Cupertino, Calif. - Mac users who want to taste an Apple Newton this summer will know where to go: The company intends to rely on the same 6,000 outlets nationwide that carry the Mac to bring the new personal digital assistant to market.
The first Newton - finally named the MessagePad - is slated to debut in Boston on Aug. 2, the day before the opening of Macworld Expo.
Apple is planning to offer three configurations, sources said:
> A base model without a modem.
> A package that includes an external 2,400-bps modem with send-fax capabilities.
> A bundle that includes the Newton, the modem, and the Mac or Windows version of the Newton Connection Pro (a kit that includes a software and cable kit for sharing data between the PDA and a desktop or notebook computer).
Apple will not set suggested retail prices for the MessagePad, but it has reportedly set the prices it charges dealers with the expectation that the three configurations will have street prices of about $699, $799 and $899, respectively. Some sources said the modemless version may initially be marketed only through education and consumer channels.
Apple will also offer several cards for the MessagePad's single PCMCIA slot, sources said. A storage card with 1-Mbyte of memory is expected to cost users less than $200; a 2-Mbyte version will be about $250. The Messaging Card, a Motorola-built wireless communications card that lets the Newton receive pages and electronic mail, will also be about $250.
Supplies of the device could be limited for several months, sources said, but if a last-minute manufacturing ramp-up goes as planned, as many as 5,000 MessagePads could be available for sale on the floor of the Boston expo.
Over the following month, units will reach not only traditional Apple dealers but also many of the computer superstores and discount retailers the company has added to its Mac distribution network in the past year. In addition, MessagePad will be available through Apple's mail-order catalog.
All Apple-authorized resellers will be eligible to sell Newtons. The preliminary list of chains that have reportedly committed to carrying the device includes such retail heavyweights as CompUSA Inc., Circuit City Stores Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. Many of the stores are expected to display a MessagePad kiosk that gives users a chance to try out the product.
A CompUSA official last week confirmed that the chain will carry Newtons and said it expects to sell "a ton."
Later, as other models are added to the Newton line, Apple hopes to broaden its marketing channel to include consumer-electronics stores and other outlets that don't currently carry computers, sources said.
Four more Newton models, including a heavy-duty version code-named Brutus, could be released over the next six months, sources said.
Apple is "moving incredibly fast to put together a very broad, very wide" strategy for marketing the PDAs, according to a source familiar with the company's plans.
Apple apparently hopes to sell as many as 1 million Newtons over the next year. Sources said the company has ordered 60,000 units per month from Sharp Corp., the Osaka, Japan-based company that is manufacturing the device for Apple.
Although Apple has expanded its Mac channels dramatically since introducing the Performa brand last fall, industry analysts cautioned that the company will need to extend its distribution net even farther to reach the throngs of consumers it envisions as potential Newton buyers.
"It's a problematic strategy if Apple does not sell Newtons through new channels," said Doug Kass, principal of The Viewpoint Group, a market research company in Santa Cruz, Calif. "This is an entirely new market; it's not the traditional computer market."
Sharp, which will offer a MessagePad work-alike under its own label, may fill some of the gaps Apple is leaving at the outset. Sharp distributes consumer-electronics products, including its Wizard organizers, through several thousand U.S. outlets. The company has reportedly been recruiting nonauthorized Apple resellers to sell the Sharp version of the Newton, and at least one major mail-order company that carries Mac products has ordered 1,200 units, sources said.
Gil DeLiso, Sharp director of marketing, said the company has yet to set pricing for its Newton-based PDA, but it plans to introduce and ship the product next month.
About a dozen software developers are expected to announce add-on software for MessagePad, including ON Technology Inc., Pastel Development Corp., Great Plains Software and Portfolio Systems Inc.
Apple declined to comment.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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News: RISC chip to provide punch for petite PDA
By Robert Hess
Cupertino, Calif. - With the MessagePad, Apple's introductory Newton device, approaching its long-awaited release, new details about the unit emerged last week.
Of the 640 Kbytes of RAM that will come with the MessagePad, 192 Kbytes are dedicated to storage of user data. Sources said that is enough memory to hold several hundred items of each of the data types Newton is designed for - names and addresses, brief notes, and calendar entries - with room left over for several dozen sketches.
Users who want more capacity can install a static-RAM or flash-memory card in the device's PCMCIA Type II slot. Apple will reportedly offer 1- and 2-Mbyte cards, while third-party vendors are expected to offer cards with as much as 20 Mbytes of memory.
The MessagePad is powered by a 32-bit RISC processor called the ARM 610 and several custom application-specific integrated circuits. A 4-Mbyte ROM, twice as large as even that of the upcoming av-model Macs, holds the Newton operating environment and some application software.
The MessagePad's display measures just less than 4 by 3 inches. The screen is touch-sensitive; the two styluses provided with the unit are simply molded plastic. For some uses, sources said, a fingertip is as good as the stylus.
Since Newton was first announced, Apple has placed increasing emphasis on its communications capabilities, and the company has provided several ways to get the MessagePad talking.
An infrared interface, much like that used on a television's remote control, permits wireless data exchange between two Newtons within a range of about 3 feet. A serial port similar to the GeoPort found in upcoming av Macs connects the Newton to add-ons such as its external fax modem; to Mac or Windows computers; and to a StyleWriter or, via an AppleTalk network, LaserWriter printer. The PCMCIA slot will let users install other connectivity options, such as Apple's Messaging Card, a wireless device for receiving pages, news and electronic mail.
The MessagePad will reportedly offer far greater battery life than current PowerBooks: Apple, sources said, will tell prospective buyers that the device's four AAA batteries should last through several days of use. An AC adapter and backup battery will be included, and rechargeable battery packs and a charger will be available as options.
Unlike some prototypes Apple showed earlier, the shipping version of the MessagePad will not have a cover for the screen, but a slip case will be included.
MessagePad's speaker is more than an afterthought because Apple considers sound feedback an important part of the Newton experience, sources said. The company has reportedly developed Newton prototypes with a speaker at the top and a microphone at the bottom, which will offer the functionality of a telephone handset.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Big Q3 slump drives Apple restructuring
By Lisa Picarille
Cupertino, Calif. - Apple last week laid off 2,100 employees, reorganized its divisional structure and posted its biggest loss ever, a $188.3 million shortfall for the third quarter of fiscal 1993.
Mac unit shipments for the period, ended June 25, were up 20 percent compared with last year's third quarter, and revenues rose 7 percent to $1.86 billion. But the company took a pretax charge of $320.9 million to cover costs associated with the current restructuring.
The quarterly loss amounted to $1.63 per share. In the same quarter last year Apple posted a profit of $131.7 million, or $1.07 per share.
Meanwhile, the company handed pink slips to 1,100 employees in Silicon Valley, 500 in the rest of the United States and 500 more abroad.
Apple blamed the loss on declining gross margins, which fell to 32.5 percent from 44.3 a year ago, as well as on a soft European market.
"It's going to be this time next year before there are any real solid signs of a turnaround," said David Wu, an analyst with S.G. Warburg, a New York investment banking company.
"That's ugly. Real ugly," said Kimball Brown, an analyst at market research company InfoCorp of Santa Clara, Calif., in a reaction to the results. "[Apple] blew its market share during the quarter. It needs to license out the Mac OS, and PowerPC becomes even more crucial."
CEO Michael H. Spindler said he will "eliminate the Executive Management Team and replace it with an Operations Committee of about 15 to 20 ... senior executives, who will be responsible for setting Apple's direction and overseeing corporate performance."
The company also made five business units responsible for their own profitability:
> Personal Computer Division, based on the former Macintosh System Division, will be headed by Ian Diery, formerly vice president of worldwide sales and marketing.
> AppleSoft Division, previously called Macintosh Systems Architecture Division, is charged with handling the Mac operating system and licensing Apple system technologies (see MacWEEK, July 12).
> Personal Interactive Electronics Division, which is responsible for Newtons and personal digital assistants, remains intact.
> Apple Business Systems Division, formerly the Enterprise Systems Division, will retain control of server hardware and software, including AppleShare, the Workgroup Servers, AppleSearch and AppleTalk Remote Access. Most of ESD's other communications-software products will be transferred to AppleSoft.
> Claris Corp. remains untouched. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based subsidiary last week reported quarterly revenues of $40.4 million, a 79 percent increase from $22.6 million in the same quarter last year.
April Streeter and Jon Swartz contributed to this story.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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News: No PPP for ARA 2.0 client
By April Streeter
Cupertino, Calif. - It has enhanced connection features and will be bundled free with PowerBooks, but users waiting for the next AppleTalk Remote Access upgrade may be disappointed that the new client won't support Point-to-Point Protocol.
Originally scheduled to debut next month, the separate Version 2.0 client and server are currently stalled because of Apple reorganization and may not ship until fall. When ARA 2.0 does hit the streets, the client will once again be bundled with new PowerBooks, sources said, and will be available separately for about $50 a copy by site license.
The ARA 2.0 client includes a quick-disconnect button, lets users supply an alternate telephone number for servers and can handle extended dialing strings. Two highlights are aimed at cellular-modem users: the ability to dial without waiting for a dial tone and support for error-correction schemes, such as MNP Level 10, that are handled by modem hardware.
A new configuration window, called Dialing Assistant, lets users set up a range of connection information for ARA to use. When users indicate they've changed locations, ARA determines automatically which digits - outside-line prefixes, area codes, calling card numbers and the like - it needs to dial.
A check box offers Version 2.0 users backward compatibility with 1.0 servers. However, Version 2.0 servers will not support dial-in from older clients.
In addition to the end-user improvements, the new client has been rewritten in a more modular fashion so that future additions, such as extra security features, will be easier to add and so that ARA will be able to work with the transport-independent communications architecture Apple is working on (see MacWEEK, July 5).
To the chagrin of some users in multiprotocol sites, Version 2.0 does not include the expected support for the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). While Apple said it is committed to implementing PPP, development has been slower than anticipated.
"Some users are clamoring for multiprotocol boxes, but the year-end delivery promised [for AppleTalk over PPP] will probably turn out to be ambitious," said Dan Schwinn, president of Shiva Corp., Apple's PPP development partner.
Currently, the only way Macs can use PPP is in a TCP/IP environment, using Apple's MacTCP and the MacPPP shareware client developed by Larry Blunk of Merit Networks Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich. Start-up Mac developer FCR Software Inc. of Boston is developing an AppleTalk-over-PPP driver as well as a Unix-based server, which the company said it plans to sell through OEM deals.
Vendors with completed products based on ARA 2.0 have been waiting for the upgrade.
"I still haven't been able to test my product with [a completed] 2.0," said Ron Duritsch, developer of ARACommander, a utility from Trilobyte Software of Middletown, Ohio, that streamlines management of ARA connections.
"With ARA, PowerBooks used to have the big advantage, and that's soon going to change. But I'm still on the Apple-ARA bandwagon," he said. In fact, Duritsch is adding several new features, including support for AppleScript and connection scheduling.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Dial-in server improves security
By Robert Hess
Cupertino, Calif. - The server components of Apple's forthcoming AppleTalk Remote Access 2.0 software will offer expanded security and support for a variety of communications standards.
Unlike Version 1.0, AppleTalk Remote Access (ARA) 2.0 consists of a separate client and server. The client software is similar to the current version but adds considerable functionality. The ARA Multiport Server software combines the Remote Access Administrator application with a suite of system extensions.
Two new security features lock out unauthorized callers and place restrictions on authorized users. Third-party developers can take advantage of a new modular design to implement additional security protocols beyond the password and call-back measures in Version 1.0. Apple will deliver two such modules with the server; more are expected soon after the server's release.
The administrator can also restrict specific users' accounts to access only certain network zones. In Version 1.0, the only options are to give remote users access either to the ARA server or the entire network to which it is connected.
The Administrator application must always be running because it functions both as the server and as the management application. A lock feature prevents unauthorized changes to the settings from the server keyboard.
Using configuration screens much like those in Apple Internet Router 3.0, users can connect multiple communications devices on a single ARA server. In addition to the modem drivers supported in Version 1.0, ARA 2.0 adds an X.25 option. Sources said Apple will later add drivers to support ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and the Point-to-Point Protocol.
The Administrator application's interface is evocative of AppleShare Server Administrator. It also shares some of AppleShare's settings for password expiration, password-length and anti-infiltration measures. ARA 2.0 administrators can assign each user an individual connection time limit. The server can greet users with a systemwide log-on message and send individual messages to connected users. The server can now save log files anywhere on a disk and start new ones at specified intervals.
The ARA Multiport Server will be Apple's second use of its new License Manager, sources said (see MacWEEK, May 3). Each copy of the administrative software searches the network for other copies and compares serial numbers. When duplicates are found, the applications begin sending increasingly annoying messages to administrators urging them into software-license compliance.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Goldhaber surrenders Kaleida post
Former CEO will remain as co-chair
By Lisa Picarille
Mountain View, Calif. - As Kaleida Labs Inc. approaches its second birthday, the offspring of the historic pairing of Apple and IBM Corp. is experiencing growing pains.
Kaleida leader Nat Goldhaber resigned from his position as CEO last week, reportedly in response to mounting pressure from the labs' two corporate parents.
Sources said the companies - in particular, Apple - were dissatisfied with Goldhaber's management and the slow pace of progress on Kaleida's flagship technology, ScriptX.
Mike Braun, a 20-year veteran of IBM, will assume the titles of CEO, chief operating officer and president at Kaleida, based here, and join its board. He has worked at IBM's multimedia division and, since January, at IBM Fireworks Partners, a multimedia development project.
Under a deal struck after several weeks of negotiations between Goldhaber and Kaleida board members, the outgoing CEO will become co-chairman of the labs' board. He will share that title with Robert Carberry, the current chairman of the Kaleida Labs' board and president of Fireworks Partners.
Goldhaber said that he will play a more visionary role, while Braun will handle the day-to-day operations. "I recommended Nat as co-chairman, and he recommended me as president and CEO," said Braun.
Goldhaber denied allegations of excessive spending and poor management. "I think I've done a good job setting this company on a course for success, and I've done it smack-dab under budget," he said.
Sources said Goldhaber's problems managing the company, which has grown from 29 to 109 employees during his tenure, surfaced over the past few months, after the company announced delays in ScriptX, its cross-platform multimedia operating system and scripting language. In May, Kaleida said it would postpone by six months the release of ScriptX for the Mac. The Mac and Windows versions of the scripting language are now due simultaneously in the first quarter of 1994 (see MacWEEK, May 3).
Apple CEO Michael H. Spindler was said to be a major force behind Goldhaber's removal. Goldhaber, however, described his relationship with Spindler as "cordial."
Goldhaber, who signed only a one-year contract when he was hired at Kaleida a little more than a year ago, was reportedly paid more than $1 million as CEO. He said he plans to pursue outside ventures, including working with companies to create ScriptX titles.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Replica eases doc share across platforms
By Lisa Picarille and Henry Norr
Alameda, Calif. - Farallon Computing Inc. this week will become the third vendor in recent months to announce cross-platform document-distribution software.
Farallon's Replica, like No Hands Software Inc.'s Common Ground and Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat, will let users share electronic documents with other users who don't have the original application. The documents retain their format regardless of which application created them, which fonts were used and the platform on which they are viewed.
The Windows version of Replica will ship this week; the Mac version is due by year-end. Each will cost $99.
Both versions are composed of the Replica Creator, a printer driver used to generate distributable documents, and the Replica Viewer application. Users will be authorized to distribute the Viewer freely or to embed a complete version of it within documents, so Replica files can be sent to anyone. In contrast, Adobe requires users to purchase the Acrobat reader for Mac and No Hands allows free distribution only of a limited MiniViewer.
Replica is based on TrueType; Adobe's Acrobat is based on PostScript; and Common Ground uses a proprietary technology to image text. TrueType fonts can be automatically embedded within documents, and recipients of Replica documents will be able to cut and paste text and graphics in "live" form into their own documents.
Replica will include a password-protection option; double-page and thumbnail views; a Find command; and selection tools, such as a lasso.
The Windows version requires a 286 or later processor, 2 Mbytes of RAM and Windows 3.1; the Mac version will require at least a Mac Classic, 2 Mbytes of RAM and System 6.0.7.
A Replica 10-pack lists for $749, and volume licensing will be available.
Farallon's first foray into this market was DiskPaper, which was announced in 1990 but never released. That project was returned to its original programmers and eventually became Common Ground.
Farallon Computing Inc. is at 2470 Mariner Square Loop, Alameda, Calif. 94501-1010. Phone (510) 814-5100; fax (510) 814-5020.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Apple cuts PB prices, adds Performa rebates
By Raines Cohen
Cupertino, Calif. - Apple last week announced yet another round of price reductions, this one on several PowerBook models.
The price cuts range from 7 percent on the PowerBook 180 4/120 with Express Modem to 34 percent on the PowerBook 160 4/40. They were announced with the Quadra 950 and Apple Workgroup Server 95 price cuts (see MacWEEK, July 12).
The cuts leave a price differential of less than $200 between the PowerBook 145B and 160 in 4/40 configurations. Sources said this makes it likely that the recently introduced 145B will be discontinued or re-introduced this fall as a consumer model under the Performa name through that line's channels.
Likewise, Apple cut 26 percent to 31 percent off the price of the passive-matrix color 165c, a reflection of the model's reportedly sluggish sales in comparison to the crisper active-matrix 180c. But even the 180c had its price lowered 9 percent to 11 percent.
Sources said Apple plans a fall release for a new model called the PowerBook 165, a gray-scale equivalent to the 165c.
Apple last week also announced rebates on Performa desktop Macs sold with Apple printers through consumer-electronics outlets. The rebates range from $100 for a Performa 405 with an Apple printer to $200 for a Performa 600 or 605 with printer.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Caere readies fax-scan package
By Matthew Rothenberg
Los Gatos, Calif. - Caere Corp. last week announced a software and hardware scanning package that will put fax capabilities, optical character recognition and gray-scale image editing in the hands of Mac users.
OmniScan, scheduled to ship in the third quarter for $595, includes a new eight-bit, handheld scanner designed by Caere and based on an Omron CCD (charge-coupled device) array. The scanner, which replaces the company's monochrome Typist model, supports resolutions from 100 to 400 dpi and provides automatic stitching of scans captured in multiple passes.
On the software side, OmniScan includes:
> The first Mac version of FaxMaster, an application that converts faxes into editable text.
Like the popular Windows version of FaxMaster the Mac software will send, receive, track and store faxes in the background. The application will include a version of Caere's OCR software optimized for automatic recognition of 100-by-200-dpi standard faxes, and it will import text directly into other programs. FaxMaster will use Caere's SuperCompression technology to compress files by ratios of up to 33-to-1.
The program will also let owners of a compatible modem or board transmit faxes in standard or fine format, and they will be able to select multiple distribution lists or delay transmission.
Caere declined to comment on plans to offer the Mac version of FaxMaster as a separate retail package.
> OmniPage Direct, a low-cost implementation of the company's OCR software that lets users convert scanned pages straight into their text-based applications.
The program, which retails for $595, captures formatted 6- to 72-point text automatically from within word processing, page-layout, database or spreadsheet programs at up to 2,000 words per minute.
> A gray-scale version of Image Assistant, Caere's image-editing application.
Like the $495 color version of the software, the gray-scale application includes interface features designed to make high-end graphics tools more accessible to novices.
Image Assistant can separate scanned graphics from text automatically, crop and rotate photos, and remove moire patterns.
Caere said it will not offer OmniScan owners an upgrade to the color version of Image Assistant.
Caere Corp. is at 100 Cooper Court, Los Gatos, Calif. 95030. Phone (408) 395-7000; fax (408) 354-2743.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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News: Duo users to get new dock options
Newer, Lapis ready tiny units with SCSI
By Raines Cohen
San Francisco - Duo users will be able to choose from among several new small third-party docks next month. Lapis Technologies Inc. of Alameda, Calif. will introduce a SCSI dock and Newer Technology will introduce both a SCSI and a video-output dock.
All of the new docks are identical in size and shape to Apple's floppy disk adapter. All include an Apple Desktop Bus port and a security port that, when Kensington Microware Ltd.'s MicroSaver Security System lock is inserted, locks the docks to the Duo. (Apple's Duo MiniDock includes a similar port but does not lock itself to the Duo.)
The products include:
> Lapis SCSI Dock. This $199 dock, due next week, weighs just 5 ounces. It includes an HDI-30 (PowerBook standard) port that supports both SCSI Disk Mode and normal SCSI peripherals connections with the appropriate cables.
> Newer SCSI MicroDock. Newer's SCSI dock, due next month for less than $200, also includes an HDI-30 SCSI port, but it sports a unique SCSI-mode-switching feature. Users can choose either cable and hold down the Z key when booting to make a SCSI Disk Mode cable function for normal connections or vice versa. This way, users need to buy only one SCSI cable. A price for the SCSI MicroDock has not been set.
> Newer Color MicroDock. This $345 dock, due next month, weighs 6.5 ounces and includes monaural audio output and a video-output port. It supports eight-bit color on 12-, 13-, 14- and 16-inch displays and VGA monitors; eight-bit gray scale on 15-inch black-and-white displays; four-bit color on 19- and 20-inch monitors, and black and white on 21-inch displays. A VGA adapter is included.
Lapis Technologies Inc. is at 1100 Marina Village Parkway, Suite 100, Alameda, Calif. 94501. Phone (510) 748-1600; fax (510) 748-1645.
Newer Technology is at 7803 E. Osie, Suite 105, Wichita, Kan. 67207. Phone (316) 685-4904 or (800) 678-3726; fax (316) 685-9368.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: DeltaGraph Pro 3.0: better price, interface
By Lisa Picarille
Monterey, Calif. - DeltaPoint Inc. has shoehorned more than 100 new features, including additional chart types, AppleScript support and beefed-up presentation capabilities, into a forthcoming upgrade of DeltaGraph Pro, its charting and graphing program.
The company said it is taking a two-pronged approach to broaden the appeal of DeltaGraph Pro 3.0, which is due in September. First, the price will be cut to $195 from $295. Version 3.0 will offer not just a data-driven mode but also a new mode with an interface modeled after presentation-graphics packages.
The new interface sports a tool bar and a status bar.
Users will be able to create presentations by applying master backgrounds and selecting from pre-defined layouts that contain formatted place holders for various elements including text, titles, graphics and charts.
Support for AppleScript will provide more painless links with other applications. For example Microsoft Excel users could write a script to send a highlighted range of data to DeltaGraph Pro for charting, without launching DeltaGraph.
The upgrade offers 18 new chart types, bringing the total to 60. Pictograph, Open/High/Low/Close, Histogram, Box, Pie/Bar and Gridded Vector are among the new types of charts available.
Users of the current version can upgrade for $49.95 through Oct. 31. Thereafter, the upgrade will be $89.95.
DeltaPoint Inc. is at 2 Harris Court, Suite B-1, Monterey, Calif. 93940. Phone (408) 648-4000; fax (408) 648-4020.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: FAXstf goes PRO with AOCE, OCR
By Nathalie Welch
Concordia, Mo. - STF Technologies Inc. next month will ship a new version of its FAXstf software that will bring faxing capabilities to the Apple Open Collaboration Environment.
In addition to FAXstf 3.0 PRO, which is targeted at Apple's soon-to-be-available PowerTalk clients, STF will also release FAXstf 3.0, a new version for Macs without AOCE. Both versions, due to be shown at Macworld Expo next month in Boston, will be AppleScript-compatible.
FAXstf 3.0 PRO is expected to ship in October for $129. It will include a personal service access module, called STFGateway for AOCE. The software will let PowerTalk users send and receive faxes created in various standard applications by selecting Add Mailer from the Mail menu.
The PRO package will also incorporate an enhanced version of STF's optical character recognition technology, which can automatically convert incoming faxes to text in the background. A fax or portions of a fax can also be cut, copied and pasted into documents via the Macintosh Clipboard.
FaxView, the package's expanded application for incoming faxes, will present PowerTalk users with a pop-up menu with options to view the fax at magnification levels from 50 percent to 2,400 percent. Users are also provided scalable printing options and the ability to magnify and print just portions of a fax.
FAXstf 3.0 for non-PowerTalk users will be priced at $69; upgrades will be $39.
Both updates will offer improvements to the FaxManager application, including the ability to check fax activity logs located in a locally stored folder, and combine two or more faxes into a new fax document.
In addition, a new version of the FaxSettings application will let users maintain multiple settings files, directly configure modem features, such as touch-tone and busy detect, and control the number of retries and the time interval between retries.
If equipped with a modem that features call discrimination, incoming calls will be able to be routed to either AppleTalk Remote Access or to FAXstf 3.0 software.
STF Technologies Inc. is at P.O. Box 81, Concordia, Mo. 64020. Phone (816) 463-2021; fax (816) 463-7958.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: Windows talks to Macs with COPS utility
By April Streeter
Norcross, Ga. - At next month's Macworld Expo, CoOperative Printing Solutions Inc. will preview software that lets Windows users talk to Macs with the ease of System 7 file sharing.
WinShare Plus, a utility slated to ship in October with an upgrade of the $179 COPSTalk for Windows, will let Windows users share directories and drives, thus allowing other Mac or Windows users on an AppleTalk network to access files.
In current COPSTalk and other AFP (AppleTalk Filing Protocol)-compatible networks, Macintoshes can share folders and drives so that Windows users can drop off and pick up files. WinShare Plus provides peer-to-peer capabilities by letting Macs access Windows directories and drives. Miramar Systems Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., offers similar functionality with its $199 Personal MacLAN Connect package.
WinShare Plus includes setup screens that are nearly identical in appearance to those used by System 7's file sharing. Windows users can set users and groups, establish passwords, and share as many as eight directories.
Upgrades will cost $75. WinShare Plus and COPSTalk for Windows will also be bundled with either COPS' LocalTalk LT or a third-party Ethernet card for $399. Currently, COPSTalk and the card cost $349. COPS also said it will give any users of a TOPS card from recently disbanded SunSelect Corp. a $75 rebate when they buy the bundle.
CoOperative Printing Solutions Inc. is at 5950 Live Oak Parkway, No. 175, Norcross, Ga. 30093. Phone (404) 840-0810; fax (404) 448-7821.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
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(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: PageMaker 5 makes color seps
High-end features to challenge XPress'
By Neil McManus
Seattle - Desktop publishers will be able to make color separations from within PageMaker when Aldus Corp. ships Version 5.0 for the Mac this month.
PageMaker 5.0 is priced at $895, an increase of $100 from its predecessor. The upgrade adds a number of high-end features designed to challenge QuarkXPress 3.2, a competing publishing program from Denver-based Quark Inc.
PageMaker 5.0 includes:
> Free rotation. Users can now rotate and skew text and graphics in 0.01-degree increments. The previous version rotated in 90-degree increments. Rotated text can be edited, and rotated graphics can be cropped within a layout. Version 5.0 can also create horizontal and vertical reflections of text and graphics.
> Improved Control palette. Visible in both Layout and Story Editor views, this palette lets users position, scale and crop objects as well as set type attributes. Users can precisely control object placements through numerical controls and nudge buttons. Other text controls include numerical kerning and baseline shift.
> Multiple publications. The new version lets users work with multiple files open at once. It tiles and cascades open files for easier navigation. Users can drag and drop text and graphics between open publications. A new Library palette also lets users drag and drop frequently used images.
> Built-in separations. Users can make process-color separations of PageMaker text and graphics, as well as imported CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) TIFF, Desktop Color Separation and Encapsulated PostScript files. Separations can be made from within PageMaker. Previous PageMaker versions required users to make separations in Aldus PrePrint, the company's $495 color-separation program, which Aldus will continue to sell separately.
Kevin Brumfield, computer systems coordinator at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, said his newspaper is using a beta copy of PageMaker 5.0 to make color separations of advertising sections.
"It's so much nicer making separations right in PageMaker than having to use PrePrint. Now if you want to make a change to a file that you're separating, you just have to back out of [the separation] dialog box," Brumfield said.
> Faster printing. Aldus said it has rewritten PageMaker's PostScript code to speed printing by 5 percent to 900 percent, depending on the job. The print dialog box now lets users print nonconsecutive pages in any order. New printers' marks include date-time stamping, color-control strips and density-control bars on separations.
> Improved integration. New import filters include Photo CD, DXF (Drawing Interchange File) and WordPerfect Graphics. The new version supports Microsoft Corp.'s OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) interapplication communications system as a client application. It uses the Panose font mapper to identify missing fonts and the Twain standard for controlling scanners.
> Additional features. Trumatch, Focoltone and Dainippon systems have been added to the program's color libraries. PageMaker 5.0 comes with 24 add-on modules, called Aldus Additions, up from six in the previous version. New Additions include Edit Tracks, Group It and Sort Pages.
Registered users can upgrade for $150. Customers who upgraded to Version 4.2 can upgrade to 5.0 for $75. Users who purchased Version 4.2 this year can upgrade free.
The Windows version of PageMaker 5.0 shipped last month.
Aldus Corp. is at 411 First Ave. S., Seattle, Wash. 98104-2871. Phone (206) 622-5500; fax (206) 343-4240.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
GA Page 22
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: Live Picture gets US distributor
By Neil McManus
Boston - Attendees of next month's Macworld Expo here will get an eyeful of a breakthrough Mac image-editing program that lets users perform complex manipulations on 100-Mbyte images in seconds.
HSC Software will announce that it is the U.S. distributor of Live Picture, an application developed by Paris-based FITS Imaging Inc. HSC said that next month it will ship the program to selected sites for about $3,495.
Aimed at artists and pre-press professionals who work with large images, Live Picture lets users navigate, manipulate and composite multiple high-resolution images in seconds. Images can be composited to scale at any zoom level, and each composited image can be repositioned at any time.
The program's tools include an airbrush, a paintbrush and a revisable color palette. Brushes work at any level of zoom and can be sized up to 3.75 inches in diameter. Users can also sharpen, blur, dodge, burn and add spotlights to images.
All Live Picture effects can be applied through masks and stencils. Users can find the edges of objects and automatically generate masks with a brush. Masks can also be created and edited with Bezier drawing tools. The width and density of a mask can be adjusted to make soft transitions between an object and its background without anti-aliasing.
Live Picture achieves its faster-than-workstation imaging performance with a new technology called Functional Interpolating Transformation System, or FITS. FITS lets users rotate, scale, zoom and manipulate high-resolution tabloid-size images at close to real time.
FITS requires users to convert standard TIFF images to a new format called IVUE, which can quickly call up a screenful of any section of a high-resolution image. User manipulations of the image are recorded as layers of mathematical functions in a separate FITS file, a method that allows for "infinite undo," HSC said. When an image is finished, the IVUE and FITS files are processed through a FITS RIP (raster image processor) in a manner similar to rasterizing a PostScript file.
HSC said that next month it will ship the program to "early adopters" who agree to attend a full-day introductory session on Live Picture. FITS Imaging and HSC are working on an upgrade that will offer color separation, Photoshop plug-in compatibility, support for color-management systems and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) editing.
Tony Redhead, owner of Red Dog of Los Angeles, said he will purchase Live Picture to produce high-resolution movie posters and advertisements. "With [Adobe] Photoshop, it isn't easy to work with 100-Mbyte images, even on a Quadra 950 with 135 Mbytes of RAM and accelerator boards. Live Picture is a remarkable software solution for dealing with large files," Redhead said.
HSC Software is at 1661 Lincoln Blvd., Suite 101, Santa Monica, Calif. 90404. Phone (310) 392-8441; fax (310) 392-6015.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
GA Page 22
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Microtech carries on despite Ch11
By Henry Norr
East Haven, Conn. - Microtech International Inc., a longtime leader in the Mac storage and memory market, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but officials said operations are continuing as usual and customers will be unaffected by the move.
The 8-year-old company, based here, sought protection from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Bridgeport, Conn., on July 2. In its filing, Microtech reported assets of $6.95 million and liabilities - principally debt to unsecured trade creditors, such as its component suppliers - of $8.97 million.
Microtech officials said they will soon file a financial reorganization plan with the bankruptcy court. The document will explain how the company proposes to retire existing debt - how many cents on the dollar it will offer unsecured creditors - and detail its plans for strengthening the company after the reorganization.
If the court, after giving creditors a chance to voice their views, approves the plan, Microtech could be out of Chapter 11 within 8 to 12 weeks, according to Kevin Perry, vice president of marketing.
Over the past 15 months, the company has cut its payroll from about 130 to about 55, but no additional layoffs are planned, Perry said. The company continues to offer toll-free technical support and two-day turnaround on most repairs.
Microtech said its primary prefiling lender, CenterBank of Waterbury, Conn., has voluntarily agreed to continue providing banking services. In addition, Quantum Corp., the largest of Microtech's unsecured creditors, has agreed to continue supplying drive mechanisms during the reorganization, according to Jim McCanna, director of finance for the Milpitas, Calif., manufacturer.
Microtech said it will have a booth at next month's Macworld Expo in Boston and introduce several new products there.
Perry said Microtech had turned a modest profit in May and June, but debt that had piled up over the previous 18 months made it impossible to attract needed capital investment. "We had exhausted our ability to get financing without getting our balance sheet in order," Perry said. A new investor, however, is set to provide funding after the reorganization, he said.
Microtech blamed two problems that occurred in 1992 for its current plight:
> After receiving indications that it was about to receive new funding from an investment company operating under a loan-guarantee program set up by the state of Connecticut, Microtech embarked on an aggressive expansion program, including opening several regional field offices and a new manufacturing facility in Phoenix. The investment was delayed, however, and when a letter of intent finally arrived in December, Microtech CEO Cliff Wildes decided that accepting the terms offered would not be in the best interests of the company and its employees.
> In the meantime, Microtech said, it was also hard-hit by an industrywide shortage of low- and medium-capacity drive mechanisms in the summer and fall of last year. The shortage left Microtech unable to fill many orders, particularly for its RoadRunner series of Quantum drives for PowerBooks.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
BusinessWatch Page 26
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: ThinkPad eats into PowerBook lead
Sales of IBM models may hit $1.4 billion
By Lisa Picarille
San Francisco - With sales of Apple PowerBooks topping $1 billion worldwide, industry watchers referred to 1992 as the year of the PowerBook.
This year, however, the same prognosticators have already conceded the portable computer market to IBM Corp.'s ThinkPad.
Since its introduction last fall, the ThinkPad has started to steal some of the PowerBook's thunder, selling about 200,000 units in the last quarter of 1992, according to Dataquest Inc., a market research company based in San Jose, Calif.
By comparison, about 280,000 PowerBook units were sold in the United States last year and 520,000 worldwide, according to Dataquest.
The research company said the worldwide notebook market was between $7 billion and $8 billion in 1992, when 4.3 million units were sold. Analysts expect notebook sales to grow by 30 percent this year and unit shipments to swell 50 percent because of an ongoing price war.
Apple still holds the largest share of the portable personal computer market, with 12.5 percent, followed by Compaq Computer Corp. with 9.7 percent, according to Dataquest.
Meanwhile, InfoCorp, a market research company based in Santa Clara, Calif., estimates ThinkPad sales will more than double, from $600 million in 1992 to $1.4 billion this year. PowerBook sales will dip slightly in 1993, to $992 million from $1 billion last year.
"The ThinkPads are outselling PowerBooks," said Tim Puckett, Macintosh sales manager at Computer Bay, a retailer in DeKalb, Ill. "But next month when students and teachers start going back to school, PowerBook sales will pick up. The [recent Apple] price cuts will definitely boost sales. Resellers will have reduced margins, but it will pay off by increasing the number of sales."
IBM and Apple both offer a wide range of notebook configurations at comparable prices. ThinkPad models cost from $1,999 to $4,695. PowerBooks are similarly equipped and now range in price from $1,649 to $4,159, after Apple last week reduced prices from 7 percent to 34 percent.
"The price cuts are cleaning out [products] that were already in the channel and [Apple was] having difficulty moving through," said Kimball Brown, an analyst at InfoCorp.
Apple also is considering selling a version of its PowerBooks at retail outlets such as Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Office Depot Inc., where it sells Performas, to boost revenue, according to Apple USA officials.
Ironically, Apple may also be able to capitalize on IBM's problems keeping up with demand for its ThinkPad 720c, a color notebook with an active-matrix screen. Apple, which was plagued by a similar supply problem for most of its popular PowerBook models last year, recently shipped the PowerBook 180c, an active-matrix color laptop.
"Apple has a longer-term problem with its notebook growth rate," said Gerry Purdy, vice president and chief analyst for mobile computing at Dataquest. "It can't maintain its initial growth rate because it is in a smaller universe. The challenge for it is to sell into its own desktop market. There are bigger margins on the notebooks, and it's the only way for [Apple] to grow that segment."
MacWEEK 07.19.93
BusinessWatch Page 26
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Special Report: Macs and civic safety departments
By Connie Guglielmo
Along with protective gear, hoses, bulletproof vests, guns, sirens and spotlights, add the Macintosh to the checklist of equipment now found at police and fire stations.
With Mac-based networks linking stations across cities, PowerBooks on the scene of crimes and emergencies, and interactive QuickTime presentations designed to train police recruits, Mac technology is making a difference in the way police and fire professionals do their jobs.
Police report
As part of a pilot program last year at the San Jose (Calif.) Police Department, 36 officers were given PowerBooks running CrimeBuster, an application based on Claris Corp.'s FileMaker Pro database. The system was designed to provide officers on patrol with the means to electronically fill in incident, crime, property and supplemental reports at the scene.
The project pitted the Mac-based system against similar applications running on a pen-based system and a DOS-based notebook computer. Citing ease of use of both the software and hardware, officers overwhelmingly selected the PowerBook and CrimeBuster, which was developed over a two-week period for Apple by Watertechnics Consultants.
In fact, when the four-month project ended, a handful of officers were so impressed by the ease with which they could file reports, they decided not to wait until the department got funding for new computer equipment, according to San Jose Police Officer Tony Weir, who supervised the pilot program. Instead, they bought their own laptops so they could continue to file reports in the field.
One officer even developed a new CrimeBuster-like application and then ported it to Windows so he could run it on his PC portable.
Weir said, "We tested cross-platform compatibility and found that we can do the development on the Mac and open and run applications on Windows."
Instead of printing the report when they return to the station and submitting paper forms, the next step will be for officers to transfer data directly from their portable units into the department's new records-management system - a system that should become operational within the next year and a half. "We're building a system that will have an Apple-type [graphical user interface] front end," said Weir, noting that the plan calls for putting a total of 600 Macs and Windows machines on all of the department's desks and in its cars.
The new system should make it easier not only for officers to file reports but to get crime and other information on-line and into the law-enforcement system more quickly. "We plan to be as paperless as possible," Weir said.
Training ground
The success of the San Jose experiment got the attention of Susan Oliviera, director of the administration of justice program for Gavilan College in Gilroy, Calif., which is home to one of the state's police academies.
Oliviera envisioned a Mac-based interactive program that could be used in the classroom by police recruits - a first, since most academies do not yet use computers of any kind in the classroom, she said. The self-guided tutorial would include videos of situations, such as a burglary in progress, and then test and guide recruits on how they should respond, what procedures to follow and which forms to fill out.
"I thought about how I wanted recruits to interact with the program and at first thought about having a VCR-based training system, but it was too expensive," Oliviera said. "Then I looked at QuickTime movies on a PowerBook and knew that's what would work."
Watertechnics modified and expanded CrimeBuster to incorporate the QuickTime movies (digitized from video shot by the San Jose Police Department) and create the tutorial program, including a variety of police forms. The result is a prototype program called CrimeWriter, which Oliviera plans to demonstrate this summer to POST (Peace Officers Standards and Training), the organization that mandates training and curriculum for California police academies.
"If POST were to endorse CrimeWriter, it would standardize to as high a degree as possible the report-writing curriculum in the state," said Oliviera, adding that today the forms used by police departments vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. "If I had a magic wand, there would be a Mac and CrimeWriter on every desk."
Fire watch
While the Mac may be just getting up to speed in the police arena, the system has been on-call for several years at numerous fire stations, thanks in part to an Apple marketing push in 1988 that targeted firefighters.
Important resources for firefighters have been made available in Mac format, including CAMEO (computer-aided management of emergency operations), a database distributed by the National Safety Council that lists nearly 3,000 hazardous materials and describes how firefighters should handle chemicals in cases of emergencies.
The International Association of Fire Chiefs established and continues to operate an electronic-mail system and electronic bulletin board network for fire departments called Ichiefs.
Apple even co-developed an application with the IAFC in 1988 called FireLink, which was based on Microsoft Works and designed to give firefighters access to desktop publishing tools, payroll information, spreadsheets and databases.
Although FireLink is no longer offered, Advanced Commands Systems Inc. took the basic concept of the program and in 1988 created FirePoint. The integrated information system, based on ACI US Inc.'s 4th Dimension database and used at 160 fire departments across the country, combines about 36 fire-department applications. Two of these are Operations, which includes state-approved incident reports and emergency medical service response reports, and Prevention, which contains occupancy, inspection, permit and hazardous material storage files for businesses within a fire department's jurisdiction.
FireLink is at the core of a 4-year-old Mac-based system that has been in place at the Carlsbad, Calif., Fire and Police departments. Stewart Gary, acting fire chief, said the Mac was chosen because the departments realized they didn't have the resources to continually train users and because the Mac eases system administration.
Like most government agencies, the Fire Department also had to build its system under budget constraints. "A lot of off-the-shelf software did what we needed to have done," Gary said. "There wasn't any need to do a big custom job. A fireman can take FileMaker and build a simple database for inspections and then do reports and maintain records."
But its strongest appeal was the Mac's graphical interface. "[The firefighters] were able to learn how to use the system more quickly because it is graphics-based," Gary said.
The Mac's graphics capabilities have also been valuable in helping to create city maps and floor plans of buildings as part of the department's disaster planning. "We've mapped the city with [Aldus] SuperPaint instead of paying $5,000 to have someone else build our response maps."
The department today has about 60 networked Macs spread out over eight sites throughout the city. The wide-area network runs over leased lines and includes a CE Software Inc. QuickMail system that is tied into the Da Vinci Systems Corp. Da Vinci mail system that runs on IBM PCs or compatibles in the rest of the city agencies. In addition to using FirePoint and 4D as the core of its records-management system, the Fire Department's standard application suite includes WordPerfect; SuperPaint; Microsoft Works; FileMaker Pro; and Claris' SmartForms, which has been discontinued.
The Fire Department is just beginning to explore pen-based systems that allow for wireless communications. While the Police Department recently purchased three PowerBooks that officers can take on patrol to do field-based reporting, Gary envisions a system "with a 4D client-server application running [that allows] a fire inspector to go out to do his work and be able to radio back the information into the network in real time."
MacWEEK 07.19.93
Special Report Page 35
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Special Report: Biotech companies clone on Mac
By Jeff Ubois
When it comes time to build the real Jurassic Park using dinosaur DNA, the Mac will probably play a part in the cloning. In fact, it already has played a part in the fantasy version: Mac-based gene-sequencing software was used for illustrations in the book, and Macs figured prominently - albeit not realistically - in the control room in the movie.
And, in fact, gene-sequencing software on the Mac is commonly used in real-world biotechnology situations. Users say the machine has emerged as the desktop platform of choice in many of the United States' 1,200 biotech companies, primarily because of its ease of use, low support costs and versatility.
Fitting the bill
Biotech companies tend to be small - employing fewer than 50 people - and the Mac meets many of their business needs.
"Most biotech companies don't have MIS departments, nor a big VAX or IBM in the back because they just can't afford it," said Condie Carmack, a scientist with GenPharm International Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. "[Macs] have allowed us and others not to have a large overhead in terms of secretaries and support."
The Mac also suits the tastes of academic researchers migrating to biotech companies, as well as those of scientists accustomed to graphical software.
"It's pretty much to the point now that people assume you will use Macs and have them interact with Unix," said Jim Gower, president and CEO of Tularik Inc. of South San Francisco, Calif. Like many other biotech companies, Tularik is using Macs for drug-approval documentation, gene sequencing, communications and office automation.
But despite its widespread appeal for these sophisticated purposes, the Mac can't compete with Unix work-stations in raw processing power.
Scientific applications
Yet even with its current lack of processing power, the Mac is well-suited for some types of scientific research. While a protein-modeling task can take 10 days to run even on a supercomputer, other scientific applications, such as those for gene sequencing, can run very effectively on Macs.
Gene-sequencing software allows researchers to analyze the structure of DNA, which consists of sequences of adenosine, cytosine, guanosine and thymidine molecules. By identifying these sequences and separating them from adjacent ones, scientists can discover their functions.
"In sequencing, we want to see if a DNA fragment is part of a structure that has been found before," Gower said. "We are trying to uncover genes that haven't been identified that are part of the ways that cells regulate themselves. If we can discover drugs that modulate that regulation, that can lead to new drugs."
Popular scientific applications used in the biotech industry include LaserGene from DNAStar Inc., MacVector from Eastman Chemical Co., Sequencher from Gene Code Corp., MacDNASIS from Hitachi Software Engineering America Ltd., GeneWorks from IntelliGenetics Inc. and Gene Construction Kit from Textco Inc.
Tularik is using GeneWorks for discovery research. While searches might be faster on Unix workstations, Gower said, "you can get 80 percent of the performance of a workstation on the Mac, and the missing 20 percent is compensated for by the better user interface."
Paul Morrison, lab director of the Molecular Biology Core Facility of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said faster search algorithms used with Sequencher 2.0 allow the Mac to outperform Unix workstations. "I do things that take two to three seconds on Sequencher and 10 to 12 minutes on a [Sun Microsystems Inc.] SPARCstation," he said.
Morrison also uses Macs for data collection in the lab. "As we do sequencing, data is exported [from lab equipment] and collected in real time on both a Quadra 800 and a Mac IIci in case one crashes," he said.
Another important scientific application involves searching genetic databases and communicating with other researchers through the Internet.
"We use Macs to connect to the Internet for searching DNA and protein databases," Morrison said. "Anyone dealing with DNA and protein sequences is really missing out if they're not on the Internet."
Gower said Tularik has also picked up sequencing shareware through the Internet. "The Internet is very important to our business," he said. "We use it to connect with sequencing databases in the United States and Europe and for things as simple as electronic mail."
The paper chase
The biotech game isn't simply a matter of discovering a useful protein or being involved in scientific research, however. That's only half the battle; the other half is complying with the Food and Drug Administration's drug-approval requirements. Filings made by biotech companies to the FDA frequently run in excess of 1 million pages, containing both text and images. Documents that size put a huge strain on servers and networks.
And starting in 1995, the Computer Aided New Drug Application (CANDA) standards will require companies to submit FDA filings in computer-readable form.
"[CANDA] will have a profound effect on IS operations," Gower said. "It can cost $230 million to get a drug approved, and if [by complying] with CANDA you can get approval more quickly (by installing a faster system to speed the process of filing), it's clearly worth the cost of putting together a good network."
One advantage of using the Mac to comply with CANDA is that it provides a way for everyone in the company to have easy access to filings in process. "You have so many people that need to interact with that filing, that having a Mac front end is a real advantage," Gower said. Before, he said, Tularik filtered all the comments through only a few people.
At Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco, Calif., CANDA also looms large. "Our emphasis is on helping the submission process internally, with the added benefit of being able to deliver to the FDA," said Polly Moore, Genentech senior director of information resources.
Office automation
At Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen, Macs can be found on most desktops. "We have more than 2,100 Macs in a company of 2,600 people," said Bruce Whetstone, director of corporate information technologies. "We use the Mac as our ubiquitous desktop machine."
Whetstone said the company standardized on Macs a number of years ago to facilitate data exchange among different departments and has since found that the lower support and training costs continue to give them a financial advantage. "We find one person is easily able to support twice as many Macs as DOS machines," he said.
Easy networking and E-mail have been another reason for sticking with the Mac. "The vast majority of people [at Amgen] are on [CE Software Inc.'s] QuickMail," Whetstone said.
For the future, Whetstone said the company is interested in using voice- and handwriting-recognition technology. "In clinical trials, you are doing a lot of data collection with nurses and doctors who are not necessarily computer conversant," he said.
PowerPC to the rescue
Although the Mac performs adequately in gene-sequencing for applications, the lack of processing power is holding it back in other areas, especially in dealing with large databases. Biotechnology companies are looking forward to the added processing power of Apple's forthcoming PowerPCs.
"The Mac can continue to be a wonderful client and data-analysis tool, but for managing gigabyte-size genetic databases, it falls way short," said Vernon Keenan, president of BioData Inc., a biotechnology computer systems integrator in San Mateo, Calif. "We can't use it as an expandable server for serious bio-informatics or database applications."
Biotech managers echo these sentiments. "We are going to use the Macs as front ends, but with regard to data crunching, they are a little bit slow and clunky, and we need more muscle for database handling," GenPharm's Carmack said. "There is an incredible explosion of gene-sequencing data, and the Macs just don't fit the bill for that at this point."
Genentech's Stu Nixon, manager of biomedical information, said: "We have maxed out [our] Quadras in terms of their ability to support large databases and have good performance. I think the PowerPC will come into our world at just the right time in terms of our migration and growth rate."
MacWEEK 07.19.93
Special Report Page 38
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Claris' Power To Go 2.0 PB utility
Takeout utility manages portable, bundles Aladdin's disk compression
By Dale Coleman
Power To Go 2.0 from Claris Corp.'s Clear Choice Division brings to four the number of commercially available PowerBook utility packages. Claris recently took over the marketing of the utility - formerly called Utilities for the PowerBook - from ALSoft Inc.
The $99 Power To Go most closely resembles Connectix Corp.'s Connectix PowerBook Utilities (CPU) 2.0. Both offer a wide range of PowerBook enhancements, although their feature sets are far from an exact match. Power To Go lacks the synchronization module found in CPU, but it includes Aladdin Systems Inc.'s StuffIt SpaceSaver compression utility, a feature no other PowerBook utility offers.
User, set, match
Like CPU, Power To Go is built around the concept of users and sets. Each set reflects a collection of Power To Go settings that you customize to a specific environment. If two or more users share the same PowerBook, they can each have their own sets grouped by user name.
Unlike CPU, as well as the other two PowerBook utilities - Symantec Corp.'s Norton Essentials for PowerBook and Inline Software Inc.'s PBTools - Power To Go does not have a menu icon for quick access to the control panel. Instead, it uses a configurable floating palette called the PowerBar. This can contain a battery-power gauge, an instant sleep button, a clock, and a countdown indicator for pending system sleep and drive sleep. The PowerBar can also contain a rotating display of CPU speed; date; and, if not already displayed statically, time and battery-power gauge. The clock, called Travel Clock, is handy for quickly changing the time zone to match the city you might find yourself in on any given business day.
Floating palettes are fine on desktop monitors, but on the PowerBook's rather constrained screen, they take up too much real estate. Although the PowerBar gives you the flexibility of moving it around to suit your immediate needs and it neatly avoids the problems of an overcrowded menu bar, we would much prefer to access these functions with a menu item.
All of the remaining Power To Go features are grouped by module and are accessed by pop-up menus from the control panel. One thing that we think should be added to the PowerBar is a hot key for directly accessing the control panel. (The Installer script for Power To Go 2.0 does place an alias in the Apple Menu Items folder automatically.)
Power To Go's battery gauge returns only marginally more information than Apple's Battery desk accessory. Both Norton Essentials for PowerBook and CPU 2.0 offer a selection of battery indicators, and PBTools has a useful suite of battery-charge monitoring tools.
Easy conservation
Battery-power conservation is PowerBook Job 1. Like CPU 2.0, Power To Go uses a slider control, called Easy Adjust, to give you a quick way to choose the kind and degree of performance compromises you're willing to tolerate to avoid toting around extra batteries or an external battery pack. The slide control allows a single setting for all the parameters. These include processor speed at start-up and timeouts for system sleep, hard disk sleep, processor rest and backlight dimming. You can also tweak each setting.
Power To Go adds to these basic battery-conservation tools. You can use the PowerBook's manual brightness control to determine the degree to which the screen is dimmed at timeout, as well as to specify the maximum brightness available. Virtual memory keeps the hard disk constantly spinning, which contributes to battery drain. If virtual memory is on at start-up, you can have Power To Go issue an appropriate warning, turn it off automatically or leave it on.
In search of the lost pointer
We tested Power To Go on a shiny new 180c and a dull old 140. On the 180c and other models with active-matrix screens, keeping track of the pointer isn't an issue, but on passive-matrix PowerBooks, cursor submarining is a significant problem.
Power To Go's Cursor module addresses this problem better than any other product we've seen. With it you can specify an animated cursor (among 21 to choose from) that is automatically activated whenever you move the cursor in a manner that may lead to submarining. You can customize this feature with a slider control; a low sensitivity setting is fine for active-matrix screens, but a very high sensitivity makes it almost impossible to lose track of the mouse pointer on passive-matrix screens.
Disks, modems and menus
The Disk module provides for optional internal-drive read, write and spin status on either the right or left side of the menu bar. Power To Go also allows you to bypass the drive spin-down that the PowerBook otherwise executes when you restart it. The Modem module provides optional indicators for data send and receive, plus a modem status indicator that can also be placed on either the right or left side of the menu bar.
With the Sleep module you can specify a corner of the screen to click to invoke system sleep. This module is also where you specify keyboard commands for system sleep and hard disk sleep, although there is no command to spin up the hard disk.
For those not inclined to travel with a sleeping PowerBook, there's an Airport module similar to the one in Norton Essentials for PowerBook. This feature allows you to interrupt the start-up process with a simple dialog box.
The Menu module provides two variations of accessing both regular and hierarchical menus. You can either point to a menu title, which will cause it to drop down and stay in that position, or you can point and click on it. We like both methods, although we suspect that those who use this feature might prefer CPU's Windows-like method of selecting all menu commands with keyboard commands.
SpaceSaver
Claris' inclusion of SpaceSaver with Power To Go adds significant value for those running short on free disk space. SpaceSaver provides flexible, on-the-fly compression (see MacWEEK, Dec. 14, 1992). Compressed files retain their file type and creator; double-clicking a compressed file first expands it, then opens it.
The range of options for handling compressed files is impressive. You can set SpaceSaver to automatically compress files when they reach a specified age, assign labels and exclude files from compression by label, and automatically compress files and folders.
SpaceSaver functions are accessed via its own menu icon, which is located to the right of the Finder's Special menu. This arrangement only reinforces the awkwardness of Power To Go's reliance on a control panel and the PowerBar.
Documentation and support
The new manual includes two chapters covering SpaceSaver and a welcome chapter on battery-charge conservation techniques. The chapter for each module clearly describes both how to use the relevant features and what they can do for you. Claris provides technical support for Power To Go, but Aladdin provides technical support for SpaceSaver. While this is an imminently logical arrangement, new users might be confused.
Conclusions
Each of the PowerBook utilities competing for your money offers features not available in the others. Your decision should be based on which PowerBook model you use and how you use it.
PBTools covers the basics elegantly, and it remains our favorite for those primarily concerned with battery-charge management. Both Norton Essentials for PowerBook and CPU 2.0 include file-synchronization features. Power To Go lacks synchronization, doesn't offer a method for turning AppleTalk on and off, and has no capability to recognize a network to automatically mount volumes and select the proper printer.
While some of Power To Go's features may be awkward to access, the utility performs its basic functions reasonably well. In particular, Power To Go's anti-submarining and compression features are real pluses. The measures Power To Go takes to combat pointer submarining should make it nearly irresistible to those using passive-matrix displays, and the inclusion of SpaceSaver can be a godsend if your disk space is limited.
Claris Corp. is at 5201 Patrick Henry Drive, Santa Clara, Calif. 95052-8168. Phone (408) 727-8227; fax (408) 987-3932.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
Reviews Page 43
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Upgrade Quickens personal finance work
Investments, other refinements improve capable, low-cost app
By Jeffrey Sullivan
After a long delay (too long, according to many customers), Intuit Inc. has released a major upgrade to the Macintosh version of Quicken, its best-selling multiplatform personal-finance program. The upgrade, which incorporates the most-requested features from the past three versions of Quicken for DOS and adds some features not available on any other platform, constitutes the first significant upgrade for the Mac version in almost two years.
Although it contains more than 100 enhancements - some large, some small - Quicken for Macintosh 4.0 retains the $69.95 price tag of the previous version. Upgrades to Quicken 4.0 from previous versions are $29.95 plus shipping.
Quicken 4.0 requires System 6.0, a hard disk with at least 2 Mbytes of free disk space and at least 770 Kbytes of RAM (1 Mbyte or more is preferred).
New investments pay off
One of the major deficiencies of Quicken has been its lack of support for investments. Version 4.0 emphatically eliminates that shortcoming, adding a number of wealth-building tools to the Quicken framework while retaining the ease of use that Quicken users demand.
Support has been added for two new account types: portfolios and mutual funds. Between these two, Quicken 4.0 can support virtually all investments, including stocks and bonds, mutual funds, 401(k) accounts, certificates of deposit, Treasury bills, and more.
Quicken's report and graph facilities can provide analyses on investment performance, income generated and capital gains. Portfolio windows have graphs of their own that track the price or market value of shares in a security.
In keeping with its goal of making finances easier, Intuit has implemented a set of QuickForms to handle virtually all of the common transactions performed on investments.
Flexible reports and graphs
Intuit has expanded the flexibility and power of Quicken's report facility, adding easily resizable report columns, date templates (such as "this month" or "the last 60 days") and support for System 7's publishing feature.
The most interesting addition to Quicken's report facility, however, is QuickZoom, which allows you to examine "the numbers behind the numbers." Double-clicking on a summary line in a report displays a detail report of the transactions constituting the summary value. Double-clicking on any item in the detail report allows you to edit that transaction.
Intuit has also added graphing to Quicken. You can create and modify 2-D or 3-D graphs in four categories: income and expenses, budget variance, net worth, and investment performance. Within each of these categories, graphs can be customized just like reports and displayed in color.
When you click on a label or element of a graph, a small pop-up window displays its dollar value.
Other additions
Quicken 4.0 includes a set of five financial-planning calculators, supporting "what-if" calculations for investment, retirement and college savings, as well as loan analysis and refinancing.
The program has also improved its tax-handling capabilities, allowing each expense category to be linked to a specific tax form and line item. New reports and enhanced file exporting will help you prepare your records at tax time.
A new loan-tracking module lets you track principal, interest and amortization schedules.
Time savings
One of the major timesaving additions to Quicken 4.0 is QuickFill, which provides a prediction feature during transaction entry, similar to the Clairvoyance feature found in ProVUE Development Corp.'s Panorama II. As you type into a transaction entry or an editing window, QuickFill attempts to match the first letters of what you are typing with previous entries and fills in the rest of the field for you. If it's not correct, you just keep typing until it displays the correct completion (or until you're finished typing, for a new entry).
If you tab out of a payee field that has been entered with QuickFill, Quicken will enter the rest of the transaction information for you (amount, category and memo) based on the last transaction entered for this payee. You can edit what's changed; everything that stays the same is already done.
In addition to QuickFill, Quicken 4.0 features a batch-process timesaver called Automatic Transaction Entry, which allows you to designate sets of transactions to be automatically entered at regular intervals.
Intuit offers an innovative service for Quicken Mac users called IntelliCharge, which allows users of a Quicken Visa card to have their credit card transactions automatically entered and categorized for them. Users can opt for disk- or modem-based delivery of monthly statements.
Although the Quicken Visa has no annual fee, there is a monthly service charge of $3 or $4.50 for electronic statement delivery (via modem or floppy, respectively). For business users who track credit card expenditures, the timesavings IntelliCharge provides can outweigh the $36 to $54 a year that the service costs.
Greater accountability
Although Intuit promotes Quicken as the best-selling small-business finance package, its support in these areas is substantially unchanged from Version 3.0. Intuit now includes a 64-page manual that explains how to use Quicken for small-business accounting, but this manual generally demonstrates that Quicken lacks specific support for business accounting practices, offering ways to work around these limitations with Quicken.
As an accounting package, Quicken is really only suitable for very small businesses or for tracking project or departmental finances. The lack of traditional accounting constructs and links to established accounting packages is by design; Quicken is a personal-finance package first and foremost.
Documentation and support
Quicken's manual has been substantially rewritten and expanded. The main thing it shares with the previous version is its high quality. In addition to the main user guide, there is a Quick-Start pamphlet, as well as the Business User's Guide mentioned above.
Quicken's context-sensitive on-line help system provides thorough coverage of virtually all topics in a hypertext environment. New to this version of Quicken are Qcards, a floating-palette help system that gives information about options for the selected field. Quicken 4.0 also supports balloon help.
Intuit provides unlimited free technical support for Quicken users.
In the red
Our only real disappointment with Quicken 4.0 is its lack of flexibility in importing financial data from competing programs. Only Intuit's public-domain Quicken Interchange Format (QIF) is supported - the program cannot import text data. Because MECA Software Inc.'s Managing Your Money (the second-largest Mac financial program) does not export to QIF, our attempts to convert Managing Your Money 5.0 files - by attempting to manually convert a text file to QIF - were tedious, frustrating and only partially successful.
Since Quicken holds the lion's share of the Mac personal-finance market, it is understandable that "going after the competition" is not one of Intuit's priorities. The result, however, is that users of most competing programs will essentially have to re-enter their data when switching to Quicken.
On a separate note, Quicken 4.0 is already behind Quicken 7.0 for DOS in some areas; we hope Intuit does not wait three more versions on the DOS side before delivering another Mac upgrade.
Conclusions
Quicken for Macintosh 4.0 is a major upgrade to an already excellent personal-finance package. QuickFill and IntelliCharge impressively streamline data entry, while the new graph, investment, financial planner and loan amortization features significantly expand the program's range.
Despite the addition of many features, Quicken 4.0 remains extremely easy to use and well-integrated. Intuit has refined the interface and carefully avoided financial jargon, allowing people greater access to information about their finances while requiring less time to maintain them. Excellent documentation, including the manual, on-line help and Qcard facility, enhances the value of this package to everyone from total novices to power users.
Intuit Inc. is at 155 Linfield Ave., P.O. Box 3014, Menlo Park, Calif. 94026-3014. Phone (415) 322-0573 or (800) 624-8742; fax (415) 329-3689.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
Reviews Page 52
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
ProductWatch: Contact management
A wide range of products keeps track of essential contact information.
By Mitzi Waltz
Business is about two things: people and money. Since you can't get to the latter without going through the former, making, managing and staying in touch with customers, suppliers, prospects and other VIPs is one of the most essential functions at any company.
Contact management is the catch phrase for this activity, and a number of Mac applications can be of assistance. Some users rely on multipurpose programs such as Lotus Notes from Lotus Development Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., which includes a Customer Tracking feature that lets users enter sales data, note phone calls and write notes about prospects. Others create custom database applications.
Among stand-alone programs, options range from single-user software to powerful multi-user packages that can dial a phone, store thousands of contacts, generate and mail merge letters and faxes, and link with desktop software via Apple events.
Simple approach
The simplest, least expensive group of contact managers falls into the category of on-line Rolodex or electronic address book. They cost less than $100 and offer basic functionality, such as the capability to import, export and sort records; view data in several formats; and print to a variety of organizer books and label and envelope sizes. Personal contact managers include Synex Inc.'s MacPhonebook 3.0, Portfolio Software Inc.'s Dynodex, Casady & Greene Inc.'s Super QuickDex, Heizer Software's Connections 2.1, WE's Human Envelopes and Spinnaker Software Corp.'s Address Book Plus. Some of these programs include more-advanced features such as integrated faxing, reminders, automatic dialing and file-synchronization capabilities.
Super QuickDex uses a card metaphor, which allows users to divide phone books into stacks. "QuickDex's sort and search routines are fast, and it works with [companion envelope- and label-printing application] PrintDex to print easily," said Elliot Jolesch, data communications manager at the Oberlin (Ohio) College Computing Center. Jolesch uses the program to keep track of contacts with vendors and store an electronic version of Oberlin's faculty and staff directory.
White Crow Software Inc.'s HyperCard-based Office Manager 2.5 is oriented toward small entrepreneurs. It includes Mail Manager, a mail merge utility that can perform functions such as scheduled mailing, and Office Manager Remote, a version optimized for the PowerBook that includes file synchronization.
Multi-user magic
Touchbase Pro from Aldus Corp.'s Consumer Division is available as a single-user or network application. Its features include file synchronization; links to Sharp Electronics Corp.'s Wizard palmtops; 16 customizable fields; and support for Apple events that link it with Aldus Consumer Division's to-do list application, Datebook Pro. Under System 7, to-do items on a Datebook Pro calendar, such as phone calls, can be linked to corresponding information, such as phone numbers, in Touchbase. Users can automatically call up linked data from within either program by clicking a button, including address lists for use in mail merged letters created with Touchbase's built-in word processor.
Now Software Inc. will be announcing on Aug. 2 a contact manager that will communicate with its Now Up-to-Date scheduling application via Apple events.
InTouch from Advanced Software Inc. takes a multi-user client-server tack. At J.P Morgan Guaranty Corp. in New York, InTouch is used for a corporate phone book on a central server, as well as for personal contact management on some employee workstations, said Vice President Serge Suarez.
InTouch's greatest advantage is speed, Suarez said. "TouchBase was slow and cumbersome when I last used it. InTouch has a 'Miës van der Rohe' approach - it's spare, small and compact, and its search algorithm is extremely fast." Suarez added that InTouch works quickly over an AppleTalk Remote Access (ARA) hookup.
J.P. Morgan employees can search for contact information, keep track of calls, enter personalized contact data in a notes field, and schedule follow-up calls or reminders with the program's tickler-file feature.
Database-based
Many high-level contact-management tools link with database-management systems to harness serious computing power for high-intensity sales offices. Although these applications generally include a runtime version of the DBMS, buyers might choose a product that can work with the database they already have or rest their decision on which database is faster or easier to use.
R.M. Dudley Corp.'s Sales Navigation is a client-server application developed using 4th Dimension from ACI US Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. It combines contact-management faculties with customizable questionnaires that salespeople can use as "sales scripts" when calling clients or following up leads.
Other 4D-based contact managers include PowerTrax 1.25 from Soft Solutions Inc. and Prospector from DataNet. PowerTrax features automatic dialing, faxing and ARA support. Prospector is a single-user product that manages sales contact lists, tracks calls and visits, and automates communications.
Client Portrait from GreenLight Software was developed using Helix Express from Helix Technologies of Northbrook, Ill. Market Master for Macintosh Personal 3.5 from Breakthrough Productions uses Helix's older database product, Double Helix. Helix Express itself includes a user-customizable contact-management template that lets users store related documents with client records, among other functions.
At Moulded Fibre Technology Inc., a manufacturer of custom packaging materials in Westbrook, Maine, Northeastern Account Manager MacDonald Smith uses Market Master for field and in-house sales representatives and Market Master Manager to consolidate and use this information. "Market Master has [ARA] capabilities that our sales reps are using, and in the office we're on the network version," he said.
Although the product works well on a PowerBook, Smith said, it has no built-in file-synchronization capabilities. Instead, salespeople "update" by uploading their entire database. "It's a vexing way for the manager to keep up with it," Smith said.
Having the backing of Double Helix is critical at his site, Smith said. The DBMS gives Market Master the power to customize multilevel data designs, which he said are easy for nonprogrammers to create using the database's object-oriented scripting language. "It gives you a 'step' system to track your marketing campaign," he said. "You can program steps 1 through 2,000, from raw data to a closed deal."
Moulded Fibre links its sales process to design and engineering procedures. Smith said he hopes Apple events or other technologies can tie the program closer to his forms software. "I would like to have engineering forms in there behind the appropriate steps," he said.
Smith said Market Master's automation features are well-conceived. "We get hundreds of calls every day, from executives to customers to college interns," he said. "We use Market Master to profile customers, then we send them customized letters [based on their profile] at the end of the day."
TeleMagic 12 for the Macintosh from Remote Control International is a multiplatform, networked application that uses Microsoft Corp.'s FoxBASE+. Mac and Windows versions of the program can interact; data files can be easily imported from TeleMagic's DOS version (based on Nantucket Corp.'s Clipper database) or from its Unix and AS400 implementations. Remote Control said it is rewriting TeleMagic using FoxPro. When this version is released at the end of the year, Mac, DOS and Windows users will be able to share the same files over a network.
MaxSolutions, the original developer of TeleMagic, sells several add-on modules for TeleMagic. Its SalesMagic adds alarms, speed dialing, file-synchronization and duplicate-record checking capabilities. SalesMagic uses Apple events to link with At Your Service from BrightStar Technology Inc. of Bellevue, Wash., a "talking" desk accessory that reminds users of calls, appointments and electronic mail. PageMagic works with SalesMagic to add links to remote pagers. BillingMagic adds power to TeleMagic's built-in order-entry features.
For users of Panorama II from ProVUE Development Corp., HindSight markets InContact, a small-business-oriented solution.
ProVUE itself sells a personal information manager called Power Team, which is based on Panorama 2.1. Power Team is optimized for PowerBooks: It runs in RAM to extend battery life and increase speed. Power Team has seven modules: Phone Book, Calendar, Calculator, Correspondence, Checkbook, Expense Report and Mailing List. It includes an auto-dialing feature that appends time and date stamps when a call is made.
Management features
In high-volume sales operations, contact management is also of concern to midlevel managers and executives, who must track individual employee and branch performance, fulfillment of information requests, promotional items, and purchase orders sent in from the field.
Leads! from Endpoint! Marketing Information Systems Inc. offers tools for both managers and salespeople. Endpoint!'s Leads! Personal is optimized for the PowerBook with file-reconciliation features.
Will Hecht, account executive at the Advanced Concepts Center of Martin Marietta in King of Prussia, Pa., said Leads! has proved invaluable for tracking contacts with more than 10,000 clients and prospects. Leads! is set up to generate dozens of customizable reports based on any number of criteria, Hecht said. The software's Sources feature lets his managers generate reports delineating which advertisements get the most response, for example. "Based on Sources figures, you can reduce your cost per prospect," he said.
Martin Marietta runs the multi-user version of Leads! on a 4D Server and hopes to speed access by adding Ethernet capability, Hecht said. Improved import-export capabilities and Apple events links to other applications would improve the program, he said.
Field Assistant from FIT Software, a single-user solution for entering and managing contact information, is a good choice for portable users. Field Assistant screens can combine several windows or views - contact cards, to-do lists and calendars - so users can optimize the way data is displayed on the PowerBook's small screen. The program supports ARA, includes a word processor with mail merge capabilities, and can print envelopes and labels.
After Hours Software Inc.'s Salesbase 1.0. is a contact-management product for sales professionals that is sold in custom installations to groups of 50 or more. It includes screens for entering new information on contacts and getting an overview of entire accounts, projects and proposals.
James Integrated Technologies Corp.'s theCustomer takes a slightly different tack by focusing on sales fulfillment rather than prospects. It manages information on customers and creates proposals, orders, purchase orders and invoices. The program can use Apple events to launch Microsoft Word and Excel and other System 7-savvy applications. Its Apple events integration is not complete, however: Merging a long list of addresses from theCustomer with a Word document, for example, requires setting up the list as a tab-delimited file and importing it from within Word.
Other sales- and marketing-oriented contact-management tools include SuperOffice Corp.'s multifunction SuperOffice and SuperOffice Lite, which includes a contact database, to-do list and report-generation capabilities. Contact Ease 2.02 from WestWare Inc. includes file-synchronization features. Symantec Corp.'s ACT! for Macintosh is a popular, full-featured package.
There are several contact-management programs for vertical markets. Contact Pro from Actoris Software Corp. and DataNet's Prospector, for example, cater to real-estate agents. The programs contain fields to lead agents through aspects of selling property, such as inspection, escrow and title delivery. GreenLight's Client Portrait is intended for use in law offices. It includes fields for legal citations and can generate specific documents.
Reckoning Software Inc.'s Reckoning A/E is a time- and information-management application directed at the architectural and engineering market. It was developed using Omnis 7 from Foster City, Calif.-based Blyth Software Inc., so it works in both Mac and Windows environments and allows users to share networked files. It includes a calendar, to-do list manager, time and work tracking functions, E-mail, and event forms and report-generation features. Reckoning has announced that a generic, consumer-oriented version of the program will ship at the end of summer. It will support add-on modules for other vertical markets, such as legal, accounting, sales and graphic artists.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
ProductWatch Page 57
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mac the Knife: Killed with extreme prejudice
And now for the rest of the story. Those many meetings between Apple and Dell Computer had kept sources speculating for several weeks. The only problem was pinning down exactly what could possibly be up between these two personal computer rivals. Now that both companies have released their earnings for last quarter, it's fairly clear that they were sharing tips for losing huge sums of money for no apparent reason.
Ah, devastation is the order of the day this summer, whether measured by how fast and how high the waters are rising or by the number of promising projects mowed down in a frenzy of cost cutting. In the case of Apple, the list gets longer almost daily. Although some of the projects sound a little able, the Knife insists that it's quite impossible to grasp the full scope of the carnage merely in terms of offed employees.
The most visible project to bite it is, of course, the pen Mac. And it's not like we haven't been warned. The Knife was particularly amused by Randy Battat's statements to The Wall Street Journal to the effect that everything would have to be re-evaluated in light of the new reality. It ranks among the finest examples of corporate speak so far this year.
The list goes on
Whatever you think of the pen as an input device, a pen-based Mac with Duo form factor does seem like a good idea, or at least it did at the time. Some might not know that Apple also had another pen-Mac project in the works. It can perhaps best be described as a handheld PowerBook. Too bad about that one, too.
The Knife also reports that all development on future incarnations of the Classic family has been eliminated. Both of the current Classics will probably still live to see newer motherboards sporting faster processors, but if you've been holding out for a totally new Classic model, you've been holding out too long.
Apple once planned an entire family of new, high-end external storage options, including disk arrays, DAT drives, magneto-optical drives and a 2-Gbyte drive for those who always have to have the biggest one. Development of cost-saving IDE controllers for the Mac has also been nuked, although the project was far enough along that an IDE Mac can't be ruled out.
Less ambitious projects, such as special vertical-market configurations of the Quadra 950 and the hot videoconferencing system, are also history. The Knife also quotes reliable sources who claim that Apple Market Centers are suffering staff cutbacks in the 50 percent range.
What money buys
The Knife wants money, and you probably want money, too. After all, money is so handy for so many things. Money will even buy entire companies. Take Software Ventures Corp. Well, maybe take is too strong. You couldn't just take Software Ventures - that would be a felony. But the Knife bets that you could buy Software Ventures, assuming it were for sale. Well-founded rumor has it that Toronto-based Delrina Technology Inc. is more than casually interested in acquiring same.
Communications is scheduled to play an even more important role in our future than it has in our story thus far, which may explain Delrina's interest in Software Ventures. The Knife has learned that Aladdin Systems Inc., the company that made the term StuffIt acceptable in respectable society, is developing a communications application of its own. The new product, tentatively called Sitcom, will probably support simultaneous file transfer and compression. Cool.
MacWEEK mugs are cool, too, but if you want one, you'll have to yak with the Knife first, and you'll have to yak well. Get your communication tool of choice ready and start at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3650, Internet (mac_the_knife@macweek.ziff.com), AppleLink (MacWEEK) or CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac.
MacWEEK 07.19.93
Mac the Knife Page 118
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
