Finally. Despair almost crept over me when I heard that Radius had not introduced a color version of its Pivot monitor at Macworld in San Francisco. After all, I try to include rumors that eventually come true. I've been in this game for almost year now, and I'm still getting the hang of the timing rumors (I'm sure it's a game since real life is not nearly this much fun though it does pay a lot better). Sooner or later I'll figure it out.

For those of you who either weren't reading TidBITS then or have forgotten, I wrote about the possibility of a color Pivot appearing at Macworld in the 10-Dec-90 issue. It looks like I will be off by three or four months. I've heard that the Color Pivot will appear sometime in the middle of this month, possibly at the CeBIT expo in Germany. Short of that information, I don't know a great deal. I had fun reading the articles in MacWEEK and InfoWorld though, because they didn't particularly agree. MacWEEK claims that the Color Pivot will work with the onboard video of the IIsi and IIci and that the price will be "under $3000." InfoWorld, in contrast, claims that the price will come in about $2200 and that Radius will have two versions, one with a video card and one without for Macs with internal video (although InfoWorld gives the LC as one example of a Mac with internal video, which, while true, the Pivot won't work without a VRAM upgrade at the bare minimum).

Whatever the details turn out to be, I think that the Color Pivot will be a great success as long as the price isn't too high. Even at educational and discount prices, an Apple 13" color monitor with a 4*8 video card runs about $1200 and the Apple 15" portrait display is about $100 more. So if the Color Pivot comes in with a list price around $2200 and discounts down to the $1600 range, it would be a serious contender with existing systems. And the concept of full page color is wonderful, although I'll admit that I've become extremely fond of my combination of the SE/30 internal monitor and an external Apple color monitor hooked to a Micron Xceed card.

Radius -- 800/227-2795

Related articles:
MacWEEK -- 26-Feb-91, Vol. 5, #8, pg. 1
InfoWorld -- 25-Feb-91, Vol. 13, #8, pg. 8