With the new year approaching, Apple is reportedly undergoing some serious self examination as it realizes plans for a 1995 release of the next major Mac operating system are in jeopardy.
When Apple announced Copland, code name for the successor to System 7, it said the update would ship in mid-1995. By last May, sources close to the company admitted the date was more likely to be late '95. Now, few sources expect the new OS to ship before the beginning of 1996.
A variety of reasons are reportedly causing the delay -- the complexity of rewriting the OS from scratch, a glut of esoteric features that are interwoven with more-critical components and limited personnel dedicated to the task.
With the Copland release, Apple will lay the groundwork for a switch as dramatic as the transition from CISC to RISC, sources said. Gershwin, the operating-system release to follow Copland, will encompass many of the functions of a modern operating system, such as full memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking. To bridge the gap from System 7 to Gershwin without losing the Mac's massive installed base of applications requires an interim step -- Copland.
Sources said there have been a number of recent status reviews within AppleSoft to look at accelerating Copland's development. Two possibilities have received the most attention: scaling back the scope of the release and dropping support for 680x0-based Macs. Organizational solutions, such as combining the multiple projects to develop components of System 8 into a single, centralized effort have been dismissed as happening too late to affect delivery.
Most of the features Apple has announced as a part of Copland -- including a microkernel and protected memory layer -- are either so tightly integrated into the system or so far along in development as to reportedly ensure their inclusion.
More likely changes, sources said, would be to require strict conformance to years-old software guidelines that developers have tended to ignore, convert less of the toolbox to native PowerPC code and limit developers' access to some of the modern OS features until a later release.
The solution many engineers inside Apple are reportedly pushing for is to abandon development of a version of System 8 for 680x0-based Macs. By the time Copland ships, the reasoning goes, almost all new Mac sales will be PowerPC-based.
Excluding older Macintoshes could reportedly shave months off Copland's development. However, this move is said to be controversial with upper management because upgrades of the predominantly 680x0 Macintosh installed base represent a lot of revenue for Apple's software division.
Whatever the solution, it is critical for Apple to make its next OS release available at the same time as Windows 95, said Pieter Hartsook, editor of The Hartsook Letter, an industry newsletter based in Alameda, Calif.
"I don't expect to see widespread adoption of Windows 95 until late 1995 or even 1996, which gives Apple some breathing room," Hartsook said.
Apple said it still plans to deliver the key components of Copland, including a new user interface, a microkernel core and the integration of OpenDoc, on both 680x0- and PowerPC-based Macs.
Ike Nassi, an AppleSoft vice president, denied suggestions that the projected ship dates for Copland had been moved. "We're still in the investigative stages [of Copland], so it's premature to say it's slipped. We're still on for a 1995 ship."
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Cyberdog to fetch Internet resources
By Robert Hess
OpenDoc will expand beyond the desktop when Apple releases its communication and networking parts for the compound document architecture in mid-1995. Code-named Cyberdog, the first parts of the project will be for the Internet with other parts to follow.
Contrary to published reports elsewhere, Cyberdog is more than an Internet World-Wide Web browser such as Mosaic or those tools bundled with OS/2 and Windows 95. Instead, sources said, it encompasses all aspects of communications as they relate to OpenDoc. Because it is integrated with OpenDoc, Cyberdog will become an essential part of Apple's operating system.
Sources said Apple has examined the exploding Internet software industry and determined that users are dissatisfied with tools in four key ways: reliability, integration, maintenance of context and ease of access.
Most products in use today are hobbyist endeavors without serious commercial backing or support. Only now are more professional products becoming available.
A bigger problem is one of integration. Users are forced to employ one application for reading news groups, another for transferring files and yet another for browsing the Web. Sources said the company feels that while tools such as InterCon Systems Inc.'s TCP/Connect and even Mosaic Communications Corp.'s NetScape are good at isolating users from the Web's complexities, that isolation may have become too complete.
"We're finding that people can't sort the importance of, or relationship between, data found on the net," one source said. "There's no sense of space when you're Web browsing, which makes it easy to get in a situation where you're finding the same information over and over without progressing. There are significant problems brewing in this area, and no one else is working on them."
Finally, there's a chicken-and-egg dilemma as people discover they need certain tools to use Internet services but that the tools are only available on the services themselves. Instead of repackaging existing shareware in a new system release, Apple will continue to make communications tools an integral part of the operating system. This process started with the inclusion of MacTCP in System 7.5 and will reportedly continue with the introduction of Cyberdog.
Cyberdog's first Internet parts are expected to make their debut in roughly the same time frames as OpenDoc. These components will probably let users perform tasks such as placing a chart alongside a word processor part then linking the chart to data contained in a warehouse server located at a remote site on the Internet. The Cyberdog part could be configured to keep the chart up-to-date with the data over time.
The technology's OpenDoc foundation, with time, should let networked and Internet-based services take a more integral role in an OpenDoc-based Finder and even introduce new visual metaphors for Internet access, sources said. It also means developers could create their own substitutes for Cyberdog's pieces with greater or different functionality.
Although characterizing this story as speculative, Richard Ford, Apple product manager for TCP/IP products, said, "Apple would not be the first company to recognize that mixing OpenDoc and the Internet is a powerful combination."
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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News: MovieTalk to put Mac users in videoconference
QuickTime extension ready early next year
By Carolyn Said
Apple hopes MovieTalk will do for desktop videoconferencing what QuickTime did for digital video.
MovieTalk, a series of QuickTime components and APIs slated for release early next year, will provide a basic architecture for developers to add real-time media communications to their applications, sources said. Using MovieTalk, a spreadsheet developer could, for example, add the ability to send and receive live video, audio and other data across a local- or wide-area network.
MovieTalk will go beyond existing desktop videoconferencing and collaboration in several ways, sources said.
A significant limitation of current Mac videoconferencing solutions is that users on both ends must have systems from the same vendor. MovieTalk, which is designed to make videoconferencing independent of both application and platform, will remove that constraint, sources said.
Although Apple is not planning a Windows version of MovieTalk, its compliance with international standards will let competing systems talk to one another, according to sources.
MovieTalk will allow for several different types of connections: point-to-point, a conventional two-party connection; multipoint, in which a workgroup of several parties may conference and exchange data over a network; and multicast, a broadcast-type connection in which data flows one way from a sender to one or more receivers. For the latter connection, Apple has developed a new protocol called AppleTalk Multicast.
MovieTalk will include a recorder component so users can record interaction from a connection into a QuickTime movie.
Besides live communications, MovieTalk will let users retrieve and send stored media, such as a QuickTime movie on a server.
To help ensure easy adoption, MovieTalk is designed to be transport-independent, compression-independent and media device-independent, sources said.
MovieTalk reportedly will run over any LAN or WAN, including ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), Ethernet and Asynchronous Transfer Mode, and can use any network protocol, including AppleTalk, TCP/IP and RTP (Rapid Transfer Protocol) on the Internet. It will be compatible with Open Transport, Apple's forthcoming networking architecture, so it should work with future networking schemes that are Open Transport-compatible.
Apple is said to have developed new flow-control algorithms to minimize MovieTalk's network impact. For full-duplex audio and video, the technology will require bandwidth ranging from 128 bits per second up to 1 Mbyte or more per second, depending on the compression scheme. Audio-only transmission will consume about 88 Kbits per second.
Sources said MovieTalk will work with any video-compression method, including QuickTime, Cinepak, JPEG, H.261 and Indeo.
For video communication, users need a video camera and a digitizing card, such as Apple's AV card or NuBus boards from Radius Inc. or RasterOps Corp. To send and receive audio only, users would need a 68030 or better Mac with sound input; users could receive sound with a 68020 or better Macintosh. MovieTalk applications reportedly could run in as little as 8 Mbytes of RAM.
Reportedly, MovieTalk will be able to take advantage of several features of PowerTalk, Apple's new communications architecture. For example, MovieTalk could extract network information from PowerTalk Information Cards to establish a connection. The PowerTalk Key Chain, which offers security services, will be able to password-protect MovieTalk access.
Video-window size is largely hardware-dependent. MovieTalk reportedly can support video windows up to 320 by 240 pixels, although 160 by 120 at 15 frames per second will be the recommended default.
Sources said that future releases of MovieTalk will extend the technology to areas such as shared applications, shared whiteboards and other real-time collaboration.
Apple declined to comment.
Matthew Rothenberg contributed to this report.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: ACI US opening Windows to 4th Dimension
Client and server slated for Q2 '95
By Matthew Rothenberg
ACI US Inc. is ready to crack the Microsoft Windows market with client and server software for its 4th Dimension relational database. The company said it is aiming to ship the Windows versions of 4D in the second quarter of 1995.
ACI last week acknowledged to MacWEEK that it has ported the C code for the Power Macintosh revision of 4D and 4D Server, both Version 3.2, to Windows. The company said it used Altura Software Inc.'s Mac2Win Dynamic Link Library to implement the Mac Toolbox calls.
According to ACI, most of the source code for the Windows versions is identical to that of the Power Mac client; Toolbox calls have been translated to Win32 API calls, however, permitting single-user as well as multi-user capabilities on Intel-standard PCs.
The shared source code means that 4D developers will be able to write a 4D database once and deploy it on both Macs and Windows without modification. The company also plans to ship a Windows version of its 4D Compiler that will have compilation support for 386-, 486- and Pentium-based machines. In addition, the company said it will provide a way to run 4D externals with the Windows version of the software but declined to provide details.
The 4D Windows client will connect to a 4D Server running on a Mac or an Intel-standard PC. While ACI said it is looking at third-party ADSP (AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol) stacks to connect the Windows client to AppleTalk networks, the initial release will use TCP/IP as its sole communications protocol.
Besides the Windows port of the current server, ACI also said it is aiming for a second-quarter delivery of 4D Universal, a platform-independent version of 4D Server that will be available for PowerPC- and 680x0-based Macs; Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris OS on SPARCstations; and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT Advanced Server, Windows 3.1 and 3.2, and the forthcoming Windows 95 (see MacWEEK, Feb. 7, Page 1).
According to Nicole Roth, senior analyst with International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass., ACI's conversion to multiplatform development is a necessary defensive measure against such cross-platform competitors as Microsoft Corp.'s FoxPro.
"I think they have to [cross platforms] to stay afloat," Roth said. "If they don't, they're going to lose a lot of their installed base."
He said that 4D for Windows is not going to make any kind of impact on vendors firmly implanted in Intel-standard database products.
"[ACI is] never going to get anywhere near the numbers [Microsoft's] Access or FoxPro have," Roth said. "But if [ACI has] realistic goals, they should be able to stay in the game."
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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News: Apple debuts fastest Mac ever
PPC upgrade card also due to ship
By Robert Hess
As expected, Apple announced last week what it called the fastest personal computer on the market, the Power Mac 8100/110.
The centerpiece of the new model is a 110-MHz PowerPC 601, the chip with the fastest clock speed available for sale in a microcomputer (see MacWEEK, Oct. 24, Page 1). The new configuration is priced at $6,379 and comes with 16 Mbytes of RAM, a 2-Gbyte hard disk and a double-speed CD-ROM drive. A 256-Kbyte L2 cache, floppy drive, built-in Ethernet and three NuBus slots are also included, as they are with the 8100/80 Power Mac.
Apple confirmed that the 8100/110 also incorporates the updated BART21 chip that has been a part of Apple's PowerPC-based Workgroup Server line for several months. The chip delivers greater performance for demanding NuBus products, such as digital video cards. Sources said the company will withhold the updated chip from the rest of the Power Mac line, though Apple declined to comment.
Although Apple did not release benchmarks on the new model, test results provided to Mac-WEEK show a 25 percent to 30 percent improvement in processor-intensive tasks, with even greater acceleration of graphics operations.
Apple said the new model would be available in limited quantities until next month. Sources said it should not be hard to find the 8100/110, but Apple is hedging its bets in case there is greater-than-anticipated demand for the powerful new Mac.
Byran Longmire, Apple's Power Mac product manager, said, "We will be in full production in the December time frame, so it may be a few weeks before we expect people to be able to walk into a dealer and see a Power Mac 8100/110 [on the shelf]."
The company also announced last week that it will start shipping PowerPC 601 upgrade cards for several 68040-based Mac models next week. The Macintosh Processor Upgrade, which will initially be available in the United States only, has an ApplePrice of $659 and fits in the CPU socket of Apple's entry-level, '040-based Macs such as the Quadra 605 and 630; the LC 475, 575 and 630; and the Performa 470, 570 and 630 series. Apple already offers upgrade boards for the Quadra 610, 650, 660AV, 700, 800, 840AV, 900 and 950, as well as the Centris 650 and 660AV.
The card operates at either 50 MHz or 66 MHz, double the clock speed of the '040 chip used in the upgraded Mac. Because the card has a socket for the '040 chip as well, users can choose to start up with either the PowerPC or the '040 CPU in control of the machine, ensuring complete compatibility with existing software. Included with Apple's card is a copy of System 7.5 and a native Power Mac version of Claris Corp.'s ClarisWorks.
Apple co-designed the card with DayStar Digital Inc. of Flowery Branch, Ga. DayStar will also sell the Processor Upgrade card, which it will call the PowerCard 601.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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News: Color lasers poised for bold moves
By David Morgenstern
As the heavy hitters of the printer industry begin to pitch their first-generation color laser printers to the business marketplace, the products will face stiff competition from color inkjet and inexpensive monochrome laser printers. But industry analysts say the future looks bright for color laser output.
According to figures from BIS Strategic Decisions Inc., a Norwell, Mass., market-research company, the total color market, including inkjet printers and color plotters, is $2.25 billion. BIS predicted 1994 sales of color lasers will total 6,000 units, or about $50 million.
The Color Business Report of Uxbridge, Mass., said inkjet printers make up 45 percent of the installed base of color business printers. Plotters hold a 35 percent share; thermal-wax transfer commands 12 percent; dot-matrix accounts for 2 percent; and 6 percent fall into a catchall category that includes dye-sublimation, color laser and electrostatic printers.
"The current [color laser] products are a bit expensive and clunky for prime time," said Charles LeCompte, editor of The Hard Copy Observer in Newton Highlands, Mass. He said most corporate purchases are monochrome laser printers for networks; individuals who need color output get inexpensive inkjet models.
Color inkjets have moved quickly into organizations, though they tend to be difficult to share, have higher consumables costs than laser output, may require special paper and are relatively slow. Analysts said a department manager's discretionary budget can often cover the cost of inkjets, while networkable color laser models cost close to $10,000.
Printer vendors are pushing color inkjet capabilities with back-print film and higher resolutions, such as Epson America Inc.'s 720-dpi Stylus Color printer (see MacWEEK, June 6, Page 18). Tektronix Inc. just introduced an inkjet with built-in PostScript.
According to analysts, vendors may also need to educate users on the specifics of color laser technology.
"There's a lot of confusion in the market," said Michael Zeis, editor of Color Business Report. He said many service bureaus advertised thermal-wax output as color laser output long before the latter was available. "It was a successful strategy, since end users don't seem to differentiate the technologies -- only that the machines and output look similar."
But analysts see a continuing acceptance of color in business printing and for color lasers on networks.
"Today's market for color lasers is much further along when compared to the first generation of monochrome laser printers," said BIS analyst Bill Flynn. He said the transition to color lasers won't be as quick as the move from monochrome impact printers to lasers.
BIS said it expects the second and third generations of laser printers to ship in 1997. It predicts that color lasers will begin outselling monochrome lasers between 1998 and 2000. "Color is fast becoming just another feature in printing, not a specialty," Flynn said. "It won't be any more unusual than 600-dpi [resolution] is now. It's inevitable."
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: PowerPC update speeds and simplifies LabVIEW
By Robert Hess
In December, National Instruments expects to ship Version 3.1 of LabVIEW, its instrumentation software for the Mac. The update will offer ease-of-use improvements and native Power Mac performance.
LabVIEW is used to create graphical front ends to lab testing and data-acquisition equipment. The company said the Power Mac version of the software will run two to four times faster than its 680x0-based code.
The upgrade will include new timesaving editing features, such as the ability to add or remove a structure without moving or deleting its contents. New debugging features also will be added to aid the assembly of instruments.
Probes may be represented in Version 3.1 with any indicator style, including a variety of graph and chart types. Error reporting can be displayed by instrument type, and a new Memory Profiling instrument will analyze the memory needs of individual instruments.
A new Virtual Instrument History will track information such as version numbers and user comments automatically during development, and a new Print Documentation dialog box will help to clarify the uses for instruments.
Applications built with LabVIEW can either be distributed as files that require the LabVIEW application or bundled with a runtime engine for stand-alone use. Once developers have met National Instruments' licensing requirements, applications may be distributed royalty-free.
Developers of instrument drivers will also gain new capabilities in the update's Virtual Instrument Software Architecture Transition Library, which provides a single interface for controlling a wide array of instrument types.
National Instruments said it has reorganized LabVIEW's manuals to make them easier to use and has included more examples.
LabVIEW 3.1 will sell for $1,995; upgrades are $295. LabSuite, a bundle of LabVIEW and National Instruments' Hi-Q off-line data-analysis package, will be priced at $2,395.
National Instruments of Austin, Texas, is at (512) 794-0100 or (800) 433-3488; fax (512) 794-8411.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: In Control gains links to FastPace
PIM users can paste contact data to lists
By James Staten
Foresight Technology Inc.'s FastPace Instant Contact address-book and contact-management program can now share information with In Control 3.0, the latest version of Attain Corp.'s personal information manager.
In October the two companies shipped free updates that let In Control users look up information in a FastPace database and paste the data into events, outlines and to-dos; users cannot reverse the process, however.
Foresight said the update to FastPace, Version 1.1, features redesigned Preferences and Database Setup dialog boxes, improved support for Macintosh Drag and Drop, and refinements to the Find command. It also now remembers the size and position of the database window. No other features were added to In Control 3.0.
Both updates are available over most on-line services or from the companies for a shipping and handling fee.
Like their predecessors, FastPace 1.1 and In Control 3.0 cost $99 and $85, respectively.
Foresight Technology Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas, is at (817) 731-4444 or (800) 701-9393; fax (817) 731-9304; 71131,3557@compuserve.com.
Attain Corp. of Somerville, Mass., can be reached at (617) 776-1110 or (800) 925-5615; fax (617) 776-1626; sales@attain.com.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Conner, HP make retail moves
By David Morgenstern
Longtime storage OEMs Conner Peripherals Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. this month focused their attention directly on the market with new retail products the companies will offer via distributors and value-added resellers.
Conner is targeting the Mac market with new Disk*Stor drives, as well as internal and external RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) systems aimed at high-performance digital video and pre-press applications. The systems offer Level 0 data striping via Trillium host-based software.
Designed for the lower expansion bay of the Power Mac 8100 and 8150, the internal 2-Gbyte and 4-Gbyte arrays are based on Conner Filepro mechanisms with either Fast SCSI-2 or Fast and Wide SCSI-2 interfaces. The two-drive systems use a pair of small side-mounted fans and a foam insulation material that Conner said cuts the noise level of the devices.
The $1,570 2-Gbyte Fast model offers a sustained data transfer rate of 4.6 Mbytes per second, Conner said. The 4-Gbyte version costs $2,700.
The Fast and Wide models cost $2,570 and $3,700 in capacities of 2 Gbytes and 4 Gbytes, respectively. The systems include an ATTO Fast and Wide NuBus card.
External 2-Gbyte and 4-Gbyte arrays are based on pairs of enclosed drives and cost $1,690 and $2,825, respectively, for Fast SCSI-2 and are $2,690 and $3,825, respectively, for Fast and Wide SCSI-2.
The 4-Gbyte external Fast and Wide model has a sustained data transfer rate of 6.1 Mbytes per second, Conner said.
Single drives in capacities of 1 Gbyte and 2 Gbytes cost $689 and 1,259, respectively. External versions cost an additional $70. The 2-Gbyte drives and 4-Gbyte arrays will be available in December, Conner said.
HP this month shipped the first products in its new SureStore line of storage products, which will be distributed by VARs. The initial series includes a pair of hard drives as well as a magneto-optical jukebox and a tape drive for networks.
The $884 SureStore 1000S and $1,784 SureStore 2000S are Fast SCSI-2 drives with capacities of 1 Gbyte and 2.1 Gbytes, respectively.
The 2000S has an average seek time of 8.9 milliseconds, HP said.
The drives carry a warranty that guarantees replacement in 24 hours if they fail.
A spokeswoman said HP expected the drives to become "the LaserJet of storage," referring to the company's popular line of laser printers.
Conner Peripherals Inc. of San Jose, Calif., is at (408) 456-4500 or (800) 426-6637; fax (408) 456-4501.
Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Direct Marketing Organization in Santa Clara, Calif., is at (800) 826-4111.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Apple, IBM to debut PowerPC platform
By Andrew Gore
Apple, IBM Corp. and Motorola Inc. are expected to announce at a news conference in New York this week their plans for a common PowerPC reference platform.
Toshiba Corp. and Canon Inc. -- which is funding FirePower Systems Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based designer of computers that will use multiple PowerPC chips -- are expected to be at the event. Sources said Toshiba and FirePower, along with Apple, IBM and Motorola, will be among the first companies to develop systems based on the new reference platform.
As previously reported (see MacWEEK, Oct. 31, Page 3, and Oct. 10, Page 1), the common PowerPC platform is the unification theory for the operating systems and hardware that use the PowerPC processor. The announcement is expected to include few details on the standard; specifics will reportedly be revealed to developers over the next year.
Systems based on the common platform will be able to run the Mac OS, Novell NetWare, OS/2, AIX, Windows NT and Solaris. This, sources said, would result in the first industrywide standard that supports multiple operating systems on the same computer at the same time.
Sources said that other announcements, such as IBM's plans to license the Mac OS for use in Power Mac clones, or a rumored strategic investment by either IBM or Motorola in Apple, will not be part of the news conference.
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Microsoft spans platforms with Visual C++ CD
By Henry Norr
Developers looking for an easy way to deliver their products on both Mac and Windows will soon be able to get their hands on the tools Microsoft Corp. used to bring Word 6.0 to the Mac.
Microsoft Visual C++ Cross Development Edition for Macintosh, a CD-ROM-based tool kit slated to ship this week, lets developers generate Mac applications from code written with Visual C++ 2.0 on an 80x86-based system running Windows NT 3.5. Mac-specific features require additional coding, but the Cross Development Edition will typically produce 90 percent of the code for a Mac application, according to Microsoft, if the developer has based the project on the Microsoft Foundation Classes, the company's application framework.
The system does not yet support development of native PowerPC applications, nor does it support Microsoft's OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) 2.0 or Open Database Connectivity technologies on the Mac. Those capabilities will be added near the middle of next year when Visual C++ 3.0 is released, officials said.
Mac applications created with the cross-development system should, on average, offer 90 percent or 95 percent of the performance of a similar program written with native Mac tools, Microsoft said. Microsoft's portability library adds between 350 and 400 Kbytes to the program.
Hendie Salton, senior product manager at Digital Communications Associates in Alpharetta, Ga., said DCA decided to use the Microsoft porting system when a prospective large customer for OpenMind, her company's upcoming cross-platform workgroup-collaboration program, insisted on early release of a Mac client.
"We gambled on it because we figured it would save us four months or more, and it worked," she said. "We started with it in late spring, and the customer is already up and running with a prerelease version and very happy with it. Certainly we had questions about performance and look and feel, but we haven't been disappointed."
The Cross-Development Edition, which was code-named Wings, costs $1,999. In addition to NT 3.5, it requires Visual C++ 2.0, which lists for $399, or $499 with three quarterly updates. Microsoft's license allows unlimited, royalty-free distribution of most applications created with the system, but developers planning to distribute word processors, spreadsheets or developer tools must negotiate a separate license with the company.
Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., is at (206) 882-8080.
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: Apple cuts server models, prices
AppleShare 4 update in the works for '95
By Stephen Howard
Apple is paring server models and tweaking the prices and performance of its products. In October the company discontinued the 68040-based servers that run the Mac operating system. Last week Apple reduced dealer prices across-the-board on the remaining servers, and early next year it will reportedly release a faster version of AppleShare 4.
> Discontinuations. The 25-MHz '040-based Apple Workgroup Server 60 and its 33-MHz cousin, the AWS 80, were quietly removed from Apple's price lists last month. These models were the only '040 servers that ran the Mac OS, and by dropping them Apple leaves customers with the choice of running AppleShare on top of Unix in its AWS 95 or in emulation on a PowerPC-based server.
According to the company, its PowerPC-based 6150 and 8150 models provide all the features of the 60 and 80. In addition, Apple said, the new servers include features unavailable from earlier '040-based models, such as RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) software, and users who return their registration cards will receive a copy of GraceLAN Server Manager 3.0.
> Price cuts. The price changes affected the entire PowerPC-based Workgroup Server line as well as the '040-based AWS 95. Dealer prices were cut 6 percent to 11 percent on all models. Applied to high-priced systems such as servers, these discounts amount to several hundred dollars per CPU.
> Upgrades. Sites running AppleShare 4.0 in emulation on a PowerPC will reportedly get a lift in the first half of 1995. Sources said Apple is preparing an upgrade to improve performance of the non-native file server software by about 33 percent. The update, which sources said is not based on the Open Transport network architecture, is expected to be free.
Apple declined to comment on future directions of AppleShare.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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Gateways: Developers preparing for Open Transport
By Robert Hess
Multiple protocols will be the everyday environment for Mac developers when Open Transport, Apple's new networking architecture, hits the streets in the spring.
Apple has been briefing developers for nearly a year on Open Transport's details, and the process of adapting existing products and designing new ones has already begun.
Users will initially see benefits from Open Transport in the form of a less complex, more adaptive network configuration interface. Later, network services will become easier as they take on more of the PowerTalk metaphor.
Some vendors have little choice when it comes to Open Transport support. Anyone wanting to develop a network adapter based on PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) must use the architecture, much as designers of current cards must use the API associated with NuBus.
Georganne Benesch, director of product marketing at Farallon Computing Inc. of Alameda, Calif., said her company is already preparing to migrate its networking hardware to the new Macs with Open Transport. Despite Apple's claims that the new API set would make developing software drivers for hardware products much easier, Benesch said she has not found this necessarily to be the case.
"It really isn't any more easy or difficult to develop drivers for Open Transport [than before]," Benesch said. "It certainly hasn't presented any obstacles, but it is a different process to learn. Perhaps with time, as we develop more products, we'll find it becoming easier."
Some vendors will find Open Transport opening doors to the development of products that would otherwise be impossible. One such company is The AG Group Inc. of Walnut Creek, Calif., which markets network-analysis software. Currently, users cannot examine the packets of an Ethernet network while continuing to use that network for other day-to-day activities.
"One of the benefits of Open Transport for us would be to make it possible for our network-monitoring applications to coexist with other products, such as a mail package," said Mahboud Zabetian, The AG Group vice president of research and development. "We will be able to examine every packet as it comes across, then Open Transport can redirect it to the appropriate final destination."
Unfortunately, The AG Group is now in a holding pattern with Open Transport. "We are waiting for Apple to finalize Open Transport before we roll up our sleeves and get to work seriously," Zabetian said. "The use of existing open standards does mean we can do a lot of preliminary work."
Mark Murray, president of Team Advanced Systems Associates of San Diego, a developer of high-speed fiber-optic networking cards for the Mac, said Open Transport is an important part of his company's plans but doubts the company will abandon existing software.
"We don't see any way that a serious Mac developer wouldn't support Open Transport," Murray said. "It will make it possible for our existing software to support a mountable-volume type of service, which currently it does not. But we expect to continue selling our current drivers, since they provide cross-platform compatibility and better performance than we expect those based on Open Transport will."
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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: GDT to take mail airborne
Smart messaging on Internet server
By James Staten
An intelligent wireless messaging system will come to the Mac in January from Canadian developer GDT Softworks Inc.
InfoWave is a two-way Internet mail system that will use the RAM Mobile Data wireless network. It will be distributed in the United States initially under the name WyndMail by Wynd Communications Corp. of San Luis Obispo, Calif., where the InfoWave server for the United States will be located. The Mac client will be able to send messages to any Internet account, alphanumeric pager or fax machine via this server.
GDT said the client will provide faster mail delivery to the server by compressing all messages sent.
Two enclosure options not found on most mail systems will be provided: First, a size-reducing option will allow users to strip the resource fork out of a file being sent to other Mac users who have the file's creator application. Second, commonly used fax documents can be stored on the InfoWave server as TIFF files. They will then be available for faxing when needed, without the user having to upload the document for each fax.
InfoWave will also provide intelligent message forwarding and receiving. An option will set the server to copy all messages to a second Internet address, such as the user's eWorld address. It can also be set to forward only messages larger than 10 Kbytes; the mailbox will still receive the subject and header data.
The client will be priced at $59, and the service will start at $49 per month. A RAM Mobile Data wireless modem is required. Wynd said it will provide additional services to its U.S. subscribers, including Dow Jones custom, to-the-minute news retrieval and pager notification, when new messages have arrived.
GDT said that an InfoWave client for Newton should ship in the first quarter of 1995.
Wynd Communications Corp. of San Luis Obispo, Calif, can be reached at (800) 549-6000; fax (800) 549-6001; info@wynd.net.
GDT Softworks Inc. of Burnaby, British Columbia, is at (604) 291-9121; fax (604) 291-6102; aus@applelink.apple.com.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
Mobile Computing Page 18
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: GEnie to expand users' Internet options
By James Staten
Not to be left behind in the race to get on the information superhighway, GE Information Services Inc. recently announced plans to expand its commercial on-line service's access to the Internet.
GEnie's Internet access is being deployed in two phases, the company said. The first phase, scheduled for activation by the end of the year, will include text-only access to FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, Usenet news groups, Gopher sites and Wide Area Information Server databases. This phase will also provide outbound Telnet service, allowing users to connect to other host computers through the Internet.
The second phase will provide a graphical user interface to these services in the first half of 1995.
This winter, GE Information Services will also establish the GEnie Information Server on the Internet, allowing nonmembers to learn about the service. A sign-up module will also be available. Similar servers were recently announced by America Online Inc., CompuServe Inc. and Prodigy Services Co.
GEnie costs $8.95 per month, which includes four hours of connect time. Additional hours are priced from $3 to $9.50, depending on the time of day.
GE Information Services Inc. of Rockville, Md., can be reached at (301) 340-4000 or (800) 638-9636; fax (301) 340-4488.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
Mobile Computing Page 18
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: CreativePartner is virtual studio
Users can send, view, annotate digital video
By Carolyn Said
Video and multimedia producers can collaborate in a "virtual studio" with a new distribution system due this week from emotion Inc. Also this week, the company will become the first commercial vendor to ship a Mac MPEG decoder card.
CreativePartner, a software package priced at $7,500 for five users, lets people share and annotate large files over LANs and WANs. Users can send, receive, view, log and annotate digital video as well as multimedia files, sounds and still images.
daVinci Time & Space, a developer of interactive TV content with offices in San Mateo, Calif., and Los Angeles, uses CreativePartner to share large files between its two offices, which are connected in a WAN by a T1 line. "Just copying over the network was painfully slow," said Paul Jensen, engineering manager. "We've found [CreativePartner] to be twice as fast as if we just used Finder copying."
emotion said it hopes CreativePartner's annotation capabilities will help transform the way creative professionals, such as those who work for movie studios, post-production houses and ad agencies, collaborate. Users can annotate individual frames of a movie with tools for drawing, text, electronic sticky notes and audio comments. To save time, users can send just the annotated frames; the software can then automatically integrate them with the full video. Buttons allow users to jump to annotated frames. The software also includes VCR-style playback controls to play, pause and step through a video.
"They've got a very user-friendly interface for commenting on these files," said Rob Auster, vice president of digital convergence at BIS Strategic Decisions Inc. of Norwell, Mass. "It's almost a parallel to Adobe Acrobat, which lets you send someone a text document and have them comment with sticky notes. This is similar, but in the multimedia video field. This is a hot thing for creative professionals, to encapsulate their ideas and get them out in the review process."
CreativePartner runs over any LAN or WAN, emotion said, including Ethernet, token ring, Fiber Distributed Data Interface, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), switched-56, leased lines, X.25, frame relay, T1, T3, Asynchronous Transfer Mode and dial-up modem lines.
The product, now for Macs only, will ship for Windows clients in 1995, allowing cross-platform file transfer.
The system works with a variety of video compression technologies, including QuickTime, JPEG and MPEG. For MPEG compression, which can make files 1 percent of the original size, users need an encoder card, which is typically $20,000 or more. To play back MPEG, users need a decoder card. The company's new card, the CreativePartner MPEG Decoder, a 7-inch NuBus board manufactured by Wired Inc., sells for $695.
CreativePartner also offers management and administration facilities. A transaction log provides an audit trail for each file distributed. The software can stop, delay and resume package distribution at any point.
A user-definable address book maintains connection information to automate distribution. For dial-up connections, done via Apple Remote Access, the software automatically makes the phone call and sends a package. Clients can receive packages at any time, whether or not the software is running.
Besides enabling video professionals to collaborate, emotion said, CreativePartner could be used to create networks to distribute multimedia content. Examples include kiosks, corporate communications and training, real estate, and medical imaging delivery.
emotion Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., can be reached at (415) 812-9000; fax (415) 812-9009; gerry_machi@emotion.com.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
GA Page 24
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: Publishers see Internet as next frontier
By Darcy DiNucci
Judging by this fall's Seybold San Francisco and other conferences springing up across the country, publishing on the Internet has become the latest burning concern of just about every publisher and business manager with content to disseminate -- or capitalize on. And though the exact nature of the enterprise is still somewhat mysterious, the consensus in the industry is that it's not too early for publishers to take stock of how their businesses might benefit from going on-line.
Until recently, a command-line interface and an audience limited to cyberpunks and the denizens of large educational and government institutions have limited the appeal of publishing over the international public network known as the Internet.
Now, however, media coverage of the information superhighway, the availability of easier-to-use graphical interfaces such as Mosaic, and the increasing availability of dial-up access for individuals and businesses have caused the number of Internet accounts in the past year or so to multiply rapidly. The presence of millions of on-line users seems to have convinced publishers that the time is right.
The motivations for going on-line are many, but no one we interviewed expects to make much money in the short term. While the Internet offers a remarkably convenient distribution system, so far it does not offer an easy way to charge for the information offered. New methods to restrict server access to paying customers, to safeguard credit card information as it is sent through the wires and to create Internet-friendly forms of advertising are just now being developed.
Going forth
The pioneers of Internet publishing have forged ahead despite these drawbacks, finding other incentives for staking their claims. "It offers tremendous benefits," said Sue Hatanaka Burger, vice president for new media products at Redgate Communications, a media marketing company with offices in several U.S. cities.
"You can talk to end users, get feedback, do post-sales support as well as get information. Our advice to publishers is to take an audit of your assets, then make a plan to digitize that content. Become familiar with on-line services -- not just understanding what's there but also the business of putting information up there and building community."
Bill Mitchell, director of electronic publishing at the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, is setting up a World-Wide Web site for his newspaper because the Internet is "clearly a growing market among people who are our kind of customers: people for whom information is important to their business and professional lives."
Hear about the lawyer?
Nolo Press in Berkeley, Calif., a publisher of self-help legal books and software, in August set up Self-Help Law Centers on O'Reilly and Associates' Global Network Navigator Web service and on eWorld, Apple's on-line service. Both sites offer articles from Nolo's quarterly newsletter, Nolo's catalog (so far no on-line ordering), downloadable software demonstrations and the latest in lawyer jokes.
According to Albin Renauer, Nolo director of software, Nolo expects returns in on-line experience and publicity rather than in on-line book sales.
"It provides a way for the company to develop name recognition on-line and to become familiar with the processes so that we can evaluate the costs and personnel load," he said.
Renauer also said that because of the time sensitivity of Nolo's books, "in, say, two or three years, it's conceivable that the best way to distribute our books would be for people to download them." He said that Nolo won't be offering electronic versions of books for sale on-line until the logistics of commercial transactions on the Internet and better document-preparation tools are hammered out.
The (extended) paperless office
Some noncommercial organizations, such as Stanford University, aren't hanging their hopes on projections of users and technology to come; for them, the incentive is the here-and-now opportunity to cut the costs of paper publishing. Craig Moore administers Stanford's Portfolio system, an Internet-based scheme for distributing a wide variety of administrative and reference materials to faculty, staff and students.
The materials, most of which are in both ASCII and No Hands Software Inc.'s Common Ground format, are as various as textbook order forms, library catalogs, databases, presentations, university brochures, registration materials, administrative manuals and a HyperCard-based tour of the Stanford Library.
This fall, the campus's more than 8,000 students will use the system to register for classes. The materials are created on a variety of platforms, deposited on an AppleShare server, cataloged and converted to Common Ground format, then uploaded to a multiprotocol Web server.
Moore said he knows that his on-campus audience has access to the Internet; in fact, most campus computers and student dorm rooms have direct connections. Putting the materials on the Web rather than a campus network also makes the materials available to more far-flung users, such as prospective students and staff working off-site.
Moore is still trying to assess the projected savings. "I don't know if we have specific numbers," he said. "But, for example, take 8,000 copies of a 400-page administrative policy manual. You figure there's considerable costs to be saved by not printing that publication."
Hedging bets
Perhaps the most common motivation for publishers taking their first steps toward the Internet is the fear of being left behind. "They feel like they better be doing it before someone scoops them," said Redgate Communications' Burger. To those who are thinking of testing the waters, her firm recommends "that you make a bet, but watch what you invest." She stressed, however, that the return on that investment could be counted in terms of experience with on-line culture or improved customer relations and not just the bottom line.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
GA Page 24
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: Building blocks for publishing on the Internet
Software publishers are stepping up to build tools to enhance the Internet interface.
By Darcy DiNucci
Right now, anyone who wants to publish on the Internet can, and it will become easier as the set of tools to do so continues to take shape.
It's generally accepted that the World-Wide Web and NCSA Mosaic will be the metaphor on which Internet publishing will be built. Software publishers are rushing to bring out tools that enhance and complement the basic interface. Mosaic, developed by Mark Andreessen at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and released for Macintosh and Windows computers last fall, allows users to point and click their way through the Internet.
HTTP is key
The Web is a loosely organized entity, a collection of documents on about 3,000 servers worldwide, connected to one another through logical hypertext links. The core of the Web is a protocol called Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP), developed and put in the public domain by CERN, a physics lab in Geneva. HTTP sets up rules for the communication between the Web server and the Web client, or browser, software, which runs on each user's desktop computer. Mosaic is the most popular of several browsers available for the Web, and there are several versions of it.
You must set up a server and connect it to the Internet according to the HTTP protocol. (Documentation and resource code for HTTP are available on the Internet.) Servers are usually Unix-based machines, and most server software is designed for that operating system. But at least one version is available for the Mac: a program called MacHTTP (see MacWEEK, Oct. 24, Page 10) from BIAP Systems. MacHTTP is proving to be the key Internet publishing tool for Macs. Macs used as Internet servers or clients also require MacTCP, an extension included with System 7.5 that enables the Mac to use the TCP/IP protocol used by the Internet.
Formatting with HTML
Mosaic and other browsers are designed to work with ASCII files coded with a tagging language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Commonly used readers and servers now support HTML+, an improved version that supports forms. HTML tags are set in brackets throughout the documents, labeling the different parts. The client software reads the tags and formats the material according to styles defined in the browser. The most important HTML tags define hypertext links to other documents on Web servers. Between those tags is a universal resource locator (URL) -- the text that describes where on the Web the linked document is located. It's the publisher's job to define the links, which make it possible for readers to jump from server to server, finding related information around the globe simply by clicking on highlighted text.
Publishers who set out to create HTML files are often intimidated when they find that HTML design tools are meager compared to the page-layout tools they are used to. The current specification for HTML provides for only a minimal set of tags. And while HTML files can be generated with any text editor or word processor that can save as plain text, adding the tags can be time-consuming and prone to error.
In this category, as with servers, a freeware tradition is being supplemented by more full-featured commercial products. A freeware HTML extension for Bare Bones Software Inc.'s BBEdit and BBEdit Lite text editors is available on-line from Carles Bellver at the Universitat Jaume in Costello de la Plana, Spain. Other HTML freeware includes rtftohtml by Chris Hector at cjh@cray.com and SHE, which requires Hyper-Card and a Mac. It can be found at ftp://ftp.lib.ncsu.edu/pub/software/mac/simple-html-editor.hqx.
A commercial program for the Mac, called Hotmetal Pro, is due this month from SoftQuad Inc. of Toronto (see MacWEEK, June 27, Page 6). It boasts features such as automatic generation of tags, a spelling checker and an add-on module that checks for syntax errors. It is priced at $145 through Dec. 31 and $195 thereafter. Windows and X-Window versions were released in October.
Even more disturbing for publishers than the painstaking formatting is the fact that, with HTML documents, all control over the format is lost once the document is on the user's screen. The HTML tags simply mark the sections of a document, without the means to enforce specifications for typeface, type size or other characteristics. Graphics are likewise hampered: HTML supports in-line bit-mapped graphics, but such effects as wrapping text around a graphic placed at the right margin are impossible.
Alternatives
Publishers concerned about maintaining a more professional look or a house style in their documents are turning to electronic publishing programs such as Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat; No Hands Software Inc.'s Common Ground; Farallon Computing Inc.'s Replica; WordPerfect, the Novell Applications Group's Envoy; or Frame Technology Corp.'s FrameViewer to freeze their designs before they put them on-line. The electronic-document programs offer other benefits to electronic publishers as well. The biggest, of course, is that readers don't need the original application, fonts or graphics to read the files. Another is that, in many cases, publishers can create their documents just once, using familiar word processing or page-layout tools, and then "print" it to one of the electronic-document formats. Last but not least is the capability to compress and decompress files.
The publishers of these electronic-document programs, aware of their promise for Internet publishing, are taking steps to mold their products to the Web's specifications. Acrobat has always let document publishers add hypertext links to other parts of an Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) file. In Acrobat 2.0, released in October, those links may also be to other files -- in PDF or other formats -- and Adobe is creating a plug-in for 2.0 that will allow those links to be Web URLs (a new Web option will appear in Acrobat's Link tool). Although Adobe is the only electronic-document software publisher to announce that feature, others will probably follow.
Spyglass Inc. of Savoy, Ill., which handles commercial enhancement and licensing of Mosaic, has announced that it will support Acrobat's URL connections to other Web documents in its 2.0 release, due in January. Pam Deziel, Adobe Acrobat product manager, said that connection is done with a fairly straightforward Apple event, which Tim Krauskopf, vice president of R&D at Spyglass, predicts will become a standard for applications to establish such two-way communications with browsers.
Another important standard for document publishers, Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), is also being tied into the Web. In October, Spyglass announced that Version 2.0 of Enhanced NCSA Mosaic would also come bundled with a forthcoming viewer from SoftQuad, called Panorama Pro, that will launch automatically when an SGML document is encountered. (Windows and Unix versions of Panorama Pro will be available this month; the Mac version is due in mid-1995.) Hypertext links, coded in HyTime, an extension of SGML, would act like HTML links in those documents, allowing users to link to SGML texts. Panorama Pro will be available to end users for $139.
Support for commerce
For professional publishers, perhaps the biggest hurdle to Internet publishing has been the lack of tools supporting secure transactions on the Web. Most troubling is the lack of provision for exchanging and protecting passwords and credit card numbers over the Internet -- a necessary feature for any commercial enterprise and probably the hottest center of activity for Web tool vendors.
At the hub of the discussions is CommerceNet, an industry consortium working to define standards for Internet products. CommerceNet's purview is to organize, test and suggest standards for extensions to the HTTP protocol that will enhance password protection, search and retrieval, and other transactions over the network. The group's modus operandi is to create provisions for open systems, supporting multiple operating modes and cryptographic algorithms. Its work has just begun, though, and published standards are still a long way off.
(Copyright issues also need to be addressed, and some publishers are beginning to work on these problems as well. The operating theory right now is to put on the network only what you want to give away.)
At least one company has decided to forge ahead on this front without benefit of standards. Mosaic Communications Corp. of Mountain View, Calif. -- founded in April by Andreessen and James H. Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics Inc. -- promises to deliver client and server software supporting RSA encryption by the end of this month. The company has posted a late-beta version of its client software, NetScape, for Mac, Windows and X-Window systems, and has announced that the client will be distributed free to end users (see MacWEEK, Oct. 24, Page 14). The server, called Mosaic NetSite, runs only on Unix.
"Basically what this is doing is letting you create a private network over a public network," said Rosanne Siino, director of communications at the company. Siino also said promising additional modules for the server software to handle billing, user tracking and other transaction management features will be released during the next year or so.
Currently, users accessing NetSite-secured servers would need to be using the NetScape client. "There have to be some established standards before X browser can work with Y server," Siino said. "But as soon as there are standards that are more defined, we're planning to support them."
MacWEEK 11.07.94
GA Page 28
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Apple to sell directly to dealers
New channel plan stresses lower prices
By Jon Swartz
Apple is taking its channel strategy direct to dealers. Last week the company laid out a bold new plan that bypasses the traditional two-tier distribution model and is designed to offer resellers more products at lower prices.
The program, scheduled to start Jan. 15, is expected to boost Apple's role as a distributor while patching up its sometimes contentious relationship with dealers, according to industry observers. It calls for Apple to:
> Reduce volume purchase requirements for those with Dealer B designations to $5 million from $20 million a year. Resellers must buy at least $1 million worth of equipment annually to qualify for Dealer A status.
> Establish minimum advertised prices for Power Macintosh, PowerBook and Performa lines. Dealers who do not observe the policy may be penalized, according to Apple.
> Increase soft-dollar incentives to dealers, based on sales and returns of CPUs and selected peripherals.
> Make Performa 475 and 575 configurations available through mail-order catalogs and offer the 575 to all authorized Apple resellers. In addition, the company said it will offer versions of the Power Mac 8100 and Quadra 630 without hard drives to value-added resellers.
> Ship its products directly to as many as 30 sites per reseller, instead of the customary three.
"It's extremely positive," said Bryan Hagen, owner of Hagen MicroAge in Minneapolis. "[Apple USA President Jim] Buckley needed to rebuild the channel to make us more of a partner and less of a competitor. Some dealers with [Apple] running through their veins either have gone out of business or now sell Intel machines because of Apple's decisions the last two to three years." Although most Apple-authorized dealers said they were sold on the plan, some -- like Ahmad Manshouri, senior vice president of vendor relations and procurement at Vanstar Corp. of Pleasanton, Calif. -- contend that lower discounts may force smaller dealers into carrying excess inventory to get better pricing.
Analysts briefed on Apple's new channel plan gave it generally positive reviews but cautioned that by lowering rather than raising volume price purchases, Apple may be gambling long-term profitability. "It's a real roll of the dice," said Van Baker, director and principal analyst at Dataquest Inc. of San Jose, Calif. "Apple could take a hit on margins."
Conversely, IBM PC Co. of Somers, N.Y., last month announced it will raise price qualifications Jan. 1 for its smaller dealers to $20 million a year, effectively doubling the requirement for best-dealer pricing.
In related news, Apple USA has named Paul Thomas director of channel strategies. He previously was a marketing executive at Tucson, Ariz.-based Artisoft Inc. and at Compaq Computer Corp. of Houston.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
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: Microsoft, NeXT may become partners
By Lisa Picarille
Former friends as well as foes Bill Gates and Steve Jobs may be teaming up again. But this time their plans could create a big headache for Apple's Taligent Inc.
A report in last week's The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, said that Gates, CEO of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. and Jobs, the former Apple co-founder and CEO of NeXT Computer Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., are considering a deal in which NeXT's future generation of object-oriented application development tools would be used to develop software for Microsoft's Cairo operating system. Cairo is the forthcoming object-based version of Windows NT, which is due in 1996.
In addition, applications created using NeXT's tools would also work with a special Cairo implementation of NeXTstep or OpenStep, the Times story said.
According to analysts, Microsoft would benefit from a deal that eases Windows development, especially because Taligent's rival object-based OS, Pink, is due to ship at about the same time.
"It could potentially give Microsoft a technological leapfrog ahead of Taligent," said Pieter Hartsook, editor of The Hartsook Letter, a newsletter based in Alameda, Calif. "It also gives NeXT that much more marketing muscle in the object-based market.
"If NeXT's tools are the next generation of object-based tools, as NeXT has promoted them, then it would make sense for Microsoft to target it for Windows 95 or Cairo," Hartsook added.
Microsoft and NeXT declined to comment.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
BusinessWatch Page 32
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Editorial: IBM Macs won't hurt OS/2 strategy
MacWEEK readers, as revealed in last week's QuickPoll, overwhelmingly want third-party Macintosh clones to augment their purchases of Apple-manufactured machines. Macintosh managers see the benefits of broader choice, better availability, flexible configurations and lower prices -- as well as the industry's best computers.
As a potential supplier of Macs, IBM Corp. gets an enthusiastic thumbs-up from those polled. Its reputation for quality and service and its knowledge of IS issues make Big Blue the preferred vendor of third-party Macs.
Some observers, however, contend that IBM Macs would prove to be a strategic error for the computing giant because the company should focus its efforts on OS/2. According to this argument, an IBM-labeled Mac would confuse the market by diluting its operating-system strategy.
Nonsense. The market, which is primarily made up of sophisticated business buyers, understands the value of Apple's machines as well as alternative computers. People will not suddenly become bewildered just because a Mac has an IBM logo. They will continue to bring the same buying criteria to the purchase: Does the computer do the right job at the right price? And for many corporate customers: Can I buy it from IBM?
OS/2 is certainly key to IBM's desktop strategy, but the world's biggest computer company also sells Unix, Windows and DOS to its hugely varied customer base. Add to that mix IBM's mainframe and minicomputer operating systems, such as RPG and CICS, and you can see that putting the Mac OS on the list does not confuse the issue, it simply completes the picture.
The Mac OS is virtually the only OS you can't buy from IBM. The reason this odd condition persists is because IBM can't negotiate a mutually satisfactory deal with Apple, not because of OS/2.
This bottleneck must end soon because both companies' balance sheets will benefit from an agreement, and they know their customers are eager to get Mac clones.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
Editorial Page 36
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Second Decade: Apple-IBM talks can change the world
By Henry Norr
Let's hope Messrs Spindler, Cannavinno and Gerstner are thinking big this week, because if they aren't, they may have thrown away their best chance to reshape the personal computing market.
A bold, comprehensive and detailed agreement between Apple and IBM Corp. could lay the foundation for a serious challenge to the Windows-x86 standard. Anything less, I'm afraid, will ensure the continuing -- and probably increasing -- dominance of Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp.
Paradigm shift?
It's no secret that Apple and IBM have been discussing a two-part deal giving Big Blue rights to market Mac clones and committing both companies to a common design for future Power PC hardware so their machines (and licensees' machines) could someday run the same operating systems and applications.
I think the companies need to announce that, and more, immediately. They also need to define a long-term, cooperative relationship between their operating systems. If IBM treats the Mac OS simply as a stopgap enabling it to sell PowerPC boxes while it struggles to finish the RISC version of OS/2, corporate buyers who have spurned the Apple Mac aren't likely to take the Blue one any more seriously. And with the PowerPC market still divided along OS lines, even with a common hardware foundation, many software developers will still question whether either side of the market is large enough to justify their attention.
Suppose, on the other hand, the partners announce a commitment to bring their operating systems together. Complete integration (Mac OS/2?) probably wouldn't make sense; the key is to guarantee that off-the-shelf Mac applications will work under the IBM OS (presumably by offering a Mac personality on top of IBM's Workplace microkernel). To developers, that would at last mean a unified PowerPC market; to corporate buyers, it would offer an appealing combination of the Mac's interface and native applications with IBM's enterprise-computing expertise and support. An IBM promise to share its voice-recognition and other "human-centric" technologies would be frosting on the cake.
If you can't beat 'em ...
There's one other weapon the PowerPC partners need if they hope to reverse the tightening grip of the Wintel standard: a more compelling story about compatibility with existing DOS and Windows applications. With the enhanced-mode version of SoftWindows delayed into next year and its performance lagging far behind today's PC pace, it's clear that Insignia Solutions Inc.'s software emulator by itself doesn't fill the bill.
The impending introduction of an improved Houdini card for the Power Mac 6100 is a step in the right direction, but Apple needs to go further and IBM needs to get in the act. I'd like to see a range of solutions at varying price/performance points, including coprocessor cards for all models, systems incorporating the unannounced x86-compatible PowerPC 615 processor and even dual-processor logic boards.
Renewed cooperation between Apple and IBM could mark a new era in computing -- if they have the guts and vision to deliver an agreement of the scope the situation demands.
Henry Norr, editor emeritus of MacWEEK, welcomes feedback in the MacWEEK Forum on CompuServe or eWorld or at henry_norr@macweek.ziff.com.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
Second Decade Page 36
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
MacWEEK Insider: System 8: 1995 or bust
By Andrew Gore
Senior Writer Robert Hess' story this week on the delay of System 8 to 1996, which this publication I believe has rightly identified as the most important work Apple was going to do in 1995, is going to come as quite a shock to the Macintosh industry. It also has the potential to be misunderstood.
First, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come might say, these are the shadows of what may be, not what will be. As the story points out, there are still things Apple could do to get System 8 out in 1995. However, if the company continues on its current path, this will not happen.
Rewriting a 10-year-old operating system from the ground up and going to a modern OS structure, while maintaining compatibility on two CPU architectures, is too big a challenge for any company to meet in six months.
And that's all the time Apple has left to make Copland work in '95. Because, once it has assembled the multitude of parts that make up System 8, it will take at least another six months to beta test a brand-new OS that is trying to achieve so many goals. And that's only if the software gods are smiling on Cupertino next year.
As we've said in these pages before, Apple cannot afford to wait until the middle of '96 to deliver its next OS release. The new OS is critical if Apple expects to successfully fend off Windows 95 from its installed base and to make Macintosh licensing work. Without some form of hardware abstraction, which Copland reportedly will deliver, Mac clone makers will be limited to repeating Apple's designs. A healthy clone market for everyone, including Apple, requires diversity.
So, if we accept that delivering a major OS release in '95 is critical, what are Apple's options? I believe they can be distilled down to two: Start tossing stuff over the side of the System 8 ship, as is discussed in Hess' story, or don't do Copland at all.
If you look at the goals of Copland -- start a migration to a modern OS, get a hardware abstraction layer and adopt a new interface -- only two are going to be really important to users in the short term. As I understand it, it should be possible for Apple to take its current Power Mac OS, put it on top of the NuKernel, and then put at least some of the new interface components, such as the Appearance Manager, on top of that.
This would result in an OS release with a new Finder (to help combat Windows) and a hardware abstraction layer (to help make licensing work) that should be deliverable by next fall.
By doing this, Apple will get a little breathing room to resolve compatibility issues and make sure the third-party community has time to thoroughly test the modern OS before its 1996 debut. No, it won't include everything Apple may want in System 8. However, it will deliver what Apple really needs in '95.
Andrew Gore is executive editor/news at MacWEEK. He welcomes feedback at agore@eworld.com and 72511,224@compuserve.com.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
MacWEEK Insider Page 3
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Apple, HP inkjets color mainstream business
Easy-to-use printers work well for documents, presentations
By Jeff Green
With each passing month, color printers are beginning to look like the next office inevitability. And while color laser printers have been soaking up most of the media hype, their lower-rent cousins, the inkjets, have quietly been getting better and less expensive. Apple's Color StyleWriter 2400 and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s DeskWriter 560C are two low-cost color QuickDraw inkjet printers aimed at business users who would like to incorporate color into their documents and presentations but don't want to spend thousands of dollars to do so.
The $595 Color StyleWriter 2400 is Apple's newest low-end color inkjet printer, offering 360-by-360-dpi color and black-and-white output. The printer requires a 68020 processor or better, System 7 and 4 Mbytes of RAM, and provides support for System 7.5's QuickDraw GX. It ships with ColorSync, Apple's system-level color-management software, and ColorShare, an extension that lets you share the printer over an AppleTalk network. GDT Software Inc.'s $149 StyleScript 1.1, available at the end of this month, is a software RIP that will bring PostScript Level 2 support to the 2400.
The $719 HP DeskWriter 560C, released earlier this year, offers 600-by-300-dpi black-and-white and 300-by-300-dpi color output. It ships with HP's ColorSmart color-management software and is compatible with ColorSync. The printer requires System 6.07 or later and 4 Mbytes of RAM, and includes both serial and AppleTalk interfaces. An HP-labeled PostScript Level 2 software RIP is available for $249.
Both printers output to plain paper and support a wide variety of other media, including transparencies, glossy and coated paper, envelopes, and back-print film.
Getting started
Setting up the Color StyleWriter 2400 was a simple, by-the-numbers procedure that took just a few minutes. Thanks to the manual's clear explanation, even novices should have no trouble installing the ink cartridge and connecting the printer to a Mac. The 2400 can accommodate either a black or a CMYK ink cartridge. Once the unit is set up, an installer copies the print drivers, ColorSync and ColorShare software, and 28 TrueType fonts to your hard disk.
We like the StyleWriter's slim, compact design, which makes it easy to position on even a cramped work space. Most of the printer's controls are conveniently located at the top of the unit. You load paper into the sheet feeder from the top, which is also handy, but this leaves much of the paper exposed, making it vulnerable to curling or other possible damage -- not a small matter when you're using expensive transparencies or glossy paper.
Setting up the DeskWriter 560C was also extremely easy. The 560C simultaneously uses two cartridges -- one for black and another for color. An installer loads all the necessary software onto your Mac; you use a separate installer to load the 20 included TrueType fonts.
Our one quibble with the 560C is HP's curious decision to put the power socket and interface port underneath the machine, which means you have to lift the printer when you want to check or change a connection. The 560C is also considerably bulkier than the Apple printer (14 pounds vs. 7.9 pounds) and hogs more desktop space.
Performance
To test the performance and image quality of the Color StyleWriter 2400 and HP DeskWriter 560C, we connected the printers to a Quadra 840AV and printed a variety of sample documents, including three color EPS files, two text documents, a 9-Mbyte Adobe Photoshop 3.0 image and a five-page ClarisImpact document.
Speedwise, the HP 560C was the clear victor, consistently outperforming the Color StyleWriter in both color and black-and-white tests. On the color EPS files, the HP's average print speed on the Best setting was about three minutes per page; the StyleWriter clocked in at closer to four minutes per page.
The disparity was even greater on text files. Though Apple says the StyleWriter 2400 can print three black-and-white pages per minute, we couldn't get anywhere near that speed; average time was a yawn-inducing two minutes per page for plain black-and-white text. In contrast, the 560C zipped through a page in about 30 seconds.
Output quality
Because bad color is worse than no color, and because inkjets have not always enjoyed the greatest of reputations, we pulled our first few sample sheets out of each printer with some trepidation. Happily, our fears proved to be unfounded. Both printers offer color output good enough to improve documents and presentations. Output on glossy paper and transparencies was very good -- more than adequate for everyday business needs.
Though neither printer directly supports PostScript, we were quite happy with the printouts of the EPS files we tested. For photos and scanned images, both printers offer a choice between patterned and scattered halftone printing; in each case, scatter halftoning produced far superior results.
Apple's printer offers a slightly higher color resolution than the HP 560C (360-by-360-dpi vs. 300-by-300-dpi), and it shows. Images on the StyleWriter were sharper and crisper, details were rendered more accurately, and colors were more vivid. When turned on, ColorSync made a difference but not always for the better. While it provided greater intensity to some images, it sometimes did so at the sake of realism, saturating and brightening colors more than we would have liked.
Though the 560C's color output was inferior to the Color StyleWriter in every test, it was still quite decent for the modest jobs for which it is intended. Images often appeared a bit fuzzy, and colors looked somewhat washed out, although the latter problem could usually be fixed by adjusting the Print dialog's Intensity control. The 560C did produce very good quality text documents because of its higher 600-by-300-dpi black-and-white resolution; coupled with the printer's high speed, this makes the machine a better choice if you plan to use it for intensive text printing.
Neither printer fared very well with scanned images, which is typical of inkjet printers. If you need to print photorealistic images, consider a higher-end solution.
Documentation and support
The 2400's slim manual does a great job of guiding users through the installation process but falls apart after that. The driver's color options are given only a cursory mention, forcing you to experiment to see how the features work. Since this may be many users' first color printer, more explanation is needed.
The HP 560C's documentation is better, consisting of a Setup Guide, User's Guide, Printer Software Guide and Guide to Using Color. The latter is exactly what we'd like to see in Apple's documentation: a layperson's guide that clearly describes basic color concepts such as halftoning and color correction, with tips for effectively incorporating color into standard business documents.
Conclusions
Business users who want to incorporate color into their documents and presentations now have decent choices at remarkably low prices. Both the Apple StyleWriter 2400 and the HP DeskWriter 560C are inexpensive, easy to install and use, and offer output quality that's very good for lower-end needs. Those who occasionally need to print a color chart or presentation transparencies no longer have to schlep down to a service bureau or invest thousands of dollars in a color printer that would otherwise collect dust most of the year.
While both printers function well, ultimately we prefer the StyleWriter 2400, which offers a sleeker design and higher-quality color output for $124 less than the 560C. The StyleWriter's one downside is its slow printing speed: If you're looking for one machine to handle your color printing as well as your day-to-day text output, this isn't it. But if you already have a black-and-white document printer, the StyleWriter could serve as a very good addition for occasional color attachments or color presentations.
On the other hand, the 560C is relatively fast and excels at text jobs. If performance is more important to you than color output quality, and you want only one printer sitting on your desk, this might be the way to go. But judged strictly in terms of their value as color printers, the Color StyleWriter 2400 is the clear victor.
Apple can be reached at (800) 767-2775 or (800) 538-9696.
Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Direct Marketing Organization in Santa Clara, Calif., is at (800) 752-0900; fax (800) 333-1917.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
Reviews Page 39
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Digital Ocean and Photonics unplug LocalTalk
Wireless technology pricey for large sites
By Todd Coopee
With ubiquitous access to LANs becoming the norm, wireless networking products are starting to make timely appearances in the Macintosh marketplace. Two recent entrants, Digital Ocean Inc.'s Grouper 100LT and Photonics Corp.'s Cooperative adapter, offer full access to LocalTalk networks without the need for direct, hard-wired connections.
LocalTalk unplugged
Each wireless networking system uses a different protocol for communication and data transfers.
Cooperative products from Photonics use diffuse-infrared technology, the method used in most stereo and TV remote controls. The lens of the $349 Cooperative adapter radiates infrared signals in a cone-shaped pattern at standard AppleTalk speeds of 230.4 Kbytes per second. The signal reflects off solid surfaces, such as ceilings and walls, and continues to reproduce within a 25-by-25-foot area. This range allows two or more adapters to communicate with each other without being in direct line of sight. To achieve the widest possible signal dispersion, Photonics recommends that you adjust all adapters to point toward the ceiling.
Alternately, the $699 Grouper 100LT adapter uses direct-sequence spread-spectrum radio waves as a transmission medium. Radio waves emanate from a transmitting Grouper in an omnidirectional pattern up to a distance of 800 feet. Unlike infrared, spread-spectrum radio waves pass through solid objects but grow weaker in the process. The data rate of spread-spectrum radio waves is 2 Mbytes per second, although much of this bandwidth is wasted because of the much slower speed of AppleTalk.
Digital Ocean also sells the $799 Manta, which allows wireless Ethernet connections.
Getting connected
Setting up and configuring the Photonics product was very simple. The Cooperative adapter plugs directly into the printer port on a Mac SE or later model. It will also function properly in a LaserWriter II or later model printer. An additional connection is required to the Mac's ADB port to supply the device with power. The adapter's ADB connector includes a pass-through ADB port so you can piggyback two ADB connections.
Because some Apple products -- such as PowerBook Duos, most LaserWriters and Newton MessagePads -- do not have ADB ports, Photonics offers an optional $129 Cooperative Access Point/Power Unit. With the adapter mounted on top of it, the access unit supplies power from either an AC adapter or three AA batteries. Photonics estimates that alkaline batteries provide 24 hours of use, while rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries will last about 12 hours. We found these estimates a bit high and recommend using the AC adapter for long-term, stationary usage.
Once you've made your connections, just turn on AppleTalk and restart the Mac. No additional software is necessary.
Another nice feature of the Photonics product is its size. Even with an access unit installed as a base, the adapter measures less than 3 by 3 by 4 inches when fully extended and weighs only 8 ounces.
Installing Grouper
Setting up Grouper was also easy, albeit a bit more time-consuming. The 100LT's hardware consists of two components -- a wedge and a radio -- that snap together to form an elongated "L." Besides the attachments for the radio, the wedge contains two LocalTalk ports, off and on/reset buttons, and an LCD status display.
The wedge provides power to the radio via an AC power connector or a compartment for a rechargeable NiCad battery pack (provided with the product). Depending on usage, Digital Ocean estimates that fully charged batteries will last about six hours. Again, our results varied.
The wedge-radio combination attaches to the LocalTalk port on any Macintosh or peripheral capable of supporting AppleTalk Phase 2. The Macintosh should also be running System 7 or later. Once attached, the LCD provides basic diagnostic information, including power status and signal quality.
Grouper is much larger than the Cooperative adapter. The wedge measures about 11 by 4 by 1 inch with the radio checking in at about 3 by 1 by 5 inches. Together they weigh 22 ounces.
To accommodate PowerBook users, Grouper can be screwed into the bottom of most notebooks via an included mounting kit. A special C-shaped LocalTalk coupler makes the connection between the PowerBook and Grouper as short as possible. To use the coupler, you'll have to remove the back door of the PowerBook, a prospect some users might find distasteful.
Something fishy
Unlike the Cooperative adapter, Grouper must be configured via software before it can be used on a Mac or LocalTalk peripheral. The Installer copies over the Grouper control panel, status bar application and a Grouper Monitor extension. Using the control panel, you can name your Grouper, select an operating mode, and choose a school name and type.
Keeping with the marine motif, Groupers communicate with each other based on the name of the school in which they are placed. Each school contains as many as 16 Groupers. Data packets are encoded with the school name so individual Groupers will recognize only the signals of other school members. This allows multiple schools to exist within the same transmission area without interfering with each other.
To reduce network traffic even further, one or more Groupers in each school can be designated as hubs. Groupers not acting as hubs operate in remote mode. To provide backup in case of hub failure, one or more Groupers may also be placed in dynamic mode, which lets them act as either a hub or a remote.
Additional configuration options in the Grouper control panel let you make Grouper inactive, determine how alerts from the 100LT should be sent to your Mac, discharge the NiCad battery pack, and set when or if Grouper should enter into power-saving mode.
Performance
Both the Cooperative adapter and Grouper performed well in our tests. We created wireless LANs with both products by attaching them to several PowerBooks and a single LaserWriter and had no problems with file transfers and printing requests. We also installed the products on a wired LocalTalk network; accessing network file servers and printers worked without a hitch.
In our tests using the Cooperative adapters, we periodically blocked the infrared signals with objects. Unless we completely covered the lens, the adapter continuously tried to retransmit the signal. If we blocked the signal for several minutes, our network connections were lost. Grouper did not suffer from this limitation.
To assess the school capabilities in Grouper, we created a pair of schools. When we moved a PowerBook between the two schools, we were successfully able to view only those resources available in that particular school.
Security
While wireless networking is convenient, it does raise some concerns about data security. Both products rely on entirely different security models to keep network signals away from prying eyes.
Photonics contends that security is inherent in diffuse-infrared technology for several reasons: The signals propagate over a small area and they reflect off solid surfaces, making it possible to contain them within closed spaces. While this may be an ideal solution for sites maintaining a closed and secure work environment, it is clearly not the norm at most locations.
Since the spread-spectrum radio wave technology used in Grouper can pass through solid objects, there is a greater chance of data being picked up by an outside receiver. For this reason, Digital Ocean provides several security options: Classes can be password-protected, and roster security can be implemented on a class-by-class basis. Essentially, both techniques digitally encode the signals in software, which means there is still the potential that they could be decoded by an unauthorized source. For sites concerned with providing maximum data security, Digital Ocean also offers Groupers that use a 64-bit Data Encryption Standard encryption model.
Documentation and support
Both products ship with clear, easy-to-follow documentation. The manuals cover the basics, from installation to troubleshooting. A Quick Start card and balloon help round out Grouper's documentation set. Technical support at both companies was helpful and is available for a toll call during business hours. The Cooperative product family is backed by a three-year limited warranty; Grouper comes with a one-year limited warranty.
Conclusions
Wireless computing seems well-suited for those nomadic users with PowerBooks and Newtons who have occasional or temporary networking needs. In general, the price of exploiting this technology is a bit prohibitive for wide-scale use, especially given the inexpensive costs of daisychaining LocalTalk connectors. However, if providing wired networking is impractical and outweighs the costs, both the Cooperative adapter and Grouper 100LT fill the bill.
If data security is an issue, Grouper offers a distinct advantage over the Cooperative adapter -- but this comes at the expense of additional configuration time and the Cooperative's plug-and-play setup.
Digital Ocean Inc. of Lenexa, Kan., is at (913) 888-3380 or (800) 986-2326; fax (913) 888-3342; digocean.sys@applelink.apple.com.
Photonics Corp. of San Jose, Calif., can be reached at (408) 955-7930 or (800) 997-2326; fax (408) 955-7950.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
Reviews Page 39
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Tektronix Phaser 140 enters market
By Rick LePage
With phase-change printers such as the Phaser 300i and thermal-wax models such as the Phaser 200 series, Tektronix Inc. has built a reputation for providing top-notch color output devices. The company is now trying to reach into the low-cost color inkjet market with its latest product, the Phaser 140.
The $1,695 Phaser 140 is based on Canon's A-161 Bubble Jet print engine, the same engine Apple uses in its Color StyleWriter Pro. The CMYK-based Phaser 140 has a resolution of 360 dpi and a color print speed of 1 page per minute.
Tektronix has diverged from Apple and other low-end color inkjet manufacturers by including a dedicated PostScript Level 2 controller inside the printer, which is the primary reason for its higher cost compared with color inkjets that have similar specifications. For this reason, Tektronix is positioning the Phaser 140 as a competitor to Hewlett-Packard Co.'s DeskJet 1200C/PS, a $2,479, 300-dpi color inkjet with PostScript that can print black-and-white text at 600 by 300 dpi.
Details, details
Powering the 140's PostScript RIP is a 16-MHz AMD RISC processor and 8 Mbytes of RAM, expandable to 24 Mbytes using proprietary Tektronix SIMMs. (If you want to print on legal-size or larger paper, you'll need to add RAM.) The printer has parallel and LocalTalk connections built in; an EtherTalk interface is available for $295.
Setting up the 140 is a simple plug-and-play task: All you have to do is snap the four ink cartridges into place, load the 100-sheet top-loading feeder, hook the printer to your network and turn it on.
Software installation is just as easy. A Phaser 140 printer driver is included, which is Apple's LaserWriter 7.1.2 driver with Tektronix TekColor color-enhancement software built in. Tektronix also includes a set of PostScript Printer Definition (PPD) files for users of Adobe Illustrator, Altsys FreeHand, Aldus PageMaker and other PPD-aware applications. A printer definition file for use with QuarkXPress 3.x also ships with the 140.
Output
We tested the Phaser 140 with a wide variety of applications, including word processors; spreadsheets; and illustration, drawing and presentation programs. In every instance, the color output was as good as -- or better than -- that obtained from either HP's DeskJet 1200C/PS or Apple's Color StyleWriter 2400. Objects with gradient fills and fine lines were represented better with the 140 than with any of the non-PostScript inkjets.
In our tests, we used transparency film, and inkjet, glossy and plain copier paper. The best results were achieved with Tektronix glossy paper, but at $49.95 for a box of 50 sheets, it's not something you'll want to use frequently. We did have good luck, however, with 24-pound laser printer stock, which was a more reasonable $13 for 500 sheets.
Transparencies printed on the Phaser 140 were vivid and had minimal evidence of banding, although some of us preferred the output from the Color StyleWriter 2400 over that of the 140.
We found the TekColor feature to be very helpful in achieving top-quality color. Four TekColor settings are available when you print -- Vivid Color, Simulate Press, Simulate Screen and None -- as well as the capability to turn Tektronix's image sharpening feature, FinePoint, on and off. The printer's documentation does an excellent job of explaining when to use each of these options and what to experiment with to achieve better results.
The speed of the Phaser won't break any records, but it was more than acceptable for most tasks. While we rarely reached a page per minute with any complex color page, we were able to print a five-page presentation on glossy paper in about eight minutes.
Conclusions
Unlike HP and Apple, Tektronix has chosen to stay out of the true low end of the inkjet marketplace, where margins are tight and purchase decisions are largely made on price. But because its resolution is similar to many of the non-PostScript color inkjets, the Phaser 140 will inevitably suffer some negative comparison with the HP DeskWriters and the Apple Color StyleWriters. If you want decent color and couldn't care less about PostScript, the 140 is not a good choice.
Plenty of small workgroups and individuals feel they need PostScript, and that is the market Tektronix wants to hit with the Phaser 140. At that level, the Phaser 140 is a success. It has slightly better output and comes in $500 lower than HP's DeskJet 1200C/PS. It also offers a lower entry point for Tektronix products, which should help the company gain both market share and mind share in the next year as HP, Apple and others expand their reach into the volatile world of color printing.
Tektronix Inc. of Wilsonville, Ore., can be reached at (503) 682-7377 or (800) 835-6100; fax (503) 682-7450.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
Reviews Page 40
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
ProductWatch: Text-retrieval systems
The information age is upon us with a vengeance, and text-retrieval systems are one way to keep track of what's been archived.
By Larry Stevens
Database management systems are the perfect tools for handling large amounts of structured data. Customer lists, parts inventories, product catalogs and indexes are excellent applications for databases that can be searched by predesignated fields.
Most companies also have a lot of free-form data that cannot be organized into records and fields. Text material such as articles, correspondence, policy statements, operating manuals and handbooks do not conform to a rigorous database format.
Until recently, many companies used databases as a way to catalog documents. The title, author, date, keywords and other information about each document would be input into the fields of the database. Users could search by various criteria, get a list of documents, and then retrieve them manually from the file drawer, the microfiche room or, in the best of circumstances, an on-line archiving system. The problem with this method, however, is that the keywords the users decide to search might not be the keywords the input operator selected.
Text-retrieval systems let users search the entire document, not merely keyword fields, using Boolean logic and proximity clues (for example, one word is before and within five words of a second word). Most systems combine keywords with full-text retrieval to give users more flexibility and to keep the number of successful finds at a reasonable level.
Kevin Whiteside is the manager of knowledge retrieval systems at Raytheon Co., Missile Systems Division, in Bedford, Mass., which now uses Topic, a full-text retrieval system from Verity Inc., for its free-form documents. "What people subjectively decide is important enough to include on a keyword list may or may not correspond to what the users decide is an important concept," he said. "A lot of documents can be lost or at least temporarily unavailable if finding them depends on keywords."
Full text vs. keyword
The first Mac text-retrieval systems were developed to work on a single machine, helping users find files in increasingly larger hard drives. Retrieve-It from Claris Corp., Alki Seek from Alki Software Inc., GOfer from Microlytics Inc. and On Location from ON Technology Corp. can search a few megabytes of documents to locate a word or combinations of words in minutes.
Such programs are fine for a single hard drive. But for searching through hundreds or thousands of megabytes on CD-ROMs, networks or client-server systems, higher-end packages are in order.
To speed the search processes, these products first create an index list of all words in all documents (excluding "stop words," such as "and," "or" and "the"). Each word in the index, which is normally invisible to the user, has encoded in it a pointer to the original documents where the word is found. When users begin a search, the program searches the index, a faster method than searching entire documents.
The increased performance gives this system leeway to search through hundreds of megabytes in seconds. It also offers fuzzy logic, which looks for word combinations that may not fit the search criteria or natural language.
But fuzzy-logic searching won't help unless users find ways to express their queries intelligently. Verity's Topic tries to help users refine their searches and limit the number of hits using a hierarchical knowledge tree. For example, if a user gets too many hits while searching for documents on the auto industry, the knowledge tree limits the searches to documents about General Motors or documents about a particular model.
Micro Dynamics Multi-User Archival and Retrieval System (MARS), the archiving system from Micro Dynamics Ltd., was developed so companies could ditch their microform systems. With MARS, documents can be located by keywords, viewed on a desktop Mac and printed out. Micro Dynamics then developed FreeForm, a full-text retrieval system, to provide more flexibility in locating documents. But full-text searches can often yield hundreds or even thousands of hits. As a result, even those customers who have bought FreeForm often use keyword searches as well, according to the company.
Karen MacLellan, programmer analyst at the law firm Osler, Hoskin, & Harcourt in Toronto, said she believes strongly in amassing as many search methods as possible. Her company uses Optix, a document-management system from Blueridge Technologies Inc., which also has keyword and full-text capabilities.
Small hit lists
While large hit lists cause problems, MacLellan said she is concerned about hit lists being too small because of poor search queries or mistakes in the OCR scanning process. "A misspelled word or missing letter from the [scan] can make a document difficult to find," she said. Optix helps by providing sliders to adjust the extent to which the system will allow natural language, divergence from standard queries or fuzzy-logic searching. For example, the natural language slider can be placed at No. 1, "Exact matches and morphological variants"; No. 4, "Strong synonyms"; or No. 8, "Related words."
Marilyn Strafield, document imaging specialist at Amgen Corp., a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said her company's users depend on fuzzy logic. Recently, Amgen transferred tens of thousands of standard operating procedures to electronic form; they are stored and can be accessed using Excalibur EFS from Excalibur Technologies Corp. The product's binary pattern recognition, which compares bits rather than characters, is what sold Strafield. The method, she said, is forgiving, "and frees us from having to perform expensive cleanup operations on our [scanned] documents."
The low end
MarcoPolo from Mainstay and Sonar from Virginia Systems Inc. represent the low end of text-retrieval systems. Next up the scale is Sonar Professional, which includes complex search features such as synonym, concept and associated words searches that are missing from Sonar.
MarcoPolo is geared for scanned images, which may or may not be turned into text using the program's OCR scanning capabilities.
Randy Crawford, president of software development company Knowledge Modeling Corp. in Durham, N.C., said MarcoPolo's Document Center structure helped eliminate his need for file cabinets. Instead of the tedious and error-prone process of filing routine correspondence such as bills, packing slips, receipts and business letters, the company scans them and saves the image in MarcoPolo's Document Center on a 1-Gbyte hard drive. Items such as telephone bills and bank statements can more easily be searched by title and date, so the time-consuming OCR scanning on those documents is wasteful. But "it's certainly worth the time to [scan] a business article, [which] would be difficult to find using only keywords," Crawford said.
Sonar and Sonar Professional lack MarcoPolo's OCR scanning capabilities and are geared for electronic text documents, not scanned images. Sonar Image, also from Virginia Systems, combines OCR and other image-management features with Sonar searching.
The advanced search features of Sonar Professional allowed the 45-person Medical Affairs Department at DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals in Wilmington, Del., to make its growing on-line library of medical data easily accessible.
The department subscribes to six information sources, each of which regularly sends electronic files of research papers, journal articles and other relevant data. Additionally, the department gets product information from its internal Information Sciences Group and its Drug Safety Group. Because all the data comes in electronic form, scanning is not needed. The only production requirement is for Sonar Professional to create its index file, which, according to Erik Bloom, the department's associate director, takes about 24 hours for a typical job of 4 Mbytes. But the work, which proceeds automatically on weekends, is time well-spent. "Most of the money we pay for electronic data would be wasted without Sonar, since our people would have a hard time finding anything," Bloom said.
MacWEEK 11.07.94
ProductWatch Page 47
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mac the Knife: What makes management work
Regardless of the actual results of the elections this week, we can all take comfort in the knowledge that at least this round of the ongoing assault on the body politic has finally drawn to a graceless close. That leaves us with more time for such pursuits as tallying the follies of industry pillars that are not Microsoft.
After having devoted so much of his professional energies to a critique of Microsoft's Mac software efforts, the Knife once again focused his gaze on Apple. One of his first discoveries was that last week's public disclosure of the Excel Mac linking problem generated more than mere heat. He's told that an Apple official of some rank leaned on counterparts at Microsoft to get with the program. There's no available patch yet, but fixing the Mac's only spreadsheet is now a top priority.
If only Apple could mend its own ways in a similarly prompt fashion. Sources tell the Knife that some 4-Mbyte Performa models being distributed through the K-12 channel have System 7.5 installed, which even schoolchildren know leaves no RAM for applications. Sources claim that Apple has graciously provided copies of 7.1 in at least one instance. But this still rates a grade of "needs improvement."
Gift horse
Over the past few years, IBM has made sporadic attempts to entice Apple to adopt its Mach microkernel. Apple has always declined the offer, citing Mach's excessive resource requirements as a major reason for the rejection.
And it will probably decline the offer IBM currently has on the table. Apple has been cooking up its own microkernel as a major component of the Copland project. To switch microkernels now would put Copland even further behind schedule (much to the delight of Microsoft Windows 95 fans) and would cause many of Apple's best OS engineering talent to walk off in disgust. There are some things that money just can't buy -- even the stunningly large sum that IBM is offering to sweeten the Mach pot.
No expectations
Apple is prudent to take into account the needs and desires of its software engineers. After all, just about anyone can build a personal computer, but only Apple engineers can create a Mac operating system. As one example of their overall excellence and suitability for their tasks, consider the new time-tracking system recently introduced in the AppleSoft division. Apparently it was designed to help management keep track of who's been good and who's been slack. Whatever its purpose, it presented an irresistible challenge to its intended victims, one of whom promptly devised a hack that allows the system to fill in the time-card information itself.
Starts with 'A'
A tracking system of some sort would certainly have come in handy at Aldus (now Adobe) during the licensing process for the spelling checker used in PageMaker. The Religion and Ethics Forum on America Online is the scene of a heated discussion of a peculiar feature of the spelling checker Aldus licensed from Proximity. It flags "Jewishness" as an "Improper word" and lists these alternatives: Gushiness, Joylessness, Juiciness, Jazziness, Jealousness, Hoggishness, Hideousness and Dishonest. (Frame Technology also licensed this spell checker for use in FrameMaker.)
According to those contributing to the forum, flagging a legitimate word as improper -- rather than unknown --is just as offensive as any of the suggested alternatives. More likely, it's an algorithm bug, since the spelling checker also returns the above list when the word "Dewishness" is entered.
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MacWEEK 11.07.94
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