Cupertino, Calif. -- Apple is reportedly set to spin out its newly formed eWorld on-line service, with a long-distance carrier most likely to be the minority-interest holder.
According to sources, the deal will be finalized in June, and the on-line services industry is abuzz with speculation that Sprint International Inc. of Reston, Va., will become Apple's business partner. Sprint owns SprintNet, the X.25 network that is used to access eWorld.
One source close to the negotiations said, "Apple has to work with a long-distance carrier to make the venture reasonably profitable" because of eWorld's tight profit margins.
Apple said it anticipates the on-line service will turn a profit quickly once it goes live later this spring. eWorld currently has several thousand beta testers.
eWorld is already a distinct business unit within the company. Both NewtonMail and eWorld are run on a Stratus Computer Inc. host at Apple's data center in Napa, Calif.
Earlier this year, Peter Friedman, Apple's director of on-line services, said that strong financial returns are expected for eWorld over the next couple of years, generating several hundred million dollars in revenues for Apple by 1996.
Not everyone is impressed with Apple's attempts at becoming an on-line service provider, however.
"[Apple] has been trying to spin it out for six months now, but there is no particular value to the proposition," said David Coursey, editor of the San Mateo, Calif.-based P.C. Letter. "Apple's thinking is that by attaching [its] name to it, people would buy it."
Some industry analysts saw a downside to Apple choosing Sprint as its partner.
"America Online [Inc.] has blamed lots of its current problems on Sprint," said Eric Arnum, editor of the New York-based Electronic Mail & Micro Systems newsletter. "Sprint has not expanded its network to keep up with its growth."
Apple recently suffered a weak second quarter and is looking for partners to help develop its emerging technologies. Observers also say the spinoff is part of Apple Chief Financial Officer Joseph Graziano's re-examination of the Personal Information Electronics Division.
Apple and Sprint declined to comment on the reports.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Industry betting on ATM at Interop show
By Nathalie Welch
Las Vegas -- ATM, or Asynchronous Transfer Mode, was the word heard in the aisles of NetWorld+Interop 94 here last week, but the Mac spoils at the show were a little more down to earth.
The estimated 65,000 attendees were bombarded at every turn with information on what ATM holds in store for the future of LANs and WANs. And InteropNet, billed as the first multivendor, multiprotocol ATM backbone, put some of the technology's promise on display. The show also included the ATM Solutions Showcase, a well-attended demonstration of wares from 30 hardware and software vendors.
"At shows such as this one you get vendors who are trying to sell their vision of the future," said Zyg Furmaniuk, director of marketing at ON Technology Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. "I don't know how we went from FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) to ATM in the blink of an eye."
Furmaniuk said that getting Ethernet LANs running smoothly was still a challenge at many companies, and ATM seemed to be several years away from general availability.
Networking products and services of more-immediate interest to Mac managers included:
> Internet. Cerebus Corp. of Dallas demonstrated Internet Atlas, its graphical interface for E-mail, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Gopher and Usenet news groups. The program is a front end built on top of a VT100 dial-up session. Developed with Novell Inc.'s Visual AppBuilder, Internet Atlas will ship for Macs and Windows this summer.
> TCP/IP. Herndon, Va.-based InterCon Systems Corp. gave Mac users a look at InterPrint Server, software that lets TCP/IP-based workstations access PostScript printers on AppleTalk. The bidirectional package also lets Macs take advantage of PostScript-compatible TCP/IP printers. InterPrint Server is bundled with InterPrint 1.1 for Macintosh, available now for prices starting at $195 for a single user.
> MIME. StarNine Technologies Inc. of Berkeley, Calif., demonstrated an upgrade to its SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) gateway that links various E-mail packages to Unix and Internet mail.
Mail*Link SMTP 3.0 offers support for MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) encoding and decoding; MacBinary encoding; and Apple's Thread Manager, which lets the gateway process messages simultaneously from different SMTP hosts. The upgrade is due to ship in the second quarter with prices starting at $195.
> 5250. Andrew Corp., based in Bothell, Wash., announced its intention to develop new 5250 terminal-emulator and file transfer software for Macs accessing Windows NT servers. Pricing and availability were not yet set. The company also said that its existing 680x0-based software runs twice as fast on Power Macs because parts of the Mac operating system are native RISC code.
> FDDI on NetWare. Mac FDDI vendor Team Advanced Systems Associates of San Diego announced an NLM (NetWare Loadable Module) that speeds file transfers via the company's FiberTalk Express protocols. The $995 NLM allows 2-Mbyte-per-second rates from Mac to server over FDDI, the company said.
> Frame Relay. Advanced Computer Communications Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., demonstrated Release 7.2 of its WAN compression technology. Available now, the software runs on the company's bridge-routers, which link AppleTalk LANs to Frame Relay, X.25 and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Networks). Customers with maintenance contracts will receive free upgrades.
Off the show floor, Psiber Data Systems Inc. of La Mesa, Calif., demonstrated a prototype of its "noninvasive" LAN-traffic monitor for Ethernet and LocalTalk. The pocket-size device does not plug into the network; instead, it senses emissions from the wire to read the signals. The box is due to ship this fall; pricing has not been set.
Mac attendees were scouring the show floor for products that would enable fuller participation in cross-platform networks.
"I am looking for tools, such as news readers, that let me access the TCP/IP environment better from my Mac," said David J. Young, principal engineer at Honeywell Inc.'s Air Transportation Systems Division in Phoenix. Young dials into his all-Unix corporate network from home several times a week. "Unix-to-Mac links are definitely getting better, and Apple has an edge over PCs in that area due to MacTCP. It really has a nice architecture for the networking stuff," he said.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Dealers grapple with channel evolution
By Jon Swartz
Charles Darwin called it natural selection. Apple dealers -- contending with a changing retail market of plummeting prices, razor-thin margins, and expanding superstores and mail-order businesses -- are calling it the fight of their lives.
Several longtime Apple dealers say they have been forced into early retirement. Others have sold the businesses they founded more than a decade ago. And others are struggling to change with the times.
Apple-only dealers, which currently represent about one-third of the 6,000 outlets that carry Apple products, "have become dinosaurs," said John Ullis, who last year sold his dealership, Quantum Computers. "Some adapted; others became extinct." Ullis now owns Education Technology Inc. of Tacoma, Wash., one of 18 Apple Education Sales Consultants nationwide.
"The industry just matured," said Jim Speerschneider, co-owner of Milwaukee-based North Shore Computers, which went out of business this year. "Every major PC maker has dropped its prices to gain market share, and mom-and-pop dealers got trampled in the process. It happens to every industry. I don't blame Apple for that."
If anyone is making money in the channel, industry observers said, it is the superstores and mail-order catalog specialists that deal in volume sales. "They're willing to sacrifice sales to gain market share," said Howard Gelpey, owner of Computers Etc., a Peabody, Mass.-based dealer that is shutting down this month after 11 years. "I can't afford that." In the past 18 months, Gelpey said, Price/Costco, Staples, Sears, Circuit City and Computer City outlets have sprouted in the vicinity of his store.
In fact, sales have never been better for superstores. CompUSA Inc. of Dallas is predicting record sales of $2 billion in 1994 and already has added 28 sites to its 74-store chain this year. "The customer chooses where to go, and they are coming to our stores," said CompUSA CEO James Halpin.
Meanwhile, Apple has authorized mail-order catalog companies such as Mac Mall of Torrance, Calif., Elek-Tek Inc. of Skokie, Ill., and Oak Brook Computers of Oak Brook, Ill., to carry its entire product line (see MacWEEK, April 18, Page 30). According to Apple, they mark the first of many to be signed up.
"While we believe there will always be a place for traditional resellers, Apple recognizes that the channel is evolving as customer shopping preferences evolve," an Apple USA spokeswoman said. "Vendors must remain customer-driven yet continue to support the needs of the reseller channel." Apple this year began authorizing qualified resellers to sell its products through mail-order catalogs (see MacWEEK, Jan. 24, Page 3).
According to analysts, superstores are invading metropolitan areas ruled by dealers in the 1980s. "Superstores have blanketed every major city and are kicking dealers' butts," said Laura Curran, director of research at Merrin Information Services Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. "By the same token, dealers are bitching. They can't expect to still make a profit without serving a niche in the market."
However, all isn't lost for dealers who have long relied on Apple sales, Curran insisted. Some have even flourished as Apple, Compaq Computer Corp. and others continue to slash personal computer prices, she said.
MicroAge Inc., recognizing the growing phenomenon of specialized sales in the retail market, has created an organizational structure in which its Tempe, Ariz., headquarters acts as a distribution center for its franchises, which provide sales, technical support and multiple brand names to corporate clients in their immediate areas.
The arrangement allows MicroAge stores, such as the one Rick Weir manages in Ann Arbor, Mich., to offer on-site service to local divisions of major corporations. "We have no interest in the retail business," he said. "What we offer is a personal touch the superstores -- and certainly the mail-order guys -- can't."
Other resellers, such as ComputerWare, are diversifying. According to sources, the Palo Alto-based chain is among the companies about to be authorized by Apple to offer Macs and other products via a mail-order catalog. ComputerWare officials declined to comment.
Regardless of what they do, dealers are faced with the uncertainty of a rapidly changing channel.
"This is the hardest transition we've ever faced," said Bob Zellin, product manager at Di-No Computers Inc., a Pasadena, Calif.-based reseller of Apple products since the days of the Apple II. "We're just trying to hang on and survive."
David Morgenstern contributed to this story.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Developers laud efforts to improve tools
By Robert Hess
Programmers headed to San Jose, Calif., for next week's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference are expressing a degree of confidence in vendors of Mac development tools.
How quickly things change. Just last year, the mainstream developer market was controlled by two large players: Apple, which seemed interested in backing out, and Symantec Corp., whose products many seemed unwilling to use.
Apple's Macintosh Programmer's Workshop and Symantec's Think C and C++ environments have long cornered most of the development market. Developers have regarded MPW as comprehensive and powerful but terribly slow, and they characterized Think as MPW's less able but considerably more nimble competitor.
"I originally chose MPW because it has historically been the most consistently supported environment for MacApp," said Brian Arnold, director of software development for Lumina Decision System Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. "[MPW is] more flexible than any other development environment. And OpenDoc, along with a new version of MacApp to support it, may increase my interest in MPW."
MPW runs only in emulation on Power Macs. However, Apple issued prerelease native versions of pieces of MPW code on its latest developer CD-ROM.
Besides users of Apple's compilers, developers who use compilers that work within MPW -- such as Symantec's C++, Metrowerks Inc.'s C and C++, and Language Systems Corp.'s Object Pascal -- also said they look forward to the Power Mac version of MPW.
Some developers had been worried that Apple and Symantec's collaboration on a forthcoming development environment, code-named Rainbow, would prompt both companies to abandon their current products. By releasing pieces of MPW in native code, developers say, Apple has sent an important signal of its continued dedication to the product.
Symantec has just released updates to its C and C++ compilers. These upgrades add new functions but -- more importantly, developers say -- fix the plethora of bugs in previous releases. The jury is out on the new version, but most developers say it is an improvement.
Developers remain highly critical of Symantec's support organization, however. They say the company's developer support is a far cry from the accurate, helpful support they received from the original vendors of products now owned by Symantec.
According to one developer, Symantec's responses are "late in coming, consistently rude and arrogant, always unhelpful, and sometimes just plain wrong.
"Symantec has virtually stopped responding to Internet queries," he said. "I may forgive Symantec for disguising an alpha product as a final release, but I will never forgive it for its arrogant and useless technical support.
"I particularly dislike its apparent favoritism toward large corporate developers and scorning of small developers," he said.
Meanwhile, Metrowerks has taken the market by storm with its CodeWarrior environment. Although still in its infancy, the product has won converts throughout the industry, reportedly even within Apple's and Symantec's nondeveloper product divisions.
According to Howard Berkey, software engineer with Premenos Corp. of Concord, Calif., "Metrowerks is the most promising C++ development environment available today for the Mac. It is still a little rough, and it lacks some of the bells and whistles of tools like Symantec's C++, but it is more stable in prerelease than Symantec is to this day."
Metrowerks has introduced an aggressive system of software releases. The company ships updates three times per year, and buyers receive two free updates. The company has also taken an active role in the on-line world, and developers say Metrowerks' willingness to admit to, and repair, bugs is refreshing.
Language Systems will enter the field this month with an early version of its Object Pascal compiler for use with MPW. Although Apple points to Language Systems when Pascal developers lament the industry's transition to C and C++, developers of all stripes still speak of Symantec's Think Pascal as the ideal Mac development system. However, Symantec has said it will not update that product except to ensure 680x0 compatibility, and its users do not relish the transition to MPW.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Adobe draws on PowerPC speed in upgrade
Illustrator 5.5 adds automatic trapping
By Ben Long
Adobe Illustrator will move into the PowerPC era next month when Adobe Systems Inc. ships Version 5.5, a native-mode port that promises substantial speed improvements over previous versions, as well as some much-needed features missing in previous versions.
We tested a prerelease version of the $595 program on a Power Mac 6100/60 to get a sense of the speed increase. Running native, our beta copy was consistently two to three times faster at redrawing the screen in Preview mode than its 680x0-based counterpart. Calculation-intensive operations, such as blends, showed a noticeable speedup. Unfortunately, the program's Pathfinder filters will not be in native PowerPC code when the upgrade ships. Consequently, operations with those filters were slower on our Power Mac than on our 68040-based Quadra 800.
The native-mode acceleration gives the application a peppier feel. Faster screen redraw and more-fluid tools make for a better environment in which to work.
But Adobe has done much more than simply port its existing code to the PowerPC chip. Illustrator 5.5 has several new features and a few new plug-in filters.
The new version supports Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), allowing users to open any Adobe Acrobat file and perform simple editing tasks (the package will include copies of Acrobat Distiller and Exchange). Text corrections, copy and paste operations, and full editing of vector-based artwork are all possible in Illustrator 5.5. The inclusion of Distiller also means Illustrator users will be able to produce their own PDF files.
A new Pathfinder Trap filter makes it simple to create traps automatically for process and custom colors, including options for tints and compensation for paper stretch.
Selecting the objects to be trapped and then choosing the Trap filter brings up a dialog box that allows you to select the thickness of the trap, tint reduction and several other options. Illustrator will automatically determine the lighter of the two colors and create the specified amount of overprinting. Though the Trap filter was designed for simple images (it has no support for placed objects, patterns, fills or strokes), it does provide an effective solution for basic trapping problems.
Illustrator's text-layout capabilities have been expanded to include several new text filters and a Tab palette. The tab controls place a ruler palette above your current text selection and allow for the placement of left, center, right and decimal tabs. When setting a tab, a vertical line extends downward through the text block, providing good visual feedback for placing tabs in rotated text.
Other new text filters include a well-designed spelling checker and filters that allow users to search and replace fonts, convert punctuation and ligatures, and change case.
The new Rows and Columns filter makes multicolumn, snaking layouts a snap. With the filter, users can define the number of columns and rows, the gutter specifications, and the direction of text flow.
Adobe has aggressively priced its upgrade. Illustrator 5 owners can upgrade to Version 5.5 for $99. That price includes both the Power Mac and 680x0-based versions; Adobe Acrobat; and the deluxe-edition CD-ROM, which includes QuickTime tutorials, documentation and 180 Type 1 fonts representing more than 40 font families. Users of earlier versions of Illustrator can upgrade for $149.
The PowerPC acceleration alone is worth the cost of the upgrade, but Adobe has sweetened the deal considerably with well-implemented new features that will appeal to any Illustrator user still unsure about the Power Macs.
Adobe Systems Inc. is at 1585 Charleston Road, P.O. Box 7900, Mountain View, Calif. 94039-7900. Phone (415) 961-4400 or (800) 447-3577; fax (415) 961-3769.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Intel, Motorola square off in price war
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
Austin, Texas -- Even as Intel Corp. plans further price cuts on its Pentium processors, Motorola Inc. last week continued to apply pressure by unveiling aggressive pricing for its PowerPC 603 chip.
The 66-MHz PowerPC 603 processor will cost $160 each in quantities of 20,000, while the 80-MHz version will be $199. Apple, Motorola's biggest chip buyer, will probably pay less than $100 for each chip, sources said. Apple has said it will use the PowerPC 603 chip in RISC versions of its PowerBook computers.
"That's down around [33-MHz 486] pricing," said Linley Gwennap, editor of Sebastopol, Calif.-based Microprocessor Report. "That's not even close to Pentium, not even close to a high-end 486. [Motorola is] pricing it against the low end of the 486 line and offering at least twice the performance."
Motorola's RISC Microprocessor Division, based here, said it is offering the PowerPC 603 chip in sample quantities and will begin volume production during the third quarter.
The PowerPC 603 offers a 3.3-volt design and three modes of saving power: sleep, doze and nap. It is based on 0.5-micron technology, Motorola said.
Meanwhile, Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., will reportedly drop the prices of its Pentium chips during the second half of the year, with entry-level chips starting at less than $400.
"We've heard Intel is going to offer some very aggressive pricing," Gwennap said. "Pentium prices are falling a lot more rapidly than people expected. What we're seeing is the increased competition from companies such as [Advanced Micro Devices Inc.] and Cyrix [Corp.] as well as the PowerPC.
"Certainly, Motorola is trying to position the PowerPC against the Intel product line; [Motorola's] push has been to offer twice the performance at the same price."
MacWEEK 05.09.94
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: PowerCard brings PCMCIA to Macs
By David Morgenstern
Bothell, Wash. -- Software Architects Inc. this week announced PowerCard, signaling the arrival of PCMCIA technology on the Mac. The $495 device, which is expected to ship next month, will reportedly let Mac users mount PCMCIA cards on the desktop.
PowerCard is a card reader-writer that supports flash memory and static RAM Type II cards as well as rotating-memory Type III and 14.2mm cards, sometimes called Type IV or oversize. It has a SCSI-2 interface and a footprint of 6.5 inches by 7.78 inches. Flash cards have a sustained data transfer rate of 5.5 Mbytes per second, the company said.
The device can accommodate a single card that is automatically mounted on the desktop. The reader-writer supports multiple Macintosh and DOS partitions on a single card; the partitions appear as separate volumes. The PowerCard software is SCSI Manager 4.3-compatible, and it can create and test Mac or DOS partitions and format card drives, according to Software Architects.
The reader-writer is compatible with 1.8-inch drives from Conner Peripherals Inc., Integral Peripherals Inc. and Maxtor Corp., Software Architects said. It also supports flash-memory cards from Verbatim Corp. and SRAM cards from Sony Corp. and Verbatim.
The forthcoming PowerBook 520 and 540 Blackbird models reportedly will admit an Apple-built PCMCIA card cage. Software Architects declined to comment on compatibility with unannounced Apple products.
Software Architects Inc. is at 19102 North Creek Parkway, Suite 101, Bothell, Wash. 98011. Phone (206) 487-0122; fax (206) 487-0467.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
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: Orange Micro puts 100-MHz 486 on board
By Robert Hess
Anaheim, Calif. -- Orange Micro Inc. has released a new series of NuBus-based 486 coprocessor boards for the Mac. Featuring processors as powerful as 100 MHz, the OrangePC Series 200 cards offer considerable speed improvements over previous offerings.
The OrangePC Series 200 comprises the $779 Model 210, which runs on a 486 SX33 chip; the $1,171 Model 250, which includes a 486 DX3 processor; and $1,661 and $1,996 versions of the Model 290, which come with a 66-MHz 486 DX2 and 100-MHz 486 DX4, respectively.
All models offer VGA graphics, and the 250 and 290 support Super VGA. The 250 and 290 also come with a PCMCIA-interface slot accessible from the back of the Mac instead of the ISA bus available in earlier Orange Micro cards. The Model 290 also includes a 128-Kbyte secondary cache for faster performance.
Orange Micro's cards work equally well in 680x0- or PowerPC-based Macs, according to the company, and offer four to seven times the performance of Insignia Solutions Inc.'s SoftWindows.
Memory for the coprocessor cards may be purchased separately, Orange Micro said.
Orange Micro Inc. is at 1400 N. Lakeview Ave., Anaheim, Calif. 92807. Phone (714) 779-2772; fax (714) 779-9332.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
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: Hi Resolution gets lock on Power Mac
By David Morgenstern and Robert Hess
Newbury, Mass. -- Hi Resolution Inc. last month added to its family of open-access computing management utilities. The new releases included several native Power Mac applications.
> MacPrefect 2.3.2 is an application and extension package designed to control the use of Macs in an open setting, such as a computer laboratory, service bureau or training center. Unlike some other security programs, MacPrefect does not alter file and folder names or present the user with a non-Mac interface.
"This is a real improvement over other security programs we've tried," said Jeshua Lacock, supervisor of the Computer Education Center at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. "I don't find files saved everywhere or have to clean up the drive after people who think they are experts."
The program uses a DiskKey extension; the hard drive is write-protected if the extension is not loaded. The program can inhibit System 7's Shift-key extension-disable feature. The company said Version 3.0, due this fall, will implement read and write protection.
MacPrefect can restrict users from installing or launching unauthorized applications and renaming volumes or hard drives. It can control copying by file type and lock users' access to control panels.
The administrator can establish a base configuration for a Mac and prevent users from modifying that structure by moving or renaming files, for example.
MacPrefect's educational price is $49 per user for one to four users; $39 for five to 24 users; $30 for 25 to 49 users; and $27 to $20 for 50 to 499 users. Corporate pricing is available.
> MacPrefect Remote consists of an administration program and a client extension that let site managers control special MacPrefect settings over a network. For example, the software lets administrators turn off MacPrefect on machines when software installations are to be performed. MacPrefect Remote sells for half the price of MacPrefect at any price level.
> MacVisa limits use of a Mac to specific groups of users at particular times of day. MacVisa is $395, plus $19.95 per client.
> Mac=Back provides simple day-to-day backups, according to the company. It uses the Finder's Label feature to back up individual files, the contents of marked folders and files created by marked applications. Pricing for Mac=Back starts at $49.
Mac=Back, MacPrefect Remote and MacVisa all run on 680x0-based Macs, but also include PowerPC code for use with Power Macs.
Hi Resolution Inc. is at The Carriage House, 28 Green St., Newbury, Mass. 01951. Phone (508) 463-6956 or (800) 455-0888; fax (508) 462-9198.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
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: Broderbund-Electronic Arts merger off
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
San Mateo, Calif. -- The wedding bells stopped ringing last week as multimedia companies Broderbund Software Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. called off their proposed merger.
The two companies announced in February that Electronic Arts, based here, would trade about 15.4 million shares of its stock for all of Broderbund's stock. The companies estimated the deal, which they expected to be completed by the end of this month, to be worth nearly $400 million.
In explaining last week's about-face, the two companies said that Broderbund, based in Novato, Calif., had re-evaluated the deal based on current stock prices and decided that the proposed agreement no longer reflected "the relative values of the two companies." Electronic Arts' stock has fallen in the months since the merger was announced.
Broderbund and Electronic Arts were unable to agree on a revised merger plan. Instead, Broderbund will pay Electronic Arts $10 million to terminate the agreement.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
News Page 88
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Commodore hits end of line
By Jon Swartz
West Chester, Pa. -- Commodore International Ltd., a pioneer in the personal computer industry and one-time heir apparent to the Apple throne, quietly went out of business last month.
In a prepared statement, the company, based here, said it plans to transfer its assets to unidentified trustees "for the benefit of its creditors" and has placed its major subsidiary, Philadelphia-based Commodore Electronics Ltd., into voluntary liquidation.
The company, whose graphics-rich Amiga computer drew raves from reviewers and attracted legions of loyal users, topped $900 million in sales in 1992 and once employed 2,000.
But a prolonged recession in Europe, where Commodore did 80 percent of its business, and PC price wars among the major hardware manufacturers took their toll. As a result, the company's net worth turned negative last summer, according to financial analysts.
"Commodore was particularly hard hit by the recession in Germany, its largest PC market," said Ronald Opel, senior analyst at Fechtor, Detwiler, an investment bank based in Boston. "It couldn't find another market to pick up the slack, and never recovered."
Commodore officials could not be reached for comment.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
News Page 88
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: SoftArc tapped for Internet servers
Apple aims bundles at K-12 market
By Nathalie Welch
Cupertino, Calif. -- Apple this spring will reportedly deliver Internet-access and E-mail server bundles of 68040 CPUs loaded with messaging software from SoftArc Inc.
Called Apple Communication Servers, the bundles will be aimed at the K-12 market and will be unveiled at the National Education Computing Conference in Boston next month, sources said. The Comm Servers will be built around Apple Workgroup Server (AWS) 60 or 80 models equipped with FirstClass 2.5 from SoftArc of Scarborough, Ontario, as well as TelePort modems from Mountain View, Calif.-based Global Village Communication Inc.
Sources said a 25-MHz AWS 60 with FirstClass server software and a 100-network-user license will be priced at $2,495. The AWS 60 with 8 Mbytes of RAM, a 230-Mbyte hard drive and AppleShare 4 is regularly priced at $2,699; a FirstClass license for 100 network users is normally $2,495 by itself. Apple and SoftArc both offer deep education discounts.
Configurations with 250-user licenses will also be available, sources said, and later Comm Servers might be built around the Unix-based AWS 95. Apple also may target higher-education and corporate sites if the current package for school districts is successful, sources said.
According to sources, Apple will promote the packages as "Internet servers" and will include a FirstClass-to-Internet gateway supporting Usenet news groups and E-mail. Apple designed the servers as turnkey systems and will rely on service partner Eastman Kodak Co. of Rochester, N.Y., to install the CPUs and connect them to the Internet via high-speed T1 and fractional T1 digital phone lines.
Apple reportedly chose FirstClass over its own system-level messaging technology, PowerTalk and PowerShare, and more-popular Mac E-mail packages because FirstClass supports more low-end Macs, Windows clients and customizable bulletin board capabilities.
Initially developed for the education market in the early 1990s, FirstClass has made inroads with corporations, service bureaus, government offices and hobbyist BBSes. SoftArc claims 860,000 installed E-mail boxes.
The software has built-in E-mail, conferencing and live chat for Macs and Windows clients as well as command-line users. SoftArc sells gateways to SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), Unix to Unix Copy Program, Message Handling Service, SQL and Data Access Language databases, as well as fax. Third-party gateways are also available.
Version 2.5, which SoftArc said was released as an upgrade in March and will ship to new customers later this month, adds many features, including directory synchronization among multiple servers.
"[SoftArc's] Internet gateway implementation is far superior to any other Internet gateway out there," said Stephen Hull, technical consultant for the Together Foundation in Burlington, Va., an electronic information service for nonprofit and environmental organizations. Hull said he spent more than a year evaluating all available Mac E-mail packages before he chose FirstClass.
SoftArc declined to comment on the purported deal. "We have had discussions with Apple and are very encouraged," said Dallas Kachan, SoftArc's manager of sales and marketing.
Apple declined to comment.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Gateways Page 12
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: Claris trumpets FileMaker Pro server
By Matthew Rothenberg
Santa Clara, Calif. -- Claris Corp. this week unveiled its high-end server version of FileMaker Pro and a runtime engine for Mac and Windows database developers.
FileMaker Pro Server, priced at $1,499, is slated to ship in July for AppleTalk networks. Claris said it will offer a fat binary containing both 680x0 and native Power Mac code. The company promised that it would deliver an NLM (NetWare Loadable Module) version for Microsoft Windows users on IPX LANs by year-end.
According to Claris, the software will support up to 100 Mac and Windows clients running versions 2.0 or 2.1 of the company's flat-file database. Currently, FileMaker Pro is limited to 25 concurrent users.
FileMaker Pro Server will ship with a minor upgrade to the normal database, Version 2.1v3, which lets FileMaker Pro users access the server easily.
The company said the server package is a new version of the FileMaker Pro engine and lacks an interface for creating or modifying databases. According to Claris, FileMaker Pro Server offers speed gains of up to 100 percent when performing some network-intensive functions centrally, such as indexing, that previously had been handled by clients. The server also takes advantage of newer Macs' asynchronous I/O capabilities and uses multithreading to speed execution of multiple tasks, Claris said.
FileMaker Pro Server includes database-administration features that let administrators track network use and set user access from the server or any networked Mac.
In other news, Claris announced the FileMaker Pro Solutions Development Kit, a cross-platform, runtime version of FileMaker Pro slated to ship in July. The FileMaker Pro kit will be $499 to members of the Claris Solutions Alliance program. Membership to the program costs $249 per year. The kit will also be available to qualified corporate sites, Claris said.
The FileMaker Pro Solutions Development Kit, which will come on CD-ROM, lets developers bind one or more FileMaker Pro files to a 400-Kbyte Mac or Windows engine. Runtime clients can be used to access FileMaker Pro Server databases, Claris said.
End users of the runtime version will not be able to modify database structures, but all runtime databases can be opened by FileMaker Pro 2, the company said.
Claris Corp. is at 5201 Patrick Henry Drive, Box 58168, Santa Clara, Calif. 95052-8168. Phone (408) 727-8227; fax (408) 987-3932.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Gateways Page 12
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: Picking an Internet access provider
By Jonathan A. Oski
When building on-ramps to the information fast track from commercial enterprises, managers must make many choices: selecting a network access provider, determining bandwidth requirements, managing IP addresses and establishing rules for would-be infonauts.
Many of these considerations hinge on the choice of an access provider. Depending on your location, you could have one option, or you might have 10 or more providers to choose from.
Managers cite reliability and cost as key factors in choosing an access provider. "Reliability would come first for a large company," said Kjeld Hvatum, network administrator at Draper Laboratory Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. "If there's a problem, it needs to be fixed fast, night or day."
Daniel Kohn, CEO of The NetMarket Company Inc. in Nashua, N.H., said, "Cost was the most important issue to us when finding a network access provider."
Because much of what happens on the Internet is out of an access provider's control, few providers are willing to guarantee a level of service beyond the availability of their own network services and the reliability of the equipment they provide. Once you're connected, you're pretty much on your own.
"Reliability is important to us, but in most cases you have to make an assessment based on a vendor's reputation, as few, if any, will contractually commit to guaranteed service levels," Kohn said.
Cost of doing business
Depending on your bandwidth requirements and the distance between your location and the access provider's nearest point of presence, monthly costs can range from less than $40 to more than $1,000. "I found that access-line cost was a big factor," said Dave Dorosz, communications systems engineer at the Philips Lab at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Mass. "This precludes getting a provider that is far away, as the access-line cost would be unreasonable. The only exception to this would be if you needed a line speed that was not offered by the closest provider."
Bandwidth requirements depend on how you intend to use your Internet connection. If you plan to use your connection as a way to exchange E-mail -- that is, as an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) gateway -- your bandwidth requirements may be small enough to use a 14.4-Kbps transient link to your provider. If, however, you plan to get news feeds, transmit large files or use an Internet-access tool such as Mosaic, your bandwidth requirements are apt to be considerably higher.
Consider bandwidth scalability when you select a provider. An access provider should support a flexible array of line speeds so you can increase your bandwidth as necessary. "One of the big attractions of [our provider] is its support for a full spectrum of bandwidth, ranging from 9.6-Kbps dial-up to full T1," NetMarket's Kohn said.
Robert D. Worsham, manager of computer resources at Atmospheric & Environmental Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., recently quintupled his bandwidth from 56 to 256 Kbps after analyzing his current usage and projected needs. Worsham said his company's provider, NEARnet, also of Cambridge, "provides weekly plots of our usage so we can better determine the bandwidth we need."
Routing to the infobahn
Any interface to the access provider generally consists of a router -- such as those offered by Cisco Systems Inc., Telebit Corp. or Wellfleet Communications Inc. -- that sits on your network and connects to the provider via a leased line or dial-up circuit. Many vendors will provide the router as part of your service agreement; the fee is part of your start-up or installation costs.
Since AppleTalk is not generally spoken on the Internet, in most cases you need an IP gateway, such as Cayman Systems Inc.'s GatorBox or Shiva Corp.'s FastPath, unless AppleTalk packets are encapsulated into TCP/IP packets, as in the case of AppleTalk Update-based Routing Protocol (AURP). If your Macs are on anything other than an Ethernet network, you will need such a gateway to take your MacTCP packets and transmit them as TCP/IP.
While TCP/IP is becoming a more common transmission protocol on many networks, administration and configuration are not trivial issues. Managing an IP network requires a specific set of skills. "To ensure the integrity of your network, you need someone with strong IP networking skills," Kohn said. "It is not technology that can be quickly learned, so you can't assume that you can have one of your [IBM Systems Network Architecture] technicians fill in as an IP network manager without substantial training."
Some sites that, for security or other reasons, never envisioned a connection to the Internet have created private network numbering schemes. When they connect to the Internet, none of their private network numbers are valid. Draper Labs' Hvatum said: "Not getting real IP numbers [from Network Resources Inc. in Herndon, Va.] at the start is usually very foolish. It costs virtually nothing to obtain real IP numbers, and the cost of conversion can be in the millions of dollars for a large company."
In some cases, you can rely on your network access provider for expertise in IP networking topics. NEARnet was "a good choice for us, as it has a knowledgeable staff. If we didn't have [NEARnet], we'd probably have had to spend money on a network consultant," Worsham said.
Speed limits
The Internet offers an array of services that can easily boggle the minds of most end users. Before any ribbon-cutting takes place for an Internet on-ramp, managers need to set policies and limits on uses of the network, educating users about its pitfalls without discouraging research. Letting users run amok on the network can easily eat up all the available bandwidth.
On the other hand, exploring the Internet can benefit your organization; it's the reason to have a connection in the first place. "We recently pulled down three sections of the California Corporations Code from [the Internet], which were needed to interpret the bylaws of my company," said John Gilmore, chairman of Cygnus Support in San Francisco.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Gateways Page 12
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: How far can you drop a drive?
Vendors bemoan lack of shock standards
By David Morgenstern
Storage vendors tout the ability of their products to take a beating as mobile users stray from the safe and secure environment of the desktop. But there is little agreement in the industry over shock-related standards, and users may not understand disparities in vendor claims.
"We need the hard drive associations to back a [testing] standard with some muscle," said Hong Liu, president of Quanta Laboratories of Santa Clara, Calif. "One company drops the drives on carpet and another on concrete. Yet another will hit [the drive] with a hammer. It's very unscientific and inaccurate."
Rick Ralston, director of product development at APS Technologies Inc. in Kansas City, Mo., said: "The 3.5-inch drive is designed to sit on the desktop, and we've found that 97 percent of all 3.5-inch mechanism failures are controller-board failures. This is an electrical problem, not a mechanical one. But 10 percent of failed 2.5-inch drives (such as those used in PowerBooks) are head- and disk-assembly-related. Dropping would be the most compelling argument for these problems."
PowerBooks, so far, have used 2.5-inch hard drives for primary storage, but the PowerBook 520 and 540 models will reportedly contain a processor direct slot expansion bus that will admit a PCMCIA card cage. The module will support two Type I or Type II cards, or a single Type III card.
With these new PowerBooks, users will have a wider range of storage options. Solid-state Type I flash storage cards are available with capacities up to 20 Mbytes, and 105-Mbyte Type III drives are currently shipping. The Type I cards are engineered for extra wear and tear but are hardly immune to damage.
When a storage device drops to the desk or floor, the impact generates shock. Manufacturers express the ability of products to tolerate shock with a G-force rating. However, a simple rating does not measure the duration of the shock or the total energy involved.
Drive manufacturers have different strategies to deal with shock. Integral Peripherals Inc. parks the heads of its drives in a space past the outer edge of the disk. In March, it announced that its Viper line could withstand 750 G's. Maxtor Corp. points to its fluid, spindle-bearing designs and said its MobileMax can tolerate 600 G's.
"There's a lot of specs-manship going on. No one has a set of standardized tests. Physics is complicated, and people are trying to play games," said Quanta's Liu. This month, Quanta expects to release a study describing its revised version of the Environmental Stress Screening Test for computing equipment required for military contracts.
The PCMCIA standard was originally designed for the sturdier solid-state storage cards. This spring, Integral proposed additions to the standard covering electromagnetic field interference and drop tests for drive cards. In the drop test, a card in its protective pouch would fall 30 inches to a "noncushioning vinyl-tile surface" and to a "0.25-inch-nap industrial-carpeted surface" for six repetitions.
Despite the posturing by vendors, the shock issue may not make much difference in the marketplace. Industry analysts say that price is the most important factor.
"It's an esoteric issue," said storage analyst Dal Allan, president of ENDL Inc. in Saratoga, Calif. "Nobody except packaging engineers really understands shock issues, or cares for that matter. If a drive is priced low enough, consumers will do the figuring and walk away from the shock issue."
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Mobile Computing Page 20
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: Sharp display uses less power
By James Staten
Osaka, Japan -- A new LCD technology emerged last month from the laboratories at Sharp Corp. here that could increase the battery life of PowerBooks and other portable devices.
Sharp claims its prototype is the first color active-matrix display to provide a bright screen without back-lighting, which is the biggest power drain in laptop computers.
A number of new technologies were used in the design, Sharp said, including high-reflectivity organic contacts and additive-complementary color microfilters.
Active-matrix LCDs consist of a substrate of evenly spaced liquid crystals encased between two panes of glass. Beneath each set of crystals is a TFT (thin-film transistor) that applies voltage to the crystals and a reflector that affects the orientation of the unblocked light.
In traditional backlit displays, such as those used in the current PowerBooks, low levels of voltage force the crystals into a spiral orientation that absorbs light attempting to pass through the display, darkening the display. When the voltage rises above a certain value, the crystals straighten, allowing light to pass through.
To present color, reflectors in front of the crystals angle the light passing through the display through red, green and blue filters.
In Sharp's prototype, the traditional TFT is replaced by a highly reflective organic dielectric film that serves as the transistor and the reflector, bouncing ambient light from the front of the screen back through the crystal substrate, eliminating the need for backlighting and reducing power consumption to 50 milliwatts. The company said that this is much less than the approximately 1.5 watts needed to power today's backlit displays.
Another benefit of the prototype is its wider viewing angle, which the company said will allow users to see the screen clearly from an angle of up to 100 degrees from its center.
"It looks beautiful," said Jack Roberts, a market analyst from Dataquest Inc. of San Jose, Calif. "Back-lighting is by far the biggest [power] drain on laptops, consuming as much as 70 percent [of the total power supplied]."
Sharp said it expects the new screens to appear in laptops by the end of the year and to be priced comparably to current color active-matrix displays.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Mobile Computing Page 20
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: Photonics ships infrared adapter
By Raines Cohen
San Jose, Calif. -- Photonics Corp. last month quietly expanded its promise of wireless LocalTalk with a new Cooperative adapter that connects its peer-to-peer infrared LANs directly to wired ones.
Cooperative Transceivers, priced at $295 each, use diffuse-infrared technology to link Macs into local-area wireless AppleTalk networks running at LocalTalk speeds (see MacWEEK, Nov. 8, 1993, Page 12).
Each transceiver normally draws power from the Apple Desktop Bus port of a PowerBook or desktop Mac. Now Photonics is selling the Cooperative Access/Power Unit, a $99 device that supplies AC power to the transceivers. The power unit allows a stand-alone transceiver to serve as a bridge between the infrared LAN and wired LocalTalk, Photonics said; it also supplies power for devices that do not have ADB ports, such as many printers, undocked PowerBook Duos and Newton MessagePads.
The power unit can be plugged into a wall outlet or run for 30 to 40 hours of typical network use on three alkaline AA batteries.
Photonics Corp. is at 2940 N. First St., San Jose, Calif. 95134. Phone (408) 955-7930 or (800) 628-3033; fax (408) 955-7950.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Mobile Computing Page 20
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: Playmation gets Master version
3-D app combines animation, textures
By Carolyn Said
Vancouver, Wash. -- The California Raisins are coming to Power Macs this month.
Animation Master, an upgrade of Will Vinton's Playmation, is available now for 680x0-based Macs and due in two weeks for Power Macs. Both 3-D animation programs, sold by Hash Inc., were developed with Claymation inventor Will Vinton, whose most famous creations are those dancing, shriveled grapes.
Priced at $1,049, Animation Master combines the 3-D character animation tools of Playmation (see MacWEEK, March 15, 1993, Page 28) with new mapping, texture, animation and rendering options.
Hash said Animation Master is the first Mac 3-D animation program to offer inverse kinematics, allowing parts of a character to be linked so when users click and drag to move one part, the connected joints move as well. Users can establish constraints so the range of motion is realistic; for example, raising an elbow affects only the arm and not the legs.
Modules include Sculpture, for creating shapes; Character, for assembling pieces into a figure; Decal, for placing bit-mapped images on an object; Action, for creating different movements; Materials, a texture editor; and Render. Animation Master also supports motion blur; field rendering; and alpha, depth and shadow buffers for post-compositing.
The bit maps placed with Decal can bend, twist and morph with the object as it animates. "Decal doesn't just let you stick on textures in a general way, like most animation packages," said Rod Havrick Altschul, a special-effects consultant in West Los Angeles, Calif. "You can be very precise in your placement of maps. Decal lets me create a realistic human head with excellent accuracy."
The program's spline-based patch modeling "is a big plus over polygonal modeling," Altschul said. "In many packages, it's very difficult to do something as simple as sculpt a nose; with patch modeling you can just hit the highs and lows with a minimal amount of points." Altschul said he also liked the skinning feature, which allows for realistic-looking skin movements during skeletal motion, and the capability to store and load keyframes.
Upgrades from the $550 Playmation to Animation Master are $400. Current Animation Master or Playmation users can buy a second license for the Power Mac version for $200. Animation Master is also available on Windows and Silicon Graphics machines.
Hash Inc. is at 2800 E. Evergreen Blvd., Vancouver, Wash. 98661. Phone (206) 750-0042; fax (206) 750-0451.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
GA Page 26
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: Specular ships high-res TextureScape
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
Amherst, Mass. -- Specular International Ltd. last week shipped Specular TextureScape, a $195 application that creates high-resolution, multilayered textures.
Users can create a basic outline or shape in Adobe Illustrator or Aldus FreeHand or build a texture based on one of TextureScape's 32 predesigned shapes. Once the shape, saved as an EPS file, is loaded into TextureScape, users can evenly tile it or distribute it randomly across a grid.
A collection of palettes lets users specify a color, highlight color and lighting for each shape. A shape can have only one color, but each texture can include multiple layers, each with a different shape.
TextureScape supports up to four lights per layer with controls for intensity, direction and angle. The program also offers sliders for setting surface information, such as gloss, softness, transparency and bump.
Once users have defined all the attributes of a texture, TextureScape renders it at any resolution up to 4,096 by 4,096 pixels. Textures can be saved in PICT or TIFF formats with alpha channels or as description files, which contain no bit-map information and take up less space.
"To me, it's freeing," said Kevin Abbott of Abbott Consulting in Belmont, Mass. "Since TextureScape is resolution-independent, it's worry-free because you can't wreck anything. You can go in and make changes at any point."
An animation feature lets users animate a single texture or morph one texture into another. Users specify the start and end textures and the time increment. Animations can be saved as QuickTime, PICS or numbered PICT files.
"The program invites experimentation," Abbott said. "In an hour, I may generate three or four textures, maybe not for the job I'm working on, but I'll save them to use later."
Specular International Ltd. is at 479 West St., Amherst, Mass. 01002. Phone (413) 253-3100; fax (413) 253-0540.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
GA Page 26
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Developers dig for PIM-market gold
Fledgling industry lures major vendors
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
With its comparatively easy development cycle, a personal information manager seems like the perfect software get-rich-quick scheme, and more and more developers seeking their fortunes are entering the industry.
But is the PIM market a treasure-trove, or is it already too crowded to support all of its prospectors?
Until the perfect PIM comes along, there will continue to be room for new players, observers say. "People are only just beginning to realize the role PIMs can play in organizing their work and the work of others," said Ray Boggs, analyst for BIS Strategic Decisions Inc. of Norwell, Mass.
As the mainstream Mac market recognizes this potential, major software companies are making forays into the PIM arena. Aldus Corp., WordPerfect Corp. and Symantec Corp. have acquired information managers in the past year, and Claris Corp. will announce an integrated PIM for the Mac next week.
"I think that shows corporations' acceptance of the PIM category as a real product," said Adam Bartlett, San Diego-based product manager for Aldus' TouchBase and DateBook. "Two years ago, PIMs were a niche; now they're pretty much a standard category."
However, the entry of large vendors into the PIM market will spell trouble for many smaller developers who don't have the resources to compete with companies such as Claris and WordPerfect, observers say.
"Most of the fairly successful products have a large amount of money behind them, both for development and marketing," said Larry Lightman, president of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Software Inc., which develops InTouch and DateView.
A few companies, once among PIM market leaders, have already fallen by the wayside. Pastel Development Corp. of New York is seeking a buyer for DayMaker Organizer, and Dynodex developer Portfolio Software Inc., based in Richmond, Vt., is also struggling, sources said.
One key to surviving, developers say, is to keep up with the latest trends in the features war. In 1993, the answer was integration, connecting two programs via Apple events or creating an all-in-one PIM application, according to observers.
To compete in 1994 and beyond, developers say they will need to add myriad features, including customization options, cross-platform capabilities and networking features. And as the information superhighway grows, PIMs will need to share data with word processors, databases -- even pagers and telephone services.
"[The next trend is] linking to more disparate kinds of information," said Kerry Kelley, Now Contact product manager at Now Software Inc. in Portland, Ore. "The kind of thing that should be happening next is that all of a sudden your fax software begins to use your contact manager as its address book."
MacWEEK 05.09.94
BusinessWatch Page 32
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: U.S. LCD market to stay flat
By James Staten
Washington -- The Department of Defense gave the domestic flat-panel display market a billion-dollar shot in the arm last month, but analysts say the injection may not increase the United States' share of the worldwide market.
Although Pentagon and White House officials say they intend to spend as much as $1 billion in research subsidies and grants over the next few years to encourage U.S. companies to manufacture flat-panel LCD displays, industry watchers fear the funding may be too late.
"I don't think anybody here is going to win," said Jack Roberts, display market analyst at Dataquest Inc. of San Jose, Calif. "[The Japanese government already has] been spending about $1 billion a year in this market for four to five years."
According to Dataquest, Japanese computer giants Sharp Corp., Toshiba Electronics Corp. and NEC Corp. control more than 80 percent of the flat-panel screen market worldwide.
By comparison, U.S. manufacturers, who invented the technology in 1973, have less than 1 percent of the market.
The Defense Department said that $50 million has already been earmarked for the construction of a high-capacity display plant near Troy, Mich., that will use new manufacturing technology created at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in California and other research facilities. The plant is expected to be operational by the summer of 1995.
The construction of such display plants could give U.S. screen makers the technological edge they need against Japanese manufacturers, according to analysts.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
BusinessWatch Page 32
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: FIT's Full Contact demands attention
Relational contact manager is feature-rich but a bit unwieldy
By Ross Scott Rubin
Hoping to make the task of managing contacts and appointments as easy as dragging and dropping, FIT Software has released Full Contact 2.01, the latest in a growing number of contact managers available for Macintosh users. A follow-up to FIT's sales-oriented Field Assistant 1.0, Full Contact offers powerful relational-database capabilities along with some of the advanced linking features and flexibility of sophisticated personal information managers. The $169 program is available in versions for Power Macs and 680x0-based Macs.
Interface
At first blush, Full Contact displays most of the characteristics of a traditional contact-driven PIM and activity scheduler, such as Symantec Corp.'s $395 ACT!. Full Contact tracks six items -- Activities, Addresses, Companies, Contacts, Notes (handy for free-form tidbits) and Phones -- in a single database file. Each item has its own SuperList window, which displays all the item's records in a spreadsheetlike view, and a Detailed Editor window, which shows specific information about a particular record.
Full Contact also includes daily, weekly and monthly calendars; a word processor for creating mail-merged letters and cover sheets; a tacked-on terminal emulator for accessing text-based telecommunications services; a label editor with eight Avery standard-size templates; and a phone dialer. Full Contact can automatically create a log of phone calls and letters initiated from the program.
Two palettes help you navigate the program. You use the icon bar to display SuperLists and calendars, and you use the tool bar to create new database entries, dial phone numbers, import and export data, print labels, and delete items.
Lists of steel
You can use the Detailed Editor or a Quick Entry form to enter data. The latter presents a unified window for contact entry. Full Contact has a complete set of data-entry aids for most data fields. Names, titles, cities, states and countries are automatically capitalized, while dates, times and phone fields are automatically parsed. We especially like how the application handled pop-up data-entry lists, which could be defined on the fly instead of through a separate setup window. Full Contact will type ahead to anticipate items when you enter data or perform searches.
The main method of viewing records in your database is through the SuperLists, which you can sort with an unlimited number of criteria by Shift-clicking column titles. As in Now Software Inc.'s Now Contact, you can edit text in SuperLists without opening the individual records. A split bar lets you lock columns so you can keep contact names in view while scrolling to see other fields. You can relabel any field name, but the procedure is one of the few nonintuitive operations in Full Contact.
Double-clicking the diamond icon to the left of each record in a SuperList opens the Detailed Editor for that record. Any records linked to that record are listed in a large field at the bottom of the window. Double-clicking on a linked record opens its Detailed Editor.
You can customize SuperLists through views and filters to display only the information relevant to you. Filtering controls for SuperLists are impressive. You can search with as many as three criteria, which can include fields in the lists or records attached to the list. You can even switch the order in which the criteria are applied with a single click.
No missing links
Full Contact's unorthodox separation of contact information into distinct categories lets you create interesting and flexible combinations of data. Extending beyond the contact and appointment linking that occurs between Now Software's Now Up-To-Date and Now Contact or Aldus Corp. Consumer Division's DateBook Pro and TouchBase Pro, Full Contact lets you link any two records of any type in its database. You can, for example, link contacts to each other to designate people on the same committee or link free-lancers to several companies with which they work.
In addition, instead of confining contacts to one or two addresses and phone numbers, you can link each contact to numerous sets of data. For example, Full Contact's Detailed Editor for Phones lists 14 phone number categories, such as fax, pager or telex, that you can link to a contact.
To link items, you simply drag and drop them from one view to another. For instance, to schedule a meeting with XYZ Corp. on May 15, you drag the company's record from the Companies SuperList to that date in the monthly calendar.
Unfortunately, the reliance on linking can be a double-edged sword. It's often necessary to create several links for a record just to maintain basic information, and Quick Entry forms also create several links among addresses and phone numbers. While SuperLists let you see some linked information, you must open a record's Detailed Editor to see all its associated links. This leads to a proliferation of windows that Full Contact inadequately manages. A Tile Windows command would provide some relief, but SuperLists would benefit greatly from some kind of outline facility.
We compared the performance of Full Contact's versions for 680x0-based Macs and Power Macs; the Power Mac version was faster, except in the Import test, where it was slightly slower (see benchmarks, left).
Quibbles and bits
Full Contact is rich with nice touches and vexing distractions. The program's calendaring facility has only minor limitations. The monthly calendar cannot wrap long event descriptions, nor does it offer the convenience of duplicating an event by holding down a modifier key while dragging the event. You can, however, create events with simple recurring patterns. Full Contact can repeatedly remind you of appointments with beep sounds, icon flashes or detailed messages. It can designate multiday events with banners that can span weekends or even months.
While dragging and dropping a contact onto an appointment lets you quickly designate a day for an event, you must still type in the start and end times of an event or deal with the frustrating daily calendar. The graphical depiction of events in the daily view is difficult to read and manipulate.
Full Contact's Import and Export capabilities provide extensive field mapping controls for information exchange, but, surprisingly, there's no way to copy and paste an address as in DateBook Pro or Now Contact.
Unlike other contact managers, you cannot access Full Contact from a systemwide pop-up menu, but with an application size of 650 Kbytes and a suggested RAM allotment of 1 Mbyte, it's not unreasonable for most users to keep it open all the time.
Full Contact ships with a clear manual, but its index could use some work. The program also comes with an on-line guided tour instead of a written tutorial. When we called FIT for technical support we were forced to leave a message, but our call was returned the following morning, and we received courteous help.
Conclusions
Lean, convenient and feature-rich, Full Contact is the integrated software of contact managers. Its exceptional filtering and linking controls should delight anyone who doesn't have time to learn the philosophy behind some advanced PIMs. Good data-entry aids and diverse information types create a well-rounded, single-application solution. Although Full Contact could use some improvement, such as better window management, it might take no more than a minor revision to make it stand out in a crowded field.
FIT Software is at 3255-1 Scott Blvd., Suite 104, Santa Clara, Calif. 95054. Phone (408) 562-5990; fax (408) 562-5970.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Reviews Page 41
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Dayna ProFiles eases file management
Application offers a Finder alternative
By Dale Coleman
Almost everyone agrees that the Finder needs an overhaul: The metaphor is near collapse under the weight of the ever-expanding number of files and volumes users juggle. ProFiles 1.0.2, a $129 file-management application from Dayna Communications Inc., offers an alternative to the Finder's location-based file tyranny. Unlike the Finder, ProFiles lets you group files and folders together in a single window called the Filelist.
From a Filelist you can perform almost all of the familiar Finder actions plus some new ones, such as synchronizing folders, customizing how conflicts are handled, and automatically compressing or decompressing files as you copy or move them. As with System 7 aliases, items in a Filelist are tokens that point to the files and folders; the actual location of these items is not changed until you perform a specific action on them, such as move or delete.
Making Filelists
There are three ways to add files to a Filelist. The Add Item command summons a standard Open dialog from which you can select items. With System 7 Pro (and System 7.5, due this summer), you can use Macintosh drag and drop to drag items from Finder windows to a Filelist and from one Filelist to another. To add groups of related files or folders, you can use the ProFiles Find command.
The Filelist window is organized by rows and columns, with a column for each of the file identifiers, such as name, size and kind. Columns can be resized or hidden to display only the information you need to see. When a volume dismounts, any of its files that are in your Filelist are marked with a special icon; clicking on the file name in the list causes the Finder to try to remount that volume.
Actions
Once you grasp the Filelist metaphor, you'll find that the concepts and keyboard commands you picked up in basic Finder training still apply. File actions are accessed from the Actions menu or from tool-bar icons.
When copying or moving files, you can use the tool bar's Destination pop-up menu to select from predefined destinations, such as the Apple Menu Items folder, the Extensions folder, the desktop and other common locations. You can customize the menu to add destinations where you frequently store documents.
Although aliases were a boon to System 7, Apple has encouraged us to make unreasonable demands on them. ProFiles' Filelists are much easier to use for file-management tasks. For example, if you were using the Finder to copy a project folder's files to a removable disk, and the files were aliases of originals located in various folders and volumes on your system, you would have to individually locate and copy each original. With a Filelist this task requires one command. For many, this feature alone will save enough time each day to justify the cost of the program.
Optional file compression or decompression while copying gives ProFiles another dimension of efficiency and flexibility, especially if the destination is an Apple Remote Access volume. If you use Aladdin Systems Inc.'s StuffIt engine (included with ProFiles), you can create self-extracting archives. Incompatibilities with Symantec Corp.'s AutoDoubler/DiskDoubler in previous versions are addressed in Version 1.0.2.
ProFiles also has strong conflict resolution for copy operations. When the Finder detects a conflict during a copy, you must manually respond to the alert dialog; multiple conflicts require multiple responses. In ProFiles you can select from several conflict options in the Preferences window beforehand, including one timesaver that skips files identical to those at the destination.
Find me a find
ProFiles' powerful Find command is everything the Finder's Find should be. There are more criteria options, such as finding by backup date and by content. While the Finder's Find dialog lets you search by only one criterion at a time, Profiles' Find supports three. You can save any set of criteria as the defaults for future searches. You can specify to search local or remote volumes only, a specific folder, or the desktop.
When you conduct the search, the Find takes place in the background, like all of ProFiles' actions. ProFiles identifies all matches and adds them to the Filelist without interruption. In contrast, the Finder's Find forces you to use the Find Again command to locate each item meeting the criteria, all the while hogging the foreground.
Through the ProFiles control panel you can choose to use ProFiles' Find dialog as the default Find command when you press Command-F from the desktop.
Documentation and support
The 117-page manual is adequate, but using it is an exercise in frustration because of its poor index. Voice technical support by toll call is available during business hours; on-line support is available via Dayna's BBS, AppleLink, the Internet, Connect and America Online.
Conclusions
Although ProFiles quickly becomes indispensable, it needs a bit of polish. Its file-synchronization feature is very spare, although some will favor it over other products because of its accessible interface. The icons are mediocre, and some of the alerts are confusing. As of this writing, a features update is in progress.
But the program is far from a diamond in the rough. Instead, the efficiency it offers makes us ask for more, such as an agent technology similar to that in No Hands Software Inc.'s Magnet that could be used to schedule and automate repetitive tasks.
ProFiles mounts a remarkably successful assault on the Finder's major limitations. It is quicker, easier and more capable than the Finder alone or the Finder and any combination of enhancements. We only wonder why it took so long to get here.
Dayna Communications Inc. is at Sorenson Research Park, 849 W. Levoy Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah 84123-2544. Phone (801) 269-7200 or (800) 531-0600; fax (801) 269-7363.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Reviews Page 41
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: PhotoMatic 1.0
Utility makes Photoshop AppleScript-compatible
By Ben Long
AppleScript offers a great way to automate repetitive tasks in applications -- as long as the application supports it. Adobe Photoshop does not support Apple's scripting language, but PhotoMatic 1.0 from DayStar Digital Inc. works around this problem. The $229 utility adds AppleScript support to Photoshop 2.5.1 or later through the use of an application that works with a Photoshop plug-in module.
Installing PhotoMatic is simple. An installer copies the application to your hard drive and the PhotoMatic plug-in to your Photoshop Plug-ins folder, then installs AppleScript in your System folder.
For the record
PhotoMatic's only visible change to Photoshop is the addition of a Record menu. Four commands let you start and stop recording, play a previously recorded script, or select from a few simple scripting options.
Scripting is easy: Just choose the Start command and perform the desired actions on an image. When you're finished, selecting the Stop command brings up a dialog that lets you name and save your script.
PhotoMatic can record any Photoshop function, including plug-in filters, effects, mode changes and rotations. You can also script Photoshop tools but with variable success. Recording brush strokes sometimes works well; other times you may find that the program recorded your clicks, but not your drags, correctly. (PhotoMatic can record only the beginning and end points of a drag.) This limitation is of small consequence, however, because few users will need to record brush strokes.
The PhotoMatic manual warns against recording Photoshop tools at one resolution for playback at another. This is because some tools deal in actual screen coordinates: 300 pixels across, 200 pixels down, for example. If you change an image's resolution, those coordinates will no longer correspond to the same locations in the image.
The Record menu's Script Functions submenu lets you hide Photoshop's dialogs when a script is running. This lets scripts execute much faster, since Photoshop won't have to keep updating the screen. The submenu also lets you direct Photoshop and PhotoMatic to always work in the background or foreground.
Although DayStar reports that intermittent bugs occur in PhotoMatic on Power Macs, we never experienced any problems. An upgrade to fix these bugs will ship this month.
Moving pictures
While PhotoMatic's scripting functions are excellent and simple to use, the program shines in its flexible script execution options.
The easiest way to run a script is from within Photoshop: Choose Play from the Record menu and select the script you want to execute. The script will load and perform its actions on the front-most image.
PhotoMatic also lets you execute scripts without manually opening Photoshop. If you drag an image (or selection of images) and a PhotoMatic script onto the PhotoMatic icon, a prompt will ask you to locate your copy of Photoshop. PhotoMatic will launch Photoshop, and the script will begin executing on your selected images. (From then on, PhotoMatic will remember where your copy of Photoshop is.) If you drag images onto the PhotoMatic icon without a script, a dialog box will let you select a script to use on the selected images.
When scripts are executed this way, PhotoMatic never changes your original documents. Rather, it processes the images and places the processed copies into a Done folder located in your PhotoMatic folder.
PhotoMatic can also process images on a remote Mac that has Photoshop and PhotoMatic installed. Once you've chosen a remote machine, PhotoMatic will automatically move your documents and script to that Mac and process the images there, freeing your Mac for other work.
PhotoMatic provides a further level of automation by automatically watching for the arrival of new images in a folder. You can create a number of folders, each containing a different script. Whenever you place an image in a folder, PhotoMatic will automatically process it with the folder's script.
You might, for example, create one folder containing a script that boosts an image's saturation level and converts it to CMYK and another folder containing a script that despeckles an image and converts it to gray scale. These tasks will be performed on any image you place in the folders.
This is quite handy if you have many images to manipulate. Just group your images according to their needs, place them in the appropriate folders and let PhotoMatic take care of them overnight. Or, as you're scanning or creating images, you can let PhotoMatic process them on another computer.
Documentation and support
PhotoMatic's documentation is short, simple and fairly comprehensive. However, although PhotoMatic's scripts are completely editable, DayStar provides no documentation for the PhotoMatic dictionary (Version 2.0, due later this year, will contain this information). This is a nuisance, but serious scriptors can find what they need to know by examining PhotoMatic-created scripts. Technical support is amiable and helpful.
Conclusions
PhotoMatic is an incredible timesaver for anyone who needs to batch-process Photoshop images. One good-size job will easily pay for the utility because it executes your tedious image-editing tasks. It's also the best example yet of the promise of automated computing through AppleScript and interapplication communications.
DayStar Digital Inc. is at 5556 Atlanta Highway, Flowery Branch, Ga. 30542. Phone (404) 967-2077 or (800) 962-2077; fax (404) 967-3018.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Reviews Page 44
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Installer Pro and NetDistributor Pro
Symantec Pros help with file-administration tasks
By Jonathan A. Oski
Installing and distributing software on a Macintosh network can be a challenge for administrators, particularly because some software seems to be revised every month. Symantec Corp.'s Installer Pro 1.0 and NetDistributor Pro 2.0, recently purchased from Trik Inc., try to ease the pain by automating the installation and distribution process.
Installer Pro and NetDistributor Pro each list for $235 for a 10-user license. Licenses for 50 and 100 users are also available.
Installer Pro automates software installations that are based on Apple's Installer scripts. NetDistributor Pro installs Mac applications, fonts, desk accessories, system extensions, control panels and documents. The two products compete with full-featured network administration utilities such as Helios USA's $645 netOctopus 1.2 (see MacWEEK, March 28, Page 39) and Sonic Systems Inc.'s $499 Radar (see MacWEEK, April 18, Page 1), which provide distribution along with many other network administration features. Unlike netOctopus, Installer Pro and NetDistributor Pro do not support DOS or Windows PCs.
This week's installation
The two products use identical client software, which consists of two system extensions. Launching the Client Installer package installs the extensions in the System folder on the start-up disk. To save you the hassle of manually installing the program at each workstation, Symantec suggests you E-mail the Installer package to your users or place it on the server and supply installation instructions. The administrator applications are also installed using an installer package.
Installer Pro reads Apple Installer scripts and creates a package that you can then distribute and automatically install throughout your network. These scripts can follow either the Easy Install or Custom installation routes.
Installer Pro and NetDistributor Pro use virtually identical distribution mechanisms. You can choose groups or selected workstations as installation targets. You can schedule a time for the installations and choose how many repeat attempts should be made if the installation fails.
Both products let you specify whether installations should occur automatically or manually. The latter option lets users choose an installation time that's convenient for them. The two products also let you compose messages that will appear on users' workstations before and after installations have occurred.
Scripting
Like Radar, NetDistributor Pro offers branched distribution scripts. Branching lets you perform actions based on conditional tests. The scripting interface is simple in its approach, yet powerful enough to tackle some fairly complex tasks. For example, you can upgrade an application and its associated files no matter where it is found in a user's file hierarchy. NetDistributor uses a home-folder concept, so associated files can be stored in a position relative to the home folder. This comes in handy when you must replace or add files at the same level as another file without knowing the location of the first file.
With 11 script commands, NetDistributor can be used for more than software installation. You can use it to periodically distribute data files, remove unnecessary files or perform other file-related maintenance on any Mac client on your network. For instance, you might use NetDistributor to copy a spreadsheet to certain clients every day. NetDistributor can move the previous day's file to an archive area in case users need to access it.
Shortcomings
We experienced a few problems while testing Installer Pro and NetDistributor Pro. When we tried to install the LaserWriter 8.1.1 software on a number of different workstations using Installer Pro, the installation failed and the workstation crashed, requiring a cold restart. Also, Installer Pro cannot handle interactive Installer scripts.
We installed a number of products with NetDistributor Pro without any difficulty.
Neither product produces an adequate log of the distribution process. Both products have a Distribution Manifest, which displays the status of the distribution and installation process. However, if a problem occurs, the log doesn't give you any information to help you determine its source.
Symantec technical support for both of these products is extremely difficult to find. We called a series of numbers before finally reaching someone who could at least listen to our questions; in the end, we got more help from Trik than Symantec. Adequate documentation is provided for both products, but some interesting new alias-creation features in NetDistributor Pro are not addressed at all.
Conclusions
NetDistributor Pro is the most sophisticated file-distribution package we have reviewed to date. Its scripting features are easy to use yet let you address virtually any file-distribution challenge. It's a good value, but for an extra $250 you can buy Radar, which includes distribution among its many features. Installer Pro is a good choice for automating some Apple Installer-based software installations, but it can't install software that requires you to enter serial numbers or other information during installation. Since neither product has acceptable technical support, we caution you to wait until Symantec improves it before you make a large commitment.
Symantec Corp. is at 10201 Torre Ave., Cupertino, Calif. 95014. Phone (503) 334-6054 or (800) 441-7234; fax (503) 334-7474.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Reviews Page 48
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
ProductWatch: Internet tools for the info highway
Easier-to-use software tools and less-expensive connections are helping more Mac users tap into the Internet.
By Sean Lucey
The Internet has grown into an on-line community that provides connectivity and information to more than 20 million people in more than 60 countries. This rapid growth has much to do with the ease with which new users can now get on-line.
The Internet can be accessed via TCP/IP. To connect to the Internet you need to link your Mac to another computer already on the Internet. There are three common ways to do this.
Plugging in
The first method, which has been in use for the longest time, is using a modem along with a communications package to dial into a host computer that runs TCP/IP on the Internet. This makes your Mac a terminal. Although it does not actually communicate using TCP/IP, it can run many applications, such as electronic mail, on the host machine.
The second and third methods require the Mac to speak TCP/IP by loading the MacTCP system extension at start-up. The Mac is connected to the Internet through a network or through use of a telephone line and modem. Chris Pepper, Macintosh networking administrator at Rockefeller University in New York, said: "The majority of Macintoshes that communicate on the Internet using TCP/IP are already on a network in academic or corporate environments. They access the Internet in the same way they would access another Mac's file sharing or a printer. However, all of the traffic going to and coming from the Internet goes through a separate gateway and usually uses a separate protocol (TCP/IP as opposed to AppleTalk)."
Generally, universities and large corporations use leased lines that link their pre-existing networks to a service provider or other large Internet site. "However," Pepper said, "more recently, many people are using modems and special TCP/IP-routing packages (such as InterSLIP and InterPPP from InterCon Systems Corp.) to dial into a host that provides them with Internet access."
Getting on-line with SLIP or PPP
Most remote Internet users rely on small service providers that offer dial-up accounts with Internet access to customers in metropolitan areas throughout the United States. Stacy Horn, president and founder of Echo Communication Group Inc., a commercial provider of Internet connections in New York, said: "FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), as well as News, E-mail, Telnet, Archie and Gopher, are all Internet tools that our customers want. And they are all available just by dialing in with a modem and a terminal emulator."
Horn pointed out, however, that many of the more recently developed applications, such as Mosaic (free from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, it lets users navigate the Internet more intuitively, with a graphical interface), require users to run MacTCP. "We provide these users with SLIP or PPP access, which allows them to [run MacTCP]," Horn said.
Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) or Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), with MacTCP and an account with a service provider, give the Mac its own TCP/IP address and let you use many tools to communicate with other computers around the corner or around the world.
Howard Greenstein, an Echo user and a master's candidate enrolled in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, uses standard terminal emulation and PPP access. "I use dial-up serial connections when I just want to read text messages, but it makes such a difference to have a graphical interface for tasks like reading news, and for that you need SLIP or PPP," he said. "The graphical user interfaces on some of the Mac tools make arcane Unix commands much more palatable."
According to Amyn Meruani, senior product manager at InterCon in Herndon, Va., SLIP "[was] originally developed by Unix gurus as an admitted programmer's hack" and has since been replaced by PPP, "a much more-robust implementation that will help solidify the remote-connectivity market." He said that SLIP and PPP work with MacTCP and a modem to turn the Mac into a full-blown node on the Internet that speaks IP. There are several SLIP and PPP clients available for the Mac. InterSLIP, which was the first SLIP product for the Mac, has been released as freeware to the network, and InterCon has recently released InterPPP, which is the first commercial PPP client for the Mac, Meruani said.
Dealing with difficulties
Alexis Rosen, president of Public Access Networks Corp. of New York, which provides the Internet service Panix, said: "Configuring a Macintosh for SLIP or PPP access is extremely difficult for nontechnical users. Many of them have trouble with terminal emulators. Expecting such users to figure out things like 'subnet masks' and 'chat scripts' is unrealistic. Getting the modem, SLIP or PPP, and MacTCP all working together can be a huge job if you're not a TCP/IP wizard. Thanks to a few volunteers, we now have preconfigured disks for both our Mac and PC users."
Rockefeller University's Pepper said: "TCP/IP is designed to be used in a stable, unchanging network environment as opposed to an environment where network addresses are constantly changing. These changes occur because an administrator has a larger number of potential dial-in clients than he has IP addresses to go around. This makes it difficult to run, for example, an FTP server on your remote Mac, because its IP address is not static." The solution to such a problem, he said, is "to make sure that the Internet service provider offers static IP addresses as an option."
Kim Scheinberg, graphics network systems specialist at The New York Times and an early Panix user, lent a helping hand to her fellow Mac users on Panix. Scheinberg recognized that the configuration of MacTCP and SLIP presented a hurdle to many Mac users. "I purchased copies of MacTCP from Apple as well as a Mac SLIP client," she said. "I made these available to anyone who wanted to use SLIP on their Mac along with an installer script I wrote using Aladdin [Systems Inc.'s] Installer." The result made SLIP a more viable means of accessing the Internet for many early Panix users.
Old tools with new faces
Cyberspace Development Inc. of Boulder, Colo., helps businesses establish a commercial presence on the Internet through its "information mall" (which can be found at marketplace.com). According to Andrew Currie, the company's president, users might experience some bumps while getting up and running on the information superhighway, but "eventually, the Internet will be as invisible to the end user as the phone system."
Pepper said that E-mail gateways to the Internet are nothing new. "Major service providers such as Prodigy, CompuServe, GEnie, America Online and Delphi have [let users] send and receive mail to and from the Internet for years," he said.
One tool that helps Currie manage his E-mail is Eudora from Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego. "We are a lot more productive with clients who have Eudora," Currie said. "It's almost as if we are on a LAN. I just send a note and attach my files, and I know the recipient will get it."
Exploring the Web with Mosaic
Mosaic -- developed at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva -- is one example of the tools available to users once they are on the Internet.
"Some of the most exciting new developments on the Internet are tools like Mosaic," said Michael Nicklas, imaging specialist at New York's Microcomputer Publishing Center. Mosaic is a browser interface that presents X Window, Macintosh or Microsoft Windows users with a scrollable document containing full-color images, sounds, video and text. By clicking on them, users can load and display or play the given data using applications that act as helpers. Mosaic uses HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to navigate the World-Wide Web. The power of Mosaic lies in the fact that it builds simple functionality, such as copying files, into an intuitive interface.
"Mosaic gives you a sense of continuity you might expect to find on a CD-ROM but is unexpected, due to its vastness, on [the] Internet," Nicklas said. "It makes pursuing one train of thought, as you move automatically from one Web server to another, possible."
Business in cyberspace
Cyberspace Development's Currie said that "graphical point-and-click interfaces to the resources of the Internet, such as Mosaic, are taking off wildly and are worth looking into."
Many of Cyberspace Development's clients use its information mall to set up their electronic storefront, Currie said. "Some are testing the waters to see where this new frontier will lead, while others are using the Internet to target small micro-markets that align themselves using things like News."
Many Macintosh users around the world are setting up their own Web servers through the use of an application called MacHTTP. "MacHTTP allows someone who might not have the resources to go out and buy a Unix workstation to put up their own Web server using a less-expensive Macintosh," said Chuck Shotten of the University of Texas in Houston, developer of MacHTTP. "I've been contacted by people all over the world who are using MacHTTP to set up special-interest servers and even small businesses."
Evolution or revolution
Adam Curry, former MTV video jockey and founder of mtv.com, a music-based service on the Web, said, "Mosaic is the tool that will level the playing field for small businesses."
Nicklas agreed: "Mosaic is potentially very interesting to small and medium-sized companies because it allows them to compete in a market with companies much larger both in terms of size and resources. Distributing over the [Internet] lets you break the choke hold that the traditional media has had through their control of distribution channels like television and radio."
David Spector of New York has written, and given to the NCSA, extensions for the next major release of Mosaic for the Macintosh, which will enable corporate users who are behind security firewalls to make use of the program. "Mosaic may prove to be the equalizing force in the battle over the information superhighway," Spector said, "because it allows anyone to be a publisher of information, and because it is not a proprietary, closed system."
MacWEEK 05.09.94
ProductWatch Page 51
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mac the Knife: The Cheetah challenge is clear
We're all getting comfortable with the concept of ever-more-powerful hardware at prices that get better with each phase of the moon.
Paradoxically, just when the hardware cost/performance ratio is swinging our way, the slice of the budget pie consumed by software keeps getting fatter and fatter. For the company swift of foot and clear of vision, this presents a market opportunity. Perhaps it was just such imaginative and aggressive policies that recently led Claris to slash the prices of its Clear Choice line of acquired offerings. Or not -- maybe it was just using a time-honored technique to get static inventory moving.
But if the Clear Choice line is performing anemically, how do we explain the results of the Knife's most recent research into the mysterious moves of Apple's leading software subsidiary? The PIM product it acquired recently from three smart guys doing business as Trio Development isn't a bad one. In fact, deep sources in the PIM industry say it holds the potential to become real competition. So the Knife is giving the designers good marks on this product, which they called Cheetah (for its black-spotted tawny fur and nonretractile claws, no doubt). Good enough to divert a chunk of the mighty Claris purse into their Southern Californian pockets.
If PIMs were houses
Although the practical and prudent managers running Claris surely know more about their business than those of us on the outside, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the Mac PIM market is softening at such a rate that it will soon be liquid.
As mongered in this space last month, Advanced Software's Larry Lightman has put InTouch and DateView on the market pursuant to his plans to enter the peripherals business. And while Pastel Development thought for a brief moment that it was close to consummating a deal to sell the rights to its PIM, DayMaker, to ON Technology, the deal collapsed before it could be signed. Now the company is quietly being shopped around, no reasonable offer refused.
So the odds of making a buck in the PIM market don't look so great from this perspective. But remember that Claris is not just FileMaker Pro and ClarisWorks. It's also the company that ceded the last remaining fractions of the spreadsheet market to Microsoft. And who can forget the renowned Claris word processor?
Hard evidence
Even with declining prices, there are still big bucks to be made in the hardware business, including peripherals. Witness the plans being hatched by QMS to introduce a 600-dpi replacement for the CMYK, PostScript-equipped 300-dpi ColorScript Laser 1000. Just last June when the 1000 debuted, the $12,499 price was considered something of a breakthrough for a one-pass, plain-paper PostScript color laser printer that can achieve a respectable 8 monochrome pages per minute and 2 four-color pages per minute. With basically the same feature set as the 1000, including the ability to peacefully coexist in mixed environments, and the same price tag, the 600-dpi successor should succeed when it debuts in a few months.
Because the print engine still accounts for a hefty portion of the street price of laser printers, it's safe to assume that QMS got a fair deal on the new engine. But that's something we will be forced to discover on our own if QMS continues its policy of keeping the manufacturer's identity to itself.
Thought for today: If PowerBook 145B sales are so slow that the introduction of Jedi, its designated successor, is in danger of being postponed again, perhaps Apple's aim is too low for this mark.
If you're looking for something to advertise the fact that your tips look good in print, you could hardly top the MacWEEK mug. Let your fingers do the walking at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3651, Internet (mac_the_knife@macweek.ziff.com), AppleLink (MacWEEK) or CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac.
MacWEEK 05.09.94
Mac the Knife Page 90
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
