after Apple spinoff Claris acquired Styleware in June. Sources close to Claris say that a Macintosh version of the program, which would compete with Microsoft Works, can be expected in about 18 months.
- InfoWorld 4 July
If These Guys Get Together It Could be Awesome.
Researchers at Sandia National Labs have a 1,024 parallel processor machine that runs 1,000 times faster than the single processor machine (Nearly perfect efficiency). Processing that quickly could require a memory based on a transistor made of superconducting materials which AT&T Bell Labs has developed that is current-sensitive to only one electron. The machine could produce so much output that "Digital Paper", a polyester-based substrate coated with infared-sensitive dye polymer developed by ICI Electronics might be needed. The "tape" is able to accept data at 10 Mbits/sec - a 2,400 ft. reel (.5 in wide) can hold 600 Gigabytes. - Popular Science reader John W. Taylor (SUNY Buffalo)
6 July
Up in Smoke.
Phillip Morris has been test marketing a new cigarette in Palo Alto, California named Next. The real difference between the tobacco product and Steve Job's computer of the same name is that Phillip Morris has managed to get something into the box.
- InfoWorld 20 June
Murph Sewall Sewall@UCONNVM.BITNET
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