Cupertino, Calif. - An experiment under way at Apple may let users of high-end PCs boldly go where no Intel-based computer has gone before.
Code-named Star Trek, the project is a rewrite of System 7.1 designed to give users of IBM PCs and compatibles an alternative to Microsoft Windows, sources said. The system reportedly will run on any PC that uses an Intel 486 and meets other hardware requirements.
The project, according to sources, is an offshoot of an older skunkworks effort to explore whether it would be possible to get the Mac operating system to work on the Intel architecture. Once that project demonstrated the feasibility of the idea, Apple officials reportedly decided to pursue it seriously. Several software-development teams were recently combined into a larger group dedicated to bringing Star Trek to market this year.
But the company has not made a final commitment to release the software, sources said.
The Apple software reportedly sits on top of an upcoming release of DR DOS, an MS-DOS alternative now owned by Novell Inc. Some observers have speculated that Novell and Apple may be hoping to offer DR DOS and the Mac-interface software as a client to server-based applications running under Univel, Novell's recently released Unix implementation. Together, they said, the products could be positioned as an alternative to Microsoft Windows NT.
Most of the work involved in the translation has been completed, according to sources close to the new group. A major step still to be taken is the native implementation of AppleTalk on the 486. While the software protocol itself is portable, assumptions regarding available connectivity hardware that can safely be made about a Mac logic board cannot be made about a PC, and this has slowed development, sources said.
Applications reportedly will have to be recompiled to run on Star Trek.
Paul Johnson, an analyst with First Boston Corp. in New York, said, "DR DOS alone wasn't a strong contender against Windows, but a combination of DR DOS and a Mac Finder and interface would be a very viable alternative to Windows, especially in light of Microsoft's FTC (Federal Trade Commission) problems about OEM bundling deals."
But Pieter Hartsook, editor of The Hartsook Letter in Alameda, Calif., said he is incredulous that Apple is at work on something such as Star Trek when the company must dedicate much of its resources to implementing the Mac OS on the PowerPC. "If Apple had a bunch of engineers sitting around with nothing better to do, this would be a good experiment," he said. "But it sounds like a waste of time to me."
MacWEEK 03.22.93
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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News: Servers will bring '040 punch to Mac nets
Three versions set for CeBIT rollout
By Mitch Ratcliffe
San Francisco - Apple this week will introduce a family of 68040-based servers that support file and print, database, backup, and groupware services for AppleTalk networks.
The company's Enterprise Systems Division will roll out three Apple Workgroup Server packages at CeBIT '93 in Hanover, Germany. The servers will be introduced along with AppleSearch, a server-based text search-
and-retrieval package.
The centerpiece of the server lineup, the AWS 95, is due by the end of next month. It will include a Quadra 950 with an I/O-accelerating processor direct slot card; A/UX 3.0.1, a new release of Apple's Unix operating system optimized for the server; and AppleShare Pro, a new version of the company's file and print server software, rewritten to take advantage of Unix and the PDS card.
The AWS 95 will offer more than four times the performance of AppleShare 3.0 on a stock Quadra 950, Apple said. The PDS card provides two SCSI direct memory access (DMA) channels and a secondary cache with up to 512 Kbytes of RAM, while the A/UX operating system delivers multithreaded, multitasking capabilities, including asynchronous I/O. Each user session will be treated as a separate process by the computer, which should cut down the wait before the server responds to user requests.
AppleShare Pro will provide services for 200 concurrent users and handle up to 50 simultaneous user requests. It will be fully compatible with existing System 7 AppleShare client software, the company said.
Prices for the AWS 95 will range from $7,589 to $12,929, depending on configuration.
The other two systems in the new ESD lineup, slated to ship in June, are intended for smaller workgroups. The AWS 80, based on an unmodified Quadra 800, will start at $6,399. The AWS 60, based on a Centris 610 and designed particularly for the K-12 market, will sell for as little as $3,079.
Both will run AppleShare 4.0, an improved version of Apple's file and print server software for the Mac operating system. The AWS 60 will offer about twice the performance of AppleShare 3.0.1, while the AWS 80 will triple performance, according to the company.
AppleShare 4.0 will support up to 150 concurrent users, although only 30 can be active at any one time, Apple said. Because AppleShare 4.0 runs only on '040-based Macs, Apple will continue to offer but not further enhance Version 3.0, which is priced at $1,199.
The top-of-the-line AWS 95 is intended as a platform for third-party services as well. Among them:
> Retrospect. Apple will bundle a four-user pack of Retrospect Remote A/UX, a new Unix version of Dantz Development Corp.'s backup application, with the high-end server.
> Oracle. Users will be able to run a special version of Oracle Corp.'s Oracle7 database in lieu of AppleShare Pro on the AWS 95. Oracle said the software should be available in May. Pricing isn't final but should be comparable to the $625-per-user price it charges for other desktop Unix versions.
> 4D. ACI US Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., reportedly will offer a version of its 4D Server for the Apple servers. ACI US said the new version of 4D Server will ship this summer. Upgrades will be free.
> Groupware. Apple said Meeting Maker from ON Technology Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., and QuickMail 2.6 from CE Software Inc. of West Des Moines, Iowa, are compatible with the new servers.
Current Quadra 900 and 950 owners will be able to purchase an AWS 95 PDS card upgrade for $2,499. A kit consisting of the PDS card, a Hewlett-
Packard Co. digital audio tape drive with on-board compression and Retrospect Remote will sell for $4,399.
AppleShare Pro will be available separately for $2,399 in April. AppleShare 4.0 will sell separately for $1,899.
Server options include a DAT drive based on an HP mechanism with on-
board compression.
MacWEEK 03.22.93
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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News: Servers pitched to installed base
By Mitch Ratcliffe and April Streeter
San Francisco - Officials of Apple's Enterprise Systems Division described this week's rollout of the Apple Workgroup Servers as the 1-
year-old division's coming-out party. Users and analysts said that while Apple's support for mostly Mac networks has noticeably matured, the company isn't quite ready to keep corporate company.
The three Apple Workgroup Servers are targeted at specific niches in Apple's fragment of the computing market. The AWS 950 is designed to serve large workgroups of up to 200 people. The AWS 80 is positioned as a server for medium-size workgroups and as a platform for communications software, such as the new AppleTalk Internet Router and X.25, X.400 and Systems Network Architecture gateways. The AWS 60 is tuned to support Mac users in small offices and educational settings.
Traditional cadres of Mac fanatics, such as graphics and marketing departments, should snap up these new machines, analysts said.
"This is a very reasonable first effort in the server arena - it's a first pass that satisfies the installed base," said Charles Wolf, an analyst with First Boston Corp. in New York. "I anticipate that the next step will address the need for more effective support for cross-platform environments."
Kimball Brown, vice president of microsystems hardware for InfoCorp, a market research company in Santa Clara, Calif., said: "There is an installed base crying for a Mac server, especially in shops that are 75 percent or more Macintosh. From the PC side, however, this is an inferior system."
At press briefings last week, Apple did not lay claim to the cross-
platform network market, saying that it would provide more DOS and Windows support in future products. For now, the company will support IBM PCs and compatibles with an Apple-labeled version of Farallon Computing Inc.'s PhoneNET PC, which will be marketed as AppleTalk Connection for DOS and Windows.
But that may not be enough for heterogeneous networks, said William Green, network manager for the University of Texas at Austin. "AppleTalk is not really scalable," he said. "These servers will be useful in some situations, but it's certainly not an enterprise solution."
InfoCorp's Brown said that without robust support for PCs and compatibles, "you'd have to be an idiot to buy this stuff instead of a second- or third-tier Intel machine with [Novell Inc.'s] NetWare."
Apple's pricing also drew criticism from Brown. "When Apple faced Compaq [Computer Corp.] and IBM, which were charging ridiculous prices two years ago, it might have had a pretty good argument. Today [the servers] just don't match up to the cost of a PC server."
Joe Prinz, network manager at Racine, Wis.-based Design North, said his company switched to NetWare several years ago. "With NetWare, the server gets completely excellent performance, and it's reliable," he said. "I can't see any reason to go [back to AppleShare]." He said he is envious of Mac managers only because of the AppleShare interface's ease of use.
Users and analysts also noted the absence of DOS and Windows clients for Dantz Development Corp.'s Retrospect Remote, the backup application bundled with the AWS 95.
Doug McLean, ESD product manager for network servers and services, last week explained Apple's performance goal for the new servers: "If users believe the server is responding to their request in three seconds, that's acceptable."
But an analyst who attended an advance briefing last month called that "the strangest network metric I've ever heard. Three seconds can be a lifetime," he said.
The servers foreshadow new services that will be rolled out in the "client-client-server environment" of coming years, analysts said. These networks, linking AWS servers and desktop Macs to remote PowerBooks and personal digital assistants (PDAs), will depend on filtering and store-
and-forward messaging to help users manage the flow of information.
AppleSearch, the company's upcoming server-based full-text search application, will eventually distribute information to Newtons as well as Macintoshes, Apple said.
"[AppleSearch] opens up the concept of the PDA as a network terminal," InfoCorp's Brown said. "The client-client-server network will help people deal with information overload. That makes people incredibly more productive."
MacWEEK 03.22.93
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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News: Ease, power added to Illustrator 5.0
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
Mountain View, Calif. - Adobe Systems Inc. this week will unveil an upgrade to Illustrator that observers say will make the PostScript illustration program significantly easier to use.
The newest release of the $595 program, due in the second quarter, will jump from Version 3.2 to Version 5.0. According to the company, it will leapfrog Version 4.0 for Windows, which was released last May.
Features of Illustrator 5.0 include:
> Filters. A series of plug-in filters, comparable to those used for image processing in Adobe Photoshop, will enable Illustrator 5.0 users to create and manipulate objects quickly.
With the Pathfinder filters, users will be able to create new shapes or effects by selecting areas from several objects. For example, the Intersect filter will produce a new object from the intersecting areas of two overlapping objects. Other Pathfinder filters include tools for combining, dividing and cropping objects.
Other plug-in filters make it possible to blend, mix and invert colors; draw complex shapes, such as stars and spirals; smooth and distort paths; and add drop shadows and calligraphy styles to paths.
> Layers and custom views. Version 5.0 will let users create, name and work in unlimited layers via a floating palette. Objects can be moved from layer to layer.
The new version will also let users set up and save custom views of a document, including the zoom level and layer setting. Users will be able to simultaneously view a portion of an image in rendered mode and another section in wireframe mode.
> Floating palettes. In addition to the Layers floating palette, Illustrator 5.0 adds floating Paint Style and Character palettes.
With the Paint Style palette, users will be able to quickly create, edit and save frequently used colors according to CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) values. In the current version, users must edit colors in a dialog box.
The Paint Style palette also includes three preset gradient fills that users can add to objects just as they would a color or pattern. Users will also be able to create new gradients by specifying beginning-, middle- and end-colors, and the angle of the blend. Illustrator 5.0 also automatically optimizes the blends for the user's output device, Adobe said.
The character palette will let users select typefaces, sizes and leading. The font name box offers clairvoyance, allowing users to type "He" to access Helvetica.
> Apple events. Users will be able to double-click on an imported image, and Illustrator 5.0 automatically will launch the originating application via Apple events. Changes made to the image in that application will be reflected in the Illustrator document.
> Editing in preview. Illustrator 5.0 will let users edit images in rendered mode. The current version requires users to return to the wireframe mode for editing.
Other new features include multiple levels of undo, interruptible redraw, automatic hyphenation, support for pressure-sensitive brushes and tablets, a calligraphic pen tool, and eyedropper and paint-bucket tools. The program will also ship with 40 Adobe Type 1 fonts.
"The best parts about the upgrade are the timesaving devices, like the custom color palette," said Johnee Bee of The Johnee Bee Show, an advertising illustration company in Irvine, Calif. "You don't have to use your menus all the time, and you can have little palettes all over the place. It's going to change the way I look at my illustrations, and it's going to expand the things I can offer to my clients.
"My clients come in and ask, 'Can you do a gradient fill?' I used to say, 'Yeah, but it'll take me all day.' Now I'll be going, 'Sure. No problem. Piece of cake,' " Bee said.
Upgrades will be available on floppies or as a CD-ROM that includes Adobe Separator, Type On Call, third-party clip art and QuickTime movies showing how to use Illustrator's new features.
Disk upgrades will be free to users who purchased Illustrator 3.2 after March 1; these users can buy the CD-ROM upgrade for $99.
Other registered users can upgrade to the disk version of Illustrator 5.0 for $149 through Aug. 31; the upgrade price will then rise to $199. The CD-ROM upgrade will be $199 through Aug. 31 and $249 thereafter.
Adobe Systems Inc. is at 1585 Charleston Road, P.O. Box 7900, Mountain View, Calif. 94039-7900. Phone (415) 961-4400 or (800) 344-3385; fax (415) 961-3769.
MacWEEK 03.22.93
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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News: Apple cameras will put snapshots on desktop
By Matthew Rothenberg
Cupertino, Calif. - Apple is focusing on electronic color photography with a pair of handheld digital still cameras, sources said.
The 24-bit-color cameras, code-named Mars and Venus, are based on technology from Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. of Tokyo, according to sources. The devices may debut as early as August's Macworld Expo in Boston.
> Mars. The higher-end camera is expected to cost less than $2,000 and support a resolution of about 450 lines. It reportedly will store images on a PCMCIA card. Users will be able to download photos to their CPU via a serial interface and transfer the card to a Newton for wireless transmission, sources said.
Mars is based on the Fujix DS-H2, which Fuji introduced for the Japanese market at Macworld Tokyo in February (see MacWEEK, Feb. 22). The company last week said it has no plans to distribute the camera in the United States.
Fuji's device, which weighs about 1 pound, 3 ounces, can store up to 40 images on a 16-Mbit PCMCIA card. It features a 390,000-pixel RGB (red, green, blue) CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor; automatic focusing; an electronic shutter capable of speeds from 0.25 to 0.0013 seconds; and a built-in automatic flash.
The Fuji device costs about $1,840, and compatible PCMCIA cards cost about $540 each. It requires a $1,580 reader to transfer files to a CPU.
> Venus. The lower-end camera, sources said, will retail for about $500 and support a resolution of about 320 lines. Venus will be able to store about 20 images in static RAM and will connect to the user's CPU via a serial interface.
Apple reportedly is also working on a high-definition digital camera for release in 1994. According to sources, the company will base this product on technology from Canon U.S.A. Inc. of Lake Success, N.Y.
Canon this month unveiled a prototype high-definition digital device that functions like a single-lens reflex camera and works with Canon's standard lenses and accessories. The camera, which runs on a NiCad battery, includes a 1.3 million pixel imaging sensor and stores images in a 120-Mbyte hard disk memory pack, or 40-Mbyte and 80-Mbyte IC memory packs that can be connected to a CPU via a SCSI interface. Its electronic shutter speeds range from 0.125 to 0.00025 seconds. Canon refused to comment on any marketing plans for the camera.
Several companies have introduced portable digital cameras over the past three years, and observers said the market has a lot of potential.
Photographer Kurt Foss, a writer and consultant based in Madison, Wis., said, "Businesses have been using low-end digital cameras for some time for training and education, databases, and image management." For example, he said, a hospital could use them as part of a patient identification system.
"There are lots of applications where you need to capture images quickly and transmit them quickly," Foss said. "People who have put down the state of digital cameras so far have been thinking about print applications, and I think we're seeing that these nonprint applications are very viable."
MacWEEK 03.22.93
News Page 1
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Gateways: Improved QuickMail 2.6 ships
By Nathalie Welch
West Des Moines, Iowa - CE Software Inc. this week will ship the long-
awaited QuickMail 2.6, and the company will launch a giveaway offer to attract new users.
Server and management improvements make up most of the changes to Version 2.6, which is now priced between $649 for a 10-user pack and $4,749 for a 100-user pack.
"They didn't really add anything; they just fixed what was there," said beta-tester Jay Kohn, system manager at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Claris Corp. "QuickMail used to be very sensitive to other network activity, but both client and server software are much more stable."
According to CE, QuickMail's server software was rewritten and now has a more reliable architecture.
"With the previous version, we did see some problems with a very small number of mail messages that would just disappear," said Mike Weasner, manager of network administration at Redondo Beach, Calif.-based TRW Inc. "The new server architecture seems to take care of that."
The new version will be faster when forwarding mail to and from the file server-based MailCenters used by DOS QuickMail clients. "There are lots of nice new little things like the ability to export and import users and their mail," Weasner said. "As we move people around, it is really a jewel to have."
Users of prerelease versions weren't unqualified in their praise of the upgrade, however.
"QM Remote still stinks," said David Olson, assistant PC coordinator at Boston-based WGBH Education Foundation. "It's just too feature-laden, and we suggest that people purchase a terminal emulator or use AppleTalk Remote Access."
All standard multi-user packs contain the QM Server, QM Administrator, DOS and Mac client software, several mail gateways, and a five-user version of ON Technology Inc.'s Meeting Maker group scheduling program. Upgrades are $40 per server for users of QuickMail 2.5. Customers with earlier versions pay $12 per user.
CE Software also announced a promotion that allows users to get free five-user QuickMail packs through resellers. The free package does not include gateways but is upgradable to the full version and does not have an embedded time limit.
CE Software Inc. is at P.O. Box 65580, 1801 Industrial Circle, West Des Moines, Iowa 50265. Phone (515) 224-1995; fax (515) 224-4534.
MacWEEK 03.22.93
Gateways Page 16
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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GA: Graphics users turning to MO drives
By Kirsten L. Parkinson
San Francisco - SyQuest vs. magneto optical? It's a question that plagues desktop publishers and service bureaus alike, but according to industry observers, magneto-optical technology eventually will come out on top.
Removable-media drives manufactured by SyQuest Technology Inc. of Fremont, Calif., have been the de facto industry standard for several years. In a recent survey by the Association of Imaging Service Bureaus, more than 90 percent of the service bureaus polled owned a SyQuest drive; less than 25 percent owned magneto-optical devices.
Industry observers say the high price of magneto-optical drives has limited their market success. With a capacity of 128 Mbytes per cartridge, 3.5-inch magneto-optical drives currently cost about $1,500, while 5.25-inch optical units that hold about 600 Mbytes per cartridge typically cost $3,000. By contrast, SyQuest 44-Mbyte and 88-Mbyte drives average about $500 and $700, respectively.
"I think [magneto-optical drive prices] are going to have to drop substantially before they'll really catch up with the SyQuests," said Robert Geissberger, president of Digital Prism Inc., a service bureau in San Carlos, Calif.
Many analysts, however, predict such a price drop in the near future.
"Magneto-optical drive prices are coming down very fast," said Patty Chang, senior industry analyst for Dataquest Inc. of San Jose, Calif. "We expect drives under $500 by the end of the year."
Once drive prices drop, observers said, 3.5-inch magneto-optical technology will have distinct advantages over SyQuest devices for the desktop publishing market, including a smaller form factor, higher capacity and a better price per megabyte. According to Dataquest, when users buy seven cartridges, the cost per megabyte for SyQuests is $1.97, while the optical cost per megabyte is $1.41.
"In the long run, the 128-Mbyte opticals are a better buy," said Ed Csech, system applications director for Black Dot Graphics of Crystal Lake, Ill. "If I were in users' shoes, that's what I would go with. If you're getting three times the storage and a drive that's twice the price, you're going to spend less on media."
"Probably 30 percent of my clients in the DTP industry are pressuring me to get an optical drive," said Jeff Silva, president of Brownie's Blueprint Company Inc. of Sacramento, Calif. "They're frustrated by the size of SyQuest, both the physical size and the storage size."
As a result, industry observers said, the installed base of optical drives will grow tremendously in the next couple of years. Dataquest estimates that 300,000 3.5-inch optical drives will ship this year. In contrast, SyQuest places its installed base at 800,000 drives, according to Dataquest.
To further complicate the issue, SyQuest is about to release a new 3.5-
inch, 105-Mbyte removable drive that it said it will position against optical devices.
SyQuest's advantage is its drives' performance, the company said. For example, the new SyQuest features an average seek time of 14.5 milliseconds, almost three times faster than most of its 3.5-inch optical competitors.
But many users said price, not performance, is the determining factor.
"I don't think performance issues are going to be a problem," Digital Prism's Geissberger said. "People are going to look at the cost of [optical] cartridges, and whether it's 10 percent slower or 20 percent slower is not going to be a problem. SyQuest is going to have to counter that."
MacWEEK 03.22.93
GA Page 22
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Special Report: RISC will put Mac on a new foundation
Apple's PowerPC machines will be very much Macs - 'not some Granny Smith kind of computer.'
By Henry Norr
Jan. 24, 1994, will mark the Mac's 10th birthday. With luck, it also will mark the beginning of a new era for Apple, its developers and its customers.
On that Monday, barring a serious slip in the development process, the company will introduce and possibly even ship a new Mac model unlike any other built in the platform's first decade: Instead of a 680x0 processor, the new system's CPU will be a PowerPC 601, the new RISC microprocessor developed jointly by IBM Corp., Motorola Inc. and Apple.
But for all its uniqueness, that new machine will be very much a Mac - "not some Granny Smith kind of computer," in the words of Kirk Loevner, vice president of Apple's Developer Group. The machine will be running System 7 - partly in emulation, partly in ported form - and existing Mac programs should run without modification, Apple officials insist.
New software will, of course, be required to take full advantage of the processor, which experts said offers more than twice the power of a 68040. But - contrary to some widespread misperceptions - Mac users moving to RISC won't have to contend with PowerOpen, Apple's new Unix implementation, much less with Taligent Inc.'s upcoming object-oriented operating system.
The PowerPC-based Mac due at the beginning of next year will be the first of many. A second 601 machine, due in the summer of 1994, should take Mac performance to new peaks. A variety of other RISC Macs, ranging from notebooks and low-cost, entry-level systems to high-end, multiprocessing workstations and servers, will follow in late 1994 and 1995, as other implementations of the PowerPC architecture arrive.
Indeed, within three years the entire Mac line could be running on RISC.
Dilemmas and opportunities. For Apple the shift poses a difficult marketing challenge: how to keep customers buying 680x0 systems during the transition.
But over the longer haul, company officials believe, PowerPC processors will give Apple a significant competitive advantage in the markets of the mid-'90s: a superior price-performance ratio when compared with systems based on Intel 486, Pentium and P-6 processors.
For developers the new processor means both opportunity and burden. It promises unprecedented horsepower, and companies that move quickly to take advantage of it in imaginative ways stand to reap rich rewards.
But most Mac developers are already straining to keep up with Apple's other system-software innovations, and moving to a new processor means having to master new tools and techniques - all for a market that for several years to come will be minuscule compared with the installed base of 680x0 Macs or Intel-Microsoft machines.
For Mac managers and users the dilemmas are less immediate. Savvy buyers know better than to defer needed hardware purchases because there's something better over the horizon. But as PowerPC Macs get closer, the prospect will add a new and unknown variable to the already complicated calculus that choosing a Mac model requires.
PowerPC hardware. The first PowerPC Mac will reflect Apple's focus on broad-based, high-volume markets. It won't be a barn-burner by RISC standards, but it should deliver "better-than-Quadra performance at near LC prices," sources said.
The first PowerPC Mac, according to sources, is likely to incorporate a version of the chip running at least 50 MHz, 4 or 8 Mbytes of RAM, a 2.8-Mbyte floppy drive, and built-in support for 16-bit color on screens up to 16 inches in size, sources said. It reportedly will have a processor direct slot but no expansion bus. Like the 68040-based Cyclone and Tempest Macs expected this summer, it will feature a new high-
performance I/O subsystem.
Specs for the second PowerPC model are less clear, but current plans reportedly call for a system that will deliver three or four times Quadra performance at a street price of about $3,500. It is expected to use a faster version of the PowerPC 601 and include a new high-speed expansion bus. Company engineers reportedly have been weighing several bus designs, including Apple's QuickRing technology and Intel Corp.'s Peripheral Component Interconnect specification.
System 7, one way or another. Perhaps because the PowerPC project, as part of the Apple-IBM alliance, was announced at the same time as the PowerOpen version of Unix and the Pink (now Taligent) object-oriented operating system, considerable confusion has surrounded the question of system software for the RISC Macs.
In fact, Apple planned all along to deliver a version of the standard Mac operating system for the new machines. The challenge is that much of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that make up the Mac system software and firmware were crafted in 680x0 assembly language to take maximum advantage of that processor, and porting such code is a massive task - one that will be far from complete when the first PowerPC Macs ship.
To solve that problem Apple has developed an emulator that enables the new machines to run 680x0 code by mapping the 68020 instruction set to corresponding PowerPC instructions. Using the same emulation technology, existing third-party software written for 680x0 Macs - including not only applications but also most utilities and extensions - should run on the PowerPC Macs.
Speeding emulation. The new chip has enough raw power to deliver approximately IIci performance in emulation mode, according to Apple officials. To get beyond that level, the company is attempting to port selected system components - those that offer the most "bang for the buck" - to PowerPC native mode.
This approach is based on research showing that applications typically spend more time executing Mac OS Toolbox and system routines than their own code (see MacWEEK, March 16, 1992). Aldus PageMaker, for example, spends 88 percent of its time executing Toolbox and system routines, and just three routines account for more than half of that time, according to Apple.
Thus, getting even a small proportion of the operating system running in native mode on the PowerPC could give a substantial lift to the performance of applications in emulation. "We're targeting the perceived performance of a 25-MHz '040," said Jordan Mattson, Apple product marketing manager for PowerPC tools; other officials said Mac IIfx performance is a more realistic target.
The mixed mode architecture imposes substantial overhead for checking and routing each trap, and progress in porting key routines has been slow, sources said. But Apple engineers reportedly intend to get at least the most critical Toolbox routines and managers ported to native PowerPC mode in time for the release. In any case, QuickDraw will definitely be running in native PowerPC mode, sources said, and that alone will give emulated applications a significant boost.
Native applications. The outcome of Apple's porting project could shape initial market reaction to the PowerPC Macs since most applications will have to run in emulation at the outset.
A more important long-run factor, however, is how fast third-party developers bring out applications that run entirely in native mode and thus take full advantage of the PowerPC's speed.
It's still too early to estimate how many such programs will be available at the launch of the first RISC Macs and how quickly others will follow.
For now development tools are limited, but Apple has promised a new C/C++ compiler and sponsored Echo Logic Inc.'s FlashPort binary-
conversion technology.
To ease the transition, the company also is developing a new "fat binary" format, which will let developers include native PowerPC code in the same versions of their programs that run on 680x0 Macs: The RISC code will go into the application's data fork, while the resource fork will continue to hold 680x0 code and resources. Mattson said Apple will upgrade its Installer so it will be able to install only the 680x0 code, only the PowerPC code or both.
MacWEEK 03.22.93
Special Report Page 36
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Review: Photoshop moves to Version 2.5
Better speed, improved separations, new tools and open architecture highlight solid upgrade.
By Bruce Fraser
Adobe Photoshop is one of the great Mac applications. It is feature-rich and useful in a wide variety of situations for both creative work and production. The application has been one of those responsible for putting Macs, rather than some other kind of box, on people's desks, and its plug-in modules have become a de facto standard, spawning a mini-
industry of third-party add-ons.
Now the long-awaited upgrade to Photoshop, Version 2.5, is here. It isn't quite as dramatic a leap forward as was the upgrade from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0, and the $895 program won't turn your Mac into a Quantel Paintbox, but it's a very worthwhile effort nonetheless.
The new features are well-thought-out, making many of the program's more advanced features much more accessible, and the performance enhancements are significant, although not startling. The quality of the color separations also has improved, particularly in the handling of very saturated colors. Individual features aren't dramatically faster than in its predecessor (pending the availability of 2.5-savvy acceleration hardware), but overall it's a much more productive tool.
The Photoshop Toolbox looks almost unchanged. One new tool, Dodge and Burn, replaces the Pen tool that now resides on the Paths palette. Dodge and Burn works very much like its traditional darkroom counterpart, letting you selectively lighten or darken areas of the image in a way that anyone with darkroom skills will find immediately intuitive.
Like most of the other tools, Dodge and Burn is pressure-sensitive when used with a pressure-sensitive stylus and digitizing tablet, such as those from Wacom Technology Corp. The color swatches representing the current background and foreground colors have two refinements: You can click a Switch Colors icon to reverse foreground and background, or reset the foreground and background to black and white (or whatever defaults you have set) by clicking the Default Colors icon.
Tool size, pressure and opacity are now controlled from a floating Brushes palette. The various brush modes are selectable from a pop-up menu, and you can choose a variety of soft- or hard-edged brushes in different sizes. You can create, save and load custom brush shapes.
The other new Toolbox element is the Quick Mask feature. Clicking the Quick Mask icon lets you use any of the painting tools to create a mask directly on the image, without resorting to paths or alpha channels. The paint thus applied is translucent, so you can still see the masked elements in the image: To make a soft-edged mask, you simply use a soft-
edged brush. Clicking the adjacent Standard Mode icon returns you to normal mode, with the rest of the image, excluding the masked area, selected. For creating simple masks, this is a major timesaver.
More-complex masking has been made easier thanks to two new floating palettes: Channels and Paths. The Channels palette resembles Aldus FreeHand's Layers palette; you can click to make channels visible or invisible or to make them editable or locked; Shift-clicking can produce any combination thereof. A pop-up menu lets you create, name, delete and save channels. New channels appear in the palette with their associated Command-key shortcuts.
You can designate a color that will be used to display mask channels when they are overlaid on the image and choose to have the color overlaid on the masked area or over the selected area. Alpha channels also appear by name on the Load Selection pop-up menu, so you can quickly and easily load selections from different channels.
The Pen tool has been moved to the Paths palette, along with tools for adding, deleting and selecting points on a path as in Adobe Illustrator. Paths can take up much less disk space and memory than alpha channels, particularly when the selection outline is simple, and some selections are easier to draw with the Pen than with the Lasso. You can freely convert Paths to Selections to Channels using the Make Path, Make Selection, Load Selection and Save Selection commands. This is particularly useful with complex projects involving multiple image sources.
In addition to the Color Picker, you can now use the Colors palette to define colors and save sets of colors as color libraries. Photoshop includes predefined color libraries for Pantone coated and uncoated stock; Pantone process color simulations; and Toyo, Focoltone and TruMatch ink sets. You can work with colors in RGB (red, green, blue), HSB (hue, saturation, brightness), CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) or CIE Lab color models and use any of the painting tools to experiment in a color-mixing area. The gamut alarm from the Color Picker is present in the Colors palette, too.
You can now preview the results of adjustments made using the Curves, Hue and Saturation, and Color Balance controls, which makes them both faster and easier to use. You can use the Levels, Contrast and Brightness controls interactively on the whole screen, as in previous versions, or you can use a preview, which takes a little longer but affects only the selected area.
Variations. One further goodie lurks under the Adjust submenu: the Variations command. This lets you adjust exposure and color balance for shadows, midtones and highlights by choosing a variation of the image from a ring-around display, a kind of miniature version of Electronics for Imaging Inc.'s MultiChoice tool in Cachet. For reference, the original image and the current pick, which shows the cumulative effect of all the choices you've made, are displayed above the ring-around. You can set the degree of coarseness of the steps between the different versions: Fine is almost imperceptible, while Coarse is very obvious. A clipping alarm highlights clipped pixels. For the piece de resistance, you can save all the changes you've applied to an image as a script, which you then can load and apply to other images, providing a fairly powerful batch-processing capability.
Interface. Some useful enhancements have been made to the user interface. The screen can quickly become cluttered with floating palettes, so each palette can be collapsed or expanded via a zoom box: Pop-up menus remain available when the palette is collapsed. Pressing the Tab key hides all floating palettes, including the Toolbox.
A new Preferences option, Function Keys, allows you to assign the function keys on the extended keyboard, with or without the Shift key, to any menu command, including those that show and hide the palettes. You can save and load different function key sets.
Revving up. The new features add up to increased flexibility and productivity, but important changes have taken place under the hood, too. The most immediately obvious change is in screen redrawing, which is now done in tiles, rather than line by line. This makes zooming in on details much faster, particularly when working with high-resolution images.
Slightly less obvious is an entirely rewritten virtual-memory scheme. It's still highly desirable to have enough RAM to hold the entire image plus the scratch and undo files, but now there's much less of a penalty for using virtual rather than real RAM - performance becomes leisurely instead of glacial. The new virtual-memory scheme also lets you designate a second scratch disk for Photoshop to use in the event that the first one fills up.
CIE space. Photoshop now uses the CIE Lab color space for all its internal color values. The Lab model is particularly useful when you need to edit color and luminance values separately. And since it's a device-independent color model, it should, in theory, result in identical color on different printers and monitors, as long as they've been properly calibrated, and within the limits of the different devices' color gamuts. It's the preferred color model for use when printing to PostScript Level 2 devices: When you send Lab data to a Level 2 printer, it's converted to the printer's native color space within the printer itself, using the printer's own color-rendering dictionary.
The new version claims to support Apple's ColorSync color-management extension, but as yet we haven't been able to evaluate ColorSync support because of a dearth of ColorSync profiles.
Booster rockets. The benefits of another major change will take a little longer to appear. With Version 2.5, the architecture of the program has been opened up. Previously, vendors who wanted to accelerate Photoshop functions using digital signal processor (DSP) boards were constrained to going through the Filter interface. With Version 2.5, many features that do not fall under the Filters heading can also be accelerated. As a result, functions such as rotating, resizing and RGB-to-CMYK color transformations are now fair game to third-party DSP vendors - Adobe has announced an "Adobe Charged" certification that will guarantee 100 percent compatibility between conforming third-party accelerated routines and native Photoshop functions.
Several third-party acceleration vendors, including SuperMac Technology Inc., Storm Technology Inc., DayStar Digital Inc., Newer Technologies Inc. and Spectral Innovations Inc., have announced new or upgraded DSP-
based acceleration for specific functions in Photoshop 2.5. None of these shipped in time for evaluation in this review.
A separate peace. The color-separation algorithms have been rewritten to great effect. The new version does a much better job of handling highly saturated reds, and the problem of too much magenta in the blues also seems to have been cured. We haven't yet had a chance to do exhaustive evaluations of the new separation algorithms, but the results we've obtained so far indicate that they're much improved over the old ones.
A little slower. Photoshop 2.5 isn't perfect. Because the new version is much larger, it does more swapping of code segments in and out of memory. This occasionally leads to slightly sluggish behavior, particularly on slower machines. On a IIfx, we've noticed a slight but perceptible delay between selecting a tool and having that tool available for use, and menu commands invoked by Command-key combinations aren't quite as snappy as they were in Version 2.0.1. The program takes much longer to launch than its predecessor - exactly how long depends on how many third-party filters you have loaded - and files saved in Photoshop 2.5 format take a little longer to open than Photoshop 2.0 files. Tools used with large soft-edged brush settings are slow enough to be quite difficult to use. Given the overall improvements, though, these are fairly minor complaints.
Upgrades from Photoshop 2.0.x are $129. An optional CD-ROM version, available only as an upgrade, is $199. In addition to the Photoshop 2.5 upgrade, the disc contains many user tips, demo versions of third-party filters and tutorial files.
There's a gnat in my soup. Any program as large and complex as this is almost certain to have some bugs. We haven't found any obvious reproducible problems, but we did experience a handful of random crashes. A few Quadra users on CompuServe's Adobe Forum have reported occasional spurious out-of-memory messages, and some IIsi users have reported unusually slow performance. We've found that preview icons don't always show up, even after we've seen a message informing us that the program is creating one.
Photoshop 2.5 seems backward-compatible with most third-party plug-ins: The only one we've had break so far is SuperMac's ThunderStorm Resize function.
Conclusions. We'd like to see these problems fixed as soon as possible, but none seems serious enough for anyone to hold off on upgrading; the many advantages of the new version more than outweigh the few minor difficulties we've encountered. Adobe probably could have gotten away with calling this Photoshop 3.0, and the fact that it didn't whets our appetite. Photoshop 2.5 won't make the Mac rival high-end color workstations, but it's quite a bit more than an incremental upgrade. For serious Photoshop users, it's a must-have.
Adobe Systems Inc. is at 1585 Charleston Road, Mountain View, Calif. 94039-7900. Phone (415) 961-4400; fax (415) 961-3769.
Score Card: Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Systems Inc.
Version tested: 2.5
List price: $895*
Overall value 5
With Photoshop 2.5, an already great application just got better. The many new features are well-considered, well-implemented and provide a real productivity boost both for creative work and routine production tasks. The new virtual-memory scheme significantly reduces the penalty exacted by insufficient RAM, the new screen-redrawing technique is noticeably speedier, new color-separation algorithms provide a marked improvement over their predecessors, and a new open architecture holds great promise for future third-party acceleration. The upgrade may not be totally bug-free, but any minor problems are more than outweighed by the very considerable advantages the new version offers. This upgrade is highly recommended.
Performance 4
Features 5
Ease of use 4
Documentation/support 5
*Upgrade from Version 2.0, $129; upgrade to CD-ROM version, $199.
System 7 Compatibility: Adobe Photoshop 2.5
Balloon help No
TrueType Yes
Publish and subscribe Yes
Apple events No
32-bit addressing* Yes
*According to vendor.
MacWEEK 03.22.93
Reviews Page 45
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Mac the Knife: The importance of being speedy
In the spring, a young Knife's fancy lightly turns. And who could blame a young Knife for that, given the rather unfortunately dramatic turn that events, including the weather, took during winter's waning days.
The nice thing about doing a nice turn is that you often gain a new perspective. In the Knife's case, it's a perspective on speed. Even before the advent of today's often bloated applications, the Knife has always believed that the fastest Mac is the best Mac. And apparently the wizards working on the first production incarnation of the PowerPC chip are of the same mind. They've not been shy to boast that the PowerPC 601 will feature some impressive clock speeds: one version at 50 MHz and another at 66 MHz.
But the Knife's trusty sources now say that the next round of pre-
production PowerPC silicon may yield even more impressive figures. The engineers are hoping that the performance range will begin at 66 MHz and top out at a much higher figure. If this turns out to be the case, the first RISC Macs could be considerably faster than expected, even in emulation mode.
This high level of performance also puts in an interesting new light Apple's stated goal of a PowerPC-based Mac capable of running off-the-
shelf Mac applications at Quadra speeds and priced at less than $2,000. Perceptive observers have been quick to point out that the Centris 610 almost fills that order already.
capitalization optional. Apple will be jockeying with other companies for your attention at next week's intermedia show in San Francisco. Among the many exciting and wondrous technological marvels on display will be a configuration bundle that Apple is calling a video-production workstation. Designed to promote multimedia CD-ROM development, the workstation will be based on a Centris 650 and include a Radius VideoVision plus DiVA's VideoShop 2.0 and Macromedia's MacroMind Director. This is only the first in a series of product bundles that Apple is rumored to have planned.
Attentive readers will remember that Radius VideoVision originally was developed at Apple as Touchstone, then sold to Radius. Now it's to make an appearance both in this bundle and in the upcoming Cyclone multimedia Macs.
No Mac is a laurel. If you think Apple's roaring unit-sales growth means the company can rest on its achievements, then you probably believe a lot of the other hogwash, too. The truth is that the struggle for success is eternal, no matter how many units you moved last month or how many TV commercials your PowerBooks appear in. Take large accounts. Apple has won its share over the past couple of years, but if the Knife's sources are telling the truth, it's lost a few lately, too. For now we'll lay the loss of these accounts at the feet of the current downsizing craze and assume that Apple's ace corporate sales force is already hard at work re-establishing the famous Mac advantage where it really counts.
Along the same dark vein, the faint of heart may be disturbed by the news of the departure of two high-profile executives from the PowerBook group. The Knife's faith is unwavering, however, as it's truly difficult to imagine Dell Computer developing a product innovative enough to mount a credible challenge to Apple's current dominance in the laptop field. Cheap enough, maybe, but not innovative enough. And Global Village historically works in tandem with Apple.
On the other hand, it does seem lately that the executive suites of most of the fledgling pen-based computing companies are populated mainly by alumni of Apple USA. Does that say more about the future of pen-based computing or the quality of the work experience at Apple?
If you're thinking of asking for a MacWEEK mug, think again. If you're thinking of earning one, start at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3650, MCI (MactheKnife), Internet (mac_the_knife@macweek.ziff.com), AppleLink (MacWEEK) or CompuServe/Mac.
MacWEEK 03.22.93
Mac the Knife Page 114
(c) Copyright 1993 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
