Cupertino, Calif. - Apple is reportedly restructuring its second wave of PowerPC-based Macs to provide significant performance improvements over next month's offerings, not only for users of the company's AV technologies but for all power users.
Contrary to earlier reports in MacWEEK, the two models, part of a family code-named TNT, will not be aimed primarily at those wishing to take advantage of AV features such as telephony, speech synthesis and recognition, and video input and output.
As with the first-generation PowerPC Macs, most of these features will be implemented in software running on the RISC CPU; for video input and output, however, users will probably need to add a card with a DAV (Digital Audio Video) connector.
Apple is reportedly designing one of the TNT Macs as a high-performance computer for a variety of tasks, such as mathematical modeling and handling complex relational databases. The other TNT Mac will be positioned as a graphics workstation.
Both models, due next year, will likely operate on a PowerPC 601 processor. The speed of this chip will depend on availability at the time, but sources said the most likely candidate is 80 MHz. Both will use the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) standard for their expansion buses.
Although the high-performance configuration will come with built-in video, the graphics workstation model will not. Instead, as in the days of the Mac II, buyers will be able to purchase a video card that offers the price and performance appropriate to their needs.
Apple has reportedly submitted its vision of a PCI-based video card to several Mac and IBM PC and compatible vendors, and it has asked them to provide bids for manufacturing the card under the Apple name. Other vendors will have the opportunity to compete with Apple, guaranteeing there will be a selection for users from TNT's first day.
At one time, Apple planned to incorporate several application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) onto the logic board to accelerate aspects of TNT's performance. Sources said the company is still planning to keep some of these components on board, but many others will migrate to the PCI-based video cards. These ASICs will focus on the performance of:
> QuickTime. An ASIC to improve the rate at which the Mac can perform digital-to-analog conversion will reportedly increase QuickTime encoding and decoding by almost 30 percent over the current software version, sources said. Combined with the 601 CPU, QuickTime may reach speeds as high as seven times that of a Quadra 700.
> QuickDraw and QuickDraw GX. Screen redraw should improve as a result of QuickDraw acceleration, sources said. One ASIC is dedicated to speeding most drawing tasks so that many operations, including menus popping down and simple color animations, will happen more quickly.
> QuickDraw 3D. Apple's upcoming 3-D extension to the Mac will reportedly get a boost with an ASIC specifically designed for it. The ASIC will even get its own cache independent from the rest of the system for high-end, high-speed 3-D graphics manipulation.
> Internal buses. TNT will reportedly contain two internal buses. One, named the Apple RISC Bus (ARBus), is a proprietary bus for high-speed communication between the CPU and TNT's RAM and caches. The PCI bus will connect the expansion slots with TNT's video system and other expansion ports. An ASIC designed to bridge the two buses and maintain their performance will reside between them.
Sources said Apple is currently hoping to introduce the two versions of TNT separately. The high-performance model is expected in the first quarter of next year, with the graphics workstation to follow a few months later. This will give Apple the opportunity to spend more time developing the video ASICs and will give third parties ample time to develop video cards using them.
Information obtained by MacWEEK indicates there is good reason not only to separate TNT from the AV technologies in the buyers' minds but make its power available to those uninterested in AV technologies. Apple has learned that one-half to two-thirds of those who buy the Quadra 660AV and 840AV do so because they want the fastest possible Mac, not because they want speech, telephony or video features.
Apple declined to comment.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Price cuts pave way for PowerPC
Apple drops the cost of 660AV, PBs, Duos
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
Cupertino, Calif. - Consistent with its new business strategy to competitively price products and prepare for its new PowerPC-based Macs, Apple last week cut dealer prices on selected Macs from 5 percent to 29 percent, sources said
The biggest price drops, from 19.2 percent to 29.1 percent, came in the Duo line, sources said. For example, the Duo 230 with 4 Mbytes of RAM and a 160-Mbyte hard disk with Express Modem and Duo Dock fell 19.2 percent, while the dealer cost for a Duo Dock with a 230-Mbyte hard drive was slashed 29.1 percent.
Sources said Apple also shaved from 4.6 percent to 16.3 percent off every model in its all-in-one PowerBook line. For instance, the PowerBook 180 series received cuts of 7.6 percent to 9.1 percent, depending on configuration, while the color 180c 4/160 dropped 15.1 percent.
In the Quadra line, Apple reportedly dropped prices on the 660AV. The Quadra 660AV 8/230 fell 17.5 percent, while the 660AV 8/500 with a CD-ROM drive was cut 12.6 percent.
Despite the significant price cuts, dealers said users are unlikely to see much of a difference in the bottom line they pay.
"Apple did what they usually do when a rebate ends, which is to lower the price of the rebated products," said one West Coast dealer. He said that the initial price may now look lower, but the lack of a rebate makes the final price about the same.
"If you rushed into the store on Jan. 31 because you were worried the rebates were expiring, you really didn't need to," he said.
Other observers said the impetus for the cost cuts lies in next month's PowerPC introduction.
"The overriding issue is that Apple is getting ready to come out with an entirely new line of computers," said Dan Ness, director of microsystems research for San Diego-based Computer Intelligence InfoCorp. "To prepare for that, you have to maintain interest in the current product line. This is really a reminder notice that people shouldn't forget about Apple."
Apple also dropped the dealer price for its Newton MessagePad by 15.4 percent, a move analysts said was an attempt to boost the device's lackluster sales.
"The Newton is a whole separate story because it has been an Apple product that did not do as well as they expected," Ness said. "They still want the Newton to continue because of future additions they have planned for the line."
Other price changes include the Macintosh 16-inch Color Display, Duo MiniDock and Newton Communications System.
Apple declined to comment.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: ACI opens 4D to other platforms
New version to span PPC, Sun, Windows
By Matthew Rothenberg
Cupertino, Calif. - ACI Inc., one of the few major Mac-only software companies, will break into other platforms later this year with the introduction of its 4th Dimension line for PowerPC Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, Chicago and Sun Solaris environments.
ACI said it is working on platform-independent versions of 4D Server, 4D Client and 4th Dimension, which will be derived from a new 4D Universal database engine.
4D Universal is written entirely in C++ and contains complete, platform-independent object classes for all of 4D's capabilities. Once the work on the engine is done, ACI will be able to implement 4D on a new platform simply by running it through a C++ compiler on that platform.
Database applications generated in 4D Universal will be able to work with any version on any platform without conversion, ACI said. Additionally, current 4D applications, including those generated with 4D First, ACI's low-end database, will work with 4D Universal products.
> Universal Server. The multi-user 4D Server will be the first product ACI will bring to another platform using the new engine. It will be available this summer in versions for System 7 on PowerPC- and 680x0-based Macs, and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris operating system. In the fall, 4D Server Universal will ship for Micro-soft Corp.'s Windows NT Advanced Server, Windows 3.1 and 3.2, and Microsoft's next-generation Windows, code-named Chicago.
According to ACI, the number of simultaneously open files and databases 4D Server Universal will be able to handle will be limited only by the speed and available memory of the host machine. This new version will supersede ACI's current Macintosh server product and will provide performance improvements even on 680x0-based Macs.
> 4D Universal Client and 4th Dimension. By the end of 1994, ACI will ship 4D Universal Client and 4th Dimension Universal for the same platforms that 4D Universal Server will support, with the exception of Solaris.
The 4D Client and the stand-alone version of 4th Dimension will also feature performance improvements. In addition, both will have the Server database structure built-in so that it will be possible for both to access a database on the universal server and also make local databases available to other clients on the network. The number of clients and databases that can be connected across multiple computers will be limited only by computer and network performance.
4D Universal Client and 4th Dimension will adopt the user interface attributes of the systems they run on. So, the Windows version will feature a Windows interface while the Macintosh version will continue to feature the Mac interface.
> PowerPC releases. The company last week also outlined plans to bring the current version of 4D to Apple's forthcoming PowerPC Macs, which are slated to ship in mid-March.
ACI said native versions of the current 4D Client, 4D Server and 4th Dimension will ship as soon as a Pascal compiler becomes available from Metrowerks Inc. or Language Systems Inc. Metrowerks has said its compiler will be available in the second quarter on 1994.
> 4D Compiler. While there will be no PowerPC version of 4D at the time of the new Macs' launch, a new compiler will allow users to turn any 4D database into a native PowerPC application. According to the company, the upgrade will cost about $50 and will generate applications that run about two times faster than their 680x0-based counterparts.
Native versions of ACI's 4D Write and 4D Calc modules will be available at the PowerPC launch. All other 4D modules are expected to go native within 60 days of the PowerPC Macs' debut.
ACI US Inc. is at 20883 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, Calif. 95014. Phone (408) 252-4444; fax (408) 252-0831.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Digital's Forte kit, MS Mail gateway
By Stephen Howard
Littleton, Mass. - This week, Digital Equipment Corp. is making tectonic movements toward open systems, and the Macintosh peeks through a few cracks.
The company made dozens of enterprise announcements, some of which will interest Mac managers.
> Electronic-mail gateway. Digital said that next month it will ship a MAILworks driver connecting Microsoft Mail clients to the company's MAILbus system. The MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface) driver, priced at $50 per user, runs on Digital OpenVMS or OSF/1 Unix. Macs or IBM PCs and compatibles will use Microsoft Mail clients to access the X.500 directory services and MAILbus gateways.
> Cross-platform tools. Digital took over distribution of Forte Software Inc.'s self-named cross-platform development tools. Forte lets information-systems departments build client-server, distributed applications that work across Macs, Windows and Unix Motif clients, and on servers running OSF/1 and OpenVMS, as well as several other implementations of Unix (see MacWEEK, Nov. 8, 1993, Page 13). Digital expects to ship these tools in June.
> Work-flow software. An upgrade to Digital's $299-per-user work-flow environment, LinkWorks can send E-mail via Lotus Development Corp.'s cc:Mail and Notes, Microsoft Mail, and Digital's own TeamLinks Mail.
When the new version ships in May, LinkWorks will also access ALL-IN-1 file cabinets, add an OS/2 client and work in 27 languages (see MacWEEK, Oct. 25, 1993, Page 12).
The company said that over time LinkWorks will become an interface atop ObjectBroker, the distributed, object-oriented technology that is the core of Digital's client-server plans.
> LAN management. Digital rolled out a family of products under the Polycenter name, including Polycenter System Census for PC LANs 1.2, which inventories software on Macs and PCs. Starting at $499, the software will ship this month.
> Protocol stacks. Digital shipped a group of wireless technologies under the RoamAbout moniker, all of which are intended for PCs. The RoamAbout Transport Communications Software, previously called DECtransporter, is a single TCP/IP protocol stack with built-in drivers for normal Ethernet, dial-up phone lines, analog cellular, and Mobitex and Ardis wireless networks. A Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) driver is planned, as is a Mac version, Digital said.
Digital Equipment Corp. is at 550 King St., Littleton, Mass. 01460. Phone (603) 884-6660 or (800) 344-4825; fax (800) 234-2298.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Pablo helps analyze business databases
By Todd Coopee
Andyne Computing Ltd.'s Pablo 2.0 is an impressive, all-in-one data-analysis tool that lets users extract summary data from centralized corporate databases. It integrates the data-grabbing capabilities of products such as Andyne's GQL, ClearAccess Corp.'s ClearAccess and Brio Technology Inc.'s DataPrism with the reporting and data-manipulation features of tools such as Objective Software Inc.'s SpreadBase, Occam Research Corp.'s Muse and Brio's DataPivot.
Originally developed by Apple for its own internal reporting purposes, the $695 Pablo is the first end-user product to use HyperCube technology. HyperCubes are multidimensional data structures that provide very flexible ways to view and manipulate data.
Before you can use Pablo, you must structure your existing data into the HyperCube format using Andyne's CubeCreator Pro. This is neither a seamless nor intuitive process - in fact, we found it to be a frustrating challenge. Andyne clearly explains in its Pablo documentation that creating HyperCubes is a job for the information systems department.
HyperCubes
Unlike relational databases, which use multiple tables to organize data, a HyperCube may be thought of as a single multidimensional table or matrix of data. By storing the data in multiple dimensions, HyperCubes let you go beyond the simple two-dimensional tables to which most spreadsheets are limited.
Each dimension of a HyperCube consists of a number of discrete points known as members. To ease access to information within a HyperCube, every dimension and member within each dimension is given a unique name.
HyperCubes can store only numeric data, which could be a problem for sites that need to work with information such as names and addresses.
HyperCubes can be stored either locally, on a hard disk or file server, or remotely in a relational database. Once local or remote HyperCubes are in place, you can use Pablo to analyze your data. Double-clicking on Pablo (which requires System 7) brings up the User Profile dialog box, where you can log into an existing user profile, create a new one or log in as a guest.
User profiles are external documents that contain connection information and the name and location of local and remote HyperCubes. For example, a sales profile could link to HyperCubes containing sales figures, while an inventory profile might point to current inventory data. Individual HyperCubes can be added, replaced or removed from a user profile at any time. To enhance security, user profiles can also be password-protected.
Once you select a profile, an untitled Report window appears. A tool palette offers drawing functions that let you easily add graphics, color and text anywhere in the Report window. Table and Chart tools let you place a table or chart into your report that will offer a view, or window, into a HyperCube. Each view is characterized by the particular dimensions and selected members in the HyperCube. For example, you can choose to see quarterly results that include gross margins, total sales and units sold for the southern region of your company.
Creating a view
Pablo comes with several tools to help you build views. The Source Browser is used to select an individual HyperCube resource to use in a chart or table. The Source Browser also lets you add and remove local and remote HyperCubes from a user profile.
Once you select a HyperCube, Pablo's View Builder lets you navigate through its dimensions and select individual members to build a view. You select members by simply dragging them from the Member list to the Selection list. You can use the Filter Dimension list to limit your views to certain members within a dimension.
Once you've chosen the dimensions and members of a view, you specify a chart's or table's orientation (x and y axes) by dragging members to the row and column dimension lists in the Data Navigator window. You can easily pivot your data by dragging a member from the row list to the column list or vice versa. The Data Navigator window also lets you display a view as a table or chart, open the View Builder dialog, and update the data in a view.
Pablo's real power lies in the flexibility of the View Builder and the Data Navigator. Both take advantage of the inherent structure of a HyperCube and let you work with multiple sets of variables on the x and y axes. This structure lets you easily compare many variables at once and focus on the specific information you need.
To further analyze your data, Pablo lets you sort data and add calculations to views. For example, you can quickly sum up quarterly figures to produce a cell with final numbers for the year. Like other data-modeling packages, Pablo provides a number of built-in functions that can be used in a calculation's definition.
In addition to multidimensional data manipulation, Pablo also lets you modify many other attributes of charts and tables, including the font, size and style of text; fill patterns; and row height and column width.
Documentation and support
Pablo's manual is generally well-organized, albeit a bit redundant in places. The manual for CubeCreator Pro thoroughly explains the structure of local and remote HyperCubes but offers very little advice or tips on how to speed the building process.
In addition to regular technical support, Andyne can also be reached through CompuServe, AppleLink, anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and a Gopher client at bbs.andyne.on.ca.
Conclusions
With its decent layout options and extremely flexible data-analysis capabilities, Pablo 2.0 transcends other report writers and traditional query programs. Its data-pivoting capabilities are also truly exceptional. Nevertheless, our enthusiasm for the product is somewhat tempered by the HyperCube building process and the fact that HyperCubes are limited to numeric data. If additional building tools were integrated into Pablo, it would be much easier to exploit the program's depth of features. As it stands, the task of creating HyperCubes may prove too daunting for certain sites.
Andyne Computing Ltd. is at 552 Princess St., Kingston, Ontario K7L 1C7, Canada. Phone (613) 548-4355 or (800) 267-0665; fax (613) 548-7801.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
Reviews Page 1
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: New LCs debut; Apple plans PPC upgrades
By Matthew Rothenberg
Cupertino, Calif. - Apple last week released two new LC models aimed at the education market.
The company also announced plans to offer PowerPC upgrades for its entry-level, all-in-one LC and Performa lines.
The new LC 550 and LC 575 feature 33-MHz 68030 and '040 processors, respectively. The two new machines are based on the same design as the LC 520, Apple's current all-in-one Mac for the K-12 market, which runs on a 25-MHz '030 chip.
Like the earlier model, the LC 550 and 575 ship with a built-in 14-inch color monitor, a unidirectional microphone and stereo speakers.
The LC 550 and 575 also mark the debut of a new tray-loading CD-ROM drive that eliminates the need for CD caddies.
Each model ships with a 160-Mbyte hard drive; 4 Mbytes of dynamic RAM, which can be expanded to 36 Mbytes; and 512 Kbytes of video RAM. VRAM on the LC 550 and 575 can be expanded to 768 Kbytes and 1 Mbyte, respectively.
The LC 575 features a new communications slot for which Apple will offer a 14.4-bps fax-data modem, as well as three Ether-net cards priced at $84 each - 10BASE T, thin coaxial or AAUI (Apple attachment unit interface).
The LC 550 and 575, which are available only to education customers, start at $1,199 and $1,699, respectively.
The two new LC models, along with the LC 520, comprise what Apple has labeled its Entry Systems PowerPC line. These three models are among the entry-level Macs that the company last week announced it would provide with upgrades to PowerPC, along with the Performa 475, 476 and 550; LC 475; and Quadra 605 models.
Apple said it is continuing to investigate whether these upgrades will consist of the full-power PowerPC 601 chip or the reduced-power PowerPC 603 processor. Sources said the upgrades will be available by late fall.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
News Page 3
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Apple appeals 'look and feel' case
By Rick LePage
San Francisco - The endless copyright debate over the Macintosh interface vis-a-vis Microsoft Windows moved into its next phase when Apple filed an appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here.
In a brief filed on Jan. 20, Apple claimed that the final disposition of its March 1987 copyright-infringement lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. (see MacWEEK, June 7, 1993, Page 28) was prejudicial against Apple in several respects.
The 45-page brief states that "the basic conceptual error infecting the judgment was the court's mistaken notion that Apple's GUI [graphical user interface] was '[p]urely functional ... wholly beyond the realm of copyright as are other common examples of user interfaces ... the dials, knobs and remote control devices of a television or VCR.' "
Apple also objected to the court's consideration of "isolated elements of Apple's works" instead of viewing the interface as a whole.
Apple spokesman Frank O'Mahony said: "In the case so far, the judge made decisions that a jury should have made. We've asked the court to refer the case to a jury."
A Microsoft spokeswoman would only say, "our next reaction will be to file a response by Feb. 20."
HP spokesman Andrew Ould said: "We've reviewed Apple's appeal. It's completely inconsistent with existing copyright law, especially recent 9th Circuit cases."
Apple asked for and was granted an expedited hearing in the case. Sources said that an actual date depended upon the 9th Circuit's caseload, but the case is expected to be heard this year.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
News Page 3
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: DataScript links apps to databases
By Rick LePage
Bloomfield, N.J. - Essex Systems Inc. recently shipped three members of the DataScript family of extensions that allow any scriptable application to access host databases through popular middleware.
Developed by General Knowledge of Poole, England, DataScript lets users of Oracle Corp.'s SQL*NET, TechGnosis Inc.'s SequeLink and Apple's Data Access Manager/Data Access Language (DAM/DAL) create client-server applications using off-the-shelf programs that are scriptable via Apple events, such as Claris Corp.'s FileMaker Pro 2.1, Microsoft Excel 4.0 and QuarkXPress 3.2.
DataScript will work with any scripting system that supports Apple's Open Scripting Architecture, including AppleScript and UserLand Frontier, the company said. The software requires System 7 and does not include AppleScript. DataScript for Oracle and SequeLink are $249 each; DataScript for DAL/DAM is $149.
Essex Systems said that this week it will ship a version of DataScript for Oracle7 that supports Binary Large Objects, and DataScript for Sybase databases will ship within two weeks.
Essex Systems Inc. is at P.O. Box 1818, Bloomfield, N.J. 07003-1818. Phone (210) 338-4336.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
News Page 4
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Dynodex address book updated
Goes head to head with Now Contact
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
Richmond, Vt. - Portfolio Software Inc. next week will go head to head with Now Contact when it releases Version 3.5 of Dynodex with its new DynoFind feature.
The company will also raise the price of the address-book program to $69.95, which is $10 more than Version 3.0.
Dynodex's new features include:
> DynoFind. Similar to Now Contact's QuickContact feature, Dynodex's new control panel lets users search for contact information via a hot key or from an icon in the menu bar, even if Dynodex is not running.
The DynoFind feature also lets users add frequently called contacts to the DynoFind pull-down menu for quick access.
DynoFind brings up the contact's name, address and four telephone numbers.
Users can dial phone numbers from within DynoFind, or copy and paste phone and address information into another application.
> Customization. Users can now change the font and size of entries in both the List and Detail views. The List view supports resizing and rearranging of columns.
Portfolio has simplified the printing interface, allowing users to customize page layouts either numerically or graphically.
Users can also change the typeface, size and style of the printout on a field-by-field basis.
> Interapplication links. Dynodex's Detail window includes two buttons that link users to DynoNotepad, the company's outlining application, and forthcoming calendar software via Apple events.
Clicking the DynoNotepad button automatically creates a new outline file and stamps it with the time and date. Users of the company's calendar application, due in August, will be able to create new events and look up linked events for a contact from within Dynodex.
Upgrades are $24.95.
Portfolio Software Inc. is at 1 Millet St., P.O. Box 1010, Richmond, Vt. 05477-1010. Phone (802) 434-6400 or (800) 729-3966; fax (802) 434-7000.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
News Page 6
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: What to do with a broken PowerBook
Being on the road, PowerBooks often need more service than other Macs. Which repair option is best for your company?
By Larry Stevens
It should come as no surprise to Mac managers that PowerBooks and Duos are more likely to need repair than their desktop cousins. Their portability leaves them vulnerable to bumps, falls and spills, and they are sometimes taken into potentially dangerous environments such as hot welding shops or frigid construction sites.
Getting your company's laptops fixed is not as easy as it is for desktop machines. The PowerBooks' all-in-one design means that even relatively simple repairs, such as for a faulty trackball, require packing the entire computer off for repairs.
In addition, your choice of service route can mean a difference of days or weeks in getting back your repaired portable.
Up to snuff
Faulty manufacturing techniques can occasionally result in new Macs needing repair, but, despite that, most dealers said the quality of PowerBooks is generally high. "The difficulties come and go, as in any type of machine, but there are no persistent problems," said Chris Romine, director of customer service at MacCenter Inc. of Austin, Texas.
Consultants who have studied notebook computers agreed that Apple has done a good job with the PowerBook. "The quality of the [IBM Corp.] ThinkPad, PowerBooks and Compaq computers are all about equal; they're all very good," said Jerry Purdy, chief analyst of mobile computing for Dataquest, a market research company in San Jose, Calif.
Assault and battery
A solid design, however, cannot protect notebook machines from the perils encountered outside the office. Jay Goldstein, president of 800-WE-FIX-MACS Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., which repairs out-of-warranty Macs, said he has "seen it all," including a PowerBook that was run over by a car and another "whose owner's cat mistook its keyboard for a litter box."
One of the most common problems, Goldstein said, is broken screens that resulted from objects left on the keyboard when the case was closed. "If you habitually rest your pen on the keyboard, chances are someday you'll use that pen to write out a check to get the screen repaired," he said.
Arthur Wood, senior producer at H & C Communications, a Houston-based company that owns several TV stations, agreed that PowerBooks often get rough treatment when used by reporters on assignment in the field. "If the reporter is jostled at a press conference, demonstration or accident site, you can be sure that his or her PowerBook is getting banged around too," Wood said.
Sleep problems
H & C Communications, which has 35 notebook Macs, had a problem with two Duos that would go to sleep as if they were out of power, despite newly charged batteries. The problem was eventually traced to a loose battery connection either caused or exacerbated by rough treatment of the Duos.
If your PowerBook breaks down, there are three places to turn: a third-party service center, Apple Assurance's mail-in service, or a local Apple-authorized service center or retailer. Each has its pros and cons.
Third-party service centers are often the least expensive option for out-of-warranty work, since they must compete with Apple-authorized service centers. However, if you have a problem with a third-party center, you can't rectify it by appealing to Apple, as you can with an authorized center.
Additionally, third-party service centers have not had as much experience repairing PowerBooks and Duos as their authorized counterparts have, since managers and users turn to third parties only when their machines are no longer covered by warranty.
Apple Assurance's mail-in option, on the other hand, requires shipping the equipment to the Rochester, N.Y., repair center, which adds at least two days to the two Apple takes to repair the machine.
Despite being required to mail equipment, the service received high marks from users. John Caswell, marketing director of a Massachusetts bank, said the advantage of Apple's mail-in service was that he "made one call, and after that everything happened automatically." When the trackball on his PowerBook 180 stopped working last year, he called Apple Assurance's toll-free hot line, Apple SOS, which offered to supply the names of local service technicians. But Caswell opted for the pick-up and drop-off service since it saved him two trips to a local dealer.
Because of their proximity, many managers choose an Apple-authorized service center as the first line of defense when PowerBooks, especially those still covered by warranty, go on the fritz.
Apple-authorized centers
Stephen Clancy, associate director of Dataquest Worldwide Service Group in Framingham, Mass., said that, in general, customers are happy with Apple's channel support, which includes its authorized service centers. He said that a recent Dataquest survey, which is not yet fully compiled, shows that customers of major vendors, including Apple, IBM, Compaq Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., are generally satisfied with services from their vendors' channel support. While the survey did not break out Mac owners, Clancy said that from interviews with survey participants, he believes that Apple's and Hewlett-Packard's customers are slightly more satisfied than those of the other major vendors. "Apple began channel support for personal computers, and they are still the best in that category, although all the major vendors are very close," he said.
But despite the favorable survey, all PowerBook owners contacted for this article had complaints about Apple-authorized service centers. For example, Joe Beerman, a business consultant with Filon Consultants in Glen Cove, Ill., said that when his disk drive died, the local dealer took more than two weeks to repair it, which was unacceptable.
Catherine Conroy, director of electronic systems at White Way Sign and Maintenance Company Inc. of Chicago, said that when her PowerBook 145 developed a bad hard drive, her Apple-authorized service center kept the machine for a few days, then shipped it to Apple for repair. "If they had decided earlier that it was beyond their ability to fix, it might not have taken two weeks to get it back to me," she said.
Users also report that local authorized service technicians are less knowledgeable about PowerBook problems than Apple's technicians - and the resulting wasted time can be frustrating, at the very least.
Robert J. Gebhardt, a U.S. management consultant in international trade and finance living in Lugano, Switzerland, said that his PowerBook 145 developed an intermittent problem with the trackball. The dealer's fix - replacing the trackball unit - solved the problem only briefly. When the malady returned, the repair technician accidentally discovered a work-around that seemed to get the trackball working again for a while. "This did not seem to me to be the ideal answer," Gebhardt said. Eventually, the service center again replaced the trackball unit, which again solved the problem for only a short period of time. Finally, Gebhardt said, he called the Apple Assurance hot line; a technician suggested that the keyboard and motherboard be replaced. Once the local service center did so, the problem disappeared.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
News Page 12
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: PowerTalk 1.1 coming with Mac OS update
By Nathalie Welch
Cupertino, Calif. - PowerTalk users should be listening closely to news of System 7.5. In addition to possibly making the client component of AOCE a standard part of the operating system, the system upgrade is expected to include Version 1.1 of PowerTalk.
Sources said Apple is considering bundling the new PowerTalk with both System 7.5 and System 7.5 Pro (see MacWEEK, Jan. 31, Page 1). If not in both versions, PowerTalk 1.1 will be included only in System 7.5 Pro. In either case, the update reportedly will provide performance improvements, new interface features and a number of bug fixes.
"No major problems were reported by our early adopters that would prompt us to do a major upgrade, although through time we will, of course, make minor and major upgrades as the opportunity presents itself," said Andy Lauta, marketing manager for Apple's collaborative products group. PowerTalk, the AOCE (Apple Open Collaboration Environment) client software, was released last October. System 7.5 is expected to be released in early summer.
According to sources, the time it takes to boot PowerTalk - one of the major complaints about Version 1.0 - will decrease slightly. Other tweaks reportedly will be applied throughout PowerTalk:
> Mailbox. A new menu command will let users mark electronic mail as unread. Letters will now accept multiple tags for categorization and filtering. The small problem-alert icon, which appears in PowerTalk mailboxes, will be made more obvious with the addition of a text label.
> AppleMail. The default memory partition in Apple's updated mail-creation application will be reduced by about 200 Kbytes. The new AppleMail will place a postmark symbol on sent letters. Further, when a user selects an AppleMail reply option, such as All Recipients or Sender Only, that option will stay in effect for subsequent replies. AppleMail 1.1 also will allow letters to be saved as letterheads, so the recipient can use the format when creating new messages.
> Catalogs. Users browsing the Catalogs icon as a guest should no longer crash. Opening any catalog should be faster, and the time required to open a catalog Group will be cut in half, sources said.
> Key Chain. The PowerTalk Key Chain will be renamed simply "Key Chain" and will sport an Info button to explain Key Chain features. The default installation will place the Key Chain in the Apple Menu instead of on the desktop.
Apple declined to comment.
PowerTalk 1.1 pluses
> Start-up is slightly faster
> Users can mark electronic mail as unread
> Multiple tags per message
> AppleMail uses 200 Kbytes less RAM
MacWEEK 02.07.94
Gateways Page 18
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: PPC upgrades not in the cards for AWS
Apple says PDS cards are not fast enough
By Matthew Rothenberg
Cupertino, Calif. - For owners of Apple's servers, the move to PowerPC will not be a simple matter of buying a low-cost upgrade card.
According to Emilio Robles, public relations manager for Apple's Business Systems Division, ABS' research shows that Apple's planned processor direct slot card upgrades will not speed up the Apple Workgroup Server 60 and 80 models.
"At this stage, ABS is not recommending [PDS cards] for server upgrades," Robles said, although he emphasized that the company's research is still preliminary. "Given the current investigation, PDS cards won't give users a performance improvement; in fact, [servers with the cards] may perform a little worse."
The problem is not incompatibility: The hardware of the AWS 60 and 80 is identical to the Quadra 610 and 800, which can use the cards. The PowerPC cards will not provide adequate speed for servers because they were designed for different performance needs, Robles said.
"At the moment, we recommend people go with logic-board upgrades," he said. ABS announced that it will sell such upgrades for its AWS line, although it has not specified speeds or ship dates (see MacWEEK, Jan. 24, Page 1).
The new logic boards reportedly will run faster than the PDS cards. To retain compatibility, the cards will run at twice the clock speed of the existing Mac, so a PowerPC card in the 25-MHz Quadra 610 will run at 50 MHz. The logic boards can go faster, sources said, so an upgraded AWS 60 should run at 60 MHz. The AWS 95 cannot accommodate a PDS upgrade because its slot is occupied.
Sources said even the logic-board upgrade for the 95 will extract a performance penalty, however. An upgraded AWS 95 must run System 7; Apple's Unix won't run on the PowerPC, and the company is moving its high-end servers to a PowerOpen Unix, which isn't ready, sources said.
Adam Block, IS manager for the Stanford (Calif.) Daily, Stanford University's student newspaper, which uses an AWS 95, said: "A PowerPC upgrade seems pointless at the moment. Before PowerOpen comes out, why would we want to slow down the machine [with an upgrade]?"
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: PowerPC trips up Vines Mac E-mail
By Stephen Howard
Westboro, Mass. - Banyan Systems Inc. has discovered that the 680x0 compatibility of the PowerPC Macs is not absolute. Testing at the networking company has revealed that drivers used by Vines Mail for Macintosh don't work on the RISC-based Macs, even in emulation.
Banyan has begun briefing customers and resellers on the problem. According to Pam Campagna, product line manager for Vines, the fault lies in system extensions that link the Mac electronic-mail client to Banyan's Intelligent Messaging. Timing issues prevent the extensions from working in emulation, and, since the extensions do not load, the Vines Mail application will not run.
"We don't plan to do a native-mode recompile" to fix the problem, Campagna said. Instead, Banyan hopes to squash the bug by tweaking the existing 680x0 code. Campagna would not predict when or how the fixed drivers would be released.
Some customers felt that problem had been discovered early enough to fix before the PowerPC Macs arrived. "As long as Banyan can get its act together and chase this, it shouldn't hurt too bad," said Mike Lewis, a consultant at Syntrex Technologies of Eatontown, N.J.
In other news, Campagna said that a new version of Mac Vines Mail was expected by year-end. The company is still considering whether to port to PowerPC at that time. She said Banyan's work on a client-side gateway to link both PowerTalk E-mail to Intelligent Messaging and PowerTalk catalogs to StreetTalk III was an unrelated project. The gateway work is still under way, she said, but has no announced release date.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
Gateways Page 18
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: Apple Duo Battery Patch released
Extension repairs charging problems
By Raines Cohen
Cupertino, Calif. - Apple last week released an extension that can help PowerBook Duo users suffering from charging problems.
The Duo Battery Patch, available this week on the Internet and most major on-line services, is for users of the Duo 210, 230 and 250. It fixes a problem in the power manager that prevents some of these systems from charging the internal battery. The Duo 270c, which uses a newer version of the power manager, is immune to this problem.
"The power manager essentially needs to know what sort of machine it is running on," said Russ Emmons, a software engineer at Apple who worked on the Duo 270c. "A byte in the low-memory globals that identifies the type of system becomes corrupted.
"We know the effect, but we don't really have a good handle on the cause," Emmons said. "Essentially, there's no particular reason this should have happened."
The patch was developed in December in response to complaints by a major customer, according to Apple. Sources said it will be incorporated into the next update to the Duo Enabler, which is due next month.
Apple also recommends that all Duo users install the PowerBook Duo Enabler. The Duo enabler supersedes System Enabler 201, included with early Duo 210s and 230s, and the 1.0.1 update to enabler 201. The Duo enabler fixes bugs which can prevent a Duo from waking up from sleep mode when docked to a MiniDock and can cause keyboards that are connected through the Apple Desktop Bus port to lock up.
Users without access to an on-line service can contact the Apple Assistance Center at (800) 767-2775 to obtain the Duo Battery Patch.
Is your PowerBook enabled?
PowerBook Model Required System Enabler Version
160, 165c, 180, 180c 131 1.0.3
210, 230, 250 PB Duo Enabler 1.0 *
270c PB Duo Enabler 1.0
*And Duo Battery Patch. Source: Apple
MacWEEK 02.07.94
Mobile Computing Page 24
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: In Focus LCDs run presentations w/o PBs
By James Staten
Tualatin, Ore. - In Focus Systems Inc. is encouraging users to leave their PowerBooks at the office when putting on presentations. The company's new LCD panels and projectors have an optional disk drive that can play back presentations without the aid of a computer.
> PanelBook 530. This LCD panel uses an 8.5-inch active-matrix display that can project more than 1.4 million colors at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. The 530, due to ship later this month, simultaneously supports computer and NTSC or PAL (European) video signals. Users can switch between sources by using a remote control.
In Focus said the 530 is 40 percent smaller than other LCD panels because all its electronics are stored on a built-in drawer that slides out when in use.
> LitePro 540. This projector features the same active-matrix LCD as the PanelBook 530 along with a 150-lumen, 400-watt, quartz-halogen light source. The compact 19-pound unit can project up to a 15-foot diagonal screen image, according to In Focus.
The LitePro comes with the ability to accept computer input; an optional adapter is required for NTSC or PAL video signals.
> LiteShow II electronic presentation manager. Both the PanelBook and LitePro models above, as well as all In Focus LitePro and PanelBook devices, are now available with LiteShow II, which displays and controls presentations without using a computer.
Consisting of a 3.5-inch SuperDrive and built-in capture and control software, LiteShow II allows images from both Macs and IBM PCs and compatibles to be stored on a floppy disk. Images are captured by printing screens or documents to disk via an included printer driver or by connecting the panel to the computer's video-out port.
Up to 50 images can be stored on a standard 1.44-Mbyte floppy disk. Users can rearrange slide order and add any of 14 transition effects directly from the panel.
PanelBook 530 is priced at $5,299; $6,049 with the LiteShow II option. LitePro 540, available now, is priced at $7,499, or $8,499 with the LiteShow II option. The LiteShow II option is available on all other PanelBook models for $750, or $1,000 on LitePro projectors.
In Focus Systems Inc. is at 7770 S.W. Mohawk St., Tualatin, Ore. 97062. Phone (503) 692-4968 or (800) 327-7231; fax (503) 692-4476.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
Mobile Computing Page 24
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: Quark plans PowerPC-native XPress
Speedy new version to include XTensions
By Neil McManus
Denver - Desktop publishers who make the move to a PowerPC Mac can look forward to a native version of QuarkXPress that reportedly runs two to four times faster than the 680x0-based version.
Quark Inc. Chairman Tim Gill said his company plans to release a native PowerPC version of XPress 3.3 within six weeks of Apple's expected March 14 PowerPC Mac rollout. It will carry a $995 price tag; $100 more than the 680x0 version.
XPress users are still waiting for the Windows and 680x0-based Mac versions of XPress 3.3, which were due in December (see MacWEEK, Oct. 18, 1993, Page 22). Gill said the English editions of XPress 3.3 are ready, but the company won't ship until next month when the foreign-language editions are finished.
The PowerPC Mac version will include all of the new features of XPress 3.3. It will ship on a CD-ROM and come bundled with 12 XTensions, including QuarkPrint, which lets users save and select frequently used Print settings.
Gill said the most noticeable improvement of the PowerPC version will be its improved speed. One large document redrew 12 times faster on a midrange PowerPC Mac than on a Quadra 950, Gill said.
Kevin Sartoris, design director at Sky & Telescope magazine in Cambridge, Mass., said, "Things can go very slowly when you're dealing with a Quark document that has a lot of images. Quark was absolutely choking on this one high-resolution image when I tried to zoom in on it on my Quadra 800."
Upgrades from the 680x0 version of XPress 3.3 to the PowerPC will cost $195 until June 30. Also until June 30, registered XPress users can buy additional PowerPC versions for $595 each. All versions of XPress 3.3 will be file-compatible across platforms.
Quark Inc. is at 1800 Grant Ave., Denver, Colo. 80203. Phone (303) 894-8888; fax (303) 894-3399.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
GA Page 30
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: Aldus educates its IntelliDraw
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
San Diego - Aldus Corp.'s Consumer Division this week will raise the IQ of its "smart" drawing program when it ships Version 2.0 of IntelliDraw.
The $199 IntelliDraw incorporates features designed to simplify creation and editing of drawings and charts such as automatic object alignment and connector lines that stay linked when objects are moved.
New features include:
> Drag-and-drop templates. Users can create and save templates of drawn objects, which they can drag and drop into documents. The program ships with built-in templates of clip art, including flowchart elements, borders and furniture designs. IntelliDraw also lets users drag objects between templates and between document windows.
> Warping and perspective. The perspective feature lets users give any object, including text, a simulated 3-D look. Users can randomly bend and twist an object in any direction with the new warping effect.
> Text enhancements. IntelliDraw 2.0 supports bound text around any shape. Users can specify starting place, text direction and justification. The program also comes with a spelling checker, tab ruler and hyphenation capabilities.
> Polymorphs. The Polymorph feature creates an animated blend from two or more shapes. Users can play the animation back with a slider bar and save it as a QuickTime movie. Attributes that can be blended include the size, shape, color and position of objects.
Other new features in IntelliDraw 2.0 include user-definable pattern and gradient fills, improved importing and exporting, and faster dragging and redrawing.
"The polymorphing is pretty cool," said James Satter, senior information processor for Chevron Corp. in San Francisco. "You can change a circle into a triangle and then freeze it anywhere along the change with the slider bar and create some interesting shapes."
Upgrades are $49.95. Users who purchased the previous version after Aug. 2, 1993, can upgrade free.
Aldus Corp.'s Consumer Division is at 5120 Shoreham Place, San Diego, Calif. 92122-5926. Phone (619) 558-6000; fax (619) 558-8723.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
GA Page 30
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Apple inventory gets back on track
New strategy helps supply meet demand
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
San Francisco - Apple's new sales-tracking system is earning kudos from dealers and analysts, who said that the company's newfound ability to reconcile supply and demand will be an essential component of the PowerPC rollout.
George Everhart, vice president and general manager of Apple's PC Division, said Apple last summer began tracking products actually being sold to users. The result has been quicker response to market changes, better forecasting and a drop in inventory, he said.
"We are tracking our business in ways we never used to," Everhart said. "We can make decisions or take action in a matter of a week or 10 days where it used to take us up to a month."
As an example, Everhart cited the Quadra 610 and 650, which were selling faster than Apple could supply them to the channel. In response, the company ramped up its production of those models, Everhart said.
Dealers said they notice the difference. "Product supply is very good," said Ken Krich, president of ComputerWare in Palo Alto, Calif. "Prior to mid-November we just never experienced that with Apple."
Industry analysts applauded the new focus on end-user sales numbers, saying it will help Apple avoid ballooning inventory and embarrassing product shortages.
The company shaved almost $200 million off its inventory last quarter but is still left with a balance of $1.34 billion.
"Apple historically has had a hard time predicting what the demand for its product is going to be," said Amy Wohl, editor of TrendsLetter in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. "Anything [Apple] can do to understand what customers are buying will help them."
As launch of the PowerPC Macs approaches, however, Apple will need to plan carefully to avoid shortages of the new machines and stagnant sales of current Macs, observers said.
"This is a product introduction where it's almost certain there will be some products there are shortages of and some that they'll have too many of," said Eric Louis, manager of PC hardware research for International Data Corp. in Mountain View, Calif. "It puts a premium on [Apple's] ability for good forecasting and quick response to what's selling in the field."
MacWEEK 02.07.94
BusinessWatch Page 36
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Pricing spurs America Online gains
By Mark Hall and Robert Hess
Vienna, Va. - America Online Inc. last month reported phenomenal second-quarter sales and profits, results that observers said underscore the significant growth of the on-line services market in 1993.
The company, based here, announced revenues for the quarter ended Dec. 31 increased 130 percent, to $21.5 million from $9.3 million in the same quarter a year ago. Profits for the same period jumped to $1.2 million, a 55 percent increase from the $722,000 earned in the year-ago quarter.
AOL subscribers have topped 600,000, and the company is focusing on expanding its infrastructure, according to AOL CEO Steve Case.
Eric Arnum, editor of the New York-based Electronic Mail & Micro Systems newsletter, said, "After 10 to 12 years of less than promising growth, the last three months of 1993 saw an improvement industrywide." However, while many on-line companies have seen significant expansion, Arnum said he sees AOL's results as atypical.
On-line growth is being spurred by the drop in computer and modem prices, according to Debra Young, a spokeswoman for Columbus, Ohio-based CompuServe Inc., which reported revenues of $315.4 million in 1993. "These price cuts are attracting more and more novice users, she said."
In addition, the attention being given to the future information superhighway is encouraging users to become familiar with telecommunications and electronic interaction, Arnum said.
To attract new users, both CompuServe and AOL are bolstering their offerings in consumer areas. For example, AOL and Shoppers Express this spring will provide on-line grocery and drug-store shopping with home delivery.
The fast-paced expansion of the on-line industry has also attracted new entrants into the market, including Apple's eWorld and Ziff-Davis Interactive's Interchange Online Network.
Subscribers tend to use multiple services for different purposes, creating opportunities for niche markets, Young said. For example, Apple and Ziff-Davis are initially targeting professional markets with their services.
However, increased competition in the industry has prompted significant cuts in connection charges. Apple's eWorld costs are significantly lower than those offered by its predecessor, AppleLink, and CompuServe this week instituted 40 percent cuts in connection costs.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
BusinessWatch Page 36
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Cypress PhonePro 1.2 picks up the line
Program builder lets users create their own telephony apps
By Sean Wagstaff
Cypress Research Corp.'s PhonePro 1.2 is an authoring program for creating telephony applications on the Macintosh. Combining voice mail with computer-based decision making, PhonePro provides a range of options for developers and office administrators to build customized systems for handling calls.
PhonePro 1.2 works on any sound-equipped Mac with at least 4 Mbytes of free RAM, System 7 and a hard disk. While previous versions were expensive because you had to purchase a custom-made Cypress voice-enabled modem along with the software, Version 1.2 supports Supra Corp.'s voice-enabled SupraFAXModem V.32 and SupraFAXModem V.32bis. If you have either of these modems, you can buy the $349 software-only version of PhonePro. (Cypress is working with modem manufacturers to ensure that PhonePro will be compatible with other voice-capable modems as they are released.) The hardware/software version of PhonePro 1.2 is $950.
Beyond voice mail
You can use PhonePro to create a variety of telephony applications that fill niches not met by standard commercial voice-mail systems. For example, you can build an application that will answer the phone and provide the caller with a menu-driven directory of services; set up a paging system that will automatically page you when your phone receives a message and play back the message when you call in; create a bulletin board system that will let users upload or download both voice and electronic messages; or set up a system that will record calls and forward them via electronic-mail programs such as CE Software Inc.'s QuickMail or Microsoft Mail, or through Apple's PowerTalk and PowerShare mail services.
One of PhonePro's most useful features is the capability to create an automatic menu-driven fax-back system. Users simply call in, listen to a menu of selections, and enter one or more options and their own fax number. The system will automatically fax back the appropriate documents. However, to create such a system you'll also have to purchase Cypress Research's $550 FaxPro II, a network application for handling incoming and outgoing faxes.
Icon-based programming
PhonePro comes with pre-built sample applications, but to really get it to work for you, you must learn the PhonePro icon-based programming system.
Like many object-oriented scripting systems, PhonePro breaks its functions into easily digestible tasks. These tasks are represented by icons grouped onto seven palettes:
> Table, for storing and managing databases containing sounds, text and numbers.
> File, for managing standard files on any mounted volume.
> Modem, for controlling and responding to the modem.
> User, to interact with the person running the application.
> Mail, for interfacing with an E-mail system.
> Fax, for sending and receiving faxes (if you have FaxPro II).
> Main, which includes functions such as answering the phone, dialing a number and recording or playing messages.
PhonePro systems are set up like a database. You can create an unlimited number of tables that can be used to store and retrieve data, such as a recorded phone message, based on a variety of search criteria. To create a script, you drag icons from the palettes onto the Scripting work space and arrange them into a flowchart, which graphically displays the flow and branching of your program.
Sound decisions
To input sounds, such as outgoing messages, you simply click on the appropriate Table icon, name the sound and record it using the Mac's hardware. While PhonePro supports Apple's Sound Manager for recording outgoing messages (meaning, among other things, that you can use high-quality digital signal processing hardware for recording), all sounds are ultimately compressed by the modem's voice chip, which uses 22-kHz audio with 6:1 MACE (Macintosh Audio Compression Expansion). Users who are creating high-profile applications may find that the resulting audio sounds a little too much like AM radio or a scratchy old record.
For moving sounds between different script files, PhonePro provides a Sound Mover tool that suspiciously resembles Apple's outmoded Font/DA Mover. We'd much prefer it if PhonePro followed System 7's lead and moved up to simple drag and drop.
Fiddling about
In general, we found the system to be well-designed and very easy to use. It's easy to add notes at any spot in a code flowchart, for example. However, while PhonePro is much simpler to use than a code-based programming language, it still requires some patience to learn how to put a working application together, and you'll probably spend a lot of time debugging and perfecting scripts.
The scripts you create are not compiled into runtime applications, so if you're creating a telephony application for a third party, they'll need their own copy of PhonePro to run the application. However, you can easily create a simplified front-end menu that hides the actual script from an end user.
Documentation and support
While the PhonePro manual is nicely produced and well-written, it's unorganized and short on examples. The on-line help system is full of holes, and it doesn't let you search for words, so you may have to do a lot of scrolling through the Help menu. Technical support is available via a toll call.
Conclusions
If all you need is an answering machine, then PhonePro is an impractical choice: A sound-equipped Mac with PhonePro and a voice-capable modem costs at least 10 times the price of a standard answering machine, and it's much more of a hassle to set up and use. It's also no substitute for dedicated voice mail in a corporate setting.
But if you need to integrate a telephone line with a Mac for the sake of automating repetitive telephony tasks, it's a good solution. For creating dial-in directories, fax-back systems or phone systems integrated with your E-mail, PhonePro is a flexible, creative and useful tool. Small workgroups may also want to consider High Tide Software's WaterMark Message Central.
Cypress Research Corp. is at 240 E. Caribbean Drive, Sunnyvale, Calif. 94089. Phone (408) 752-2700; fax (408) 752-2735.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
Reviews Page 47
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
ProductWatch: Medicine turns to the Mac
Fewer specialists and less-expensive medical equipment are two keys to lowering health-care costs. Mac technology is aiding on both fronts.
By Rochelle Garner
Desktop computers are becoming a key component in the effort to lower this country's $903 billion-a-year health-care costs.
Physician specialization and sophisticated medical equipment have been major contributors to these costs. Cutting costs over the next several years will depend on general practitioners' abilities to tap into vast repositories of medical information and use desktop computers to perform tasks now relegated to expensive medical technology.
Macs have become the platform of choice at medical schools for presenting medical information in the form of interactive educational and reference CD-ROMs. The Mac is also being used as an inexpensive alternative to specialized diagnostic tools.
Teacher's aides
The Mac's solid position in medical schools may be because of the grass-roots efforts of dedicated Mac enthusiasts, such as Dr. George Sheplock. When he wasn't on 24-hour call at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, the anesthesiologist-in-training was developing an interactive computer program at home based on SuperCard, which was recently acquired by Allegiant Technologies Inc. of San Diego. Brachial Plexus Blocks is designed to show fellow students how to safely administer anesthesia by locating the important landmarks of nerves and sheaths beneath the skin.
At the Center for Advanced Instructional Media at Yale University's School of Medicine, co-directors Dr. C. Carl Jaffe and Patrick Lynch are using SuperCard to create a series of interactive videos for physicians. The programs - all developed on the Mac - contain encyclopedias of images and diagnostic information to guide radiologists through the intricacies of interpreting a vast array of medical images.
Pharmaceutical companies have also begun to distribute information on CD-ROM in an effort to teach doctors and students about their new drugs and technologies. Knoll Pharmaceuticals of Whippany, N.Y., is using interactive CD-ROMs to teach radiologists about its new monoclonal antibody technology. And Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corp. of East Hanover, N.J., offers a free educational series of such discs to medical schools.
The Sandoz series, in fact, formed the core of a study showing what impact multimedia course materials have on students. Two years ago, Dr. William R. Ayers, associate dean for undergraduate medical education at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., created a study on osteoporosis, about which Georgetown had long taught in lecture format to its second-year students. He divided the class of 200 students in half. One half heard the standard series of lectures, and the other half supplemented the course with material from the Sandoz Osteoporosis Education Program, an interactive Mac-based video developed by Erlich Multimedia of Park Ridge, N.J.
Ayers said that although both sets of students tested equally well at the end of the course, "When we gave those students the same test a year later, we found they remembered the computer-based portion much better than they did the lecture format."
Those findings are no surprise to Dr. Larry Mieczkowski, associate program director of internal medicine residency at the Kettering (Ohio) Medical Center. He's a firm believer in both the Mac and the software available as a diagnostic aid. "The Mac, with its decreased learning curve, will have to be seen as the platform for clinical information," said Mieczkowski, who has been teaching medical students since 1985. Mieczkowski said he wants Kettering to propagate more Macs throughout the hospital so diagnostic systems can be accessed practically by the bedside.
Cure for missed diagnoses
To provide that diagnostic information, Kettering is training its students on the use of Applied Informatics Inc.'s Iliad. The program provides diagnostic information and trains physicians to understand the value of tests and how those tests relate to a patient's history.
"Over the past 30 years, physicians have consistently missed diagnoses of pneumonia, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and other common diseases," Mieczkowski said. "Those statistics haven't changed. But the beauty of Iliad is it helps physicians consider diagnoses they may have forgotten or have never been taught."
When doctors and nurses can readily find potential diagnoses for a particular problem, it can lead to more objective patient care, Mieczkowski said. "We all have biases, influenced by the time of day, whether we've just seen a patient die of a heart attack or even if the patient is a man or a woman," he said. "Iliad helps us eliminate those biases."
Unfortunately, Iliad can take up to 15 minutes before it presents a list of possible diagnoses. And while that time is considered time well spent, it's also time unbilled. That, say those in private practice, is Iliad's greatest drawback.
"I'm so busy, I tend to use Iliad for only the most complicated patients I see," said Dr. Mark R. Johnson, doctor of internal medicine with the Salt Lake (City) Clinic. "I'd like to use it for more common ailments, but I just can't take the time filling out Iliad in addition to all the other forms I have to prepare."
While not a diagnostic tool, A.D.A.M. Software Inc.'s A.D.A.M. Entire Human Body can serve as a teaching aid, information repository or patient kiosk. The program uses a peel-away image of the body as the navigation metaphor to manage information overload. The company also sells add-on modules that cover specialized topics such as obstetrics-gynecology, orthopedics and podiatry.
"A.D.A.M. is a framework that's just crying for content," said Dr. Stephen Van Pelt of the Center for Sports Medicine in San Francisco's St. Francis Memorial Hospital. "You could click on the knee, for example, and see the medical library, or click on an anterior cruciate ligament and see what its structure and biochemistry are, or view clips of surgeries, or even read about the ailments of the surrounding muscles at the cellular level. The possibilities are almost endless."
Scan that
Certain specialties outside the halls of academia, including surgery, radiology and nuclear medicine, have also embraced the Mac for its help in interpreting ultrasound, CAT and MRI scans.
With video-capture boards from companies such as Precision Digital Images Corp. of Redmond, Wash., and software such as Evergreen Technologies Inc.'s MedVision Viewer and MedVision Modality Pak (for measurement and analysis), a Mac can sometimes do the job of the $1 million film-viewing consoles hospitals use. Evergreen's products can also let physicians do work on the road.
Dr. Jack Ziffer, director of nuclear medicine and positron emission tomography at Baptist Hospital of Miami, used to come to the hospital seven days a week at odd hours of the day and night. Now, using his PowerBook 180c and MedVision, he can do some of that work on the road. "I was in the Toronto airport business club when I called back to the hospital using my fax modem and AppleTalk Remote Access," Ziffer said. "I was able to view three difficult cardiac perfusion scans [using MedVision], annotate the images and fax back my impressions directly to the doctors."
At Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., surgeons have used the same concept, called telemedicine, to link themselves to operating rooms in Mogadishu, Somalia.
"These hospitals are fully staffed with physicians, but they were going into an area with resistant malaria, parasites we had never encountered before, no electricity and no phone system," said Dr. Edward Gomez, chief of vascular surgery, who designed the system. Gomez said he and his team had to develop a system that was portable, reliable and able to transmit high-resolution images along with the patient's medical history.
The components included a PowerBook 180, a 13-inch color monitor, a MagnaPhone system for satellite transmission and an Eastman-Kodak Co. DCS 200 digital camera. Claris Corp.'s FileMaker Pro was used to store relevant patient clinical information, Adobe Photoshop to enhance and manipulate the photographic images, and Storm Technology Inc.'s PicturePress JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) product for compressing the files. Physicians back home viewed the information on a Quadra 950.
"They are 8,000 miles and eight time zones away, and the system worked beyond our expectations," Gomez said. A similar system is now in place in Croatia that uses a PowerBook 180c.
Calling Dr. Newton
"One of the biggest limitations of various medical information systems has been the need to find a terminal, and the inconvenience of getting information in and out," said Lt. Col. Dr. Dean Calcagni, clinical director of the U.S. Army's ProMED Project at Fort Dietrich in Frederick, Md. "That's why we feel the portability and wire-less communications of [personal digital assistants] will be the next step in information handling."
The Army's ProMED Project is a one-year "proof of concept" study to explore use of Newton MessagePads for medical applications. All told, 95 Newtons will be tapping into an Apple-supplied wireless network, using applications developed by KPMG Peat Marwick. Late this month, the first prototypes of those applications - for lab results, pathology reports and writing prescriptions - go live.
Calcagni said he envisions a system in which Newton-toting physicians can review clinical notes from past patient visits, examine tests results and prescribe new tests. But such a system would demand huge, sophisticated databases of patient information that are accessible to the Newton. One example of the enormity of such an effort is the Department of Defense, which has signed a $2.5 billion contract with Science Applications International Corp. of McLean, Va., to create a central database on the millions of patients treated in the United States.
For now, the ProMED project will work with limited information on one Quadra server at each of its three test sites: Walter Reed; Wright-Patterson USAF Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio; and Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Each site will use the core medical application that Peat Marwick develops, as well as customized components. At Walter Reed, Gomez's staff will keep track of patients who have undergone surgery. At Brooke, physicians are exploring Newtons for primary care. And at Wright-Patterson, Dr. Jeffrey Roller, chief of obstetrics-gynecology, will distribute Newtons to doctors and nurses to monitor pre- and postnatal care and issue prescriptions.
"Our Newtons will be accessing the pharmacy and the lab, so we can requisition medication electronically," Roller said. "Newton will give us immediate feedback on the cost of what we are prescribing. And I'm convinced that getting cost information back quickly and intelligently will help us curb health-care costs," he said.
"I don't think I'm inflating the project when I say this is the vanguard of a new technology that will totally change the way physicians will do their business."
MacWEEK 02.07.94
ProductWatch Page 59
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Digital delivers object-oriented tools
By Stephen Howard
Digital Equipment Corp.'s fleet of announcements this week centers on its object-oriented, client-server strategy and tools. The non-Mac news included:
> Development tools. Digital ported its client-server Cobol tools, Distributed Application Program Management, to OpenVMS. Also, the company in May will ship a new DECadmire that generates Windows front ends for several databases. The company announced OSF/1 and SunOS versions of its Cohesionworx distributed, object-based programming systems. Versions for HP-UX will ship in March.
> Database and OLTP. Digital promised its Rdb relational database on OSF/1 in June, along with a Unix version of Reliable Transaction Router, its fault-tolerant middleware for on-line transaction processing (OLTP). In April, the company will ship an OSF/1 version of Accessworks and DB Integrator, its multidatabase middleware. Digital and IBM Corp. will port Customer Information and Control System (CICS) to OSF/1 by year-end.
> Mobile computing. With NCR Corp., Digital shipped new RoamAbout PCMCIA cards and stationary Access Points for 2-Mbps wireless LANs. The spread-spectrum radio products are compatible with NCR's WaveLAN. Digital also shipped its Mobile IP drivers, based on the Internet standard, which allow TCP/IP clients to move around a wired or wireless LAN and retain services.
> LAN management. The company announced Polycenter Manager for NetView, which brings IBM's NetView to the OSF/1-Alpha AXP platform. Digital also rolled out PathDoctor, which analyzes SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) data from routers to spot traffic problems.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
News Page 99
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Apple preps upgrades to PowerPC
By Rick LePage
Cupertino, Calif. - When Apple introduces its Power Macintosh lineup on March 14, it will also make available upgrades to help Mac owners make the leap to PowerPC. Apple will offer logic-board and 68040 processor direct slot card upgrades to the standard Power Mac and logic-board upgrades to the Power Mac AV configurations.
Depending on the model of Mac being upgraded, sources said users will end up with a system identical to one of the three Power Macs: the 6100/60, the 7100/66 or the 8100/80. Both the standard and AV logic-board upgrades will include 8 Mbytes of RAM and System 7.1.2 with AppleScript, PC Exchange and QuickTime. In addition, the upgraded Mac will have the same ports and audio and video support as the Power Mac it resembles.
The PDS-based upgrade reportedly will result in a Power Mac rated at twice the speed of the Mac in which it is installed. For example, when the card is installed in a Mac with a 33-MHz 68040, the resulting computer is equivalent to a 66-MHz Power Mac 7100/66. Software included with the card enables switching between the host 68040 or the card's PowerPC, but the change will require the user to restart. The same system software that comes with logic board upgrades is included with the PDS-based upgrade.
Apple was unavailable for comment.
CPU Logic Board upgrade Upgrade card
Quadra 900, 950 Yes
Quadra 840AV 8100/80, 8100/80AV
Quadra 800 8100/80, 8100/80AV Yes
Quadra 700 Yes
Quadra 660AV* 6100/60, 6100/60AV
Quadra 650* 7100/66, 7100/66AV Yes
Quadra 610* 6100/60, 6100/60AV Yes
IIvx, IIvi, Performa 600 7100/66, 7100/66AV
* Also applies to Centris versions of these machines.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
News Page 100
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mac the Knife: A measure of what sources said
All work and no play may be a good way to save for the sunset years, but even hard-working misers benefit from making time for a thorough and honest professional inventory. The Knife may be known for his single-minded dedication to revealing that which some try to keep secret until an arbitrary announcement date. But dedicated reporters, too, occasionally take a break from the unadulterated excitement of the workday to take an honest measure of their labors. And is not the Knife human?
PowerPC-based Macs are now even more imminent than they were the last time you read about them. This is fortunate for Apple because the specifications, reports of which have littered these pages for so long, have now been finalized. And it's fortunate for the Knife because these final specs indicate a very good hit rate on RISC reporting.
As they say in Washington, "Some mistakes were made." Apple has decided to name the RISC Macs "Power Macintosh" rather than PowerMac. Power Macintosh rolls so gently from the tongue, after all. The 7100/66 and the 8100/80 will ship with video RAM to support the video circuitry; 1 Mbyte and 2 Mbytes standard, respectively. Finally, the 256-Kbyte cache is standard only on the 8100, although it's an option on the 6100 and 7100.
Overall excellence
Now for some news more uplifting and life-enriching. The remainder of the Power Mac details revealed by the Knife in his weekly reports have proven accurate. But that's not to imply that everything we need or want to know has already been reported or that every marketing ploy has been properly ridiculed in print.
On the subject of interesting facts only recently revealed, consider the existence of Power Mac AV models. Each model of the March RISC trio will be available in an AV configuration.
Sources accurately insist that the Power Mac AV models will not be equipped with a DSP chip. That means those of us who rely on the current AV lineup for its support of Adobe Photoshop plug-ins (or maybe another of the handful of successful products similarly DSP-dependent) face uncertainty. If the developers of these products don't have Power Mac versions in the pipeline, both they and their customers are likely to be displeased.
New hole in the hedge
Last week when Apple announced the Power Mac upgrades for all-in-one LCs and the Performas, the suspicious among us may have questioned its seeming inability to decide whether the upgrade would use the first-generation PowerPC 601 chip or the newer 603. Because the 603 has the twin virtues of lower manufacturing costs and lower power consumption, it seemed to many as the logical choice for upgrades to these entry-level Macs, many of which have rather anemic power supplies. The smart money is firmly behind the 603.
In other 603 news, sources say Apple has a Power Mac logic board upgrade path for the upcoming '040-based Duos. Many of these same sources speculate that this logic board will fit nicely in the Duo 270c, too.
New to the family
You may very well have been asking yourself what companies, other than DayStar Digital, are concealing plans to make money on the looming PowerPC upgrade board fad. The Knife's list of likely players includes Radius, a stranger to none of us.
While we're on the subject, how's your inventory of promotional items? If your stash has a hole where the MacWEEK mug goes, call the Knife at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3650, Internet (mac_the_knife@macweek.ziff.com), AppleLink (MacWEEK) or CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac. If your tip is hot, there could be something in it. That's how you earn a MacWEEK mug.
MacWEEK 02.07.94
Mac the Knife Page 102
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
