Eagles Nest BBS 7/Eagles_Nest_Mac_Collection_Disc_7.TOAST/MacWEEK/MacWEEK930906/MacWEEK News 09.06.93

Text File | 1993-09-03 | 82KB | 1,810 lines

News: Magic Cap allows walk through on-line world

General Magic plans Mac version for '94

By Andrew Gore

Mountain View, Calif. - One of the industry's best-kept secrets, General
Magic Inc.'s operating environment offers a new way of looking at
communications on an emerging class of handheld devices and existing
personal computers, including the Macintosh.

Magic Cap (Communicating Applications Platform), General Magic's
operating system and application framework, will offer users the ability
to "walk through" a virtual world of information and communications
services. According to sources, Magic Cap will run on devices to be
built by Motorola Inc. and Sony Corp., among others, as well as on the
Mac and Intel-standard systems.

The first Magic Cap devices are expected to ship in the first half of
1994, sources said. The Mac-compatible version is expected earlier,
however, so developers can start building applications.

> Walkabout GUI. Magic Cap features a 3-D interface of a little world
through which users navigate.

This world has three primary areas through which users wander at the
touch of a finger, tap of a stylus or click of a mouse. The core is the
Desk, where messages can be drafted and where the message in-box and
out-box reside. Users can schedule appointments, look up addresses, dial
the phone, make notes and check the time by tapping the appropriate
objects on the Desk.

Just "outside" the room where the Desk sits is the Hallway. The user
walks left or right through the Hallway to other rooms, such as the
Library, where documentation and references are kept; and the Storeroom,
where unused applications are mothballed and links to Mac disks are
made. Smaller desks in the Hallway contain locks for Doors and other
objects, such as "Smart Newspapers." Even the Hallway's Painting has a
function, one akin to the Mac Scrapbook's.

Exiting the House, the user hits Main Street, where buildings represent
other services available to the Magic Cap device, such as on-line
services or even an on-line mail-order boutique.

> Multiple connections. Magic Cap's design is focused primarily on
communications, especially electronic messaging, and the OS contains
many facilities for sending and receiving data.

According to sources, Magic Cap will be able to send data over phone
lines; several computer networks, including AppleTalk and TCP/IP; serial
connections; and infrared beams. Depending on the device, the OS will
support radio and Cellular Digital Packet Data transmission and even
could place voice phone calls.

Magic Cap will fully support Telescript, General Magic's cross-platform
communications architecture. It will be possible to search through any
Telescript-equipped service and send out automated agents to retrieve
new information and drop it into Magic Cap's in-box.

> Scripted development. Magic Cap is constructed of software objects,
the behavior of which is defined by a HyperTalk-like scripting language.
Developers and power users can select "authoring" or "construction" user
levels to customize the Magic Cap interface. Customization can be as
simple as copying a button and its script from one on-screen area to
another or as complex as creating new rooms and entire applications.

Despite superficial similarities between Magic Cap and Apple's
HyperCard, which was created by General Magic co-founder Bill Atkinson,
sources said the object-oriented framework has little in common with its
precursor.

> Hardware. The first Magic Cap devices will include wired telephones,
infrared transceivers and LCD touch screens, sources said. Magic Cap
does not support handwriting recognition and relies instead on an on-
screen keyboard, drawing tools and connections to hardware keyboards.

Magic Cap devices will "dock" to recharge their two batteries and access
certain communications capabilities. They will use PCMCIA slots to load
new software and will also be able to back up, restore and synchronize
data to a Mac or IBM PC or compatible computer.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 1

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: Apple readies CPU cornucopia

New Quadras, active-matrix Duos due

By Robert Hess

Cupertino, Calif. - October CPU introductions have become an Apple
tradition in recent years, and this year won't be an exception.

In hopes of stemming its recent sales slowdown, the company plans to
reorganize its desktop product line, add two new low-cost 68040-based
models, bring active-matrix displays to its PowerBook Duo series, roll
out a new 600-dpi printer and overhaul its Performa line for the
consumer market, according to sources.

Continuing in a direction that began with the June introduction of the
education-only LC 520, Apple will officially divide its computers into
four distinct lines: Quadra for business, PowerBook for mobile use, LC
for education and Performa for home.

Z>Quadras. The current Centris family, consisting of the 610, 650 and
660AV, will reportedly be folded into the Quadra line. The 610, which is
now based on a 20-MHz 68LC040, will get a full '040, including an FPU
(floating-point unit), and a 25-MHz clock speed, while the 650 will be
bumped up from 25 to 33 MHz. The 660AV will simply get a new name.

A new low-end Quadra model called the 605, incorporating a 25-MHz
68LC040, is expected to be priced at less than $1,500. It will come in a
new box - even slimmer than the Mac LC family's case - with a single
processor direct slot and no bays for removable-media storage systems.

The Quadra 800, 840AV and 950 will remain unchanged. (Contrary to a
report published in the Aug. 23 MacWEEK, the 800 will remain in the
product line at least until next spring, sources said.)

> Duos. A new PowerBook Duo model called the 250, sources said, will
offer a 9-inch active-matrix screen capable of displaying 16 shades of
gray. Like the Duo 230, it will have a 33-MHz 68030 processor. The 4-
pound device will reportedly use a new higher-capacity battery - a Type
II nickel metal hydride (NiMH) cell - capable of powering it for 2.5 to
6 hours.

A second new notebook, the Duo 270c, will sport an 8.4-inch active-
matrix color screen capable of two display modes: 16-bit color at 640 by
400 pixels or eight-bit color at 640 by 480 pixels. It will be the first
Duo to include a math coprocessor and the first to support up to 32
Mbytes of memory. Like the 250, it will use Type II NiMH batteries,
which are supposed to power the system for two to four hours per charge,
according to sources.

Existing Duo owners will be able to upgrade their computers to the new
models.

> LC. The LC 475 will bring the '040 for the first time to Apple's
learning line. A 68LC040 running at 25 MHz will offer double the
processing power of the LC III and LC 520. The new model will be the
first LC to support all Apple monitors, including the Macintosh 21"
Display. In addition, the LC 475 will be fully compliant with the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star standard: While several
previous Apple models have relied on a special sleep mode to meet the
standard, the LC 475 will comply even when in full operation.

By the middle of next year, sources said, Apple hopes to limit purchases
of LC models to educational buyers.

> LaserWriter Select 360. The new LaserWriter, a 600-dpi, 10-page-per-
minute model, is tentatively priced between $1,500 and $1,700, sources
said. It will incorporate Adobe PostScript Level 2 and PCL 5 emulation.

The printer will come with an Am29200 RISC processor and 7 Mbytes of
RAM, expandable to 16 Mbytes. It will switch automatically among its
LocalTalk, serial and parallel interfaces; Apple does not plan to offer
an Ethernet option, sources said.

A Level 2 PostScript fax option, priced between $300 and $400, will
reportedly be available when the printer ships next month. A
daughterboard capable of optical character recognition of incoming faxes
is due later this fall (see MacWEEK, Aug. 23).

> Performas. Apple's existing trio of Performas will be supplemented
with seven new models, including two with '040 processors. All will come
with a keyboard, monitor, Global Village Communication Inc.'s
TelePort/Bronze fax/data modem and bundled software.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 1

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: PowerPC may start slowly

By Henry Norr

Cupertino, Calif. - The PowerPC will quickly take over the top and
middle of the Mac line next year, but disappointing performance in
emulation mode and a limited selection of mainstream applications
running in native mode could slow early acceptance of the RISC machines.

Apple plans to release the first Mac models based on the new processor
on March 14, 1994. In addition to the two models previously reported
here - a single-slot system in a Centris 610-style case and a three-slot
model in a Centris 650 box (see MacWEEK, Aug. 23) - the company is now
expected to offer a higher-performance three-slot model in a Quadra 800-
like minitower, sources said.

The base model will reportedly include a 50-MHz PowerPC 601, a processor
direct slot, 8 Mbytes of RAM and a 160-Mbyte hard disk. The Centris 650-
style unit will offer a 66-MHz version of the processor, three NuBus
slots, 8 Mbytes of RAM and a 230-Mbyte hard drive. The third model will
have the same CPU, slots, RAM and drive. But in addition to the extra
storage bays and beefier power supply of the Quadra 800 design, it will
include a large high-speed memory cache - at least 512 Kbytes - that
could boost overall performance by as much as 25 percent.

Final pricing will depend on market conditions next winter, but Apple
reportedly is aiming for street prices of about $2,000, $3,000 and
$4,000, respectively, for the three models.

Performance in 680x0 emulation mode is now expected to fall far short of
Apple's announced goal, the speed of a 25-MHz 68040. Actual performance
in emulation is likely to correspond, on average, to the level of an LC
III, which has a 25-MHz 68030. That means that comparably priced '040
machines will significantly outperform the PowerPC Macs running existing
software.

Native-mode performance, however, is still expected to be two to four
times that of a 33-MHz '040. Applications that Apple expects to be ready
with native-mode version in March, sources said, include ACI US Inc.'s
4th Dimension; Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat; Aldus FreeHand;
ClarisWorks; Deneba Software's Canvas; Frame Technology Corp.'s
FrameMaker; QuarkXPress; Specular International Inc.'s Infini-D; and
Wolfram Research Corp.'s Mathematica.

But users who rely primarily on more mainstream applications, including
Microsoft Word and Excel, may have to wait at least several months after
the introduction of the PowerPC Macs for native-mode software.

Another factor complicating the transition is that the first PowerPC
Macs will offer only a subset of the technologies built into the AV
Macs. The PowerPC models will include direct memory access, the GeoPort
architecture and a software version of Apple's PlainTalk speech
technology, but none of the first-generation PowerPC systems will offer
the AVs' video-in and -out capabilities - a gap Apple hopes to fill with
an add-on card.

Despite these challenges, sources said, Apple still expects to sell more
than 1 million PowerPC-based Macs in 1994. By next fall, the low-cost
Quadra 605 is likely to be the only '040 model left in the company's
business-desktop line.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 1

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: Apple to focus on photography

By Matthew Rothenberg

Cupertino, Calif. - Apple will take a shot at electronic photography in
November, when it plans to unveil an inexpensive digital color camera
and a CD-ROM mastering system, sources said.

The new Apple products reportedly will debut at Comdex/Fall '93 in Las
Vegas.

Apple declined to comment.

The camera, code-named Venus, is expected to retail for less than $1,000
and is expected to fetch a street price as low as $600.

Venus features an optical lens, an electronic shutter and a built-in
flash. A CCD (charge-coupled device) array enable to capture 24-bit-
color images at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. The device can store
up to 25 images in flash EPROM, and users will be able to download
photos to their CPUs via a serial interface. Adobe Photoshop 2.5 will
reportedly come bundled with the camera.

Apple reportedly developed the camera with Eastman Kodak Co. and Chinon
America Inc. after abandoning plans to license digital cameras from the
Fujix division of Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. of Tokyo (see MacWEEK, March
22). Chinon reportedly will market wide-angle and telephoto lenses for
Venus.

Sources said Apple also plans to introduce a higher-end camera at
Macworld Expo in San Francisco in January 1994. This device, code-named
Mars, will offer adjustable resolutions up to 2,000 lines and will
feature controls for exposure, electronic flash and depth-of-field. In
addition, Mars may store images on Sony minidiscs instead of in EPROM,
according to sources.

The CD-ROM mastering system, expected to cost about $5,000, comprises a
repackaged version of Kodak's PCD Writer 200 disc-mastering device
controlled by interface software developed by Apple.

The software will reportedly allow users to mount the SCSI-2 device on
the Mac desktop via the Chooser and create 680-Mbyte CD-ROMs by clicking
on files they wish to record and dragging them to the mastering volume.

The system reportedly will ship with Photo CD Portfolio, multimedia
authoring software from Kodak that lets users create Photo CDs
containing digital photos, graphics, audio sequences and text. The
application works with the mastering device to allow users to author
their own discs in Kodak's proprietary Photo CD format (see MacWEEK,
March 29).

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 1

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: Farallon adapters daisychain Ethernet Macs

By Nathalie Welch

Alameda, Calif. - Farallon Computing Inc. next week is expected to
announce a line of Ethernet products that will help users easily set up
ad hoc networks or expand existing LANs.

Farallon's EtherWave line consists of adapters, cards and transceivers
that will let users daisychain up to eight 10BASE T nodes without a hub
or add more devices to a single port of an existing hub. Nodes can
include Macs, IBM PCs and compatibles, and printers.

EtherWave transceivers and Mac cards are expected to ship this month;
adapters and PC cards are due next month. The devices feature two RJ-45
ports and are self-terminating, according to sources. Pricing
information was not available.

Farallon declined to comment.

> Cards and adapters. EtherWave interface cards will come in two
varieties for the Mac: NuBus and LC. Cards for PCs will connect to the
ISA or EISA bus.

An EtherWave external adapter for PowerBooks and slotless Macs will
connect to the serial port. Sources said Farallon claims that its high-
speed serial adapter offers SCSI-level performance. An external printer
adapter will connect LocalTalk printers to Ethernet.

> Transceivers. Farallon will offer transceivers for Ethernet printers,
Macs and PCs with third-party Ethernet cards, and Macs and PCs with
built-in Ethernet.

EtherWave components are expected to incorporate both media access unit
(MAU) and hub technology, handling auto-partitioning like a MAU and
collisions like a hub, sources said.

Users will reportedly experience no performance degradation with
EtherWave daisychained networks. Daisychaining - connecting devices to
one another in a line - is usually employed for LocalTalk or thin
Ethernet, while 10BaseT Ethernet has relied on star-network topology, in
which each node must be physically wired back to either a main computer
or a hub.

Some experts were skeptical, however. "There are a couple of drawbacks
with a daisychaining scheme," said J. Scott Hougdahl, senior technical
analyst at Architecture Technology Corp., a network consulting company
in Minneapolis. "One would be manageability. If it becomes widespread on
a network, administrators will have no way of knowing how many people
are on an Ethernet drop or how to manage daisychained nodes."

Network reliability may be another problem, Hougdahl said. Problems
could occur if a Mac in the middle of the daisychain were to fail.

Kenneth Thurber, president of Architecture Technology, said that
Farallon's technology, if positioned correctly, could result in a
proliferation of similar low-cost Ethernet solutions. "There are
currently two pushes in the Ethernet market, one touting performance and
the other concerned with repackaging components to make the technology
more affordable," he said. EtherWave falls in the latter category, he
said.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 1

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: Apple to add 7 new models to Performa line

By Robert Hess

Cupertino, Calif. - Apple's Performa line next month will more than
double in size as the company adds seven new models.

The new models, expected to range in street price from $999 to $1,799,
will join the existing Performa 405, 430, 450, 600 and 600CD.

All will come with a mouse and keyboard, a 14-inch color monitor, a
68030-style processor direct slot, and Global Village Communication
Inc.'s TelePort/Bronze 2400-bps data/ 9,600-bps fax-send modem. The
modem can be upgraded via software to receive faxes.

The new Performa 410, priced from $999 to $1,049, will have a 16-MHz
68030, an 80-Mbyte hard drive and from 4 to 10 Mbytes of RAM. The 460,
priced at $1,099 to $1,299, will increase the CPU speed to 33 MHz and
support up to 36 Mbytes of RAM.

The 466 and 467, priced from $1,299 to $1,399, will use the same CPU as
the 460 but offer a better monitor and 160-Mbyte hard disk. They will
differ from each other only in their software bundle and where they are
sold.

The 475, at $1,549, and the 476, at $1,799, will bring 68040 processing
power to the Performa line with a 25-MHz 68LC040, the version of the CPU
that lacks an FPU (floating-point unit). The 475 and 476 models will
come with the same monitor as the 466 and 467 and support up to 36
Mbytes of RAM. The 475 will come with a 160-Mbyte hard disk and the 476
will offer a 230-Mbyte drive.

The Performa 550 will be a 33-MHz version of the '030-based LC 520,
which is available only to education users. Like the new all-in-one LC,
the Performa 550 will come in a 40-pound case with a color monitor and
CD-ROM drive built-in.

Sources said the company is delivering multiple bundles with minor
differences - such as the 475 and 476 - in response to requests from
consumer chains for a way to differentiate their offerings. Price Club,
for example, will sell the 466 and 476; only Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will
stock the 410; Circuit City Stores Inc. will offer the 460 and 476; and
Sears, Roebuck & Co. will have the 460, 475 and 550.

Apple is also reportedly prepared to quickly drop slow sellers. The 405
and 430 are likely to be the first casualties because of the comparably
priced and better-configured 410.

The new models will all come with a bundle of software selected from
almost two dozen titles, including ClarisWorks 2.0, Intuit Inc.'s
Quicken 4.0, America Online 2.1, the Apple Font Pack, and games and
educational programs. The Performa 550 will come with CD-ROM titles,
including the Grolier Encyclopedia and Time Almanac.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 3

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: PB RAM vendors seek to fix glitches

By Raines Cohen

San Francisco - Some users of high-end all-in-one PowerBooks have found
that third-party 10-Mbyte RAM cards can cause crashes and lockups. Now
several developers claim to have identified and solved the problem.

The symptoms, generally associated with the PowerBook 165c and 180c,
include the system hanging after the machine has been operating for
anywhere from a half-hour to several hours. Failures appear to occur
sooner when the inside of the PowerBook reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit or
hotter.

Although RAM-card vendors said timing issues in the PowerBook are
responsible, Apple placed the blame back in their laps. "We had some
problems we traced back to third-party cards," an Apple spokeswoman
said. "They are updating their cards."

Some developers disagreed with that assessment. "The problem really
isn't a memory-vendor-related problem," said Roger Kasten, marketing
director for Newer Technology of Wichita, Kan. "Anomalies exist on the
[logic] board, so they have to be compensated for on the memory module."

Others side with Apple, however. "It's not Apple's fault," said Paul
Columbus, president of Lifetime Memory Products of Huntington Beach,
Calif. "We've seen the phenomenon start to occur [on the 180c] when you
get to 4 Mbytes. The more chips you glom onto the bus, the worse it
gets."

Newer said that this week it will ship new cards that can cope with the
PowerBook's timing sensitivity. The company is offer-ing its solution to
other memory vendors for the cost of materials plus a $3-per-card
royalty.

Lifetime said it just shipped a new card; Technology Works Inc. of
Austin, Texas, said it is working on one; Microtech International Inc.
of East Haven, Conn., said its cards are unaffected.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 4

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: Nisus' File Clerk helps track down files

By Raines Cohen

Solana Beach, Calif. - New file-management software due this fall from
Nisus Software Inc. will let users organize and retrieve files by
clicking through a hierarchy of user-defined keywords.

File Clerk is designed to help users working with large numbers of files
locate desired items quickly without having to remember file names and
folder locations. It is based on a feature already available in Nisus
Compact, the company's word processor for PowerBook users.

To take advantage of the system, users must assign descriptive keywords
to files; File Clerk does not search document contents. To retrieve a
document filed with the system, the user selects among the keywords via
pop-up menus. As more keywords are selected, the list of matching files
narrows. File lists can also be filtered by other criteria, such as
creator, volume, and creation or modification date. Users will be able
to launch files located by the program or preview their contents,
including text, graphics, sound and video files. Any or all categories
can be password-protected.

The program, which will list for less than $100, will remember the last
15 files the user opened. It automatically tracks file creations,
changes and deletions.

The software, which requires System 7, supports aliases, so it can
automatically retrieve documents stored on a distant machine or network
accessible through AppleTalk Remote Access.

In addition to the full interactive version of File Clerk, Nisus is
planning a "passive" version that CD-ROM developers will be able to
license and ship on their discs to help users navigate the contents.
Users of the passive version will be able to recategorize files and
delete categories but not add new files. Nisus will provide tools to
help preconfigure the program, including a software agent that
automatically categorizes files based on the file hierarchy.

Nisus Software Inc. is at 107 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach, Calif.
92075-1900. Phone [phone]; fax [phone].

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 6

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


News: Apple Assurance broadens user support

The plan's command center in Austin, Texas, is aiming for a 90 percent
customer-satisfaction rate.

By April Streeter

What Apple began two years ago as an effort to aid users stymied by its
then-new System 7 has now blossomed into a support hot line that fields
thousands of calls per day on problems about the company's hardware and
software.

A new campus in Austin, Texas, which will house nearly 600 support-
related staff by the end of the year, is the command center for Apple
Assurance, the general-user support program that Apple USA officially
unveiled last April.

From the Mac's inception - and even before - Apple has been chastised by
end users for skimpy warranties and lack of direct support.

Give them a choice

Beginning with System 7 and followed by the introduction of the
PowerBooks, Apple has tried to prove that it wants to give customers a
choice - troubleshooting and service directly from the company, or the
traditional dealer support channel.

"We had a lot of disparate focuses, but we didn't have an overall
strategy," said Tom Dyer, manager at the Austin Assistance Center. "Now
we have a soup-to-nuts model, which is a big change for us."

Apple has made its service assurances through two programs. The first is
the toll-free "up and running" technical support Apple provides five
days per week, 12 hours per day via the [phone] hot line.

Second, in April the company extended the one-year warranty that covers
all products purchased after Feb. 1 to include on-site service visits by
a technician. It also expanded the mail-in service that previously
covered the PowerBooks to all Apple logo hardware.

The support program is currently available only in the United States,
but sources said plans are under way to establish Apple Assistance
Centers or support programs in Mexico and Canada.

Bright colors, hard work

In the technical trenches at the Austin site, where the walls are
painted in the same rainbow hues as the Apple logo, staffers working the
phones are divided into six divisions: PowerBook, System 7, Performa,
Peripherals, K-12 and High End.

While the dress code is decidedly laid-back, each technician's cube is
in view of a red electronic marquee relentlessly recording the number of
callers waiting and how long they've been on hold, as well as displaying
the number of calls that have come in that day.

Technicians, who receive four to five weeks of support training
regardless of their existing knowledge or experience, are monitored on
how many calls they individually field and how long calls last.

"Before I got here it was hard to find anyone who knew more about [the
Mac] than I do. Now I know I'm just average compared to some hotshots
we've got," said Robert Barger, a technical-support specialist for K-12
issues who has worked on the hot line since November.

A day in the life

On the day of MacWEEK's visit, Barger's calls lasted an average of six
minutes.

Although Apple declined to give overall averages for call times,
Assistance Center manager Dyer said they are comparable to other phone-
in support lines in the industry.

For technically perplexing calls, the first line of technicians can
escalate calls to "Specialists of the Day." Technicians also research
problems and return calls later.

Each technician has a handful of bizarre support-call stories. Barger's
includes the tale of a caller requiring support to set up an Apple IIc
that had never been unpacked because of its owner's seven-year coma.
Another caller couldn't recall her Macintosh's upgrade history because
of a mugging that made remembering things difficult.

While Dyer said the center is aiming for, and in some divisions
achieving, a 90 percent customer-satisfaction rate, not all users think
Apple's policies are customer-driven.

One dissatisfied customer

To his dismay, the flickering screen Randy Wilkinson of Yakima, Wash.,
experienced in the first month of owning a PowerBook 180 resulted in a
crash that totaled his Quantum hard drive. Wilkinson sent his PowerBook
to the Austin center and got a repaired machine back promptly. Quantum
Corp. supplied him with a new drive.

But within 10 days, the flickering screen and subsequent crash recurred.

When he sent it in again, the Assistance Center told him the real
problem had not been identified in the first fix and reassured Wilkinson
that there should be no further trouble.

Two weeks after the second fix, the flickering started again. On a third
pass with the center, Wilkinson tried to appeal to higher management and
to his dealer, but to no avail. "I was anything but a happy camper. But
from the people at Apple, I got the policy that it's four strikes before
they'll replace a machine," Wilkinson said. "I was saying, 'Hey, we're
dealing with a lemon.' It's one thing if a machine has always worked
great. But three months into it, a lot of the time has been downtime."

Wilkinson, who practices medicine and runs a 25-Mac office, said he was
happy with the center's initial quick response but believes that the
"four-strike" policy is shortsighted.

"I can't trust the 180, so now I'm living with the monkey on my back,"
Wilkinson said. "I feel what's missing is that the system does not
empower midlevel people to take action, and there's no way to bend the
rules."

Staff empowerment

Apple's Dyer said staff empowerment is a primary focus at the center and
that the 90 percent satisfaction goal makes the hot line "exceptionally
successful." Currently, an ACI US Inc. 4th Dimension database front end
called Cafe keeps a history of all callers and their problems, while an
in-house knowledge base called Way Cool is the data repository for
thousands of Apple hardware and software product reports, upgrades,
revisions, and marketing changes. The center is also beta testing
AppleSearch for use as the text-retrieval front end.

Each user calling into the Assistance Center for troubleshooting
receives a short mail-in questionnaire to measure satisfaction on
service rendered. The center quantifies the responses along with data
collected on common problems and complaints. The data is compiled in
reports to Apple executive management and a "Top Ten" is distributed
throughout the company.

"[The Top Ten list] used to be a very emotional issue. We'd say this or
that is a 'huge' customer issue, but we couldn't say exactly how huge,"
said Jean Toulouse, senior manager at the center. "Now we can say it's
affecting x percentage of customers. Product people, who don't like
their product being on the Top Ten, will then do a lot of re-engineering
to get it off the list."

MacWEEK 09.06.93

News Page 14

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


Gateways: Remedy to offer Mac help desk

Unix-based system routes trouble tickets

By Leonard Heymann

Mountain View, Calif. - Remedy Corp., a leader in the help-desk market,
is developing a Macintosh client that is due by the end of the year.

Remedy's Action Request System (ARS) is a client-server application that
provides forms for reporting  and tracking requests from users, as well
as a database that help desks can tap to track problems and find
solutions.

The ARS server runs on Unix workstations from all leading vendors,
according to the company. Mac clients will need MacTCP to communicate
with the server. The package is $6,500 for a single server and unlimited
clients. The Mac client software will cost an additional $500.

The system includes three  applications: User Tool lets anyone submit
action requests (ARs), query, modify or report. Notification Tool
reports on status changes of ARs, and management is conducted through an
Administrator Tool.

In addition to forthcoming Mac support, the Action Request System
supports users of Windows 3.0, Sun and X Window-compatible desktops. The
server database may be the Action Request System's flat-file database or
a leading SQL database.

Trouble-ticketing forms can be tailored to meet the needs of an
organization. Help-desk staff are alerted to new requests on the desktop
via a pop-up window, a beep, a flashing icon or pager messages.

Database queries are also forms-driven. Queries can be made "by example"
or through a constructed query facility that employs relational
operators and arithmetic operations.

The ARS can be integrated with a number of network management platforms,
including Sun Microsystems Inc.'s SunNet Manager, Cabletron Systems
Inc.'s Spectrum, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView and IBM Corp.'s
NetView/6000.

Remedy Corp. is at 1965 Landings Drive, Mountain View, Calif. 94043.
Phone [phone]; fax [phone].

MacWEEK 09.06.93

Gateways Page 24

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


Gateways: Wollongong Group carves out new Pathway

By Nathalie Welch

Palo Alto, Calif. - The Wollongong Group Inc. next week will deliver a
speedier version of its Macintosh client for Network File System.

Pathway NFS for Macintosh 2.0, priced at $295 per copy, lets users on an
Ethernet network (or LocalTalk network connected via a TCP/IP-aware
router) directly access remote NFS servers. The new version is 50
percent faster, according to the company. The upgrade also lets users
access NFS servers via the Chooser or browse an extended dialog box of
all available NFS servers. The previous version offered access only via
a control panel. Users can now also mount multiple volumes at start-up.

"I especially like that available NFS servers can now be displayed
through the Chooser," said Anne-Marie Gallegos, scientific programmer
and analyst at Lockheed Missile & Space Co. Inc.'s advanced imaging
facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Making the servers so much easier to find
has made the program much more palatable to end users."

Pathway NFS for Macintosh 2.0 will also give users the option to make
remote volumes more Mac-like by hiding certain Unix files, such as those
pertaining to directory structure.

The upgrade, which now supports MacTCP 2.0.2, lets users log onto
multiple servers by letting them change group IDs or names. Users are
also notified after files have been transferred successfully.

An Installer script is included to simplify installation of the new
client. The upgrade also supports symbolically linked directories and
offers improved authentication and file-locking features.

 Upgrades are free for users who purchased the previous version 30 days
before the new release and to customers of Wollongong's support program.
Otherwise, upgrades are about $70.

InterCon Systems Corp. of Herndon, Va., offers a competing product
called NFS/Share for $295.

The Wollongong Group Inc. is at 1129 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, Calif.
94303. Phone [phone]; fax [phone].

MacWEEK 09.06.93

Gateways Page 24

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


GA: FrameMaker lays out new features

Version 4.0 handles group docs, CMYK

By Matthew Rothenberg

San Jose, Calif. -  Frame Technology Corp. this month will reportedly
roll out an upgrade to FrameMaker that offers stronger cross-platform
and workgroup controls, among other features.

Sources said FrameMaker 4.0 will ship simultaneously in versions for the
Mac, Windows and Unix workstations and offer control over cross-platform
preferences, such as naming conventions, character mapping and graphics
formats. Like earlier generations of the software, Version 4.0 will cost
$795.

Other improvements reportedly include:

> Workgroup support. FrameMaker 4.0 tracks revisions made to multiple
copies of a single file, then compares and compiles changes, simplifying
collaboration on FrameMaker documents.

> Improved graphics support. Version 4.0 adds support for imported CMYK
(cyan, magenta, yellow, black) TIFF 6.0 images and uses Adobe PostScript
Printer Descriptions to output process-color separations on PostScript
Level 2 devices. The upgrade lets users ungroup imported PICT images and
edit them with the program's graphics tools, and it supports QuickTime
movies and MacPaint images. Like earlier versions, FrameMaker 4.0 is
also compatible with Desktop Color Separation and Encapsulated
PostScript formats.

> A streamlined interface. Sources said FrameMaker 4.0 features icon
bars that simplify access to frequently used commands and provide pop-up
menus for modifying text, tables and graphics. The upgrade also offers
context-sensitive help, a word-count feature, thumbnail image previews,
document templates, and full rotation of text and graphics.

> Improved text handling. Version 4.0 supports Apple's XTND file-
translation system and will come with filters for RTF, WordPerfect,
MacWrite 5.0, MacWrite II and WriteNow. The upgrade reportedly provides
enhanced output from QuickDraw printers, and it supports SuperATM and
multiple-master fonts.

> System 7 support. The new version can publish text and subscribe to
text and graphics. It also supports required Apple events as well as
balloon help.

Upgrades will cost $149, according to sources.

Frame declined to comment.

Deborah Cole contributed to this report.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

GA Page 36

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


GA: Aldus gets Fetch database moving

By Kirsten L. Parkinson

Seattle - Aldus Corp. this month will teach Fetch some new tricks when
it ships Version 1.2 of the $295 image-cataloging application.

The company has rewritten Fetch to incorporate Sierra Software
Innovations Inc.'s Inside Out II database engine. This change enables
Fetch to search up to 300 times faster and speeds catalog building as
well, Aldus said.

The upgrade more than triples the number of items a single catalog can
handle, allowing users to store more than 100,000 entries instead of the
32,000-item limit of the original release.

Up to 50 users will be able to access a Fetch database simultaneously
over a network. Version 1.0 handled only 40 users at a time.

Aldus said it has improved integration of Fetch with a number of
graphics programs. Users will now be able to view thumbnail and preview
versions of cataloged documents created in Aldus FreeHand, Aldus
Persuasion and Aldus PageMaker. Version 1.2 also retains keywords and
links to the original image when it transfers cataloged items into
PageMaker or QuarkXPress.

Fetch 1.2 includes built-in support for Macintosh Easy Open, Apple's
automatic file-translation software. The upgrade will ship with
extensions for GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) and Targa, two graphics
formats for IBM PCs and compatibles.

"The better integration with QuarkXPress is helpful," said Jim Alley, a
professor at the Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design. "The fact
that you can copy references and have them show up in a Quark document
is a great timesaver."

Upgrades are free.

Aldus Corp. is at 411 First Ave. S., Seattle, Wash. 98104-2871. Phone
[phone]; fax [phone].

MacWEEK 09.06.93

GA Page 36

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


BusinessWatch: Aldus CEO Brainerd to step down

Search for successor may take six months

By Jon Swartz

Seattle - Paul Brainerd, the founder of Aldus Corp. and the father of
the desktop publishing industry, said he will step down as Aldus
president and CEO as early as this year.

Brainerd, 45, made the announcement as part of a major company
reorganization last week that included the election of Brainerd as the
company's first chairman and the resignation of Sandy Smith, chief
operating officer.

"I've been running day-to-day operations for nearly 10 years, 12 hours a
day, and I needed to make the transition to more of a strategic-planning
role," said Brainerd, who will remain president and CEO until a
successor is named. "I look at [the decision] as a positive
development."

But some sources claim Brainerd's management style left a negative
imprint, prompting one former employee to denounce Brainerd's "critical"
manner.

Jonathan Seybold, CEO of Seybold Seminars in Malibu, Calif., said there
has been mounting criticism during the past year over Brainerd's
management skills. "No one questions his visionary side, but he took a
lot of heat for his management," Seybold said.

Brainerd, however, said the job change was "strictly my idea." He said
the search for a new executive, which is expected to be highly visible,
will take three to six months. Brainerd owns 22 percent of the $174
million company's stock.

The shake-up comes shortly after Aldus recorded its best financial
quarter in more than a year, posting net income of $222,000 and near-
record sales of $45.6 million for its second quarter ended July 2.

Despite the results and the recent update of the company's flagship
product, PageMaker, to Version 5.0 on the Mac and Windows, there are
still concerns about Aldus, according to financial analysts.

"Aldus can't continue to depend on PageMaker for a majority of its
sales; it has to also do well in voice and video," said Bill Whitlow, an
analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Seattle.

Other analysts expressed concern over Aldus' eroding share of the
desktop publishing software market, especially in light of the sales
success of QuarkXPress.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

BusinessWatch Page 40

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


BusinessWatch: Symantec buys Fifth Generation

By Lisa Picarille

Cupertino, Calif. - Symantec Corp. last week said it will acquire Fifth
Generation Systems Inc. in a stock swap worth about $45 million.

Together, the two companies - which between them have acquired more than
20 other companies over the past decade - reported $257 million in sales
last year.

Fifth Generation's line of Mac- and IBM PC-and-compatible-based
utilities will be integrated into Symantec's Peter Norton Group, which
is segmented into advanced utilities, security, productivity, and
networking and communications.

The Peter Norton Group accounted for about 75 percent of Symantec's
fiscal-year sales, which totaled $222 million. Fifth Generation, which
is privately held, reported annual sales of $35 million.

The acquisition is expected to help Symantec gain a foothold in the
enterprise-computing arena via a handful of unannounced products
developed by Fifth Generation. Some industry observers, however, noted
that the two companies' Mac product lines overlap in several areas,
including data recovery and backup.

"There is a synergy with what we've been doing in networking, data
security and data management," said Ellen Taylor, director of the
networking and communications business unit for The Peter Norton Group,
based in Santa Monica, Calif.

The deal is expected to be completed in December. Fifth Generation,
which employs 214 people, will be relocated from Baton Rouge, La., to
The Peter Norton Group's offices in Santa Monica. Barry Bellue, Fifth
Generation president and CEO, will report directly to Symantec CEO
Gordon Eubanks Jr.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

BusinessWatch Page 40

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


Review: LANsurveyor puts net devices on the map

Software can use SNMP agent to monitor AppleTalk networks

By Todd Coopee

To help system managers monitor their networks for faulty routers,
failing EtherTalk cards and other mishaps that can wreak havoc on
network performance, Neon Software Inc. has introduced LANsurveyor.

This $395 application graphically maps, monitors and manages small and
large AppleTalk networks. LANsurveyor is also one of the first products
to make use of Apple's SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) agent,
AppleTalk Connection for Macintosh.

LANsurveyor runs on any Macintosh running System 6 or higher with 2
Mbytes of memory. System 7 is required for those networks using
AppleTalk Connection for Macintosh.

Work in LANsurveyor begins by creating a map based on a user-specified
list of AppleTalk zones. LANsurveyor maps contain three types of network
objects: cabling, routers and end nodes.

Talk about connecting

LocalTalk, EtherTalk or TokenTalk cabling, which interconnects nodes and
makes up individual AppleTalk networks, is depicted as a rectangle. Each
box contains the AppleTalk network's assigned number or range of
numbers. AppleTalk routers, such as APT Communications Inc.'s ComTalk or
Shiva Corp.'s FastPath, which transfer network packets between networks,
are identified by LANsurveyor and represented as icons connected to
these networks. AppleTalk end nodes are also depicted as icons. End
nodes are devices, such as a Mac or laser printer, that do not act as
routers. Unknown routers and end nodes are represented by generic icons.

LANsurveyor provides several options to enhance the readability of its
maps. For large networks, maps can be drawn without the end nodes
displayed. In addition, the Drawing Options dialog box lets you adjust
the spacing between network objects and between map levels, map
orientation and object labeling.

Using a resource editor, such as Apple's ResEdit, you can import new
icons to replace unknown nodes in future network maps, although it would
be better if you could simply import new PICTs as icons.

Because LANsurveyor builds maps in several phases, the map-building
process may take some time. With the LANsurveyor application installed
on a Centris 610 with 8 Mbytes of RAM running System 7.1, our test
network of 12 routers, 18 AppleTalk zones and about 250 end nodes took
about 8 minutes. A similar map without the end nodes displayed reduced
the time to 4 minutes. Given the potential for painfully long build
times, we recommend against displaying all of the end nodes during
LANsurveyor's initial mapping process.

Network intelligence

Once the network map has been built, you can query it for data. Double-
clicking on a map object produces the Query window, which contains a
pop-up menu that lets you select from several information categories.
For instance, the Services menu item displays the name and type of
AppleTalk service provided by the object and the AppleTalk socket number
through which it communicates. The Responder Data menu item provides
useful information from end nodes, such as Macintosh system, Finder and
printer driver versions, as well as AppleShare and AppleTalk version
numbers. This information can come in handy for flagging potential
network software problems, such as incompatible printer drivers.

To help you keep site-specific records, the Query window also includes a
Notes option, which provides access to four editable fields. These are
very useful for storing such information as repair history, serial
numbers and contact information.

In addition to Responder and AppleTalk Services information, LANsurveyor
also acts as an SNMP management console. This lets LANsurveyor retrieve
a wide variety of data from any SNMP agent, including routers and end
nodes running AppleTalk Connection for Macintosh.

Routers can be queried for system data as well as for Datagram Delivery
Protocol (DDP) counters. System data includes configuration information
from an agent's MIB (Management Information Base), including SNMP ID,
machine name and running time. DDP is used to send AppleTalk packets
over networks. DDP counters include the number and type of AppleTalk
packets that have been handled by the router.

Besides generic configuration and counter data, end nodes can also be
solicited for other types of information, including attached SCSI
devices, mounted network volumes, installed NuBus boards, and system and
application files. LANsurveyor's capability to support SNMP makes it an
excellent tool for keeping track of software and hardware inventory over
the network, even though some queries can take an extremely long time to
complete (especially considering that not all devices may be turned on
at any one moment).

You cannot use LANsurveyor to exercise control over network objects. You
cannot, for example,  turn virtual memory on or off or select a
different printer on a Mac. Version 2 of the SNMP specification promises
to add encryption and authorization features; we hope programs such as
LANsurveyor will then be upgraded to make these options possible.

Defect detection

In addition to data gathering, LANsurveyor provides device polling and
traffic monitoring. Similar to Apple's InterPoll network program,
LANsurveyor's polling feature lets you test the response time of a
device by sending network packets to it and recording the response rate.
A poor response rate can often indicate a network bottleneck. Checks for
performance degradation can be made to individual nodes or groups of
network objects in a Poll List.

Alternately, routers and end nodes with SNMP capabilities can be queried
with SNMP data packets. The resulting response packet contains the
number of AppleTalk packets an object has sent and received as well as
any associated errors. Like device polling, traffic level checks can
also be made to individual agents or groups of them placed in Monitor
Lists.

With device polling and traffic monitoring, LANsurveyor lets you set
notification alarms, which are tripped when an object becomes
unresponsive or exhibits too high an error rate. Notifications include
displaying a dialog box, playing a sound, writing the error to a session
log, sending a message to an alphanumeric pager using Ex Machina Inc.'s
Notify! software or sending an electronic-mail message using CE Software
Inc.'s QuickMail.

LANsurveyor can use Apple events to launch any Mac application from
within the network map. This capability makes it possible to use
LANsurveyor as your primary management tool. The Association option lets
you link an application to a particular type of network node. For
example, Shiva's FastPath Manager could be linked to all FastPaths on
the network. Once a link has been established, double-clicking on the
map icon while holding down the Option key launches the application.

Performance

For the wealth of functionality it offers, LANsurveyor appears to be
remarkably bug-free. We still had some problems, however. During
testing, building a map with all of the end nodes displayed often caused
the machine to hang. This problem disappeared when we increased the
memory allocated to the application.

LANsurveyor also suffers from a bug in AppleTalk itself that prevents
some AppleTalk services from registering on a network map. This occurs
when an AppleTalk node registers a service with no name.

Neon Software also points out in its release notes that LANsurveyor is
incompatible with the popular shareware control panel BeHierarchic.

Documentation and support

LANsurveyor's documentation strikes an adequate balance of information
for both novice and seasoned network managers, although it is a bit
sketchy in places. A more detailed look at SNMP data information would
be useful, for instance.

Technical-support representatives answered our questions well. Besides
telephone support, Neon Software also offers support via AppleLink.

Conclusions

Even though LANsurveyor is not a one-stop solution for sites looking to
manage a multiprotocol network, it remains a very good AppleTalk
management tool. Its customizable mapping function, comprehensive
monitoring and polling features, and fair price make it a good choice,
especially for sites that already use SNMP.

Neon Software Inc. is at 3685 Mount Diablo Blvd., Suite 203, Lafayette,
Calif. 94549. Phone [phone]; fax [phone].

MacWEEK 09.06.93

Reviews Page 51

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


Review: Rae offers smart Assistance to Mac users

PIM is powerful but bulky and slow

By Ross Scott Rubin

Seeking to apply Newtonian principles to Macs, Rae Technology Inc. last
month introduced the $199 Rae Assist.

This personal information manager (PIM) uses a variety of parsing,
tagging and linking strategies to simplify access to contact and
calendar information and other data. The program runs on the database
engine from ACI US Inc.'s 4th Dimension 2.2.3.

Assist's primary metaphor is the spiral binder, stretched to fit the
640-by-400-pixel screen size of most PowerBooks. While Assist runs on
other Macs, its lone window is not resizable. To the right of the Binder
are six nonmodifiable tabs: People, Companies, Planner, To Dos, Projects
and Items. The tabs indicate which section you are in and can be used to
go to another section.

The Planner offers scheduling in day, week and month views. Projects
comprise a sequence of To Dos. Items can include free-form notes or
pictures pasted in from other sources. Currently, Assist doesn't support
publish and subscribe, although any item within Assist can be linked to
any other item.

A HyperCard-like title screen called Contents lets you jump to any of
the main sections, while a Smart Index lets you list every object in
your Binder. The Smart Index and the introductory screens of each
section let you constrain and sort information by letters or tags.

Links and integration

Like other contact managers, such as Touchbase Pro from Aldus Corp.'s
Consumer Division, Assist uses intelligent parsing to ease data entry.
For example, Assist will capitalize a person's first and last name
without your holding down the Shift key and will place a last name in
its proper field without your having to tab there. Assist can also
automatically format phone numbers either with or without an area code.
But Assist's algorithms aren't foolproof. It will not, for example,
automatically place a middle initial in the appropriate field, instead
grouping it with the first name.

Assist's underlying architecture, which the company calls Luke - akin to
the "object soup" of Apple's Newton MessagePad - is relational and
intelligent. If you enter the name of a person's company in the People
section, Assist will fill in the rest of the information regarding that
company, such as phone number and address, from the Companies section.
If a newly entered person works for a company not in Assist's knowledge
base, Assist prompts you to enter a new company.

Like Datebook Pro from Aldus' Consumer Division and DayMaker from Pastel
Development Corp., Assist employs a variety of tags you can use to group
related items. Tags can be used as filters in any section's table of
contents, letting you view only those items that pertain to a certain
category. Unlike some competing PIMs, Assist can assign more than one
tag per item, although tags cannot be hierarchical, as they are in
DayMaker.

Besides its round, iconic buttons that are used to navigate through the
program, Assist most resembles Newton in its time manager. When creating
new events in the Planner, the Assist button interprets commands and
creates links and tags without intervention. For example, if you enter a
statement such as "Lunch with Chris and Ronda," and then click the
Assist button, the Assist feature automatically indicates that the event
is a "food" type and makes the appointment appear in profiles of Chris
and Ronda stored in other sections. Assist, however, can't translate
free-form natural dates such as "next Tuesday."

Smooth interface

When you install Assist, the application is confusingly placed in a
folder within the System folder. After installation, however, you can
move the application folder.

With its iconic buttons, Rae has done a good job of integrating
interface elements from both the Mac and Newton. The package includes
two TrueType fonts (similar to Helvetica and Helvetica Black) that make
viewing small items clear and provide attractive printouts. All event
dialog boxes are modal but let you link to any person or item in Assist
if you hold down the Option key before activating them.

The People section provides a clear layout, but the Planner section is
problematic. While the day view is fine, month and week views suffer
from Assist's lack of screen real estate. Assist cleverly represents
appointments as icons in the cramped month view. In week views,
appointments are displayed in hard-to-decipher condensed type.
Surprisingly, you cannot drag and drop appointments from day to day in
week view.

In a bind

A monochrome interface and small window can be indications of a fast
product, but Assist is anything but zippy. Moving between modules can
take 2 or 3 seconds even on a Quadra 800 in one-bit mode. Even a task as
mundane as applying a tag incurs an annoying delay on a PowerBook 170. A
1.02 maintenance release has improved performance on color machines, but
not dramatically. Rae recommends a machine with a math coprocessor to
run Assist, so Duo owners should prepare to wait while Assist shifts
modules.

Assist's hunger for processor speed matches its RAM and disk-space
appetites. The application alone requires nearly 3.4 Mbytes of hard disk
space and can barely breathe in its default RAM allocation of 2.5
Mbytes. Assist's documents are also large; an empty Binder won't fit on
an 800-Kbyte floppy. The product also tends to chug away quite often at
the disk. Rae claims that Assist is disk-based for the sake of safety,
but a Save Now command already in the product would let conscientious
users maintain integrity without so much effect on battery life.

Documentation and support

Assist's interface is easy to learn and even helpful; few features need
explaining apart from the tags and the Assist feature. Yet Rae ships a
heavily illustrated overview and an in-depth reference manual that could
use more information on the Assist feature. No on-line help or balloon
help is provided, although this may be a blessing in disguise,
considering the additions they would mean to Assist's already
elephantine size.

When contacted via phone, Rae representatives demonstrated knowledge of
their product and initiative in solving problems.

Conclusions

For high-end Mac users with disk space to spare, RAM to burn and time to
spend, Assist's integration goes beyond other PIMs. Regardless of
whether you need to link all the tidbits of information in your life,
Rae Assist is an approachable repository for diverse kinds of personal
information.

However, the processing and memory costs for Rae's integrated solution
are all but prohibitive. The company's response is that Assist is an
application people want open all the time.

Regardless, Assist's girth demands a better treatment. The software
would benefit greatly from an extension that handles reminders and data
entry without having to open the application, such as those offered by
Touchbase Pro and Now Software Inc.'s Now Up-to-Date. Until its speed is
improved, Assist remains more an ideal than a tool.

Rae Technology Inc. is at 19672 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, Calif.
95014. Phone [phone]; fax [phone].

MacWEEK 09.06.93

Reviews Page 51

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


ProductWatch: Automatic disk compression debate

Users of file-level and driver-level compression are adamant about their
preferred methods.

By Bruce Schneier

Automatic disk compression programs promise to effectively transparently
double the storage space on your hard drive. Although most can live up
to this claim, several factors, including performance and reliability
problems, have sullied the images of these products.

 Given the prevalence of cheap disk drives, some doubt the wisdom of
using these products at all. Many users report no problems, however, and
have come to rely on automatic disk compression to squeeze every last
byte out of their storage devices.

There are two types of background compression products: file-level and
driver-level. File-level compression programs compress files during idle
periods and uncompress previously compressed files as they are read from
disk. Driver-level compression programs replace or supplement a drive's
SCSI controller and automatically compress all files as they are written
and uncompress them as they are read.

Each compression method has advantages and disadvantages in terms of
speed, price, compatibility and compression efficiency. Choosing among
the products depends on many factors.

File-level compression

File-level compression programs include Aladdin Systems Inc.'s StuffIt
SpaceSaver, Alysis Software Corp.'s More Disk Space, Fifth Generation
Systems Inc.'s AutoDoubler and Now Software Inc.'s Now Compress.

Proponents of file-level compression cite its speed and safety. "I used
AutoDoubler on my IIci for over a year," said Gary Gray, research fellow
in the engineering mechanics and astronautics department at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison. "I never noticed it was there, never
lost any data and never noticed a slowdown." Gray said that AutoDoubler
typically compresses PostScript files from one-quarter to one-third of
their original size.

"[File-level compression] slows things down considerably if you run the
disk really full," said Dave Sholty, producer for On the Spot
Productions, an advertising company in Chicago. "Otherwise, it is
transparent and automatic."

Unlike driver-level compression programs, file-level compression
programs let users compress and decompress files manually as well as
automatically. File-level compressors also allow users to selectively
turn off compression for certain files. This is important for frequently
modified files, such as Adobe Photoshop swap files and certain
applications.

"Some applications, such as America Online, just don't like to be
compressed," said Norman Murray, computer consultant for the biology
department at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. "Others,
such as Microsoft Word, are insufferably slow when compressed."

Users can avoid this problem either by not compressing applications or
by dedicating enough RAM to the file-level compressor so that it is able
to load the entire application into memory.

Since file-level compression programs interact directly with the system,
they are more prone to extension conflicts than driver-level
compressors. Jim Owens, chemist at the National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda, Md., used AutoDoubler for months without a problem. "Then I
had trouble opening files; the creating application could not be found,"
he said. Expanding the files did not fix the problems, Owens said. After
several attempts to fix the problem, he gave up, reformatted his drive
and reinstalled everything except AutoDoubler, without further problems.
"I cannot be sure the fault is in AutoDoubler, but I am afraid to use it
again," he said.

William Leininger, software engineer for Green Dragon Creations Inc. of
Lake in the Hills, Ill., said, "File-level compression violates certain
assumptions you should be able to make about your disk structure and can
cause problems with other INITs."

Driver-level compression

Driver-level compression products include Golden Triangle Computers
Inc.'s TimesTwo, Alysis' eDisk and Stac Electronics' Stacker for
Macintosh. Proponents of driver-level compression consider it a
significant improvement over file-level compression.

"I like everything I've heard about driver-level compression," said Ben
Liberman, a computer consultant in Chicago. "It's transparent to INITs;
everything just sees a larger drive. Driver-level compression programs
change the way a drive is treated instead of compressing individual
files."

Driver-level compressors are generally slower than file-level
compressors because they must uncompress and compress whenever they read
or write data; however, this depends on several factors.

"If the hard disk is faster than the processor, [driver-level
compression] will slow things down a bit," said Robert Altizer, software
quality assurance manager for Motorola Inc.'s ASIC division in Chandler,
Ariz. "Stacker actually sped up my home machine because the processor
was much faster than the hard disk."

Timothy Ellis, senior member of technical staff at GTE Government
Systems of Waltham, Mass., cannot detect much speed difference between
running with Stacker and running without it. "Opening and copying the
typical file is identical. I effectively have twice my disk with very
little pain," he said. Ellis reported one compatibility problem; he
could no longer use his DiskLock security program.

Many users have tried both file-level and driver-level compression and
report different reasons for preferring one method over the other.

"I switched from AutoDoubler to TimesTwo. I thought I would gain some
room, since [TimesTwo would also compress] my large system folder," said
Pascal Gosselin, Apple support specialist at Omer DeSerres Informatique
of Montreal. He ended up with less available room. "I'm going back to
AutoDoubler; TimesTwo slows things down too much," Gosselin said.

The fact that driver-level compression programs alter the hard disk
structure makes some users nervous. Once on your hard disk, a driver-
level compression product can be difficult to remove. TimesTwo cannot be
removed without first backing up and then reformatting the hard drive.

"I have not considered driver-level compression because I am not willing
to suffer the performance hit of a driverwide level," said Igor
Livshits, Macintosh support specialist for the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Champaign-
Urbana. "Also, I do not trust the technology and am attached to the
higher level of control file-based compression offers."

Rick Zeman, a free-lance writer in Laurel, Md., said: "I don't think it
has evolved far enough in the Mac world for me to trust my data to it.
Anything that makes it tougher to get the data off the hard drive in
emergencies, I steer clear of."

No compression

Dave Nebinger, biology network manager at Bowling Green (Ohio) State
University used a file-level compression product for a while before
removing it. "I got tired of being inside an application, getting the
standard file dialog, and not seeing any of the files that had been
compressed automatically or manually," he said. "It was more trouble
than it was worth."

Stan Twiefel, computer lab technician/supervisor at the University of
Texas in Austin, said, "I've had a few problems with [automatic
compression products] in the past, and am very leery of them." Once,
Twiefel lost the entire contents of his hard drive when the file Stacker
created to maintain the integrity of the compressed data was corrupted.
"The integrity of my files is worth too much to trust them to a
compression program."

Others feel that the high speeds and low costs of storage devices today
make file compression unnecessary. "You spend all your money to get a
fast computer and a fast hard drive, and then you slow it down by
putting something in the middle," Liberman said. "You should buy a
larger drive if you really need the space."

Product Info
Aladdin Systems Inc.
 StuffIt Deluxe 3.0.6: $120 (includes StuffIt SpaceSaver) StuffIt
SpaceSaver 1.0.5: $59.95
 165 Westridge Drive, Watsonville, Calif. 95076
 Phone [phone]
 Fax [phone]

 Alysis Software Corp.
 eDisk 1.1: $149.95 More Disk Space 2.2: $99.95
 1231 31st Ave., San Francisco, Calif. 94122
 Phone [phone] or [phone]
 Fax [phone]

 Fifth Generation Systems Inc.
 AutoDoubler 2.0: $89.95
 10049 N. Reiger Road, Baton Rouge, La. 70809
 Phone [phone] or [phone]
 Fax [phone]

 Golden Triangle Computers Inc.
 TimesTwo 1.03d: $149
 11175 Flintkote Ave., San Diego, Calif. 92121
 Phone [phone] or [phone]
 Fax [phone]

 Now Software Inc.
 Now Compress 1.0: $99
 319 S.W. Washington, 11th Floor, Portland, Ore. 97204
 Phone [phone] or [phone]
 Fax [phone]

 Stac Electronics
 Stacker for Macintosh 1.0: $149.00
 5993 Avenida Encinas, Carlsbad, Calif. 92008
 Phone [phone] or [phone]
 Fax [phone]

MacWEEK 09.06.93

ProductWatch Page 63

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


ProductWatch: Media managers catalog files

New programs help users navigate gigabytes of multimedia data.

By Philip Bishop

It's one thing to have a large hard disk or CD-ROM brimming with
illustrations, photographs, sounds, animations, QuickTime movies and
text files. It's quite another to find what you want when you want it.

"I don't think anyone has such a good sense of management that they know
where every single graphic they have is located on their hard drive,"
said Darryl Gordon, dean of the Advertising Arts College in Mira Mesa,
Calif., which boasts 200 students and 50 Macs. "That may have been so in
the days when we had 20-Mbyte and 40-Mbyte drives, but most of the
agencies and people I work with have gigabyte drives. And sometimes you
have 15 slight variations of the same image."

Files on a small hard disk can be cataloged in folders and searched with
a utility such as CE Software Inc.'s DiskTop. For more demanding work, a
database program, such as Apple's HyperCard, can be pressed into
service, although since each item must be cataloged individually, this
method is slow and inefficient. With the storage capacities of digital
media exploding in the past couple of years, such work-arounds are no
longer acceptable. Jumping into the fray with a solution is a new breed
of program called the media manager.

A media manager catalogs files, typically by creating a pointer to an
original file along with a thumbnail representation of it. Most media
managers also catalog basic information about the original file, such as
creation date, creation application and file format, as well as comments
and keywords about images, such as caption information or specifications
for its use in a production environment.

There are now more than a half-dozen general-purpose media managers for
the Mac that range in price from $195 to $345. The key players include
Aldus Fetch from Aldus Corp., Cumulus from Canto Software Inc., Shoebox
from Eastman Kodak Co., MacPresents-Multimedia Database Manager from
Educational Multimedia Concepts Ltd., Kudo Image Browser from Imspace
Systems Corp., Multi-Ad Search from Multi-Ad Services Inc. and MediaTree
from Tulip Software. Several vendors also market media managers to more
specific markets, such as the newspaper industry (see MacWEEK, April
12).

Searching questions

Most media managers let you create catalogs that contain about 30,000
items, although some extend this limit considerably. Multi-Ad Search
2.0, for example, has a limit of about 160,000 items. MediaTree and
Cumulus let you catalog as many items as you wish up to the limit of
your storage capacity.

Most media managers let you specify about four levels of search
criteria, which is adequate for most needs. Shoebox, however, lets you
assign up to 100 levels of search criteria. All of the programs
mentioned here let you search for items on multiple unmounted volumes,
prompting you to insert that volume when an image is found.

Yet media managers do more than simply organize chaos by locating items
on disparate source volumes. By assigning keywords to cataloged items,
these programs can assist in the process of designing a document or a
presentation by letting you view potential design elements. For example,
if you want a picture of a flower that is both color and a PICT file,
you could enter these parameters in your search and view a range of
colored flowers in the PICT format.

Vahe Guzel, president of Educorp, a major publisher and distributor of
CD-ROMs based in San Diego, wants media catalogers to do even more. "If
I say that I want a horizontal image with a Pantone blue of a particular
type that has a lot of circular shapes in it and [the media manager]
could show me 10 images out of 50,000 that fall into that category, that
would be really useful," he said.

Many users said they feel limited by the fact that keyword and caption
information exists only in a catalog and does not travel with the actual
file. One solution to this is to enter information in a file's pnot
resource, which lets you attach up to 256 characters to a file (see
MacWEEK, Jan. 18). Fetch, Search and Kudo Image Browser let you enter
and display information in a file's pnot resource.

File formats

Although none of the media managers considered here extends to the level
of sophistication Guzel seeks, they collectively do a good job
cataloging and finding files in the most popular formats.

Aldus Fetch 1.2 supports the broadest range of file types. In addition
to Mac file formats, Fetch supports GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) and
Targa files using Apple's Macintosh Easy Open (MEO) technology, which
provides system-level file translators in the form of extensions. Aldus
said that other MEO translators are likely to follow. Kudo Image Browser
supports three PC formats (PCX, TIFF and BMP) and CompuServe's GIF.

Catalog with a view

"The problem I have with every catalog program on the market is that you
can only see four, six or 12 images," said Advertising Arts College's
Gordon. "You cannot see your entire catalog at once, so you must scroll.
There is no way around scrolling, except using Kudo Image Browser's
Riffle feature."

Kudo's Riffle command works like a fast-forward control. When you click
a button in the corner of an Image Browser catalog, it displays images
one by one. You can stop riffling at any image by releasing the mouse
button.

While the Riffle command offers a level of viewing functionality beyond
scrolling, Lou Beach, a graphic artist in Los Angeles, said he thinks
Shoebox's Slide Show feature is the answer to the viewing question.

Beach's specialty is the creation of montages for record and book
covers. To locate the elements he needs, Beach must view dozens of
images. Increasingly, these are digitized photos in Photo CD format.
Using Shoebox, Beach can view catalogs in the form of a slide show,
operated either manually or automatically. The Shoebox Slide Show places
the images on a black background for greater clarity. Users can even
include sound in Shoebox slide shows. Beach said he often uses Slide
Show to show clients a series of thumbnail comps of a job.

MediaTree includes an outliner feature, which is not offered by any of
the other media managers. MediaTree's outliner works much like a text
outliner, except the items that you collapse, expand and organize are
multimedia files. You can preview any multimedia file in an outline by
double-clicking it.

For David Milne, a partner and graphic designer at New York-based
Douglas Design Associates, MediaTree's outliner may prove valuable as
his company tests the waters of CD-ROM development. "When you're putting
together items to go onto a CD-ROM, you're dealing with 600 Mbytes of
material," he said. "[MediaTree's] outliner could be very useful to keep
track of where all that is."

Remote control

All of the media managers except MacPresents-Multimedia Database Manager
let you launch the application used to create a cataloged file so you
can edit it. A few programs also let you access a catalog from within
certain graphics applications. For example, Cumulus ships with plug-in
modules for QuarkXPress, Ragtime USA's Ragtime, Aldus PageMaker and
Adobe Photoshop. Each of the modules places a command in the program
that will let you launch Cumulus and choose a file from its catalog.
After you have selected a file and placed it in your program, Cumulus
disappears.

Kudo Image Browser goes one step further. In addition to plug-in
modules, it lets you drag a file from an Image Browser catalog onto an
open PageMaker or QuarkXPress document. When you drag an image onto a
QuarkXPress document, for example, it automatically creates a picture
box and places the image in it.

An emerging market

Although the market for media managers is still emerging, already niches
are being carved out. Overall, feature-rich Fetch appears to have the
early lead (see MacWEEK, Jan. 25). Cumulus has sophisticated multi-user
capabilities, and these are sure to win it a following (see MacWEEK,
July 26). Imspace is positioning Kudo Image Browser as a speedy single-
user browser rather than a multi-user database program, which is the
category into which most of the other products fall. MediaTree shows a
lot of promise. You can expect others to copy its outliner feature, just
as others are sure to copy Shoebox's Slide Show capability.

While developers figure out their products' optimum feature sets, users
are just beginning to discover how media managers can put an end to the
clutter on their storage devices - and how they can be a positive force
in their work environments.

Paisano Publications, an Agoura Hills, Calif., publisher of magazines
about American cars and motorcycles, has found that media managers are
increasing its productivity and cutting down on paperwork. In the past,
Paisano had photos produced traditionally with design specs written on
forms. Now a service bureau converts the magazines' film to Photo CD
format and then includes the design specs as a part of a Fetch catalog,
which is created for them along with each disc.

"What we're doing is eliminating paperwork - the order forms," said
Regina Marsh, creative director and desktop specialist with the company.
"The CD comes in and goes right into production, so all the information
is digital. It really expedites the process."

MacWEEK 09.06.93

ProductWatch Page 63

(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This
material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.


Mac the Knife: How about a Newton Expo?

Now, usually by this time of year we're all steeling our resolve to
abandon our slothful summer ways in favor of a truly productive end-of-
year season. And that's probably true for most of us this year, but with
a difference. The summer of 1993 was fraught with more than its share of
disasters, both man-made and otherwise, and many of us are happy to put
them behind us.

Those sharp minds at Apple know, however, that the Labor Day weekend
only marks the observed end of summer. Officially there are still a few
days left. Maybe that's why Apple suddenly decided that next Saturday
and Sunday would be a great time to hold a Newton Expo. And wouldn't it
be neat if it were free and the public were invited? There may be no
cookout, but that probably won't stop those who just can't get enough of
things Newton.

The Knife says Apple will announce the affair this week. It will include
training in the fine art of Newton training, and a chance for the masses
to talk to actual Newton engineers. In fact, this event, which will be
held at Apple's Infinite Loop engineering facility, will be the first
time that the general public has been admitted to the Cupertino campus.
There will be fabulous contests with Newtons as prizes for the lucky,
lucky winners, and generally enough hoopla to overcome some of the
recent avalanche of bad Newton press.

AT&T again

Last week much more private meetings were being held between Apple and
AT&T. Unlike previous talks you may have heard about, these discussions
centered on how best to tie AT&T's EasyLink, including its planned
Telescript abilities, to Apple Online Services. Hooking up with EasyLink
would greatly enhance AOS attractiveness and would represent a major
boost for Telescript.

Revised forecast

The Clinton administration isn't the only group constantly monitoring
performance and downgrading predictions for future growth. It should
come as no surprise that Apple is continuing to keep a sharp eye on the
bottom line. As for personnel downsizing, what's left of the third
calendar quarter will tell the tale. If sales are as dismal as most
suspect, Apple will engage in another round of reductions. The numbers
being tossed about range from 400 to 1,400, depending on the sales
figures. Since Apple probably wants to make this the last round of
layoffs of the year for the sake of appearances, the Knife suspects that
the higher end of the range will be closer to reality. The bad news will
most likely be announced in December.

Bad news for employees can be good news for the buying public. Apple has
been negotiating a clearance sale deal with ComputerLand to dispose of
the excess inventory that hasn't moved this summer. That should result
in some killer deals if you happen to fall into the class of those who
would buy, say, a Duo, if the price were just a bit lower. If the deal
is signed, the slow-movers should go on sale sometime next month.

Not all of Apple's considerable talent is expended on cost-reduction
strategies. Some at Product Marketing and Creative Services are figuring
out what to name the PowerPC Macs. Under current plans they'll all be
called Quadras, even though the "quad" originally came from the 4 in
68040. The big issue is what numbers to use after the Quadra name to
distinguish different models. The experts agree that the PowerPC
deserves more digits than old Macs; the question is which digits. The
conservative school, citing the ancestry of the new machine cases,
favors Quadra 6100, 6500 and 8000, while the radicals are fighting for
Quadra 6000, 7000 and 8000.

Mac model names may always be meaningless, but by now we all know what a
MacWEEK mug means. Get fitted for your own snitch jacket at (415) 243-
3544, fax [phone], Internet ([e-mail]),
AppleLink (MacWEEK) or CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac.

MacWEEK 09.06.93

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.