The summer Macworld Expo was held in Boston again this year. It featured the usual enthusiastic crowds of users, who turned out in spite of an intense bout of heat and humidity. In contrast to last year’s show, when HyperCard and MultiFinder were introduced, there was no single hit of the Expo. However, there were several important trends:
• A new wave of advanced graphics programs, including several providing impressive color capabilities.
• The arrival of the first mainstream printer based on a PostScript clone.
• A generally positive reaction to Apple’s new scanner.
• The official announcement of several new presentation programs.
• Several interesting new output devices from third parties.
This report discusses the Expo. We attempt to cover the most important highlights, but because of the size of the show, we undoubtedly missed some things. The growth of the Macworld Expo has made it almost impossible for a single report to cover everything of importance that happened there.
The Show: Overcrowded, Overheated, and Poorly-Connected
Because of the growth of the Expo, the show coordinator split it this year into two venues: the World Trade Center, and the Bayside Exposition Center. A conference with industry speakers was held at a third site. This arrangement allowed a lot of vendors to participate who would have otherwise have been closed out of the show.
Transportation problems. However, there were extreme problems getting people to and from the various Expo sites. Buses were supposed to run between them, and to and from the downtown hotels. The buses were frequently late, forcing people to stand in the sun for an hour or more in 90-degree weather and 90% humidity. Because of the number of buses needed, drivers were recruited from as far away as Connecticut, and sometimes knew almost nothing about the layout of Boston. We spent an hour on one bus while the driver searched for the Ritz-Carlton hotel. He finally asked us to find it on a map for him. Similar horror stories were common.
Overcrowding as well. Although the split venue reduced congestion on the show floor, it did nothing for the hotel room shortage. This problem has become almost routine for Macworld Boston; people at the show seemed to consider themselves lucky if they were housed within half an hour of the Expo site.
Potential damage to Apple’s reputation. Even though Apple does not control the show management, many customers seemed to believe that it does. We heard more than one attendee saying that “Apple ought to do something” about the problems. We think the troubles at this year’s show were probably serious enough to reduce attendance at future Boston Macworld Expos, especially if the weather is hot again.
Highlights
New output devices. There were a lot of new printers and other output devices at the show, including several film recorders and an embroidery machine. Also on display were several new Macintosh-compatible color printers priced at under $10,000, most scheduled to ship sometime this year. See the section below on Output Devices for more details.
A PostScript clone. Qume and Jasmine announced a new 300 dpi printer based on PostScript clone hardware and software developed by Weitek Corp. They said the printer can process PostScript at several times the speed of a LaserWriter IINT. The Jasmine version of the printer will sell for less than $4,000.
Lots of new graphics programs. There was an explosion of new and revised graphics software. Many of the major paint and draw programs received updates, and there were a number of impressive new programs in the areas of color painting, 3D drawing, and type manipulation.
Presentations were hot. The competition in presentations-making software has heated up dramatically, with the announcement of new programs from Letraset and Aldus, and revised software from Microsoft, MacroMind, and Symantec.
Increased and decreased vendor profiles. Companies making larger splashes than before at Macworld included Jasmine, which had a very large booth, and Brøderbund, which is making a push in Macintosh desktop publishing. Companies with smaller booths than previous shows included Adobe and Letraset. Lotus and Versacad weren’t even represented at the show.
Claris & Microsoft both did well. The two largest vendors of general productivity software for Macintosh both had well-organized and well-attended booths. Microsoft’s booth in particular was much easier to navigate than its booth at the January Macworld. Meanwhile, the Claris booth featured a telephone with a direct line to Claris technical support.
Miscellaneous. Among the other points of interest at the show were:
• Adobe used Illustrator ‘88 to create color labels which were then pasted onto bottles of Calistoga mineral water. We saw several people wandering around the show drinking bottles of Adobe’s Indian Springs mineral water.
• We saw a new CDEV called Fish, which causes color animated fish to swim on the desktop as a background task under MultiFinder. It was one of the strangest uses of MultiFinder to date, but unfortunately a user reported to us later that it sometimes causes system crashes.
• Three Japanese software companies exhibited at the show—still a tiny number, but the largest number of Japanese firms we’ve ever seen at a Macworld Expo.
“It’ll ship in September.” Macworld was held in August, and as usual the developers were showing a lot of programs that were not quite finished yet. But this time, most of them were promised to be ready within six weeks. Almost every incomplete program that we saw had a September ship date, including Wingz, x, x, x. Naturally, when September rolled around, few of those programs actually shipped. Developers are still having trouble planning realistic shipment dates.
Apple Presence
As usual, Apple had the two largest booths at the show. One was dedicated to education solutions, many involving HyperCard. The other booth was dedicated to business-oriented applications, and included the displays of the new scanner and Macintosh II 4/40. However, the new products were marked only by two small 8.5” by 11” signs, saying “New,” apparently printed on a LaserWriter. An average customer wandering through the Apple booth probably would not have even realized that Apple had released any new products.
Visibility of the new scanner at the show was greatly increased by cards displayed in a number of third-party booths, saying that this company supported the Apple Scanner. Many developers seemed to embrace the scanner eagerly; the most enthusiastic demo of it that we saw was given not in the Apple booth, but in Aldus’s.
Product Categories
How to read the rest of this report. The sections that follow highlight the new and interesting products we found at the show. For each product category, there is an introductory paragraph. We encourage you to use this report as a reference document, by skimming the introductions to find topics that interest you, and then for those topics reading the more detailed information that follows.
Page Layout
One new page layout program still in development was displayed at the show, and another changed distributors.
“The Integrated World of TechScriber.” That was how Mansfield Systems described its new DTP product, which is scheduled to ship in the second quarter of 1989. (It was refreshing to see a publisher with a relatively realistic ship date.) The program consists of eight modules, including a word processor, publication composer, math equation editor, and numerical table editor. Each module will be sold separately for $100 to $200, and they can be mixed and matched freely to produce an integrated package tailored to the user’s needs. This modular format is an interesting concept which, if it works, couldprobably be applied successfully to other software categories.
Ragtime finds a new home. Formerly published by Orange Micro, it is now sold in the United States by Cricket Software. Ragtime is much more popular in Europe (where it was written) than in the United States, but that could change since Cricket has a much bigger retail presence than Orange Micro. Cricket seems to be trying to position Ragtime as a forms-oriented product, a move which has a chance of succeeding because of its strong spreadsheet capabilities.
Presentations
New program from Aldus. Persuasion, the company’s new presentations package, features templates, and an outline processor that will automatically convert outlines into slides. The product is positioned as a moderately powerful presentation-maker that is very easy to use. This matches the positioning of PageMaker in the page layout market.
New program from Letraset. StandOut!, once known informally as ReadySetShow, was introduced at the show with remarkably little fanfare. It has extnsive charting features, but looked complicated and possibly harder to learn than the Aldus product.
VideoWorks continues. MacroMind continued to enhance and expand VideoWorks, which has grown into a whole line of software and support tools. The latest addition to the family is VideoWorks Interactive, which adds HyperCard-like features to VideoWorks. One of the more appealing features of the product is that moving artwork can be designated as a button. A preliminary version of the product is available today, and MacroMind says a finished version will ship sometime in 1989.
Windows program ported to Macintosh. So far as we know, the first Windows program to be ported to Macintosh is Pixie, a presentation graphics program. It could be very useful in corporate environments mixing PCs and Macintoshes, but as a standalone Macintosh product its features are barely average.
New package with Crosfield compatibility. Presentation Pro, from Strade, is a basic presentation-making package that features compatibility with a variety of Crosfield Dicomed output devices.
Graphics
We were astounded at the huge selection of new and revised graphics software at the show. There are now so many graphics packages for Macintosh on the market that some of them may not be able to survive. In the meantime, the customers have a tremendous selection, with major new color paint programs and a lot of support for automatic tracing of bitmap images. Here are some highlights:
Painting Software: New color image editor. PhotoMac, from Data Translation, is essentially Image Studio in full color. It appeared to be a very professional package, well-marketed by its publisher, and attracted intense interest at the show. Scheduled to ship in November, PhotoMac will retail for $695.
New painting programs from Aba Software. In stark contrast to its small and disorganized booth of last year, Aba had a very professional booth and several interesting new products. The company introduced GraphistPaint, a black and white painting package, and GraphistPaint II, a color and grayscale paint program. Both programs feature powerful rotation and skewing controls, plus an impressive stencil tool that allows imges to overlap. The color version has additional filtering and blurring commands, and the ability to map an image onto a sphere—an effect that probably has little practical utility, but was a crowd-pleaser at the show. Aba also showed a much-improved version of Draw it Again Sam, with paint controls and rotation.
New paint program from Cricket. Cricket Paint is a black and white painting program with some interesting features, including the ability to resize and position draw-type objects before dropping them into the painting, and a Spirograph-style drawing tool. The product is an interesting addition to Cricket’s line, but probably does not have enough new features to overcome SuperPaint.
Amiga paint program. PhotonPaint, by MicroIllusions, is probably the most popular painting program for the Commodore Amiga. Now it has been ported to Macintosh. The program includes some interesting features, including surface mapping, twisting of objects, and mapping onto several 3D solids. But its most surprising feature is the price—just $125.
Enhanced software from Silicon Beach. The company said that Super 3D Enhanced, the long-awaited color version of Super 3D, would ship in the third quarter of 1988. Also premiered was SuperPaint 2.0, which has an auto-trace tool, a freehand tool, and allows new custom tools to be added to the painting toolbox. There is also now a color preview function, although unfortunately objects are still edited in black and white mode.
Revised PixelPaint. The new version, called PixelPaint Professional, includes dithering tools for blending colors, a color separator, masking tools, and a controller for color scanners. This eliminates many of the advantages of Modern Artist.
Revised version of Modern Artist. The color painting program now has a color separator and anti-aliasing functions.
Color MacCalligraphy. A new version of the Japanese-style painting program will support full color on the Macintosh II, and will feature scrollable windows. It is scheduled to be available in late 1988.
Painting and drawing from the Apple menu. DeskPaint, the painting desk accessory from Zedcor, was shown in a new version. New features include an auto-trace tool, and enhanced painting tools. In addition, the program is now bundled with DeskDraw, a desk accessory for creating and editing draw images—include polygons traced by DeskPaint.
Drawing: Claris graphics software. Claris’s MacDraw product line now includes three products: Claris CAD, the long-awaited MacDraw II, and MacDraw 1.9. All three are available now. Claris CAD is discussed below in the section on CAD software. It is positioned for use by engineers, architects, and others who need precise technical drawings. MacDraw II is positioned as a drawing tool for artists and other graphics professionals who don’t need CAD capabilities. It costs $395, is faster than MacDraw, and includes support for color, layering, and more precise positioning of graphics. The original MacDraw, at $195, is positioned as a basic drawing tool for students and businesses.
Down from CAD. Jonathan Draw is a slimmed-down version of Jonathan, a Macintosh-based CAD package made in Norway by Orbit Creative Computing. It still has a lot of CAD-style features, including symbol libraries, grid controls, and even some 3D transformations.
Revised Canvas. Version 2.0 of Deneba’s Canvas has a lot of improvements over the original. The new features include support for 16 million colors (instead of eight), an auto-trace tool, unlimited layering, and support for export of PICT files.
Brøderbund jumps into DTP. The company announced two new graphics programs, both at very attractive prices. Drawing Table is a basic drawing program with some fairly advanced features, including binding text to curves, opening eight documents at once, Macintosh II color support, and use of a bundled library of clip art. It will cost $130, and was scheduled to ship in October.
Brøderbund’s TypeStyler is a full-color, upgraded version of PosterMaker. Like the original, it can twist type into a wide variety of shapes and perspective effects. There is now support for gradient fills, and a lot of other effects. The price on this exciting product is $150, and it is scheduled to ship in November.
Type manipulation from Letraset. The company again showed LetraStudio, its type-manipulation program, which was scheduled to ship by mid-October. At $495, it is more expensive than Brøderbund’s TypeStyler, and has fewer features. However, the Letraset type library will eventually be made compatible with LetraStudio, giving professional users access to a wider array of fonts than those available with TypeStyler.
Pictures into PostScript fonts. Altsys, publisher of the font-making program Fontographer, showed the new KeyMaster, a program allowing users to incorporate up to 16 Macintosh PICT files into a downloadable PostScript font. Unfortunately, the pictures cannot be mixed with text characters, and the 16-picture limitation is a serious drawback.
Font-kerning programs. Several new products allowed users to adjust the inter-character kerning of Macintosh fonts. They included MacKern, from Icom Simulations, and LetrTuck, from CDCO Services. A lot of professional users want to be able to adjust the kerning of their fonts, but the use of different kerning tables by large numbers of users could result in spacing changes when documents are exchanged between systems.
3D clip art. Enabling Technologies announced eight libraries of 3D clip art which can be read into its Pro 3D program. The user can rotate the drawings, change the lighting, and then export the finished graphic to other programs. The samples shown by the company looked very impressive.
CAD & Engineering
As at the January show in San Francisco, the selection of CAD and engineering packages continues to grow quickly. The following is just a sampling of the highlights.
• Pro 3D will be enhanced to run on the Macintosh II in color.
• New products from Paracomp include ModelShop (a 3D surface modeler), Swivel 3D (a 3D drawing program incorporating swivels and hinges, so objects can be connected together), and MacVLSI (a circuit layout program).
• MacSPICE is an analog circuit simulator from Capilano Computing.
• Claris CAD is a 2D CAD package using the MacDraw interface.
• Generic CADD is a 2D drawing package with a big selection of symbol libraries, from Generic Software.
• Dreams is the follow-on to MacDraft from IDD. The program is supposedly as easy to use as fingerpaint.
• DynaPerspective is a 3D modelling program developed by DynaWare of Japan. It was first available for Japanese PCs and the IBM PC, but has now been ported to Macintosh.
• Our favorite flyer for a 3D drawing program was for Designer’s Perspective, from A&A Co. Ltd. of Tokyo. It features a simple interface and “honestly limits itself to black and white without trying to fool you into accepting the weak pallet (sic) of computerized color. You can color program output by hand to your exact requirements.”
Other existing products on display at the show included MGMStation, Dimensions (including a ray-tracing version), several circuit-design packages from Douglas Electronics, Capilano’s DesignWorks, McCAD from Vamp Inc., Mac Architrion from Gimeor, IGC’s Pegasys, the 2D CAD program Snap! from a company with the same name, and a large selection of programs from Abvent.
Input Devices
The supply of scanners, especially sophisticated color models, continues to grow. Meanwhile, the manufacturers of black and white scanners reacted to the Apple Scanner announcement in different ways, most ignoring it, but one confronting it head-on. However, the most interesting development in input devices at the show was the proliferation of video image capture products.
Color scanners. Sharp showed its JX-450, a $7,000 flatbed unit which is available now. It also showed the JX-300, a smaller and less versatile color scanner which will be priced at $4,000 to $5,000 when it is released in the fourth quarter of 1988. Sharp probably makes the most innovative use of scanners of any Japanese PC manufacturer, so its presence in the Macintosh market may bring additional interesting products in the future.
Howtek showed its Scanmaster/35, a color slide scanner for Macintosh. Scanning times range from about 3 to 15 minutes, depending on resolution selected. The scanner costs $8,200, a price that includes an interface board and software. Howtek also sells an OEM version of the Sharp JX-450, discussed above.
Black and white scanners. Microtek fought back against Apple’s scanner announcement with a new scanner of its own, the MSF-300Q. It can input 64 gray levels, compared to the Apple scanner’s 16. Microtek pointed this out in a series of posters labeled “Don’t let Microtek’s competitors blur your vision.” The advantages of the Apple Scanner are that it costs $700 less than the $2,495 MSF-300Q, and that the Apple interface software is much more sophisticated than Microtek’s.
Other vendors showing black and white scanners included Hewlett-Packard, New Image Technology, QMS, Datacopy, Abaton, and Dest.
OCR. Olduvai Software’s Read-It was revised, with a new learning mode that the company says dramatically increases its performance. Caere’s Omnipage, another OCR package, was shown in the Apple booth, but its overall visibility was low because Caere did not have a booth of its own.
Video capture. A rapidly-growing category of input devices for Macintosh is video capture boards and peripherals. They include the following:
• Pixelogic produces its ProViz product in both color and black and white versions. They can capture black and white images from moving objects, and the color version can capture color images from stationary sources.
• Colorfreeze-24, from Computer Friends, can capture a frame from live video, in black and white or color up to 24 bits deep.
• Data Translation’s QuickCapture is a black and white frame grabber board. It digitizes a single frame from a live video source. The company’s ColorCapture board does the same with color video images.
• Computer Eyes is a black and white video capture board that requires a stationary image. It is produced by Digital Vision, Inc.
• AST’s NuView color capture board can grab frames at a sampling rate of 15 per second, and save them with 24 bits of color information.
• Finally, MegaGraphics, generally known for its monitors and graphics controllers, showed a new real-time black and white video capture board called MegaShot. It can extract still frames from live video.
Output Devices
The most important printer news of the show was the PostScript clone printer from Qume and Jasmine. However, there is also a rising tide of new output devices, many of them color printers. Many of these new products use a Macintosh-compatible printer driver developed by Cricket Software, called Expression. Although it is still buggy and in beta, Expression when completed may finally give Macintosh owners access to the wide variety of printers available in the PC world.
First mainstream PostScript clone. Qume and Jasmine announced the first low-cost printer using a PostScript clone. Developed by Qume, the printer is AppleTalk-compatible and is based on a very small 300 dpi liquid crystal print engine, roughly two-thirds the size of a LaserWriter II. Its input tray is limited to 100 pages, and it prints slightly darker than most PostScript printers. Qume’s version of the printer, called CrystalPrint Publisher, will sell for about $4,500. The Jasmine version, called DirectPrint, will sell for under $4,000. They were scheduled to ship in October, 1988. For a more complete description of the printer, see our bulletin, “Effects of the Jasmine/Qume PostScript Clone.”
Tiny ink-jet printer. General Computers premiered the miniscule WriteMove printer, a 192-dpi ink-jet printer priced at XXX. It weighs all of three pounds, and is two inches high and eleven inches wide. When loaded with batteries (they go inside the platen), it would make the ideal printer to accompany a portable computer.
Orange Micro’s third-party printer connectors. The company again showed its Grappler products, connectors which allow a Macintosh to print to a variety of third-party printers. At the show, Grappler was printing to an HP DeskJet (a $995 300-dpi ink-jet printer), an Epson EX-800 (a $499 color dot-matrix printer), a Star Micronix NX-2400 (a $529, 24-pin, 180-dpi dot-matrix printer), and a LaserJet-compatible laser printer. The booth appeared to attract only moderate attention from the crowd, but we saw dealers lined up to speak with the staff.
Color printers. A number of third-party color printers for Macintosh are nearing release. This is good news for Apple’s efforts to sell presentations systems. The printers include:
• The Sharp JX-730, a 180-dpi color ink-jet, priced at $1,995. It is expected to ship in the fourth calendar quarter.
• The Howtek PixelMaster is a 240 dpi solid-ink jet printer, priced at $5,995. It will be available, with a Macintosh-compatible driver, by the end of the year. Its output is very nice, but unfortunately the solid ink does not work well with overhead transparencies.
Other output devices. There were also a number of interesting new output devices for Macintosh, including several film recorders and an embroidery machine.
• Matrix ProColor film recorder, at $6,495, can print PICT images saved by several Macintosh drawing packages.
• The Lasergraphics LFR film recorder also prints PICT files. It costs $9,750.
• The Montage FR1 film recorder is accessed from a desk accessory, and can print PICT files. It is priced at $5,995.
• Still Light, from American Liquid Light, is a film recorder that prints PICT files. It costs $2,495 to $3,995, depending on configuration.
• The Mirus film recorder was probably the star film recorder of the show, because it can be accessed as a standard printer via the Chooser. This makes it a lot more versatile than much of the competition. It costs $5,885.
• POEM (Personal & Original Embroidery Machine) is a Macintosh-driven embroidery machine. It uses a small automatic sewing machine made by Aisin Co, paired with Macintosh software designed by Enzan Hoshigumi, publisher of MacCalligraphy. This weird-looking duo was probably the sleeper product of the show. It should be available by the middle of next year, for under $1,000.
Business Software
Financial model analysis tool. Given a financial model created in Excel or some other spreadsheets, Crystal Ball inputs a series of random values into the assumption variables. The program then examines the output from this process, and produces a statistical analysis of the likelihood of various outcomes. The probability distribution for each variable can be selected by the user. Crystal Ball costs $395, and is produced by Market Engineering Corp.
Revised FocalPoint. A new version of FocalPoint, the Hypercard-based personal meneagement tool, was announced by TENpoint0, the Macintosh software portion of Mediagenic (formerly Activision). FocalPoint 2 includes a number of extensions to the original product, the most popular of which seemed to be its ability to exchange information with a British hand-held personal schedule computer.
Investment support. Wall Street Investor, from Pro Plus Software, offers such features as portfolio management and fundamental analysis. The company claims that it turns a Macintosh owner into “a real animal in the Market.”
Miscellaneous
Interactive education. CourseBuilder is a flowchart-driven educational presentation tool. It can be used to display information, respond to key clicks and keyboard input, and even control laser disks and videotape recorders. A somewhat similar product, called Course of Action, was shown by Authorware, Inc.
Japanese hypertext. Idea Driver is a Japanese hypertext application for Macintosh. It has buttons, and can display variable-sized windows. It also has a speech synthesizer that can render English, or Japanese in the Osaka or Tokyo dialects. Idea Driver is made by A&A Co. of Tokyo.
Japanese input. Another product from A&A is Sweet JAM (Japanese Attachment for Macintosh). It is a utility that allows input of Japanese text from a standard roman-character keyboard, and enables the user to type Japanese into most popular English-language Macintosh software.
Simulations. Extend is a block-diagram simulations package which can be used for things like stock market simulations and earthquake threat analysis. It includes a scripting language which can be used to add to its functions. Published by Imagine That, $495.
Amanda returns. HyperCard trivia buffs may be pleased to know that Inigo the cat has returned in four adventures: Inigo Takes a Bath, Inigo’s Dream, Inigo’s Snack, and the classic Inigo Gets Out. Bundled together as the Amanda Stories, they cost $19.95 from the Voyager Company. Reportedly another stack, Inigo Gets Hit by a Truck, is circulating in the public domain world.
The strangest thing at the show. Macworld Expo is taditionally full of unusual products, but the standout by far this time was Enzan-Hoshigumi’s Cyber Space Deck. It is apparently a HyperCard stack, and seems to include a personal scheduler and a memo pad. But there is also a display of times around the world, a business card design function, and something called Cyber City that we can’t figure out at all. The flyer claims that the software includes “a cyber navigating function for transversing cyber space in any direction, including the fourth.” Exactly what the Cyber Space Deck is, and how it’s used, we still aren’t sure.
Groupware
This was the first Macworld Expo that produced enough workgroup software to merit a separate category. That alone is an encouraging development.
InBox 3, probably the most popular Macintosh electronic mail system, will include features like hierarchical organization of messages, and variable fonts and font sizes within messages. It is scheduled for release in the fourth calendar quarter of 1988.
DaynaMail is a new AppleTalk E-Mail system for Macintosh and PCs. It can deliver registered and urgent mail, and allows Macintoshes and PCs to share files and messages. However, one of its most exciting features is compatibility with wide-area messaging systems like IBM PROFS and DEC All-in-One. The price is $295 for five users, and the system is scheduled to be available in late 1988.
Interactive E-Mail. InterNet Systems showed RealTalk, a desk accessory allowing users on an AppleTalk network to type messages to one-another interactively, and to simultaneously view the contents of windows on either screen. If the product works as promised, it will add an interesting new level of functionality to AppleTalk workgroups.
Interactive scheduling. Perfect Timing is a group time management system. It allows individual users to keep their schedules on a server. Group meetings can be scheduled by inputting the list of people to attend, and then viewing time conflicts displayed graphically. Requests to confirm a meeting time can be broadcast over the network to each person being scheduled. The product is produced by Imagine Software. It costs $295 for the first three nodes, and $150 for every additional three nodes.
Conclusion
As usual, Macworld was a big success. The crowds were enthusiastic, and the vendors seemed fairly pleased with the turnout. The biggest threat to the show may be its own growth: the strain of handling large crowds at several sites almost overwhelmed the show’s transportation system. Macworld may be getting too big for Boston.
