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Newsbytes - Internationa…ews 1983 May to 1994 June
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Newsbytes - International Computing Industry News 1994 Edition - May 1983 - June 1994 - Wayzata Technologies (5045) (1994).iso
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1984
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V72
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1991-10-04
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[***][10/16/84][***]
STORAGE WOES:
Storage Technology of Louisville, Colorado suffered a devastating $20
million loss last quarter. Storage Tech makes IBM-compatible mainframe
disk and tape storage systems and its losses are the worst to come out of
the industry-wide disk business shakeout to date. The company's biggest
problem was IBM, which initiated a price-cutting war in order to promote
its own drives. Storage simply couldn't keep up. Some 15-hundred workers,
10% of the staff, are being laid off as Storage attempts to renegotiate some
loans with the banks in order to stay afloat.
[***][10/16/84][***]
AND ON THAT SUBJECT:
Other serious blows were felt among competing firms and in the floppy disk
business. Miniscribe Corp. of Longmont, Colorado canned 26% of its workforce--
more than 500 employees--citing dismal sales of its disk drives. Xebec
Corp. of Sunnyvale laid off 90 employees from its Texas plant. That company
claims the slowdown is due to plant changes. Xebec makes disk and tape
drives. Shugart Corp. of Sunnyale is shedding 200 non-production workers
and says the shakeout is to blame. "It's a tough marketplace and we have to
reassess overhead expenses," William Bayer, president, was quoted as
saying. And finally, Dysan Corporation, maker of floppy diskettes, has
sustained a $16 million loss last quarter. Its R&D budget has been halved
and its pulling its investment from 12 other companies. In a late-breaking
Dysan development, reports indicate that Dysan has signed an agreement with
Kodak to sell floppy disks under the Kodak name. Both companies have
declined comment but Kodak has announced that on October 23, it will
announce a major move into the electronics business.
[***][10/16/84][***]
EAGLE FLIES SOUTH:
Troubled Eagle Computer has split for Southern California--Garden Grove, Ca.
to be specific--and will close its Los Gatos headquarters. Half the
already skeleton staff will move with the company, the rest will be let go.
Much of the company's future rests with a creditors committee which practically
has life-or-death control over $9 million in debts Eagle owes. In light of
the flying feathers, Ron Mickwee, chief executive officer of Eagle,
resigned his post and Gary Kappenman, who founded the company, has taken his
place. Eagle hopes the money-saving staff cuts and move to a manufacturing
facility in Southern Cal will enable it to stay out of Chapter 11 proceedings
and develop new products.
[***][10/16/84][***]
PIRATES 0, PATRIOTS 1:
A bill is awaiting President Reagan's signature that promises to finally
settle the matter of copyright protection for computer chips. The bill,
just passed by both Houses of Congress, states that chip masks will be given
ten years of federal copyright protection. Hailed as landmark legislation
by semiconductor groups, the bill will further protect American-made chips
which in recent years have suffered from murky U.S. laws and increasing
piracy.
[***][10/16/84][***]
APPLE RUMORS/HOPES:
What a panic on Wall Street! This week the ugly rumor that John Scully,
president of Apple had resigned, grabbed investors souls, sending the price
of Apple stock down a point. Of course, it's not true. Scully, in fact,
just spoke to an MIT audience in Cambridge, Massachusetts, saying he's got
big plans for Apple. Planning "a hard sell in corporate America," Scully
says he's going to get more MacIntosh computers in businesses with a "series
of building blocks over the next 18 months." The only building blocks he
acknowledged were a new laser printer and a networking system, soon-to-be-
announced, for the MacIntosh and Apple family computers that eventually
would connect with IBMs too.
[***][10/16/84][***]
HUMAN ENGINEERED DEAL:
Brisbane, Ca.-based Human Engineered Software was rescued from certain doom
last week by Avant Guard Publishing Corp. of Eugene, Oregon. HES, which
went bankrupt just prior to the deal, got an undisclosed cash payment from
AGPC. Human Engineered, which makes Commodore 64 software, will become a
subsidiary of Avant Guard, which makes 45 different programs for Apples and
IBM PCs. The deal is the latest evidence of team spirit among small software
companies as many realize that joining together is the only way to survive.
[***][10/16/84][***]
BLIND LEADING THE WAY:
Raymond Kurzweil is a very happy man today. His company, Kurzweil Applied
Intelligence Corporation, has received $4 million from Xerox and Wang.
Kurzweil developed a reading machine for the blind which can "read" a
document and then "speak" it though a voice synthesizer or store it in
memory as text. It's an experimental machine that's expected to be
commercially available in 1986, priced at about $15,000. It's clear that
Xerox and Wang have been listening to his progress and they intend to
use his technology in development of speech recognition and synthesis
computers. Kurzweil, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, also has a $10,700
music synthesizer perfected which is selling at the rate of 100 units per
month. It is capable of duplicating the sounds of 60 different instruments.
[***][10/16/84][***]
IN BRIEF--
MIT has lined up for purchase of the first 200 "Explorer System" computers
from TEXAS INSTRUMENTS. Massachusetts Institute of Technology says the
low-priced machines, which use the programming language LISP will be used
in artificial intelligence projects.
LOTUS DEVELOPMENT CORP., maker of Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony software, may
be quaking in light of IBM's announcement of its own competing software, but
it isn't showing to the public. Mitch Kapor, co-founder of the Cambridge,
Ma. company, has been named as the new chief executive while Jim Manzi is
the new CEO.
EPSON CORPORATION is doing very well these days. It's announced the opening
of a new assembly plant in near Portland, Oregon and a new R&D center in
Palo Alto, Ca. The assembly plant will make dot-matrix printers.
CROMEMCO of Mountain View, Ca., maker of microcomputers and a multi-user
system, has "streamlined" its workforce, i.e., laid of "less than 70" according
to Jack Eastwick of Cromemco. Cromemco says the reason is a reorganization
of the company's technical services.
COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. of Houston says its revenues are more than double what
they were last year. Interestingly enough, the money is pouring into Compaq
while other IBM-compatible computer makers are in the doldrums. Its
aggressive marketing and sales efforts worldwide may account for the company's
success. For instance, it's spent an estimated $4.4 million on advertising
this year so far--much of that on television.
[***][10/16/84][***]
BACK TO BASICS:
Professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz of Dartmouth, inventors of the
original BASIC programming language took 20 years to do it, but they're
coming out with a new version of BASIC by Christmas. The new BASIC offers
structured programming tools, a screen-oriented program editor, a
compiler, windows and improved graphics. Versions will be out for the IBM
PC in December and for the Apple MacIntosh in early 1985. It will be sold
through True Basic Inc. See the November issue of "Popular Computing" for
details on the new system.