Cupertino, Calif. - Apple last week released an upgrade to the Newton MessagePad's operating system, the second such update this month.
At press time the company had not officially announced the new release, Version 1.04. But customers buying MessagePads in several parts of the country last week found it preinstalled in the device, and a customer service representative on Apple's support hot line last Friday said, "As of this morning, it's the official shipping version."
MessagePad owners who are currently running Version 1.02, which came with most units sold during August, or 1.03, a short-lived release installed in MessagePads delivered early this month, can order 1.04 by calling (800) 776-2333. The company will then send users a PCMCIA card containing the new system software, plus a postage-paid mailer for return of the card. Users must provide a credit card number, but representatives said no charges would be made if the PCMCIA card is returned. Callerswere told to expect the card within about a week of placing their order.
MessagePad owners who received the prerelease Newton Connection Kit during last month's Macworld Expo in Boston will reportedly have several other upgrade options: Sources said the company intends to post Version 1.04 on AppleLink and on CompuServe's Newton Forum and to send floppy disks containing the new system software to owners who registered their copy of the Connection Kit.
According to messages on the Newton Forum, owners of modem-equipped MessagePads will also be able to upgrade by calling a toll-free number with the device's Receive Enhancements function. As of Friday, however, the number posted on-line was not in operation. Sources said an enhancement line - not necessarily at the number posted - might go into operation sometime this week.
Version 1.04 reportedly includes fixes for several glitches that cropped up in 1.03, including frequent alerts suggesting that users reset the MessagePad and a problem that caused some users, when backing up and restoring with the prerelease Newton Connection Kit, to lose data stored on 2-Mbyte PCMCIA storage cards. In addition, according to sources, the latest release provides overall performance improvements in the MessagePad's Date Book application and speeds up the operation of the Assist function.
Users said the new release also incorporates improvements added in Version 1.03, which addressed memory-fragmentation problems that sometimes caused the MessagePad to stop recognizing handwriting. Version 1.03 also reportedly fixed several power-management problems, including one that made the device's built-in clock erratic.
Some users had also reported an appreciable improvement in the accuracy of handwriting recognition after installing Version 1.04.
Version 1.0 of the Newton Connection Kit for the Mac, a package that will allow users to back up Newton data on the Mac, will reportedly be released this week. Sources said Apple has dropped plans for a separate Pro version and, instead, will incorporate the features planned for Pro - notably filters for exchanging data between the Newton and major Mac applications - in Version 2.0 of the standard kit. That release, due later this fall, will be free to anyone who purchases Version 1.0, sources said.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Unkindest cut for Apple
By Jon Swartz
San Francisco - Despite a price-cutting frenzy that has significantly slashed the cost of Macs this year, Apple has not become the apple of corporate America's eye.
Apple's unit share of the U.S. desktop and notebook markets this year remains relatively unchanged. Since sales to consumers and educational buyers have grown, industry observers are blaming the company's stagnation on its problems in the corporate market.
"IBM [Corp.], [Hewlett-Packard Co.] and Compaq [Computer Corp.] are winning in the big-business market. Apple is not," said William Tauscher, chairman of ComputerLand Inc. in Pleasanton, Calif. "They're being shown the door."
According to InfoCorp, a market-research company in Santa Clara, Calif., Apple's slice of the U.S. desktop market has hovered between 15 percent and 17 percent since January. In that same span, the company has maintained 20 percent to 24 percent of domestic notebook sales.
In both markets, Apple's share rose noticeably in June, after the company cut prices and offered rebates in response to a spring sales slowdown. In the desktop arena, Apple's share increased again in July; in the notebook category, the share slipped in July, but Apple has since made several more price cuts on PowerBooks.
An Apple spokeswoman said it was "too early to draw conclusions about summer sales." Another spokeswoman said the price cuts are serving their purpose - namely, to keep Macs price-competitive with offerings from IBM, Compaq and Toshiba Corp. Indeed, she said, PowerBook sales this year are outpacing last year's total of $1 billion.
But Richard Miles, editor of The Storecheck Report, a newsletter in Berkeley, Calif., said Apple waited too long before cutting prices. "They were so concerned with back orders in the spring that by the time summer came along businesses had made their purchases from other vendors."
Jay Amato, ComputerLand's new president, cited two factors impeding Mac sales: Many buyers, he said, now intend to wait for the PowerPC-based models expected early next year. And some corporate buyers have expressed concern about Apple's financial viability.
Reaction to recent price cuts has been mixed. One major distributor said Quadra sales have picked up, but sales of other models have been flat for several months. But a New York dealer said Mac sales have soared since Apple slashed dealer prices on PowerBooks last month.
Some buyers said the frequent cuts have actually discouraged them from making purchases. Control Data Systems Inc. has 200 PowerBooks and wants more, but the Minneapolis-based company hasn't bought one in the last six weeks because of the numerous cuts. "Why buy one now if the price goes down in a month?" said Todd Hauschildt, manager of business systems implementation. "Before, it was an issue of availability, particularly with the 180. Now we can buy them, but [we] are hesitant to because of another possible [price] cut."
Hauschildt said Control Data is considering purchasing some IBM ThinkPad notebooks but will continue to spend about 60 percent of its annual microcomputer budget on Macs.
IBM last week upped the ante by adding four new models to its year-old ThinkPad product line, which has already generated backlogs of four to eight weeks this summer. The new models will feature built-in audio and video support, modular design that can be easily upgraded, and an optional docking station housing stereo speakers and a CD-ROM drive. Future upgrade modules include a cellular modem, a television tuner and a pen-input screen.
International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass., said Apple's worldwide unit share of the personal computer market has risen from 6 percent to 9.5 percent since 1990, when it adopted a strategy of lowering prices and margins in an effort to expand its customer base. During the same span, Compaq's share jumped from 3.6 percent to 8.5 percent, while IBM's remained at 12 percent.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: ATM takes network lead
High-speed protocol left to third parties
By Robert Hess
San Francisco - Asynchronous Transfer Mode is moving ahead of competing protocols as the high-speed-networking standard of choice. Although most developments in the area have centered on powerful backbones, hubs and switches, vendors are beginning to reveal strategies intended to bring the Mac into the game.
Several vendors plan to provide NuBus and Peripheral Component Interconnect cards supporting native ATM, as well as hubs and switches to boost performance of existing Mac Ethernet networks. While Apple recently disbanded its ATM group, the company will soon release a new driver standard that will support new, higher speed, easier-to-manage networking protocols like ATM.
ATM uses fixed-size packets of data to offer consistent bandwidth to time-sensitive applications, such as sound and video, as well as a wide bandwidth for typical data transfers. It is broadly scalable from 1.5 Mbps to upward of 1.2 Gbits per second, and it is compatible with a wide array of networking protocols.
When it's used at all, ATM is currently used primarily for high-speed wide-area network internetworking. Slowly, however, it is coming down to the desktop.
Fore Systems Inc. of Reston, Va., a cutting-edge developer of ATM technology, will soon announce a NuBus ATM card for release early next year, sources said. While the company declined to comment on any NuBus plans, it has committed to developing a card for the PCI bus Apple expects to use in second-generation PowerPCs, due in early 1995.
Newbridge Networks Inc. of Herndon, Va., which is committed to releasing a PCI-based ATM card and is considering NuBus cards as well, will also offer an ATM solution that won't require new hardware on the Mac.
Early next year, Newbridge's VIVID (Video Voice Image Data) division plans to release Yellow Ridge, a switched hub combining 12 Ethernet ports with a single ATM connection. With this hub, users will be able to use existing Ethernet networks to their fullest potential: Instead of everyone sharing the entire Ethernet bandwidth, each user will be able to utilize a full-speed "virtual LAN" with individual services. The ATM connection will provide high-speed interconnection of hubs, as well as connectivity to additional technologies such as token ring.
According to John Carosella, Newbridge director of business development, the company sees "a large market in both the short and medium term for providing new services using existing desktop technologies. Ethernet on the desktop is still a valid high-speed solution if it's terminated into an ATM fabric."
National Semiconductor Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., is developing an ATM hub that reportedly attains high speeds of network-to-network data transfers by using QuickRing, a technology originally developed by Apple and now moving forward mainly through third parties. The company also recently announced an Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) card for ATM networking and is expected to introduce a variety of ATM products in the future that can be used on existing Mac networks.
Other companies, such as SysKonnect Inc. of Saratoga, Calif., are taking a wait-and-see attitude. SysKonnect's president, Jim Cansler, said the company is interested in bringing ATM to the Mac but it wants to see how XTI (X/Open Transport Interface) and the PCI-vs.-NuBus questions are resolved before committing to any implementation.
As for Apple, sources said the company once had a team hard at work on bringing ATM to the Mac, and it had drawn up plans to implement ATM directly on the logic board. But after this year's reorganization, the team was disbanded.
The most important piece of the puzzle that Apple can contribute, developers said, is the introduction of XTI, a multitransport application programming interface that will let users employ whatever networking protocol best suits their needs. Some developers have found AppleTalk too slow to take full advantage of high-speed networks such as ATM. XTI will make it possible for users to plug into their system the protocol of their choice.
XTI is expected to make its debut when Apple releases its PowerPC-based Macs next year and possibly make a migration to 68000 Macs soon thereafter.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: QuickMail to spread message
CE agents will deliver better interoperability
By Nathalie Welch
West Des Moines, Iowa - CE Software Inc., long the leader in the Mac electronic-mail market, has developed an ambitious strategy focused on bringing increased interoperability and agent-based automation to enterprise messaging.
Over the next 18 months, CE plans to add a variety of products to its lineup, including new client software for wireless and other mobile devices; mail-management agents that work on all common messaging transports and network operating systems; and a groupware architecture designed to integrate messaging, scheduling and work-flow management with corporate database systems.
The theme of the strategy, CE officials said, is to offer new capabilities without asking customers to replace the systems they already have. "The technology infrastructure should be employed, not replaced," said CE President Ford Goodman. "The last thing I can allow to happen to my company is to compete application-to-application with the big guys."
Along with workgroup agents designed for use over LANs and wide-area networks, CE plans to offer a series of easy-to-use personal agents to assist Mac and Windows users with management of their documents, phone calls and E-mail. Advanced users and network administrators will be able to customize and enhance both individual and group agents via AppleScript and Visual Basic.
CE said some of the components, starting with its Mail Rules and Group Scheduling agents, should ship by next summer; the remainder are expected by early 1995.
> QuickMail clients. CE will use the Common Messaging Call (CMC) standard, recently proposed by the X.400 Application Program Interface Association to ensure that all QuickMail clients work on all XAPIA-compatible message transports.
The company has entered an agreement with RAM Mobile Data and Intel Corp. that will enable remote PowerBook clients to use wireless modems and RAM's radio-packet network to send and retrieve QuickMail. This functionality should be available by November, according to CE. Pricing has not yet been set.
Early next year, the company plans to deliver new client software, called QuickAccess, that will let Newton and other personal digital assistants access QuickMail, NetWare MHS servers or other CMC-accessible mail system.
> Personal Agents. Building on its existing QuicKeys and ProKeys products, CE will offer personal agents designed to assist Mac and Windows users with management of their documents, phone calls and E-mail. A mailbox-rules agent, for example, will filter and route a user's incoming mail or create and send a message containing a weekly report at a prescheduled time. A telephone agent will be able to filter incoming calls, place outgoing calls and act as an answering machine.
> Group Agents. The last phase of the CE plan will involve development of groupware applications, including access to host-based data for local and remote clients. The group agents and groupware architecture will be based in part on technology CE gained through a recent alliance with Reach Software Corp., a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based developer of work-flow software (see MacWEEK, June 21).
CE Software Inc. is at P.O. Box 65580, 1801 Industrial Circle, West Des Moines, Iowa 50265. Phone (515) 221-1801; fax (515) 221-1806.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Users slow to exploit AV features
By MacWEEK staff
San Francisco - Apple's new AV Macs are drawing positive reactions from users, but few buyers so far have taken advantage of either the "A" or the "V" capabilities.
Users contacted by MacWEEK said they bought the Centris 660AV and Quadra 840AV models for their price-performance equation and promised upgrade path to the PowerPC. But those who were attracted to cutting-edge features, such as CD-quality sound, said they are still waiting for final components.
"It's certainly a nice, fast machine," said Craig O'Donnell, a digital audio specialist and author based in Boston. "But there isn't any sound editor that can take advantage of the 16-bit sound, except for tools built into QuickTime applications."
O'Donnell added: "Out of the box, [the AV Mac] is not sufficient for my audio work; I still need the tools I've accumulated over the past few years." Sound-editing products expected to ship next year should remedy the problem, he said.
Similarly, few third-party applications that take advantage of the AV models' built-in AT&T Co. 3210 digital signal processor (DSP) are on the market, although Spectral Innovations Inc. and VideoFusion Ltd. will soon offer DSP-based applications.
Also slow to ship are third-party drivers that work with SCSI Manager 4.3, which is built into the AV Macs' ROM and runs older drivers in a slower "compatibility mode." Apple's HD SC Setup utility, bundled with the AVs, works only with Apple drives.
"We're waiting for the shakedown of the new SCSI Manager," said Roy Roper, assistant director of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "We need faster I/O, and then we'll [order some AV Macs]. This is wonderful Version 1.0 stuff, but I'm waiting for Version 1.1."
Dealers said the new Macs are selling briskly. "The few we've been able to get in have gone right out the door," said Nick Feinberg, manager of Computer Outlet in New City, N.Y. "They don't sit in stock for more than an hour."
Among the AV Macs' selling points, Feinberg cited the GeoPort, a technology that lets users plug in a $129 GeoPort Telecom Adapter to get a high-speed fax modem, as well as the machines' built-in support for 24-bit color on 14-inch monitors.
Users expressed enthusiasm about the possibilities the DSP offers. "I associate the incorporation of DSP [within the AV Macs] with the bringing of sound to movies; I think it's nothing less," said Bill Moore, a systems administrator at OHS Inc. in Larkspur, Calif.
Moore said he looks forward to telephony applications that will integrate the new Macs, minicomputers and telephone switch systems.
Users who have already tried out voice commands and text-to-speech said they liked the features but hadn't found them to be earthshaking. "I have some wrist problems, so having some commands available by voice is a good start, although it would be nice to have them execute faster," O'Donnell said.
Even if it's not a productivity breakthrough, users said they were happy with the built-in speech capabilities. "I love that it talks to me," said Karen Heimann, a graphic designer for the Late Show with David Letterman in New York. "Between the voice stuff and my ergonomic keyboard, I feel very Star Trek."
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Mac Zone disc key to 150 apps
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
Redmond, Wash. - The British will reinvade U.S. shores this week when London-based Instant Access International and Mac Zone, the well-known mail-order company, introduce a plan for distributing applications on CD-ROM.
The Instant Access CD, available in the United Kingdom since April, incorporates product information, demonstrations and encrypted versions of the complete application that can be purchased and unlocked by calling a toll-free number.
Mac Zone's initial version of the disc, due next month, will contain between 150 and 200 applications, including Typestry from Pixar, InTouch from Advanced Software Inc., In Control from Attain Corp. and Quicken from Intuit Inc. Demonstration versions will be included for 20 percent to 25 percent of the applications on the disc.
The disc will be distributed to customers for the price of shipping and handling. Users will pay at least 5 percent less for a product purchased through the disc than they would pay if ordering it through Mac Zone's mail-order catalog, the company said. Mac Zone initially will release new versions of the CD quarterly, although it said it is aiming to provide monthly updates eventually.
Mac Zone said software developers pay a flat fee to participate in the disc and will receive the same revenue they normally receive from Mac Zone. In addition, they will receive customer registration information from every product purchased.
The Mac Zone Instant Access CD will compete with a similar disc from Ingram Micro Inc., also due next month. Sources said Apple also plans to offer third-party and Apple software on CD beginning next month. Apple's Software Solutions program has drawn fire from developers who claim Apple's royalties are too low (see MacWEEK, Aug. 16).
Multiple Zones International Inc., the parent organization of Mac Zone, is at 17411 N.E. Union Hill Road, Redmond, Wash. 98052-6716. Phone (206) 883-1975 or (800) 864-6060; fax (206) 558-0254.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: BTI's battery of PowerBook chargers
PowerGage glows to show charge status
By Raines Cohen
Commerce, Calif. - PowerBook users can get a charge out of several products on the way from Battery Technology Inc.
> Superfast charger. The MC-SC100 PowerChargerPlus, due by next month, can charge an all-in-one PowerBook battery in about one and a half hours rather than the five or more hours that traditional chargers take to accomplish the same task. The $149.95 device prevents overcharging with "negative delta voltage" sensing, which stops charging as soon as the battery reaches capacity.
The device, like the company's MC-CHR PowerCharger, supports deep discharge conditioning of batteries to eliminate the memory effect common in nickel-cadmium cells. It draws power from an included 110-volt AC adapter, the PowerBook's power adapter or PowerBook-compatible auto-power adapters.
> Fast Duo charger. BTI by next month will ship a Duo version of the PowerChargerPlus. The MC-SC200, also priced at $149.95, can charge a Duo's nickel-metal-hydride battery in about 45 minutes, according to the company. It will include all the features of the PowerChargerPlus except battery conditioning, which is unnecessary for Duo batteries.
> Auto-power adapter. The company said that this fall it will ship a $99.95 auto-adapter that can simultaneously power an all-in-one PowerBook and a PowerChargerPlus. The MC-AP100 adapter measures 2.5 by 4 by 1.5 inches and weighs 7 ounces. A similarly equipped auto-adapter for Duos is due by the end of the year.
> Battery with charge indicator lights. The MC-180 PowerGage battery, priced at $89.95, has a testing circuit and five LEDs on top.
When a user removes it from a PowerBook and pushes a button on the side, the LEDs indicate the amount of power remaining in the battery: Five LEDs indicate a full charge; no LEDs means an empty battery.
The 13.5-ounce battery is functionally identical to the company's MC-170 battery, and it includes a terminal cover and built-in quick-lock cover. It works with all-in-one PowerBooks except the 100.
Battery Technology Inc. is at 5700 Bandini Blvd., Commerce, Calif. 90040. Phone (213) 728-7874 or (800) 982-8284; fax (213) 728-7996.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Casady updates extension manager
Conflict Catcher II now IDs font problems
By Raines Cohen
Salinas, Calif. - When diagnosing start-up problems, you may round up the usual suspects: system extensions, control panels and start-up items. However, you'll likely overlook a common culprit: damaged font files.
Casady & Greene Inc.'s updated extension manager, Conflict Catcher II, now lets users disable and detect damaged font files.
The program, formerly sold as part of the company's Innovative Utilities package (see MacWEEK, Aug. 24, 1992), remains priced at $79.95. The other utilities have been discontinued.
Conflict Catcher includes a system-extension manager that lets users enable, disable, reorder and group extensions, control panels and other start-up files. Users can associate pressing particular keys at start-up with loading a specified set of files.
The program also diagnoses which start-up files and combinations cause problems by successively disabling sets of extensions, restarting and asking the user whether the problem has been eliminated.
The new version can link start-up files that work only when together, such as Remote Access, Remote Access Setup and Remote Only for AppleTalk Remote Access. Links can also automatically disable files known to be incompatible or force them to load in a particular order. Link files can be centrally updated by an administrator.
Extensions can be replaced with aliases to simplify network updating or to let PowerBook users conserve RAM disk space.
Current users can upgrade for $19.95 or for free if they purchased prior versions after May 1.
"All these cards, they've all got an [extension] with them, and it's not like they're displaying rolling eyeballs or something you can go without," said Paul Goodman, art director of Studio G, an advertising design company in Huntington Beach, Calif., who uses Conflict Catcher to track down incompatibilities. "[Conflict Catcher] is the first product that I've ever used that I've felt was worth the cost."
Casady & Greene Inc. is at 22734 Portola Drive, Salinas, Calif. 93908-1119. Phone (408) 484-9228; fax (408) 484-9218.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Closer ties between Macs and AS/400s
By April Streeter
New York - Amid a barrage of product plans aimed at keeping the AS/400 at the top of the heap in client-server computing, IBM Corp. last week announced that LocalTalk networks will soon have direct connections to AS/400 servers.
As part of its Client Series for the Macintosh, IBM will include a card, called the LocalTalk Input/Output adapter, which hooks 31 daisychained Macs to an AS/400 computer via a single LocalTalk port. The $500 adapter is scheduled to ship in March.
According to IBM, the adapter eliminates the need for expensive gateways currently required to hook AppleTalk network segments to an AS/400.
Apple's SNA*ps Gateway, SNA*ps client software and SNA*ps 5250 terminal-emulation software will still be necessary to provide complete Systems Network Architecture (SNA) services to an AppleTalk network. To simplify setting up those services, IBM said that next month it will begin reselling all of Apple's SNA*ps products, as well as the company's Data Access Language (DAL) Server for AS/400.
IBM pricing for the AS/400 products, which differs slightly from Apple's in some cases, is as follows:
> DAL Server. Version 1.4 of DAL for the AS/400 will cost $4,250 for server software and one to eight users, $12,000 for up to 32 users and $20,000 for an unlimited number of users.
Apple sells the server software for $4,250 with each client module priced at $149.
> SNA*ps. IBM's pricing for the SNA*ps Gateway, identical to Apple's, is $1,219 for up to 10 users, $2,429 for 35 users and 3,649 for up to 70 users. Client software for the Gateway will be $105 per Macintosh. The SNA*ps 5250 terminal emulator, available now, is $365 from IBM and $279 from Apple.
IBM Corp. is at 1133 Westchester Ave., White Plains, N.Y. 10604. Phone (914) 642-5357; fax (914) 642-5795.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Apple battling bugs in AWS 95
Releases free upgrade to A/UX, AppleShare
By April Streeter
Cupertino, Calif. - In an effort to exterminate bugs that crept into its Workgroup Server 95, Apple earlier this month released a free upgrade to A/UX and AppleShare Pro.
The AWS 95 Tune-Up, available on AppleLink, the Internet or directly from the company, includes patches for Apple's Unix and for AppleShare Pro, the A/UX version of its filer-server software.
User reports of a number of bugs in the software led Apple to develop the free Tune-Up, which the company said will fix all the reported bugs and improve the AWS 95's performance.
"One of our main problems was we kept losing the concurrent user limits and had to [repeatedly] re-enter them," said AppleShare Pro user Paul Lieberman of the computing services center at Southern Oregon State College in Ashland.
To remedy the problem, Lieberman recently installed the patch on his AWS 95 and restarted the server "effortlessly," he said. "Hopefully, the user limits will stay put now."
> A/UX. According to Apple, Version 3.0.2 of A/UX removes the bug that caused the system, with some applications, to mistakenly modify dates and times on files and folders or to incorrectly lock folders or files.
Users who lack Unix "root" privileges no longer get access to all symbolically linked files.
And to improve performance under heavy usage, the new version of A/UX reads and writes files asynchronously all the time; this feature could fail in the original version.
> AppleShare Pro. Server software performance in this version, 1.0.1, is improved by an enhanced file-writing algorithm that no longer defers certain write tasks indefinitely.
Limits have been removed on the number of files or folders Mac clients are allowed to share, and the amount of available server disk space will now be correctly reported to clients.
Users will also be able to perform searches of the Desktop database without fear of crashing the system, and IBM PC and compatible clients on the AppleShare network will get a correct list of available volumes when using the "dir" command.
To get the AWS 95 upgrade, call Apple at (800) 892-4651, Ext. 400.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Tabloid size for Mitsubishi dye-subs
By Matthew Rothenberg
White Plains, N.Y. - Mitsubishi International Corp. this month will deliver the long-awaited tabloid-size version of its dye-sublimation color printer.
The CHC-S746i ColorStream/DS Plus, priced at $21,000, outputs full-bleed, 300-dpi images to tabloid-size paper or transparencies. It handles CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) or CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) color as well as monochrome. The device can output a full-color, tabloid-size page in 6 minutes, 40 seconds, Mitsubishi said.
Like other members of Mitsubishi's full-color i-printer line, the ColorStream/DS Plus will ship standard with a ROM card containing the Level 2 version of PowerPage, Pipeline Associates Inc.'s PostScript interpreter, and 35 Type 1 fonts. A second ROM card slot will let users add new fonts and emulations.
The printer switches automatically among LocalTalk, RS-232 serial and Centronics parallel interfaces, and it includes a SCSI port for an external hard disk. Ethernet is available for $695.
The ColorStream/DS Plus is based on a Shinko engine and features a 25-MHz AMD 29050 RISC controller running 54 Mbytes of RAM, which can be expanded to 130 Mbytes. It includes a 50-sheet input cassette.
The printer will ship with FotoTune, Agfa's color-calibration software, which lets users create profiles of their own color peripherals. FotoTune retails separately for $795.
The ColorStream/DS Plus originally had been slated to ship by November 1992; Mitsubishi said hardware development took longer than the company had expected.
Mitsubishi International Corp. is at 701 Westchester Ave., White Plains, N.Y. 10604. Phone (914) 997-4999; fax (914) 997-4976.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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: Flattened price for 3-D rendering
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
San Diego - A new low-end modeling and rendering program from humanOs technologies aims to give beginners a handle on basic 3-D graphics.
Presto3D, available now, offers simple modeling and editing tools for creating 3-D shapes. Users can draw a polygon or type in text and then extrude, revolve or sweep it along a defined path.
The application provides up to four simultaneous object views, which can be a mix of wireframe and rendered displays. A change made to one view is automatically reflected in the other three views.
The program supports up to 10 light sources per file. Users can place lights graphically or numerically and adjust their intensity with a built-in slider bar. Presto3D renders objects with flat shading and does not provide object shadows or texture-mapping capabilities.
Users can import and export files in DXF (Drawing Interchange File) format. The program can also export images formatted in PICT or XYZ, humanOs' proprietary, ASCII-based format.
The company is preparing a free upgrade that will provide faster scrolling and redraw, XYZ importing, improved DXF support, and three times the number of sample files. It also said it is considering adding higher-end features, such as smooth shading and texture mapping, to future versions of the program.
Presto3D lists for $99.95 but is available for an introductory price of $59.95 through Dec. 31.
humanOs technologies is at 11956 Bernardo Plaza Drive, Suite 510, San Diego, Calif. 92128. Phone (619) 451-7892; fax (619) 485-9521.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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.
BusinessWatch: Radius revamps channel strategy
By Lisa Picarille
San Jose, Calif. - Radius Inc. is aggressively retooling its distribution strategy in an attempt to improve its share of the Mac peripherals market.
Under the new strategy, purchasing, fulfillment and support will be handled by such major distributors as Ingram Micro Inc., Merisel Inc. and MicroAge Inc., instead of directly through Radius, according to J. Daniel Shaver, Radius vice president of North American sales and marketing.
Those distributors, as well as several others, will then deal directly with Radius' more than 1,500 resellers.
Although such a plan implements a middleman and typically diminishes reseller profits, Radius is working with individual dealers to tailor the plan to enhance their profits. Radius' individual plans include the use of Radius market development funds to meet growth and product objectives.
The company, based here, is also increasing its number of field representatives by 77 percent, to 53 from 30, by Oct. 1.
Sales representatives will be responsible for targeting business segments within specific geographic locations. In some regions, Radius plans to use outside contractors to penetrate specific vertical markets.
Radius is also refocusing on its established customers, as well as potential customers from Fortune 500 companies.
In addition, Radius is trying to leverage its already strong relationship with Apple with such efforts as bundling and comarketing agreements, according to Radius CEO Chuck Berger.
The company's new distribution plan is part of Berger's wide-ranging restructuring, which is already showing signs of reviving Radius from a string of less-than-stellar quarters.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
BusinessWatch Page 22
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Internet spins web over business
AT&T, cable services hooking up to the net
By Mitch Ratcliffe
San Francisco - The business world has seen the Internet and wants to make the worldwide network of TCP/IP-based networks its own.
A spate of recent commercial connections to the Internet will make electronic mail, file archives and, eventually, interactive services available over telephone and TV cables.
In recent weeks, media mogul Rupert Murdoch's The News Corp. Ltd. purchased Cambridge, Mass.-based Delphi Internet Services Inc. (formerly General Videotex Corp.), which offers low-cost commercial dial-up access to the Internet; AT&T Co. announced that it will provide a connection between its AT&T EasyLink E-mail network and the Internet; and Continental Cablevision Inc., the nation's third-largest cable provider, said it will team with Herndon, Va.-based Performance Systems International Inc. to provide 10-Mbps Internet connections over television cables to 2.9 million homes in 16 states.
"Delphi's leading technology will enhance The News Corp.'s role in the rapidly evolving worldwide interactive media marketplace," Murdoch said at a press briefing.
In fact, the Internet is becoming a self-perpetuating market for information. Sources estimate the Internet is growing at about 1 million users a month, and many of its 10 million users were already using other E-mail systems.
"[The Internet] has been growing exponentially for at least a couple of years now," said Mitch Kapor, chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Washington-based lobbying and consumer advocate organization for electronic civil liberties. "I don't think [the driving force behind the growth] was the interconnection of networks per se but a confluence of a whole set of self-reinforcing factors."
Multimedia, interactive services and new personal communications devices languished for a long time before attracting the attention of media companies. Then several technologies, such as audio and video broadcast services, found a testbed on the Internet. At the same time, the network was opened up to fee-based information services.
Delphi, AT&T and Continental will provide access to text-based services that already exist on the Internet. But analysts expect the companies will also provide connections to third parties that want to deliver new services to the Internet.
Performance Systems International estimated that the cost of a Continental Cablevision Internet connection will be between $70 and $100 a month.
Text-based service may be good enough to attract millions of new users to the Internet, said Gordon Cook, editor of the Cook Report on Internet, a newsletter based in Ewing, N.J.
"The audience will be telecommuters, individual entrepreneurs and small businesses with their own LANs, K-12 school districts, and local governments for whom $100 a month would be at the very most 20 percent of what they would have to pay for equivalent service over regular Internet ... access channels," Cook said.
The Internet will be the locus of most network-based new media ventures because it offers access to the largest electronic market. Kapor said network and content vendors need to focus on making the Internet connections and applications easier to use. "The basis for a marketplace is there, but not all the needed infrastructure is in place," Kapor said. "It's still too complicated to get an account and use it for the full range of Internet services."
MacWEEK 09.13.93
BusinessWatch Page 22
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Special Report: NetWare 4 now serving Macintosh
By Kristi Coale
Being a Macintosh user under Novell Inc.'s NetWare is a little like being an adolescent at a family holiday gathering. You're old enough to understand some of the adult conversation, but when it comes to the big meal, you're sitting at the card table with all the other kids.
That status doesn't change much under NetWare for Macintosh 4.0, the Provo, Utah-based company's July release of its AppleTalk software for NetWare servers. While the software does offer some improvements - such as tighter integration of print services and improved utilities - it still doesn't bring Mac clients up to the level taken for granted by their DOS and Windows counterparts. Most conspicuous is that users of NetWare for Mac don't have access to the crown jewel of the NetWare 4.0 release: NetWare Directory Services (NDS), the networkwide database of services.
Instead, Mac users are stuck with the old-style Bindery emulation that forces them to log onto each server and each service separately. Mac users still work with a simulated AppleShare server created on the Novell server through a set of NLMs (NetWare Loadable Modules). Mac users log on through AppleTalk and see nothing but AFP (AppleTalk Filing Protocol) naming and security conventions. At the moment, the hierarchical NDS database that ties other users to all services from one log-on does not run over these protocols; it supports only NetWare's native IPX (Internetwork Packet Exchange).
PC envy
Among some Mac NetWare managers, the dichotomy of services available for Macs and IBM PCs or compatibles causes Windows envy. "It would be nice to administer the Macs and PCs through NDS. But because Macs can't get to these services, we have to spend more time designing our directory services to incorporate the Mac client," said Doug Berman, network engineer for a large telecommunications company.
Berman said he isn't opposed to spending more time on directory service design. Rather, he said, his discomfort with the situation stems from knowing how much less of an effort it is to design services for the PCs in his company.
Novell said it hopes to remedy this situation in the first half of next year when it delivers its IPX-compatible Mac server client. In the meantime, Mac managers are finding enough in the 4.0 release to make the NetWare glass seem at least half full.
Printing's a plus
A significant enhancement for Mac managers is Novell's new printing capabilities, which make the Mac more tightly integrated into these services. Now AppleTalk printers are accessible to multiple Mac and PC NetWare queues and can be included in queues with NetWare printers attached to non-Mac clients, for instance. Novell claims Mac printing is now three to five times faster than before, but managers contacted by MacWEEK didn't seem to notice any change in speed.
Jim Drews, system administrator at the Computer Engineering Center of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, likes the tighter integration because it offers his department more flexibility and efficiency in setting up network printers.
"Now we're able to distribute the printing workload because the print queues are server-independent under 4.0. We can take the queues and put them on different servers," he said. Distribution of printing is key for Drews' department, which supports thousands of users campuswide. "We used to have all print queuing and spooling on one server under 3.11, and that was a big bottleneck with all the print jobs that are sent along our network," he said.
Manual labor
"To me, the main thrust of the enhancements in 4.0 is boosting Mac administration," Berman said. He is happy with the new Mac-like interface for the subset of NetWare administration tasks he can perform from the Mac.
NetWare for Mac 4.0 offers, for the first time, the ability for network managers to set AFP server attributes, send messages and perform other housekeeping duties for the server. However, Novell's console utility runs only on a NetWare server and is controlled through DOS-like commands.
NetWare for Mac 4.0 also lets administrators enforce server security based on the physical address of a network card, allowing administrators to enable or constrict access from specific Macintoshes rather than for specific user accounts. Still, this feature can be invoked only by an administrator from a DOS PC.
Desktop sweep
On the Mac, the desktop files keep track of folder and file attributes. On a server, corrupted desktop files, though rare, can cause big trouble. Rebuilding the desktop files is simple, but the task requires the server to be off-line - and because of the number of files on many servers, rebuilding can take a long time.
Jon Van Veler of Cornerstone Research Inc. said he constantly needed to rebuild the desktop files for his servers, but he did so only when forced to. "There's a tremendous time commitment in rebuilding a server's desktop files, and we couldn't afford to bring any server down for a long period of time," said Van Veler, computer systems manager for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based litigation consultancy.
Cornerstone's users put Van Veler's servers through their paces, searching and accessing records and reports stored in several gigabytes of database and spreadsheet files, as well as in on-line articles and other documents. Time is always of the essence in their work, so downtime came only in emergencies, a situation Van Veler said was far worse than it needed to be.
"Many times I wasn't able to get to the server's desktop files until after it had corrupted and crashed. So I was forced to first fix the crash and then rebuild the desktop files - and this would take a couple of hours," he said.
Fortunately for Van Veler, Novell included an automatic desktop-rebuilding utility in NetWare for Mac 4.0. With this, he sets a regular time for the server to check its various desktop files and perform maintenance if necessary. This takes away the cumulative effect of damage to the desktop files and reduces the downtime.
If it ain't broke
One thing Van Veler wishes Novell hadn't rewritten is its client tools. Under Version 3.11, these tools were individually packaged, allowing a network manager to determine which should be available to users.
In NetWare 4.0, these tools are combined in NetWare Tools 1.0, so their use is an all-or-nothing proposition. "If I have a group of sophisticated users, I want to give them all the tools. But I don't want all of these tools in the hands of less-learned users. It will only complicate their experience and my job," he said.
What's next?
The move toward giving Macs full access to NDS will be a piecemeal process, and it won't all necessarily come from Novell, said Susan Hanson, Novell manager of Macintosh product marketing.
"We're working on the direct log-in capabilities for the next release, but we're considering the possibility of working with third parties to bring out other parts of the Mac NDS picture," Hanson said.
Hanson said that no one, including Novell, has been really clear on what, when and how advanced IPX support will make its way to the Mac. Novell already is shipping its application programming interface (API) for IPX. Cross-platform developers are working on incorporating this API into their products to allow networked interapplication communications via IPX. IPX-aware applications are already shipping, and many more are due.
Before June of next year, Novell is expected to release an IPX-based client that will gain Mac users full access to NDS. (Novell once dubbed this product NetWare System Services for the Macintosh, but the company has since retracted the name.) But where Novell's plans for Mac extend beyond this is a little foggy.
Hanson said an IPX-based Mac client could and would someday include support for NetWare Core Protocols (NCP), the NetWare equivalent of the high-level AppleTalk Filing Protocol. An NCP-aware client would give Mac users the same direct access to NetWare file and print services that DOS and Windows clients enjoy today. Hanson said Novell is likely to look to third-party developers for this part. "When there is an NCP file and print client, you'll have an alternative to NetWare for the Mac," she said.
Even further out is the implementation of peer-to-peer services involving Macs and PCs. Hanson said Novell is working toward this as well but that the plans are up in the air over how it will be brought to users and in what time frame. But these uncertainties don't seem to faze managers like Berman. He's willing to wait and see what shakes out in the coming year.
"I'd get the warm fuzzies if I knew that it was the same experience from DOS to Windows to Mac. We'll have to see what really happens," Berman said.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
Special Report Page 30
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: AutoCAD lets go of its command lines
Release 12 of design app offers better interface, productivity
By Timothy E. Johnson
Autodesk Inc.'s much-anticipated AutoCAD Release 12 for the Macintosh has arrived a year after the DOS and Windows versions, bearing a new interface, enhanced speed, a 3-D renderer and a greatly improved optional solid modeler.
At $3,750 for the main package and an additional $495 for the Advanced Model Extension (AME) solid modeler, AutoCAD is at the high end of the price spectrum. Upgrades are $500 for owners of Release 11.
AutoCAD requires a Mac running System 7.1 with 8 Mbytes of RAM, an FPU (floating-point unit) and a hard disk with more than 12 Mbytes of free space. You'll need 16 Mbytes of RAM when running AME and more than 20 Mbytes of RAM when simultaneously running AME and AutoCAD's Renderer.
Faster than the last one
The latest AutoCAD is faster, but not as fast as Autodesk's claims would lead you to believe. The program still chugs along when opening large files or changing view orientations. The DOS version, by comparison, has always run twice as fast on a comparable machine.
AutoCAD's real productivity gains come from its improved user interface and major enhancements of selected tools and commands. The update's new interface bears no resemblance to the DOS or Windows versions. Gone is the command-line prompt: AutoCAD now has enough dialogs to avoid the command-line chores that made the old AutoCAD so difficult to use. At last, you can select a color by clicking on a color patch instead of typing in a number. Each dialog has a Help button that explains its function. The dialogs, however, are modal, so you can't move them out of the way as you can on other platforms.
The Mac package has more than twice as many tools as before; they are now on tear-off menus. Most of the new tools, however, are the equivalents of the old snapping and dimensioning commands.
New menu and tool commands for drawing include Donut for laying out solid-fill circles with a hole in the middle, Align for aligning 2-D and 3-D objects, Block for manipulating symbols, and Plot Preview for checking a collection of views before plotting.
All snaps now run faster, and you can reach them either from the tool palette or through their Command-key equivalents. Release 12 also eases hatching (filling with a pattern). Now all you do is click inside a closed boundary to apply a pattern, rather than individually selecting boundaries. The program still turns its back on color fills.
Some of the older tool and menu commands benefit from improved speed. For example, the Hide command in the new Rendering menu removes invisible lines 19 times faster than in Release 11. But beware of some inaccuracies in low-resolution projections. You'll find a toggle setting in the Preferences dialog for reinstating Release 11's more accurate hidden-line method.
The improved Zoom tool can magnify 2,000-to-1 (more than 40 times greater than in the previous version). Although redraw times are about as lengthy as before, with AutoCAD 12 you'll rarely encounter them with the Zoom tool or almost any other tool.
Autodesk has become quicker, as well. While the company promises to upgrade all platforms within 90 days of a DOS release, we nevertheless halfheartedly applaud them for taking only one year from the introduction of DOS Release 12 to ship Release 12 for the Mac. The previous cycle entailed an 18-month lag between DOS and Mac releases.
Communication
AutoCAD is finally catching on to PostScript support. You can import PostScript files and export your drawings as Encapsulated PostScript files for use in page-layout programs. But don't plan on seamless integration of exported EPS files. Both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator reject them. Ashlar Inc.'s Vellum is the only CAD program we know that exports EPS files that every program can read. AutoCAD cleanly substitutes Adobe Type 1 fonts for its own stroked characters upon export, but not all Type 1 fonts import properly. TrueType is not supported at all.
AutoCAD now fully supports the Mac Clipboard. You can copy and paste PICT files between other Mac applications or copy native AutoCAD drawings to another AutoCAD window without losing accuracy. This is awkward, however, since you can have only one AutoCAD window open at a time. We successfully pasted a complicated PICT drawing into Claris Corp.'s MacDraw Pro, but going the other way was not as successful: Fonts were lost and rotated objects showed up in AutoCAD in their unrotated positions.
AutoCAD offers complete cross-platform compatibility over your network. You may open both Release 11 and 12 files on any platform that runs AutoCAD 11 or 12. The External Reference feature supplements group drawing efforts, letting you attach remote drawings as backgrounds. AutoCAD will update all your External References once you save your modifications.
You'll find a new menu that lets you link drawing information to external databases such as dBASE, Oracle, Claris' FileMaker Pro and SQL-based databases. Support for Graphic Management Group Inc.'s Aperture is also forthcoming. A menu command lets you edit remote databases. Any changes in the database will automatically update your drawing.
One reason Mac users shied away from earlier AutoCAD releases was the paucity of third-party add-ons. The number of add-ons offered has increased dramatically from the seven that were available for Release 11, but the collection still doesn't compare with the hundreds available with the DOS version.
Render it
The new built-in renderer uses Gouraud shading to give a smooth look to curved surfaces. Your drawings will render accurately, with no ragged edges or faceted colors as in Release 11.
AutoCAD no longer limits you to a single, fixed light source. You may add any number of parallel and point sources. You can adjust a point source's light falloff over distance. You can also use spotlights if you are willing to export your file to Autodesk Retail Product's Autoshade on an IBM PC or compatible. (Autodesk says there are no plans to make Autoshade available for the Mac.)
AutoCAD's multiple lights won't buy you much anyway because they don't cast shadows. The program uses sliders to adjust light intensity. This sounds convenient, but the 100 percent limit on intensity prevents you from overexposing small areas in your rendering, even where desirable, such as a night scene in a store window.
Finishing touches
You can adjust a surface's appearance within AutoCAD by setting the surface's ambient, diffuse and specular reflections, along with its roughness. The Finishes Dialog has the usual preview window for checking your settings on a generic sphere. The program doesn't work with textures or transparent materials.
AutoCAD gives you a host of format choices for saving your rendering results, including TIFF, GIF (Graphic Interchange Format), Targa, EPS, FLM (for the DOS version of Autoshade), SLD (AutoCAD's DOS Slide Library format) or PICT. The color depth of your display card determines the color depth of your rendering, however. This prevents you from saving a rendering in millions of colors if your computer puts out only 256. You're stuck on resolution, too. The number of pixels in your rendering is always equal to the number in your window. Therefore, you'll need a large monitor to achieve fine-grained printed presentations.
Documentation and support
AutoCAD's ponderous collection of manuals deals almost exclusively with the DOS version. A single manual identifies the Mac interface commands but refers you to the DOS manuals for explanations.
As usual, Autodesk requires you to purchase technical support from your AutoCAD dealer. You should consider yourself lucky if you can get the company to pick up the phone. In some instances, it literally took weeks for Autodesk to get back to us with answers to questions.
Conclusions
AutoCAD Release 12 retains some of the problems of Release 11. View reorientation and file access are as slow as ever, and navigation in 3-D is still confusing. We hope AutoCAD takes some cues from competitors who have readily demonstrated that working in 3-D doesn't have to be a burden.
The Gouraud renderer deals with surface finishes and multiple light sources, but it doesn't cast shadows or support textures. Its speed makes it good for visualizing your work, but you'll still want to export your model to a more capable renderer to get professional results.
Despite its flaws, the new AutoCAD has become selectively faster and easier to use. Release 12's many additions to tools, menus and dialogs finally free you from the ever-present command-line prompt. The program will boost your productivity with its faster Hide command, quicker screen updates, convenient Plot Preview command, intelligent hatching and built-in support for remote SQL databases. And at last, AutoCAD supports the Clipboard and PostScript file transfer.
Autodesk Inc. is at 2320 Marinship Way, Sausalito, Calif. 94965. Phone (415) 332-2344; fax (415) 331-8093.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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: Fine finish for Claris' MacProject Pro
Project manager now supports AppleScript
By Mel Male
Claris Corp.'s MacProject Pro helps plan, monitor and communicate the allocation of time and resources for complex corporate projects. The $599 Version 1.5 provides additional data-exchange flexibility, AppleScript support and user-interface improvements.
Claris recommends that you run MacProject Pro on a Macintosh LC or higher, with a minimum of 2 Mbytes of RAM (4 Mbytes if using System 7) and about 6 Mbytes of hard disk space.
With MacProject Pro, you define the necessary tasks, the sequence in which they must be accomplished, and assign resources - such as people, equipment, material or money - to each. MacProject Pro then calculates the project's schedule and cost based on the duration and constraints of each task and the availability of resources.
MacProject Pro offers powerful project-management features: You can create dependency relationships between two tasks in different projects, create baseline data to compare later with actual project data, and track and level resources across projects.
New look
When you start a new project, you'll immediately notice some of MacProject Pro's new features.
The Outline and Schedule network chart windows have been rearranged to facilitate brainstorming and task scheduling. The windows are also supplemented by a new, context-sensitive floating Tools palette. The palette's 18 buttons provide easy access to common commands and tools, such as column setup, calendars, resource leveling, Perspectives save, print and print preview. The palette, however, is not customizable.
Perspectives, a timesaving feature introduced in 1.0, is no longer hidden in a menu; it is now featured on the Tools palette. Perspectives is essentially a global style sheet for projects. You can save customized views of your projects, including displayed charts, chart positions, scroll positions, sort orders, zoom settings, and page and column formats. You can add Perspectives to your view menu for easy recall.
Speedier project setup
A new multi-item outline scheduling feature speeds project setup. Before, you had to move out-line items to the task palette before they could be moved to the schedule network chart. With Version 1.5, once you complete part of your outline, you can select the tasks you want scheduled and use the Move to Schedule command to place them directly into the schedule.
MacProject's Gantt-style timeline chart now supports a dual major-minor time-line axis, a long-overdue improvement. This lets you control the time intervals used in resource tables, resource histograms, resource time lines and cash-flow tables, as well as in the task time-line chart.
As with its last release, MacProject still lacks built-in cost-tracking analysis and graphing tools for cost and schedule variance reporting. You must still export data to Claris' Resolve or another spreadsheet application to produce analyses.
Multiplatform exchange
The typical corporation has a mixed-platform environment where data must be exchanged between desktops, minis and mainframes. The Microsoft Project Exchange (MPX) file format alleviates some of the difficulties encountered in integrating planning and scheduling activities in this type of workplace.
MacProject Pro's support of MPX lets you exchange files with Microsoft Project, the leading Windows project-management application, as well as with other applications that support MPX, including mainframe interfaces that have been developed to accommodate the format. DOS or Windows files must first be converted with a utility such as Apple's PC Exchange.
MPX support is a valuable addition to MacProject Pro, but the automatic translations are far from seamless. You lose all formatting information, such as task box shapes and colors, text styles, and date and number formats.
Losing data
More important, we found that some data is lost in the process: MacProject Pro does not import or export calculated data since each application calculates schedules and budgets differently, and there are some unique features that do not correspond with features in other applications.
Claris has included a very helpful five-page table in its New Features Guide that compares MacProject Pro attributes (data fields) with the corresponding attributes in Microsoft Project, indicating the import and export capability of each and noting their differences.
MacProject Pro continues to provide excellent conventional data import and export with a versatile import mapping feature. You can also use two built-in methods of "live" linking of project data - System 7's publish and subscribe or Claris' Exchange (with System 6 or 7). Support of AppleScript and Apple events provides further options.
AppleScript support
AppleScript lets users as well as developers customize MacProject Pro with Apple events. For example, you can create scripts to automate batch printing of project charts or to exchange data with other scriptable applications. Samples of scripts are included with MacProject Pro. To run any of the sample scripts or to write your own, you need either a version of AppleScript or a third-party scripting application, such as UserLand Frontier.
Creating AppleScript scripts, like any macro development, ranges from very easy to very difficult, depending on what you need to accomplish. MacProject Pro is not AppleScript-recordable; you have to manually write script code.
Version 1.5 adds Do Menu and Do Script events to the list of Apple events supported by MacProject. Do Script is important because it lets you launch a MacProject Pro macro from another application.
Also new is enhanced support for the Apple events Object Model. You can now apply Get Data and Set Data to entire rows and columns of tabular data instead of just a single cell. Data selected in this manner is transmitted as tab-delimited text.
Documentation and support
MacProject Pro 1.5 comes with a New Features Guide, but the other manuals - Getting Started and the User's Guide - are unchanged from those shipped with the previous version. As such, they still need better organization and more details. Balloon help has been updated to encompass new features such as the Tools palette.
Conclusions
Claris has made MacProject Pro's good data-exchange capabilities even better by adding MPX support, an especially valuable feature for corporate users with mixed platforms. An assortment of interface tweaks and the introduction of several new features, such as the Tools palette, have made MacProject Pro even easier to use.
While MacProject Pro still holds the largest customer base of Mac project-management applications, it continues to face strong competition from Microsoft Project, Micro Planning International Inc.'s Micro Planner Manager/X-Pert and Scitor Corp.'s Project Scheduler 5.
Claris' product still lacks some of the more sophisticated scheduling and analysis options offered by some of its competitors. However, MacProject Pro's extensibility, AppleScript support and overall strong data-sharing capabilities continue to make it a very good value.
Claris Corp. is at 5201 Patrick Henry Drive, Box 58168, Santa Clara, Calif. 95052-8168. Phone (408) 987-7000; fax (800) 800-8954.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
Reviews Page 43
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
ProductWatch: Businesses reach out for CD-ROM
Businesses put popular storage and distribution medium to use at many levels.
By Christine Perey
As this past Macworld Expo showed, the time has never been better for business users looking to adopt CD-ROM technology. CD-ROM drives are getting faster and prices are dropping, and a growing installed base of CD-ROM drives on the Mac is encouraging developers to publish more Mac-based titles for business users. These commercial titles are offering more comprehensive and specialized information, accessible through more sophisticated interfaces.
CD-ROM offers an economic edge for information storage and delivery. Dataware, a Cambridge, Mass.-based publisher of CD-ROM mastering and search software tools, estimates that the cost of storing 1 Mbyte of data on paper is about $4, on floppy disk about $1, and less than one-quarter of a cent on CD-ROM.
CD-ROM-making machines are becoming more plentiful and less expensive, and corporations are using CD-ROM to replace or supplement traditional delivery methods for in-house and promotional materials.
Some businesses are making use of CD-ROM-based general reference materials, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. The capability to cross-reference and index text and to search, sort and retrieve this information from disc adds flexibility and power to reference materials.
Reference ROM
Oxford University Press recently shipped a Mac CD-ROM version of its Oxford English Dictionary (OED2). Users can browse its 500,000 cross-referenced definitions by keyword, etymology, definition or quotation, and search text using wild cards and date filters. The $895 disc contains as much information as the $2,750 book edition, and users can also extrapolate other information through queries, such as a list of all English words derived from Old English.
Highlighted Data Inc. sells a CD-ROM version of Merriam-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary for $129.95. It contains more than 200,000 definitions, 400 illustrations and 140 hours of sound.
Compton's New Media's Interactive Encyclopedia for Macintosh and Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc.'s New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia are both $395 multimedia hyperlinked encyclopedias that include video, graphics, sound and text. Betacorp Technologies Inc.'s multimedia encyclopedia line includes the Multimedia Space Encyclopedia and the Multimedia Encyclopedia of the USA.
Queue Inc. has a line of discs available designed to help users improve grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing and communications skills. These tutorial discs cost between $49.95 and $495.
Quantum Leap Technologies Inc. publishes several shareware software discs useful to business users. Its $149 Macademic is a collection of educational software that includes reading, spelling, writing and administration.
Training track
A growing proportion of the CD-ROM products are being developed to support on-the-job training and education in business.
"Librarians, both in schools and businesses, have long appreciated the value of CD-ROM as a tool for training," said Laura Burke, corporate communications director at Macmillan New Media of Cambridge, Mass. "Human-resource departments are also seeing the benefits [of CD-ROM-based training] in the high-quality programs now appearing on the market."
Compton's New Media sells CD-ROM training discs aimed at business users. Its Factomatic Business Library includes how-to advice for negotiators, supervisors, sales managers and executives. Compton's also distributes public relations and sales reference materials, as well as disc-based travel guides.
Wayzata Technology Inc.'s business titles include the $39 World Factbook and $99 Washington Time & Insight. Warner New Media's business-related titles include its How Computers Work interactive reference guide.
HyperGlot Software Co. Inc. specializes in language instruction titles. It has study courses available for many languages, including Spanish, English, French, German, Japanese and Italian.
Several vendors sell disc-based travel guides. Titles from Compton's include the Japan Business Travel Guide, Hong Kong at its Best and the International Herald Tribune's Business Travel in Europe.
Map collections also are available on CD. Highlighted Data's Electronic Map Cabinet is a $199.95 disc of maps in vector format of more than 85 percent of the populated United States. Maps can be drawn to 1-meter-per-pixel scale.
Now What Software's Small Blue Planet includes global relief maps created from satellite data obtained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as political maps with atlas statistics, ecological and landscape information, and historical briefs.
Desktop demographics
Purveyors of on-line databases, such as Dialog Information Services Inc., were among the first to commercially market and distribute CD-ROM-based reference products to businesses. Dialog's list of titles includes abstracts and full text of publications specific to industries such as banking, aerospace, engineering, electronics, energy, government, health care and business. Dialog also catalogs newspapers and periodicals, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Consumer Reports and the Commerce Business Daily. Dialog's titles range from $149 to $5,500 for a one-year subscription, which includes periodic updates.
Seneco Products Inc., a Cincinnati-based manufacturer of pneumatic tools and fasteners, uses Dialog's Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations disc to get current information on nearly 60,000 corporations. "The Standard & Poor's CD-ROM is invaluable," said Pam Klein, business information center manager for Seneco. "The other day a corporate attorney asked me for everything I could find on a certain company. I selected the icon for that disk, searched and printed it. He walked out with what he needed a minute after he came in."
SilverPlatter Information Inc. sells databases of journals geared toward the food science, biotechnology and education markets, as well as the medical industry.
Demographics editions
The capability to quickly retrieve accurate data can help a business stay abreast and take advantage of new opportunities. Several vendors publish catalogs of periodically updated demographic data. Bringing this information to the desktop allows businesses to conduct their own research and avoid purchasing expensive printed research reports.
Dunn & Bradstreet information on more than 7 million businesses is now available through the MarketPlace Business CD-ROM by MarketPlace Information Corp.
S.C. Johnson Professional, a Janitorial Maintenance chemicals producer, used a MarketPlace disc to find prospective customers. "The market for our chemical dispensing system is very narrow," said Fred Krumberger, senior business development manager. "Only about 0.3 percent of the businesses in the U.S.A. can make economical use of this product, and our target market was the top 10 percent of that group. MarketPlace Business let us create a targeting strategy that saved us thousands of sales calls."
Business Week magazine and Standard & Poor's Inc. collaborated to publish the first Business Week 1000 CD-ROM in August. The title, developed by Oradell, N.J.-based Ehrlich Associates, incorporates graphics, photos, video, audio and text. Users can search for, assemble and manipulate Standard & Poor's current and historical data on Business Week's Top 1,000 companies.
PEMD Education Group Ltd.'s Think for Yourself is a $249 database of numerical data on the environment, U.S. economics, demographics and health.
Wayzata sells several demographics discs, including its $149 Trade Opportunities and $795 Place-Names Index.
Corporate CD-ROMs
CD-ROM also offers opportunities for in-house development of business applications. Many corporations are using CD-ROM to replace or supplement traditional public relations and marketing materials, such as video and brochures. These materials are generally presented in kiosks, reseller showrooms, by on-the-road salespeople or delivered to business customers.
Ford New Holland Inc. of New Holland, Pa., markets agricultural and industrial equipment through a worldwide dealer network. After discovering the benefits of CD-ROM for publishing, distributing and accessing its comprehensive catalog in early 1989, the company has installed more than 800 CD-ROM drives in dealer establishments.
R.R. Donnelley & Sons, the largest U.S. commercial printer, completed its first corporate image and services CD-ROM, called Transforming Information into Opportunities. This disc, which Donnelley has been distributing to potential customers since June, was designed to enhance the graphics and text from the company's 36-page, four-color brochure.
Cost of development is a driving factor in corporations adopting CD-ROM for delivery of public relations materials. Macromedia Inc. has turned away from videotape presentations and toward CD-ROM. "Developing the [Macromedia Showcase CD-ROM] cost us about half what we have paid for a 30-minute video in the past," said Joe Fantuzzi, vice president of marketing at Macromedia. "Plus, it delivers twice as much and has interactivity."
American Showcase Inc. has been publishing source books for the design and advertising industry for 17 years. In July, the company released its first CD-ROM source book, aimed at communications specialists and art buyers. Developed jointly with Eugene, Ore.-based One-World Interactive, the disc, The Virtual Portfolio, contains a collection of individual works from artists. It is distributed free every six months to 6,000 corporations, design firms, ad agencies, video facilities, museums, medical centers and universities.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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.
Mac the Knife: Recognizing a very bad release
Man, this illiteracy thing be a bad one, don't it? Or, as one network news anchor so helpfully pointed out, "Illiteracy means having difficulty reading and doing math." And the fact that the release of this study by the U.S. Department of Education coincides with the outbreak of an unsightly late-night TV talk-show war is surely among the cruelest of coincidences.
Fortunately, most of the MessagePad crowd has benefited from sufficient schooling to experience very little difficulty "reading and doing math." It's their MessagePads that are having the difficulty reading their masters' handwriting. Version 1.03 of the Newton operating system was supposed to address recognition problems, as well as a variety of other glitches with the new device.
It may well have, but few of us will find out. Although there are currently MessagePads loaded with 1.03 in the stores, and Apple shipped a few upgrades just before Labor Day, shipments of the upgrade were quietly halted, with very little in the way of explanation from Apple. This may give 1.03 the shortest shelf life of any commercial product before the advent of "The Chevy Chase Show."
The Knife has received verifiable reports that 1.03 is capable, at least in some circumstances, of trashing data on PCMCIA cards. If you've got it, it's probably a good idea to upgrade to the just-released 1.04 - unless you'd prefer to wait to see whether problems emerge with that version, too. Check on-line services frequently.
Not so very sharp
The Sharp-logoed interpretation of the Newton dream should be on dealers' shelves sometime this week. When comparing prices with Apple's version, bear in mind that the Sharp Expert Pad includes neither an AC adapter nor a Getting Started PCMCIA card. The adapter is a separate item and the Getting Started information is included in a printed manual. And at the risk of dogging the bone to death, the Knife points out that Sharp is shipping its personal digital assistant with Version 1.03 of the operating system, too.
Behind the news
You may have wondered why Claris decided to discontinue Claris CAD come Oct. 1 (or maybe you didn't). Sources tell the Knife that it's no coincidence that Ashlar Inc. stepped in to offer Claris CAD users upgrades to Vellum 2D and Vellum 3D. Rather, Ashlar holds a patent for its Drafting Assistant that Claris CAD infringes. When approached with this information, Claris apparently decided to fold. And there's validity to the rumors that cash assets were transferred to the Ashlar account as part of the deal, although so far it has been difficult to pin down the exact amount.
Of interest to a larger number of Mac CAD users is the likelihood that several Mac CAD packages infringe on the Ashlar patent. If so, we can expect the company to approach those other CAD developers. The latter may not decide to cease selling their programs, but it seems likely that Ashlar has not received the last of its income from this patent. You could say that Ashlar is acquiring its cash the old-fashioned way: It's settling for it.
Grand theft Mac
Cupertino is located in Santa Clara County. Word is that the sheriff's department ranks high on the efficiency scale, which is to say that it has been previously reinvented. That's all good, if the rumors the Knife has received are true. Seems a substantial amount of valuable equipment is missing at Apple, and the sheriff's department has mounted a large-scale investigation. So the next time a guy on the street tries to sell you some equipment for a price that's too good to be true, it very well could be.
Dealing in hot Apple equipment is a felony, but there's no law against acquiring a coveted MacWEEK mug. Get your story straight and call the Knife at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3650, MCI (MactheKnife), Internet (mac_the_knife@macweek.ziff.com), AppleLink (MacWEEK) or CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac.
MacWEEK 09.13.93
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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.
