Beverly Hills, Calif. - Radius Inc. this month will unveil VideoVision, a QuickTime-compatible device that lets users transfer 24-bit graph-ics, eight-bit stereo sound and flicker- free video between the Macintosh and VCRs.
Radius will introduce VideoVision at the Seybold Digital World Conference here on June 23 and will ship it next month for less than $2,500. It will come bundled with free copies of DiVA Corp.'s VideoShop and Macromedia Inc.'s Action, which retail for $595 and $495, respectively.
VideoVision consists of a NuBus card and an audio/video breakout box. The card contains a video digitizer and a built-in encoder that uses "convolution" to output "flicker-free" 24-bit images to videotape.
Apple sold Radius the rights to the board's video technology, which was code-named Touchstone, last year (see MacWEEK, Aug. 13, 1991).
The board features two expansion buses: a high-speed H-Bus that will allow it to access compression-decompression (codec) hardware and other video cards; and an R-Bus that will allow VideoVision to access full-duplex special-effects cards. Radius plans to build a codec board for VideoVision that will allow a Macintosh to digitize, display and output full-color, full-motion and full-frame (640-by-480-pixel) digital video.
The connector panel features composite and S-video inputs for two audio/video sources, and composite and S-video outputs for a single audio/video device. It also has separate left/right channel inputs for external analog audio. An on-board mixer allows users to combine external audio with internal Macintosh audio. A serial port is included that will let VideoVision control devices when QuickTime supports device control.
VideoVision also delivers 24-bit graphics to 13-inch displays and eight-bit graphics to up to 21-inch monitors.
VideoVision runs input through a filter that "averages" pixels to produce high-quality QuickTime movies with Apple's video codec, Radius said. It also allows real-time resizing of live video in a window and relatively clean video still-image captures. It supports NTSC (National Television System Committee), PAL (European) and SECAM (French) input, and NTSC and PAL output. It can convert from one input format to another output format.
"There isn't anything on the market that does all this stuff on a single board," said David Barron, associate editor of Digital Media: A Seybold Report in Malibu, Calif. "Other boards have video out, but either they're more expensive or they're lower- quality or both."
Harold Mann, a San Francisco computer consultant who advises several San Francisco Bay area advertising agencies, said he will recommend the board to his clients over SuperMac Technology's VideoSpigot NuBus, a $599 digitizer card. "Video is not a one-way street, it's a two-way street; if you bring video into a Mac, you're going to want to bring video and graphics back out."
Mann, a beta tester for VideoVision, added that he was impressed with the board's convolution technology, which uses a filtering technique to eliminate flicker in single-pixel lines when Macintosh video is output. "The board moves print-to- tape from myth to reality. People are going to say, 'Wow, I can look at Mac graphics on videotape without getting a headache.'"
Radius Inc. is at 1710 Fortune Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95131. Phone (408) 434-1010; fax (408) 434-9575.
Andrew Gore contributed to this report.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
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(MacWEEK, June 15, 1992) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Interoperability falls short
By April Streeter and Jon Swartz
San Francisco - IS managers in an informal MacWEEK poll said a chasm exists between developers' claims of seamless information exchange across platforms and users' experience.
Of the 5 million Macs installed at corporate sites, InfoCorp, a market research company in Santa Clara, Calif., estimates that 3.4 million are connected to multiplatform networks.
Gerald Steenberge, director of information technology for Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y., said the $20 billion corporation has lost out on several deals because its multiplatform network, which includes an estimated 15,000 Macs and 35,000 IBM PCs and compatibles, sometimes makes it hard for employees to communicate quickly across the country.
"Three different business units might have three different platforms," Steenberge said. "A sales lead in Chicago is difficult to send to Rochester other than by voice or electronic mail. The technology just isn't there."
Electronic mail is one of the few successful pockets of interoperability at mixed computer sites. "It works. It's not transparent, but it works," said Eric Linneman, senior software developer at Martin Marietta Corp.'s internal-systems group in Denver.
As corporations upgrade to Macintoshes and Windows-based PCs, and as major cross-platform vendors scramble to deliver solutions, incompatibilities between different versions of the same program become a support and training problem.
"Just converting [Aldus] Persuasion documents from the Mac to Windows can cause some unpleasant surprises, like templates that don't align correctly," said Laura Leach, a consultant and president of MacAcademy at Northern New Jersey in Parsippany.
"To be honest, most developers still have not addressed the incompatibilities between cross-platform applications," she said. "They just continue to advertise how easy it is to share their Mac and Windows products."
Barry Zuber, vice president of ad agency Egeland, Wood & Zuber of Scotia, N.Y., said: "People want cross-platform to be a no- brainer. It's only seamless if you know what you are doing."
Other mainstream applications also pose potential logistical problems for IS managers.
Word processors, spreadsheets and other productivity applications still use filters - whether separate utilities or built-in modules - to convert files from other applications or different versions of the same program. This process requires extra steps to transfer and open files across platforms.
"It just isn't seamless. And users who want it to be easy are not a happy lot," said Marianne Carroll, a Mac consultant in New York who has written on the topic of converting documents between different versions of Microsoft Word. "It's not a problem of better filters or converters," she said. "It's the core code that needs to be changed."
Microsoft Excel 4.0, on the other hand, shares a large percentage of its code - and look and feel - between the Macintosh and Windows versions. But that doesn't guarantee interoperability.
"The look and feel can be the same, and applications can share code resources and data files," said Pieter Hartsook, editor of The Hartsook Letter in Alameda, Calif. "However, the applications need to be optimized for each environment and handle the idiosyncrasies of each platform to be successful."
Marshall Donovan, information analyst at Kaiser Permanente Inc. of Pasadena, Calif., said: "I'm stunned by the lack of cross- platform apps that are functional. For example, we had our hopes set on Fox Software's FoxPro and FoxBase, but every test for interoperability we've done has been disappointing."
Claris Corp. last week introduced concurrent versions of FileMaker Pro 2.0 for the Mac and Windows, due to ship this fall. The company claims the programs share 85 percent of core code.
However, as new hardware platforms such as Apple and IBM Corp.'s joint development of PowerPC, and operating systems like Taligent Inc.'s Pink, are brought to market, the task of creating interoperable applications could become even more difficult.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
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Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
HP thinks small with new drive
Sturdy Kittyhawk measures 1.3 inches
By Henry Norr
San Francisco - Hewlett-Packard Co. last week unveiled a 21.4-Mbyte hard drive small and rugged enough for use in Personal Digital Assistants, cellular phones, medical instruments, video-game cartridges and other handheld devices.
The drive, which HP calls the Kittyhawk Personal Storage Module, is the world's first with a diameter of 1.3 inches. Volume production is slated for the fourth quarter. HP said it will offer the drive to OEM customers at an initial volume price of about $250, or about $12 per Mbyte.
Packaged in an enclosure measuring 0.4 by 2 by 1.44 inches, it will take up less than half the space required for 1.8-inch drives, which until last week had been considered the cutting edge in hard disk miniaturization. The Kittyhawk will weigh only 1 ounce, compared with 3 or 4 ounces for 1.8-inch drives.
Seagate Technology Inc. earlier this month announced a family of 1.8-inch drives with capacities of 40, 65 and 80 Mbytes. Production is scheduled for the fourth quarter.
The Kittyhawk's limited capacity will keep it out of the notebook-computer market, industry observers said, but the new drive is likely to have strong appeal to companies designing the new generation of "palmtop" devices. The drive will cost only about a quarter as much as comparable storage capacity using solid-state technologies such as Intel Corp.'s flash memory.
"Flash memory has no defense against this," said Jim Porter, president of Disk/Trend Inc., a Mountain View, Calif., research company. "For 15 years the semiconductor industry has been predicting that solid-state storage will be cheaper than disk drives, and for 15 years the semiconductor industry has been 100 percent wrong." Porter predicted that the Kittyhawk's capacity will grow to 30 or possibly 40 Mbytes in a year. By the year 2000, he said, similarly sized devices should hold 500 Mbytes.
HP will offer the drive, as well as a 14-Mbyte version, with an AT bus attachment and a PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card Industry Association) interface, for use in devices that support the new industry standard for credit card-size add- ons.
In PCMCIA categories, the Kittyhawk will require a 10.5- millimeter Type 3, or double-thickness, card. Apple's Newton PDAs will support Type 3 PCMCIA cards.
The drive, which spins at 5,400 rpm, offers an average access time of 18 milliseconds. Its MTBF (mean time between failure) rating is 300,000 hours, more than most desktop computers.
To ensure that the drive will survive the rigors of use in handheld - and therefore droppable - devices, HP modeled the drive after the company's calculators, then developed new technology resembling that used in automobile air-bag systems.
The mechanism detects impending impacts and switches into a mode that minimizes the risk of data corruption or damage. According to HP, the Kittyhawk can survive a drop of 3 feet during a read or write.
The drive's controller incorporates only seven integrated circuits, compared with the 20 to 30 used in most drives. Three of the seven chips are part of a new low-power set developed by AT&T Co.
The Kittyhawk will be manufactured in Japan by Citizen Watch Co., which HP said "has the technology to drive screws you can't even see."
MacWEEK 06.15.92
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MacIS asks Apple to take action on VITAL, support, DAL, SNMP
By Carolyn Said
San Francisco - Mac managers still have a lengthy list of actions they say Apple needs to take to succeed in enterprise computing.
MacIS (Managing Apple Computers in Information Systems) last week released its members' ranking of issues discussed at its meeting here this month (see MacWEEK, June 8).
Enterprise computing issues, such as VITAL (Virtually Integrated Technical Architecture Lifecycle) and Data Access Language (DAL), topped the list, along with managers' perennial request for better support.
In priority, the issues are:
>VITAL. Apple has credited MacIS as the organization that brought VITAL, an Apple blueprint for client-server computing, to the forefront. MacIS members said they want Apple to publish and distribute VITAL in its entirety by November, including guidelines for migrating; handling organization and support; applying VITAL to small businesses and large enterprises; and integrating non-traditional media. Managers also want VITAL training, a catalog for products that offer VITAL services and a reference library on VITAL.
>Support. MacIS members continued to hammer at the theme that Apple is not offering consistent, comprehensive support, requesting that the company publish a white paper on its vision for institutional support.
>DAL. MacIS members said they need more information about DAL, calling on Apple to publish a position paper on DAL use, provide a single contact for DAL distribution, and maintain an active DAL problems report on AppleLink.
>Network-management tools. Managers said delivery of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) tools remains a priority, although several said they were heartened by Apple's promise that the tools will ship this year. "It's good to see Apple supporting SNMP," said Duane Foss of the network services group at IDS Financial Services Inc. of Minneapolis. "However, I still have a lot of questions about what its SNMP support will be."
>Improve network security. Managers said they want AppleShare 3.0 security extended to personal file sharing and the option of automatic log off for AppleShare and personal file share servers.
>PowerBook improvements. Indicative of the notebook Mac's popularity in corporate America, managers listed a raft of improvements they want, including larger hard drives that can be upgraded; built-in video support for external displays; and NTSC (National Television System Committee) video-in and video-out capabilities.
>Improve remote access. Managers want Apple to improve dial-in security and develop its own multiline AppleTalk Remote Access solution, as well as support for Point-to-Point Protocol switching.
>Distribute more information. Members said Apple should provide a monthly technical bulletin, improve access to marketing brochures and technical specification sheets and revitalize the Apple Support Coordinator program.
>Cross-platform tools. Managers want cross-platform development tools from Apple for Windows, Unix and OS/2. In addition, they want front-end tools for relational database- management system back ends.
>Improve TCP/IP support. Shipping the SNMP product came up again; managers also want Apple to give MacTCP "industrial- strength" stability and simplify network access for mobile and remote users.
>Provide a real server. Managers called on Apple to provide "an enterprise server platform that is optimized to support multiple users in a client-server environment."
Although several managers said they were encouraged by reports about Apple's forthcoming server, they cautioned that it needs to be priced competitively. "I want to see the price/performance numbers," said Frank Calabrese, manager of personal computing at Bose Corp. of Framingham, Mass. "A Mac server would have to be extremely competitive in pricing with a Unix box."
MacIS is at 401 N. Michigan, Chicago, Ill. 60611. Phone (312) 644-6610; fax (312) 321-6869.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
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Northern Telecom videoconferencing to link Macs, PCs
By Louise Fickel
New York - Northern Telecom Inc. last week unveiled the hardware and software foundation for the first cross-platform videoconferencing system for Macintosh and Windows workstations.
Due by year-end, Northern Telecom's Visit Video system will let two Mac or Windows users see each other in windows on their workstation desktops while they talk on the telephone. The initial release will transmit black-and-white images at about 15 frames per second.
On the Mac side, the system will range in price from $2,900 to $3,500. It will include Visit software, a 25-MHz 68030-based NuBus card, video camera and communications interfaces for public or private Switched 56 or ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) telephone networks. Visit Voice, a $99 companion application, will control the telephone connection.
Users will establish a work session with another user by double-clicking on the person's name in the directory, making a phone call and turning on the camera.
The Visit card, which was developed by Workstation Technologies Inc. of Irvine, Calif., is the key to Northern Telecom's system. Since the card has sufficient processor power to support video processing, data transfer and the telephone interface, users can run appli-cations on their Mac during a conference without degraded performance, according to the company.
According to sources, the Visit card will be presented to developers as a platform for third-party telephone and video applications.
But cross-platform collaboration will be limited in the first version of the Visit system; while the package will include applications for file exchange and screen sharing during Mac- to-Mac or PC-to-PC videoconferences, Mac and PC users initially will be able to share only video.
Mac users sharing screens will be able to exchange documents, make on-screen annotations to documents, and cut and paste across the telephone connection, Northern Telecom said.
"You can only annotate a working copy, and then one user has to update the application and send it back to the other," said Doug Van Houweling, vice provost for information technology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
The video capabilities are a mixed blessing, according to beta- tester Jim Jacobson, supervisor of institutional telecommunications and office automation at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Pasadena, Calif. He said that file transfer performance is substantially slower when he is videoconferencing.
"It seems counterproductive to slow down the data transfer with the video," Jacobson said. However, he said, Visit's support for on-screen updates is invaluable to JPL's scientists. "We've recommended that [Northern Telecom] redesign the software so that it doesn't pump video when it's pumping data," he said.
Northern Telecom said it plans to add multipoint capabilities and an OS/2 version in 1993, making it possible for as many as eight Mac, Windows and OS/2 users to collaborate simultaneously.
Visit will compete with Compression Labs Inc.'s Cameo Video System, which will ship this summer (see MacWEEK, Jan. 13), and an upcoming system being jointly developed by PictureTel Corp. and IBM Corp.
Northern Telecom Inc. is at 200 Athens Way, Nashville, Tenn. 37228. Phone (615) 734-4251.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
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NEC to deliver PostScript fax
By Matthew Rothenberg
Boxborough, Mass. - PostScript fax will get its first public demonstration this month, when NEC Technologies Inc. introduces a $599 fax option for its Silentwriter Model 95 laser printer.
NEC will demonstrate the fax feature at this month's PC Expo in New York and expects to ship it in September.
Like a standard fax modem, the device will allow users to transmit documents directly from their computers to a remote fax machine. But while standard fax modems convert documents to Group 3 bit maps, the PostScript fax device will be able to send and receive documents in PostScript format when communicating with another PostScript fax device.
When communicating with a standard fax machine, the printer- based fax modem will use the Group 3 format. It automatically will determine whether it is dealing with a PostScript or standard fax machine.
The NEC product is based on enhancements to PostScript Level 2 developed by Adobe Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. The Silentwriter, which lists for $1,749, incorporates an Adobe PostScript Level 2 controller (see MacWEEK, Jan. 13).
PostScript faxing will allow faster, more economical fax transmissions and higher-quality fax documents than ever before, according to Derek Blazensky, product-marketing manager for Adobe.
Because PostScript files are less bulky than Group 3 bit maps normally sent by faxes, on-line time will be reduced by two- thirds on average, he said. In addition, fax PostScript printers will take advantage of Level 2's image-compression capabilities.
PostScript fax printers use their full resolution to output incoming PostScript images. A color PostScript printer will be able to print faxed images in color, even if the file was transmitted from a black-and-white Macintosh.
The package will include drivers and software that lets Mac and Windows users send PostScript faxes by entering names and phone numbers in dialog boxes.
According to Charles LeCompte, editor of The Hard Copy Observer based in Newton Highlands, Mass., PostScript fax "seems like an attractive prospect that is inexpensive to implement."
"People have trouble understanding it," LeCompte said. "That's its biggest problem. They understand what PostScript is and what fax is, but they don't understand why you'd want them together."
PostScript fax is "a pretty neat thing once you understand what you can do with it," LeCompte said.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
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Apple extends AppleShare discount upgrade deadline to end of July
By Louise Fickel
Cupertino, Calif. - Users who missed several previous deadlines for upgrading their AppleShare server software at discount prices have another chance, but Apple said this reprieve will be the last.
The upgrade program will remain in effect through July 31, the company said. It originally was slated to expire April 1 but has been extended several times after some AppleShare 2.0 users complained they had received no warning that they were about to lose their chance at low-cost upgrades (see MacWEEK, April 27).
Users who bought the AppleShare File Server 2.0 after Oct. 15, 1991, can get the new version, offering System 7 compatibility, a built-in print server and other enhancements, for free. Other owners can upgrade for $299, or for $199 if they also own the now-discontinued AppleShare Print Server 2.0.
With each upgrade order users must send their old server installer disks; $7 for shipping and handling; and an upgrade coupon, which can be downloaded from AppleLink or obtained from an Apple dealer. A dated sales invoice must accompany upgrade requests.
Apple does not maintain a list of registered AppleShare users; it relied on dealers to spread the news about the upgrade offer. The policy has confused and angered some.
"Every other software vendor makes a point of telling their users about upgrades," said Larry Barcot, president of Escape, a consulting company in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Upgrade requests can be mailed to AppleShare Server 3.0 Upgrade, Apple, P.O. Box 59337, Minneapolis, Minn. 55459.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
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(MacWEEK, June 15, 1992) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Commentary
OS/2's two big problems: IBM and Microsoft
by Jean-Louis Gassee
"During the next 10 years, millions of programmers and users will utilize this system."
Can we guess the object of such prophetic fervor and the identity of the visionary?
Was it Steve Jobs, plugging the Apple II, the Macintosh or the NeXT cube? No, these were words from his friend Bill Gates in Redmond, Wash., in 1988. At that time the apple of Bill's eye wasn't Windows. The glowing prophecy was laid out in the foreword of "Inside OS/2," a book by Gordon Letwin, Microsoft Corp.'s chief architect of system software.
Now, after years of development and industry intrigue, IBM Corp. claims to have shipped OS/2 2.0 to more than 400,000 customers.
I was curious to see for myself how it stacked up against operating systems from Apple and Microsoft, so I bought my very own copy of OS/2 2.0 and installed it on my no-name 486 clone.
Getting started. Let's start with the installation. OS/2 comes in a trim package, with 21 3.5-inch floppies, four fairly thin manuals, assorted leaflets and a rolled sheet of OS/2 stickers. The installation manual is thicker than Apple's basic manual for the Mac. If you want the reference manual, you have to order it for $35.75.
And the problems start right away.
You can install from disk A only. If you have a 5.25-inch drive as disk A and a 3.5-inch unit as B, you're out of luck. You have to open your pliable but hairy clone and rewire the drives, which is easier said than done.
Is it so complicated to incorporate a staging program that lets you select which drive to install from?
Let's continue. Unfortunately Windows 3.1, which I have, doesn't quite work with OS/2 2.0 at this time. So much for IBM's "integrating platform" claim. As a result, I have to create two partitions on my hard disk, one for each environment.
Now I am faced with an interesting backup problem. What happens with the backup, created with Symantec Corp.'s Norton Backup for Windows, once my hard disk is reformatted for OS/2? The backup won't simply load: I have to reinstall DOS, Windows and the Norton Desktop before I can restore. I would have been better off using a DOS backup utility and tape.
After that, the installation seemed easy. Actually, only 15 disks are involved; five disks contain printer drivers.
Does the system work? Well, sort of. My Logitech Inc. mouse, which works fine with DOS and Windows, doesn't work with OS/2. Experimenting, I find that another mouse, which is not compatible with Logitech's DOS and Windows software, will work under OS/2.
In the process, I used a selective install function. You tell the system which function you want to install or modify, and it tells you which disk(s) to feed it. Just changing mouse drivers required all 15 disks, and the system studiously informed me it was installing Courier and other fonts.
Once you can get OS/2 working, you sense that the user interface is a lot better than Windows, and, in a few little details, better than the Mac. Unfortunately, once you start digging, inconsistencies and ugliness appear.
The beefy Lotus Notes folder is listed as empty; the click-and- drag action is sluggish and inconsistent; and the international Do Not Enter icon is overused.
Sometimes the system will tell you that you can't delete an object, which is fine, but sometimes it will appear to tell you that you haven't moved an icon far enough away from its origin location to move at all on the desktop. It could use some help from Apple's user-interface police.
DOS and Windows. You can indeed open a number of DOS windows, but it is not totally transparent. There are times when OS/2 manifests itself, but overall it works well, and the few added complications seem well worth the price.
Windows, on the other hand, is a problem. Warned by the manual, I didn't even try to start Microsoft Excel or Word from an OS/2 Windows session, called Win-OS/2, without migrating them first to OS/2 2.0. It's a fairly simple point-and-click process, but they didn't work. I got messages like "Missing OLECLI.DLL" and a request to supply the errant DLL file through drive A.
Neither the documentation nor the read-me file, the place where last-minute problems are discussed, could explain my situation. Usually, one reads the manual when experimenting fails. Here you have to experiment when the documentation breaks down.
After some browsing I finally found these in the system directory of my Windows 3.1 environment. I copied them on a disk, placed them on drive A, launched Excel 4.0 and Word 2.0, and they worked. I then moved them to the system directory inside OS/2's Windows world, and they still worked. But these applications were noticeably slower in Win-OS/2 than in Windows 3.1 native. The middleman is expensive.
Getting on-line help. Before going any further, I decided to try IBM's own bulletin board system for help. I didn't have the courage to experiment with connecting a modem to OS/2, so I went back to a Mac and Software Ventures Corp.'s MicroPhone II. The connection is straightforward, the BBS asks for my first name, last name, then my first name again, and my last name, again. The service can't deal with hyphens in a first name.
Once in the BBS, you're offered an unsorted collection of messages exchanged between OS/2 users, crude navigation commands and a polished corporate Q&A document dealing with a large number of problems, but none of mine.
So, I logged onto the IBMOS2 forum on CompuServe and observed a very heated and personal discussion between supporters and critics. There also was a lot of useful material, information and software. I could have downloaded a program allowing drive B installation, and I learned that all I have to do is fool OS/2 into believing my Logitech mouse actually is a PS/2 pointing device.
OS/2's fate. Overall, OS/2's problems fall in two categories: IBM and Microsoft. IBM's culture causes OS/2 to misunderstand what real people really expect and are ready to put up with. For all the claims of a big development budget and thorough testing, OS/2 is clumsy and shaky, in real marketplace terms, rather than a well-controlled corporate-computing environment.
Microsoft seems to be the kind of partner IBM can't live with or without. IBM doesn't want to forgo compatibility with Microsoft's software, especially Windows. But this very constraint burdens OS/2, making it bigger and brittler.
And ultimately, Microsoft might continue to make the compatibility an impossible goal. After all, it learned by watching IBM play against the plug-compatible manufacturers in the mainframe days.
And when Microsoft Windows NT ships, OS/2's corporate niche might just disappear. Try OS/2 and you'll understand why IBM is investing in Taligent.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
Opinion Page 35
(MacWEEK, June 15, 1992) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
New compression programs offer seamless space savings
Running out of disk space, but no budget for a new drive? New compression programs could be the next-best solution.
By Clay Andres
File compression has become an important tool in the never- ending struggle against ever-decreasing disk space. To help meet this challenge, at least four new commercial file- compression programs will be released this year.
Background compression. Background-compression programs, the newest tool for users who want to reclaim disk space, work like screen savers. While your Mac is idle, they go to work compressing files. When you "wake up" your Mac, the utility stops working and gives you control of the Mac.
Since all compression takes place in the background, the overhead associated with compression, selecting files and waiting for them to compress is no longer an issue.
"I was using DiskDoubler for several years to manually compress all graphics files and some other things that I didn't use very frequently," said Doffie Hochreich, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. "I've installed AutoDoubler on both my IIcx and PowerBook, and it's just doing its thing. I barely know it's there."
DiskDoubler and AutoDoubler, both from Salient Software Inc., are complementary products. DiskDoubler does batch compression of multiple files for archives or telecommunications, while AutoDoubler does only background compression and decompression on single files. However, DiskDoubler will use AutoDoubler's faster algorithms if both programs are installed.
More Disk Space from Alysis Software Corp. was the second background compressor introduced this year.
Two more programs scheduled for imminent release take the combined approach of More Disk Space: StuffIt SpaceSaver from Aladdin Systems Inc., makers of StuffIt Lite and StuffIt Deluxe, and Compress Express from newcomer Fluent Software.
"AutoDoubler and DiskDoubler looked like a pretty good solution," said Andrew Gilicinski, a principal research chemist and head of the local user group, AirMUG, at Air Products and Chemicals Inc. of Allentown, Pa.
"But the idea of getting both in one package made the most economic sense for the company," he said.
Gilicinski is serving as a beta tester for Compress Express because, he said: "We thought this might be a convenient way for some users to avoid buying a new hard disk."
The key to making background-compression programs work is fast decompression. "The main thing I'd like to see is how much my performance will suffer when I have compression and decompression constantly on in business applications," Gilicinski said.
And it seems very likely that his work won't suffer. "More Disk Space is amazing," said Jim Harris, owner of Harris Graphic Design of Santa Rosa, Calif. "I'm compressing files that I use every day, and the decompression time is nil. Certain applications even seem to launch faster."
Faster telecommunications. Even with the fastest modems, it's expensive and time-consuming to send large files across telephone lines. Bulletin boards with large libraries of downloadable files were largely the impetus behind the original Mac file-compression programs, as a way to save on transmission costs and keep the libraries small.
Recently, America Online adopted StuffIt as its compaction standard. CompuServe and others are willing to accept files in Compact Pro, as well as StuffIt formats.
Some users have found Compact Pro, a shareware program from Cyclos Software, to have several advantages over StuffIt. "It consistently does a better job of compression than StuffIt," said Mike Arst, president of KvetchWorks, a desktop publishing firm in Seattle. "Also, the file format is unchanging. I don't have to worry about which version I'm using."
The advantages of Compact Pro were obvious to Lorie Call, a software engineer and president of Santa Clara Research Services, an information-research and technical-writing company in Santa Clara, Calif.
But Compact Pro couldn't do everything. Call said she needed both Compact Pro and StuffIt Lite because of the amount of files she downloads from America Online and CompuServe. "I upgraded to StuffIt Deluxe; Compact Pro was more flexible for making backups, but Deluxe includes that, and I only need one program," Call said.
Compressing the archives. Since the earliest bad old days of computing, archiving data by storing infrequently used files on tape, floppy or, more recently, cartridges, has been the most effective way to free up disk space. Archiving is especially useful for saving old projects "off-line."
"Everybody needs more disk space," said David Lawrence, a free-lance multimedia producer based in San Francisco. "Once I'm done with a project, it's nice to crunch down the files and put them away." Lawrence uses DiskDoubler to compress and save his large sound and image files to SyQuest cartridges.
Wade Eilrich, the manager of Macintosh products at Caere Corp. of Los Gatos, Calif., also uses DiskDoubler, but he archives to a network file server after compressing his large folders.
"I let the network administrator back up the files to tape. It works flawlessly," he said, referring to both DiskDoubler and the network.
Horror stories or happy endings? But not everything has worked flawlessly for Eilrich. He's had problems with both SuperDisk and More Disk Space on his Quadra 900's hard disk, problems that Alysis claims it has since fixed.
His experience with More Disk Space on the 40-Mbyte hard disk of his Mac Portable was more positive, but he was able to reclaim only 7 Mbytes of disk space.
While software developers such as Eilrich don't represent the typical Mac user, his experiences are not isolated. The University of Connecticut's Hochreich had a couple of incompatibilities with AutoDoubler when she first installed it and had to reformat her hard disk twice.
Salient has been quick to address compatibility problems, releasing six upgrades in almost as many months. However, Salient blames the majority of problems on other programs and says that most of the incompatible programs it has encountered have been upgraded by its developers.
Since the latest round of compression programs are used to compress applications as well as data files, compatibility is an enormously complex issue. The consensus among developers is to make sure you back up your data before installing a background-compression program.
According to vendors, if there are going to be problems, it's possible you'll find them right away. Once the programs are running smoothly, it's most likely that they'll continue that way.
Despite some initial criticism, developers report that background-compression programs are selling extremely well - a testament to their obvious utility. Even Apple Latin America is bundling AutoDoubler with Mac Portables. The new compression programs could become as ubiquitous as screen savers.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
ProductWatch Page 51
(MacWEEK, June 15, 1992) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Apple ignores Nabisco's cookie
Years from now in law school auditoriums all over the nation, they may still be lecturing about the great R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. vs. Apple lawsuit. And just what, you might ask, do Camel Wides (and their "spokescamel" Joe) have to do with the price of a PDA?
That's exactly the question that occurred to the Knife when he realized that Nabisco, a wholly owned subsidiary of said tobacco company, already had a product line named after the famed 17th- and 18th-century mathematician and natural philosopher. Everyone's probably enjoyed the raw pleasure of biting into one of Nabisco's Fig Newton cookies at one time or another, right? But probably fewer have savored the chewy satisfaction of its somewhat less-popular Apple Newtons.
A quick call to Nabisco's headquarters in beautiful East Hanover, N.J., revealed that the company has had the Newton name trademarked for 101 years, since the company was called National Biscuit Co. And like most good corporate citizens, Nabisco, according to a company spokesman, is quite serious about protecting the Apple Newton trademark. In fact, Nabisco thinks that respect for intellectual property is just as important in the cookie industry as it is in the computer industry.
Nabisco is monitoring the Apple Newton situation with extreme interest but might wait to act until Newton actually ships. Considering Apple's recent track record in the intellectual-property litigation arena, Joe Camel might one day have something else to smile about. (Word to Apple: Nabisco is serious about this one.)
Tiny PowerBooks. Sometimes it seems Macs just keep getting smaller and smaller while life itself just gets better and better. If that is indeed the case, the overall quality of life is in for an upgrade sometime next year when Apple is planning to spring on us the smallest of PowerBooks. One major contribution to this tiny form factor is the use of a PCMCIA slot for static memory-based storage rather than the standard hard disk. This means a lighter Mac that has smaller power requirements.
What's up with Digital World? Los Angeles might have been in for a spate of bad publicity lately, but not even the mighty force of the oversized ego of Chief Gates would be sufficient to keep Seybold from producing this summer's installment of Digital World on the 23rd. That, of course, was a given, but it didn't answer the question of what Apple was going to do, if anything, at this summer's show.
Apple is likely to concentrate on what are known in the trade as content demos. These will consist mostly of third-party Mac titles. These will be particularly appropriate in view of the CD-ROM-equipped Macs that are due to be introduced in October.
In addition, a formal announcement about Kaleida finally will be made - if all the final touches on the agreement are completed by then. This announcement should include the name of the annointed president of the venture, plus the identity of some of the third parties that will be licensing KaleidaScript.
And in the tradition first established at the Newton announcement, many of these third parties will actually discuss some of the nifty capabilities of their as-yet- unreleased products.
Global Village fax-data. In some cases the more things change the better they get. Take, for example, Global Village Communication's PowerPort fax-data modem for the PowerBooks. The current model, which retails for $795 and has a little dongle hanging off the back of the PowerBook when installed, is being replaced with three models, all of which will be completely internal. A low-end version will do 2,400- bps data and 9,600-bps send/4,800-bps receive. The middle model will offer the performance of the current model but will retail for $200 less. Power freaks will want the high-end model, however, as in addition to 9,600-bps fax send and receive, it sports 14.4-Kbps data performance.
You can consider your MacWEEK mug as a badge of honor signifying your desire to help your fellows make the right Mac buying decision. Otherwise, you can view it as a simple reward for spilling your guts to the Knife, who can be reached at (415) 243-3500, fax (415) 243-3650, MCI (MactheKnife), AppleLink (MacWEEK) and CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac.
MacWEEK 06.15.92
Mac the Knife Page 114
(MacWEEK, June 15, 1992) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
