Eagles Nest BBS 7

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Eagles Nest BBS 7 / Eagles_Nest_Mac_Collection_Disc_7.TOAST / MacWEEK / MacWEEK1992 / MacWEEK 1992 / MacWEEK 9_28_92 < prev

Wrap

Text File | 1992-12-28 | 67.6 KB | 1,469 lines

MacWEEK 9/28/92 ----------------------- News: Docks for PowerBook Duos on the way By Raines Cohen and Henry Norr Cupertino, Calif. - A pack of third-party developers, led by E-Machines Inc., reportedly is preparing add-ons for Apple's new PowerBook Duo line. Developers are banking on the success of Duo 210 and 230, a pair of 4- pound dockable laptops due next month. Apple itself will offer a trio of expansion options: the Duo Dock, a $1,200 enclosure that turns the Duo into a fully equipped desktop machine; the Duo MiniDock, a $600 device (reportedly manufactured by SuperMac Technology of Sunnyvale, Calif.) that adds video-out and standard Mac ports; and an adapter, priced at less than $150, that adds Apple Desktop Bus and floppy drive ports. But third-party developers also are counting on Duo buyers to look for other options. Among them: >E-Machines of Beaverton, Ore., is expected to announce two products. PowerLink Presentor, a portable Duo dock, will output up to eight-bit color to Apple and other RGB (red, green, blue) displays, as well as VGA and Super VGA monitors, LCD panels and projection devices. The Presentor will support a variety of resolutions up to 1,024 by 768 pixels, according to sources. It also will provide NTSC (National Television System Committee) and PAL (European) output to TVs and VCRs, with custom convolution to reduce flickering. The device, which is expected to sell for less than $500, includes graphics acceleration and a collection of ports: stereo output, two serial, Apple Desktop Bus and external floppy drive. The company also will announce PowerLink DeskNet, a $700 desktop dock with support for 10BASE T and 10BASE 2 Ethernet. The device, which slips under the PowerBook Duos, supports the same RGB-video output as the Presentor and has the same ports plus a SCSI connector and stereo input port. Hardware pan and zoom will make viewing large documents easier. >Sigma Designs Inc. of Fremont, Calif., is expected to announce several color display systems for the Duos and other Macs next month. The company already offers SCSI-connected monochrome monitors with built-in video circuitry. Other vendors reportedly are developing docks that support 24-bit-color and larger monitors. >Lind Electronic Design Inc. of Minneapolis is among several companies reportedly developing external chargers and auxiliary power supplies to complement the Duos' nickel-hydride batteries. Lind's Auxiliary Power Pack, priced at less than $200, is designed to provide extra portable power; the Auxiliary "D" Cell Power Pack, at less than $100, provides backup power via alkaline D-cell batteries; and the Auto Power Adapter, for less than $150, will draw power from an automobile cigarette lighter. The Duos reportedly use a new Apple custom chip for power management. Users will be able to set battery-conservation options via a new integrated PowerBook control panel. >Second Wave Inc. of Austin, Texas, will offer chassis that let users install additional NuBus cards. While Apple's Duo Dock has just two NuBus slots, users will be able to expand that with Second Wave chassis such as the $1,295 four-slot Expanse NB4 and the $2,295 eight-slot Expanse NB8. Apple and third-party developers are building in security cable connection points on many of the docks. The systems are Apple's first to be compatible with the Kensington Security Standard, proposed earlier this year by Kensington Microware Ltd. of San Mateo, Calif., and implemented by Toshiba Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and AST Research Inc. Third-party modem makers, who have done a brisk business offering alternatives to the underpowered modem that Apple offered for the original PowerBooks, may have a harder time competing with Apple in the Duo add-on market. The company is expected to offer an optional internal modem that supports data transmission at 14,400 bps and sends and receives Group 3 faxes at 9,600 bps. The modem relies on the Duo's CPU for some functions, so users could notice a slight performance penalty during large transfers, sources said. The Duos, like the new PowerBook 160 and 180, also will have built-in microphones between the keyboard and screen hinges. MacWEEK 09.28.92 News Page 1 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- News: Apple slashes desktop Mac prices IIsi 5/80 will drop to less than $2,000 By Andrew Gore Cupertino, Calif. - The other shoe will drop in Apple CPU pricing this week. The company earlier this month reduced dealer prices on its mainstream models; this week it is expected to follow up with changes to its suggested retail price list. The cuts, ranging up to 33 percent on some configurations, are designed to keep up with plummeting prices of IBM PCs and compatibles and make room for the new desktop and portable Macs expected Oct. 19, sources said. The largest cuts reportedly will be on the Mac IIci, IIsi and LC II. For example, the list price of a IIci with 5 Mbytes of RAM and an 80-Mbyte hard drive is expected to be priced at $2,719, down from $3,999. The 5/230 IIci will sell for $3,089, down from $4,599. The IIsi 5/80 system will drop to $1,999, from $2,999. The 4/40 configuration of the LC II will sell for $1,239, from $1,699; the 4/80 LC II will be priced at $1,349, down from $1,849, sources said. Apple has been planning for some six months to gut prices of its midrange color systems to make them more competitive with the Performa 600 and the upcoming IIvx, sources said. The 600, the three-slot consumer model announced earlier this month, delivers slightly slower performance than the IIci but comes in at a street price of only $2,000; the cache-equipped IIvx, which runs faster than a IIci, is expected to list for about $3,500 at mainstream dealers. Both the 600 and the IIvx can accept Apple's new dual-speed internal CD- ROM drive, an option the IIci, IIsi and LC II do not offer. In addition to the adjustments on its midrange line, Apple also will announce significant cuts at the low end and high end, sources said. The Classic II with 4 Mbytes of RAM and a 40-Mbyte hard drive reportedly will sell for $1,079, down from $1,699, while a Classic II 4/80 will go from $1,849 to $1,209. Among 68040-based Macs, the Quadra 700 4/80 system is expected to sell for $4,669, down from $5,899. The 4/230 will drop to $5,039, down from $6,499, and the 4/400 will list for $5,849, down from $7,199. Even the top-of-the-line Quadra 950 is in for a cut. The 950 8/230 will go from $8,499 down to $7,359, and the 8/400 configuration will list for $8,169, down from $9,199. A major reason for the sharp cuts, sources said, is to enable Apple to compete more effectively with makers of increasingly inexpensive 386- based PC clones. The company next month is expected to announce a bundle designed to win sales from owners of 80286 systems looking to upgrade. Apple reportedly alerted dealers to the impending retail price cuts at a national reseller briefing earlier this month. MacWEEK 09.28.92 News Page 1 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- News: Two Newtons, Motorola links due next year By MacWEEK staff San Francisco - The future of computing and communications sounds more like a Zen koan every day: What is an office if it has no walls? Motorola Inc. highlighted upcoming mobile-computing technologies for PowerBooks and Newtons last week, while Apple CEO John Sculley put a new spin on his company's plans for its Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). >Apple. Apple reportedly hopes to ship two Newton models in 1993, although several versions of each may appear in consumer-electronics stores and at computer dealers. The first Newton, which is due in March or April, will reportedly be marketed through consumer-electronics channels. Designed to provide personal information management and basic communications capabilities, it will probably retail for between $500 and $700. A second Newton reportedly will be a 6-by-8-inch unit offering more collaborative capabilities, including a whiteboard application for sharing data and sketches. Currently scheduled to ship in August, it will be sold principally through computer dealers for $1,100 to $1,300. Sculley last week seemed to redefine the market for the first-generation Newtons. "As we learn more about PDAs, we are less convinced that the near-term market is the consumer market," he told computer executives at the Agenda 93 industry conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif. "The price points are too high." Sculley said the first Newtons will not be "general-purpose devices" but units configured with recognition software and communications capabilities designed for specific vertical markets. >Motorola. The Motorola Paging Products Group, based in Boynton Beach, Fla., showed PowerBook client software for its Embarc pager-based messaging network at the Telecator Mobile Communications Marketplace Convention and Exposition here. The Embarc network delivers digital data, including mail messages, USA Today news reports and data files, to a NewsStream pager that connects to the PowerBook serial port. The interface, which is similar to standard Mac electronic-mail applications, lets users browse and read incoming messages. Replies to E-mail can be composed off-line but must be uploaded by modem to the Embarc system. Messages longer than 1,500 characters will be delivered to the PowerBook in sections and joined by the Embarc client software. The first version of the software, due in November, may require that users break messages into 1,500-character chunks before sending them, but the Embarc system is expected to perform this function automatically by the end of the year. Motorola also announced its intention to develop a "derivative" of its NewsStream pager for Newton. According to sources, the pager will be either built into some versions of the PDA or available on a PCMCIA card. Motorola said the capabilities of the PowerBook Embarc client also will be available for Newton users who purchase the version of NewsStream for the PDA. MacWEEK 09.28.92 News Page 1 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- News: Sun, SGI make imprint at Seybold By MacWEEK staff San Francisco - Last week's Seybold San Francisco show here saw advances in color and speed on Mac, Windows and workstation platforms, proving that the Mac is no longer the only game in town for desktop publishing. Apple CEO John Sculley said the company is "making a strategic thrust into higher-end professional publishing systems," but he focused on mainstream color desktop publishing in his keynote address. Apple next year will ship a range of products to support color publishing, he said, including several color printers; a server optimized for sounds, video and graphics; and a low-end color editing application from Claris Corp. >Color. As color-management systems move from theory to products, users said they are anticipating the benefits of color fidelity. Pamela Seawell, a technical systems specialist at Addison Design here, said her company will only buy a color printer if it has a color- matching system. "Our artists need the color comps to be as close as possible to the final printed color. We can't show a client something green that's supposed to be blue." Gerald Murch, Apple director of imaging software, demonstrated ColorSync, which he said "will provide the cornerstone for device- independent color." The forthcoming Apple system extension will provide basic color management and offers hooks to plug in higher-end color- management systems from third parties such as Electronics for Imaging Inc. and Eastman Kodak Co. Microsoft Corp. said it will integrate a scheme for device-independent color in the next release of Windows. >Competition. Leading Mac developers embraced workstation and Windows platforms, citing higher performance and wider market opportunities, respectively. Adobe Systems Inc. demonstrated an early version of Photoshop for Silicon Graphics Inc. workstations; it declined to give a price for the port, due next year. Illustrator for SGI will ship next month. Both programs will offer full file compatibility with their Mac counterparts. Mac users said they could see the appeal of SGI's workstations as a step up from Quadras. Eric Neylon, manager of Marinstat, a graphics shop in Mill Valley, Calif., said he might buy an Iris Indigo workstation if the Photoshop version for it looks good. "For price and speed, [Indigo] can't be beat," Neylon said. "No matter what speed I've got, it seems I always want to go a little faster." NeXT Computer Inc. also made a strong bid for the publishing market. CEO Steve Jobs, who spoke immediately after Sculley, touted NeXTstep 3.0, NeXT color printers and RightBrain Software's PasteUp publishing software as existing solutions for color publishers. Sun Microsystems Inc. and Adobe announced that Adobe will port its applications to Sun workstations. Sun has licensed Adobe's Display PostScript and Type 1 fonts and will produce PostScript printers. SuperMac Technology announced a line of Windows products, including a 24-bit-color card to be bundled with QuarkXPress for Windows. >Fast PostScript processing. Adobe unveiled its PixelBurst coprocessor and the Level 2 version of its CPSI (Configurable PostScript Software Interpreter) software RIP (raster image processor). PixelBurst will provide a massive speed boost to high-end PostScript output, Adobe said. Agfa showed PixelBurst running on both a Sun SPARCstation and a Quadra 950 for output on Agfa's AccuSet 1000 imagesetter. Agfa said it hopes to release PixelBurst products in the first half of 1993. Varityper Inc. said it will incorporate PixelBurst and CPSI Level 2 into its Series 3000 Imagesetting System early next year. The Macintosh version of the image-setter system with CPSI Level 2 will be $39,995 and $49,995 with PixelBurst. Monotype Inc. will ship its LaserBus RIP multiplexer with PixelBurst early next year for $12,500. Lonnie West, a graphic artist at Pacific Bell in San Ramon, Calif., said his company is considering upgrading to a faster Agfa imagesetter with PixelBurst. "We've had to back off from using intense PostScript effects in our artwork, because our imagesetter takes forever to process them," he said. "With faster processing, we'll be able to work more creatively." >Fonts. Apple and Adobe announced that Adobe's Type 1 rasterizer will be integrated with Apple's QuickDraw GX, due next year, allowing future Type 1 fonts to take advantage of GX features such as ligatures and swash characters. >Graphics software. Although the show floor was crowded with both exhibitors and users, the number of groundbreaking products seemed low. Aldus Corp. officially introduced Fetch, the multi-user, mixed-media cataloger it acquired earlier this year, now slated to ship by year-end for $295. Caere Corp. shipped Image Assistant, its 24-bit-color image editing and painting program that aims to beat the $895 Adobe Photoshop both in price (Image Assistant is $495) and ease of use. MacWEEK 09.28.92 News Page 1 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- News: PowerPoint 3 shoots for interoperability Microsoft to release upgrade next month By Carolyn Said Redmond, Wash. - Interoperability is a key theme in the next release of Microsoft PowerPoint for the Mac, according to sources. Slated to debut and ship next month, Version 3.0 of the Microsoft Corp. presentation program reportedly will offer almost complete file interchange with PowerPoint 3.0 for Windows, which shipped in May. The Mac update will require System 7, sources said. One of its few features that does not translate directly across platforms is QuickTime support. The Windows version plays movies in AVI (Audio Video Interleave) format, Microsoft's soon-to-be-announced standard for digital video. Like its Windows counterpart, PowerPoint 3.0 for the Macintosh will use Microsoft OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) technology to let users place objects created in other applications within their documents. "This should give [Aldus] Persuasion a good run for their money," said one source who had seen the Mac product. "The new features are tremendous." Like other recent Microsoft applications, the update will provide a Toolbar for quick access to common functions. Under different views, buttons adjust automatically to reflect the features available; the transition effects button, for instance, is available only in the Slide Sorter view. A new integrated outliner is available in all views. A master template, available in slide, outline, notes and handout views, will determine a document's look and feel, but can be customized for individual slides. The program now can automatically generate bullet charts. The upgrade also includes dozens of templates, editable clip art, and new tools for editing text and shapes. The Mac version includes 35 TrueType fonts. If a Mac presentation contains PostScript Type 1 fonts, they are replaced by the equivalent TrueType fonts under Windows. New runtime players for both Mac and Windows will let users open and play presentations created on either platform without file conversion. Version 3.0 will be the Mac program's first major upgrade in four years. Nevertheless, it has remained the top-selling presentation package for both Mac and Windows, according to Los Altos, Calif.-based New Media Research Inc. "PowerPoint has been sticking back in the dark ages," said Tim Bradley, senior computer support specialist at Cimarron International Inc., an Aurora, Colo., multimedia creation house and service bureau for presentation work. "From what I understand, the new version is a good step forward." PowerPoint 3.0 will continue to list for $495. Upgrades are $99; sidegrades from competitive presentation programs are $129. Microsoft declined to comment. MacWEEK 09.28.92 News Page 1 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- Gateways: What is acceptable Internet use? The world's largest network comes with strings attached - strings that are tripping up business users. By Jeff Ubois Until about a year ago, everyone loved the Internet. But since the passage of Sen. Al Gore's supercomputer bill, which provides more than $100 million in funding next year for government-supported research networks, a battle over who will benefit has begun in earnest. Several fundamental questions are at issue, but one of the most basic asks whether businesses should have equal access to the giant government- funded network. Population control. As the world's largest network entered into its current geometric growth phase - traffic is increasing by more than 15 percent a month - the Internet's character shifted rapidly from a U.S. government and academic resource to an international data pipeline with an increasingly commercial character. About 50 percent of the connected hosts are governmental or academic, but nine out of 10 new connections are commercial sites, according to Gordon Cook, publisher of "The COOK Report on Internet->NREN" in Ewing, N.J. But the rules that have governed use of the primary U.S. backbone, called NSFnet, are oriented toward keeping commercial traffic out (see story below). The National Science Foundation wants to ensure that the money it spends on NSFnet goes to support research and education rather than to subsidize corporate communications. "We do our best to ensure the taxpayers are providing support to the appropriate people that are within the mission of NSF to support," said George Strawn, NSFnet program director . "Just yesterday a person was using [the Internet] for advertising, and we called the involved regional net to see if they were aware [of the activity]," Strawn said. "They had contacted the user and made the policy clear to them, so we do take action like that." Ungovernable networks. But the enforceability of the NSF's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is open to debate. No one checks messages before they are posted to the Internet, and no one could possibly read all the traffic. "It's a little like speeding. There is a law against it, but that doesn't mean every speeder will get caught," Strawn said. In fact, NSF's policy has become the focus of intense debate within the Internet community. Rick Adams, president of Uunet Technologies, a commercial Internet access provider in Falls Church, Va., agreed with the speeding analogy but with a twist. "It's the moral equivalent of the 55-mph speed limit in Nevada; the reality is, it just doesn't work," Adams said. "Companies are just lithely ignoring the rules. It is a giant honor system, and the honorable people are getting hurt by it." Said publisher Cook: "The NSF's AUP is getting more and more controversial. It's basically unenforceable and should be abolished forthwith." The user's perspective. Tom Childers, a software engineer at Oracle Corp. in Redwood Shores, Calif., and a heavy user of the Internet, said: "It's been my personal experience that people abide by the rules pretty carefully. For example, there was one instance where someone broadcast news about their product on a mailing list and got a ton of negative feedback." However, there is a big difference between private electronic mail and public postings via news groups and mailing lists. While vendors may answer public questions about their products, they don't make it a practice to accept orders via the Internet. "This is where it gets gray. What is a business transaction?" Childers asked. "A letter telling you how to use something is a business transaction, but it doesn't have the same kind of significance as a request for current prices." Childers said: "[At Oracle] we have our own internal network for routing mail to others overseas, but there are circumstances where we communicate with customers [via Internet-carried E-mail] and that is considered perfectly acceptable." To further confuse matters, not everything that goes over the Internet passes through the NSFnet backbone, and different regional networks have different rules. "It's like the post office telling you that you can send mail from San Francisco to Boston as long as it doesn't stop in Chicago," Uunet's Adams said. "Practically speaking, the user has no clue as to whether he or she is violating the policy or not - it's a real mess." ANS: A deal no one can refuse? Advanced Network and Services Inc. of Elmsford, N.Y., runs maintenance services for the NSFnet backbone; it runs the only network connected to all of the major midlevel and regional networks paid for by the NSF. ANS, a partnership of IBM Corp., MCI Communications Corp. and the nonprofit Merit Inc., runs a similar backbone service for commercial users. This gives it a unique position among commercial Internet providers, the rest of which must design their networks so they avoid NSF-supported networks. "This is like 18th-century France, where the monarchy was going bankrupt and rich nobles would build roads at no charge to the throne if the king gave them letters of patent, which they could use to recoup their investment by charging the commoners a heavy toll," Cook said. "By maintaining the AUP on part of the backbone and giving ANS the right to run a commercially available parallel network without an AUP, [the NSF has given the] ANS an advantage, which is equivalent to a letter of patent." Allan H. Weis, president of ANS, said: "What we did is set up a process and mechanism that ensured federal dollars were not being spent on commercial traffic and that allowed the NSF-sponsored regional networks to send and receive commercial traffic across those gateways if they chose. "Basically what that did is it put many of the regionals in the country in competition with PSI (Performance Systems International Inc., of Reston, Va.) and Uunet - we opened up competition, and that is why they screamed." Its competitors view ANS as taking unfair advantage of its position, especially regarding the Acceptable Use Policy. "They (ANS) are saying they are the only people that can guarantee customers won't get into acceptable-use problems," Cook said. Uunet's Adams added: "Basically what ANS is doing is saying: 'You want Internet access with no fear of liability? All you have to do is pay our commercial rates.' " ANS said the claims against it are unfair. "If we have any advantage, it is one we won in very strong, open competition," Weis said. "If we have other advantages - and we do, for example we are the only [service] with a good security product - it's because we invested our own money to develop that product and its features." ANS' role became the focus of increased controversy since its contract for backbone maintenance came up for renewal this year. What happens next depends partly on whether ANS remains in control of NSFnet maintenance and partly on the success of some bills being introduced to Congress this fall that would change the Internet's charter. But ultimately it's the users that shape Internet culture and use, and increasingly those users are commercial companies. For them, fine distinctions about the types of mail they can send over the network are going to be ignored or are going to become an annoyance. MacWEEK 09.28.92 Gateways Page 30 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- GA: Apple's new technology MacWEEK takes an extensive look at Apple's system-level technology developments from a technical angle, as well as from the point of view of developers whose work can have an effect on the publishing industry. By Ric Ford and Connie Guglielmo The success of the Mac in the market can be attributed in large part to the strength of its basic architecture and the quality of such architectural extensions as AppleTalk. With fierce competition from Windows boxes on one end and Unix workstations on the other (both with graphical user interfaces), Apple now is looking to gain additional advantages from new extensions to the System 7 architecture. In this report, we present an overview of WorldScript, QuickDraw GX and ColorSync, and OCE (Open Collaboration Environment). We also look at what Macintosh managers might expect from application developers, particularly in the area of print publishing. WorldScript will be released Oct. 19 as part of System 7.1; ColorSync, a component of QuickDraw GX, is slated to debut as a solo system extension in January, ahead of QuickDraw GX; QuickDraw GX and OCE just now are getting out of alpha testing and are not expected to be released until after the first quarter of 1993. (Apple is not specifying release dates.) While work has been under way for years, it is a long road from ideas to marketable products. The entire process, of course, depends on the integral involvement of third-party developers with Apple and real-world feedback from customers to Apple and third-party developers alike. A few selected "seed" sites have been working with Apple-confidential prototype software and documentation, but it will be months before end users can buy shrink-wrapped products that take advantage of the new system improvements. Other important new technologies, which we will cover in future issues, include Bento, a cross-platform, compound-document standard; Translation Manager, the generalization and incorporation of Apple's XTND architecture for translating documents into the Mac operating system; and AppleScript, an upcoming system for automating and customizing the actions of applications that support Apple events. WorldScript extends alphabet support Following QuickTime, WorldScript is one of the first new Apple extensions to be delivered for System 7, shipping as part of System 7.1. WorldScript and System 7.1 bring a new, orderly architecture to the problem of supporting the world's varied alphabets on the Macintosh. Previously, system software was different for each foreign script, which includes the characters of the alphabet and linguistic files that specify how the written language should appear (such as left to right or up and down). Supporting languages such as Japanese required time- consuming, ad hoc programming. System 7.1 has the first full Japanese version for the Mac. "What [WorldScript] means is that the system software isn't tied to a language," said Michael Buhr, System 7 product manager at Apple. "What we can do with System 7.1 and WorldScript is provide one system-software version worldwide that supports all languages." The new approach means extending the operating system in several areas to break performance and functional bottlenecks. A Japanese font, for example, can be 7 Mbytes in size, compared with about 70 Kbytes for an English font. Japanese characters are represented by 2 bytes rather than the single byte used in English systems. Future Mac system software will support Unicode, the upcoming international standard that defines 2-byte codes for representing all the world's characters. WorldScript does not define such encoding standards as Unicode and ASCII but rather serves, in a modular layer above them, to translate the binary numbers into "glyphs," or graphic character forms, on the Mac. "Unicode and WorldScript are not counteractive to each other, they're actually complementary, and Unicode is one of our next steps," Buhr said. Since non-Roman characters have no inherent relationship to a standard English computer keyboard, a new system of modular "input methods" was designed to let users choose among techniques for entering characters, regardless of the current application. This adds much more flexibility to the critical process of getting international information into the computer. The new modularity of WorldScript also was intended to provide support for multilingual documents and operations, something that was virtually impossible previously, according to Buhr. Additionally, users can look forward to adding languages to their systems with the same ease as adding fonts, he said. The potential payback from WorldScript for Apple and its developers is enormous. The first expected benefit for Apple is fast international release of new Mac hardware and software, localized via simple, modular system extensions. For the first time, developers will have a single international operating system base for their applications. The new market potential is large, since customers in many organizations are reaching across national boundaries in their work, and they will buy systems to support that. As with Apple's other new technologies, WorldScript's full capabilities will not be available to users until developers build support into their applications. Integrating WorldScript into System 7.1 makes this a little easier, however, since many customers can be expected to upgrade their systems to this "reference release." Linguist praises WorldScript's tools WorldScript does more than provide a single Macintosh operating system capable of supporting the world's numerous writing scripts. WorldScript is the dawn of a new publishing era for Bill Griswold, Macintosh coordinator for the Summer Institute of Languages in Waxhaw, N.C., which has linguists working in 53 countries publishing and putting together alphabets and writing systems for cultures that don't have a written language. "We've had to develop our own in-house software to deal with the classic 10 problems of using software to publish in foreign languages," said Griswold, who works in the institute's JAARS technology division, the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, which provides airplanes, radio equipment and computers to linguists working out in the - often very remote - field. "We've had to deal with languages that read right to left, top to bottom, at an angle or those like Arabic that have characters that are context-sensitive, that is they change depending on the characters around them," he said. The fact that Apple has offered versions of its operating systems in 30 languages was of no real benefit. "That was great if you spoke Arabic, but it wasn't good if you're an English-speaking person who wanted to publish in Arabic." While many of these problems have been dealt with at the application level with language-specific word processors, Griswold added that "you are stuck with that application." Apple's solution, to break down the barriers between languages with WorldScript by providing a single operating system with plug-in writing scripts, also solves many problems for Griswold and his linguists. "For us personally, Apple has taken the Greek out of the Greek OS and put it all into modules," Griswold said. "And when you solve the problem at the operating system level, then you're free to use any commercial application that is WorldScript-aware." Being able to use commercial software will be a boon to the institute, Griswold said, because it lacks the resources to continue to "squeak out" custom tools. The only thing that would make Griswold and his colleagues even happier is if Apple included editing tools along with WorldScript, tools that would enable linguists - some of whom are creating writing systems for cultures that do not have one - to create new writing scripts, the alphabets and specifications of how the written language should appear. Apple will be offering help in creating alphabets, but users will have to wait for QuickDraw GX, which will include font-editing tools that will allow users to modify TrueType GX fonts. It seems likely that third-party developers, such as Altsys Corp., also will supply GX font- editing tools. Perhaps third-party developers also may tackle the problem of allowing users to create writing scripts. "The only way we can create writing scripts now is with MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop)," Griswold said. "If Apple were to provide the [linguistic] scripting tools, I'd be dancing a lot." QuickDraw GX expands to objects QuickDraw GX, like OCE, lacks a firm public schedule, and the two groups at Apple reportedly are competing to be the first out the door with finished software sometime next year. At the moment, each is finishing an internal alpha-test phase and migrating to an external beta-test phase. Some QuickDraw GX components, such as its "line-layout manager" (for composing character shapes along a path) and a redesigned printing architecture, originally were promised by Apple for System 7.0 but subsequently were dropped as delays mounted. Comprising a varied set of components, the core of QuickDraw GX is an extension to QuickDraw rather than a replacement for it. At its center, the new software expands the original, bit-mapped QuickDraw architecture to a modern object-oriented model, which defines lines, quadratic curves, rectangles, polygons, text, bit maps, paths and pictures. Objects may be represented in different color spaces and transformed among them. An "alpha channel" specifies an object's transparency. Additionally, bit maps are no longer locked to 72 dpi but also may be defined at other resolutions. The goal of the extensions is to better cover the graphic range between the Mac's bit-mapped display and object-oriented, PostScript output devices - without forcing the Mac down the NeXT path to Display PostScript. For developers, the new capabilities greatly simplify such tasks as rotating and scaling images or skewing them to create perspective views. With the development of new TrueType GX fonts, users will be able to manipulate text like other objects, and appropriate application support will enable many special transformations. In combination with the line-layout manager, the new font architecture provides for glyphs composed of multiple characters (such as ligatures and fractions); context-dependent character forms (such as Arabic); languages written vertically; multilingual text on the same line; and such typographic functions as optical alignment, tracking and kerning. Of course, Adobe Type 1 fonts also will be supported, but they are not likely to provide all the operations possible with special TrueType GX fonts. The Open Printing Architecture bundled into QuickDraw GX is a long- overdue overhaul of Apple's printing routines. As with WorldScript, the design goal was to instill more consistency and modularity in the operating system, reducing development problems for both Apple and third-party vendors. End users will gain several welcome improvements, including the logical addition of printers as graphic objects on the Finder desktop, complete with drag-and-drop support. Perhaps the most important development is a new more universal format for documents "spooled" to disk. This promises to make it far easier to exchange documents among users and to print them out on different printers without reformatting the original or hassling with fonts. Other benefits of the overhaul include support for multiple paper trays and page formats within a print job, as well as the capability for sharing all printers, whether they are attached to AppleTalk or serial ports. Competition among Apple's development teams and an aversion to interdependencies that might cause delays have created some interesting issues, according to third-party sources. The standard interchange formats of OCE and QuickDraw GX reportedly are unrelated, for instance, and it's not known at this time if QuickTime will be able to use QuickDraw GX's capabilities. Another developer concern is the potential plethora of platform variations if customers have to mix and match Apple's new technologies. On the other hand, if they were bundled into one package, the processing, memory and storage requirements could be untenable. As the technologies migrate to the market, these are a few of the concerns that Apple will have to address. Developers smooth the GX curves When creating graphics applications, Macintosh developers have found they not only have to learn how to work with QuickDraw but how to work around it. The problem has centered on the fact that QuickDraw, the graphics engine developed for screen display on the Mac, has lacked many of the capabilities of Adobe Systems Inc.'s PostScript, the imaging standard supported at the printer level. But Deneba Software CEO Joaquin DeSoto is certain the situation will change when Apple releases QuickDraw GX next year."We think QuickDraw GX will solve the problem of the QuickDraw vs. PostScript world," said DeSoto, whose Miami-based company developed Canvas, a drawing and illustration program. "In Canvas, you can draw a 300-dpi, very precise image, but QuickDraw only supports 72 dpi," DeSoto said. "So when you save your 300-dpi image in PICT format, you're putting it into a medium that can't handle all the information there, and so you lose some information." To work around this situation, developers have been embedding PostScript into PICT to get the optimum image at the printer. While this embedding is a documented feature of the PICT format, developers will no longer have to do this. The end result is that developers will be able to create programs faster and with more functionality because they can devote their resources to innovation rather than work-arounds. "When you had to work with one graphics engine for the screen and one graphics engine at the printer level, you had to double the programming work," DeSoto said. But now that there's a more level playing field between the capabilities of QuickDraw GX and PostScript, "all you have to do is develop your program, and the printing and output will be taken care of by GX." Although taking advantage of QuickDraw GX will mean that Deneba has to re-engineer Canvas, DeSoto said the investment is worth it. "Developing for GX is not a free ride," he said. "It is a massive undertaking, and it would probably be easier to do a simple DOS program. But when you do something for the Mac, you get a better end product. If you don't respond, you're not going to be competitive." For developers just entering the Macintosh market, the fact that QuickDraw GX will be part of the base operating system is reason enough to celebrate. Corel Corp., an Ottawa graphics developer known for its Corel Draw program in the IBM PC world, recently announced its Mac products. Steve Bland, Macintosh project leader for Corel, was enthusiastic about QuickDraw GX. "To me, QuickDraw GX is a whole new step forward because it is built into the platform," he said. "There's nothing else like it in the current industry. You're going to have true WYSIWYG color, and it makes our job as developers much easier because we can concentrate on adding special effects to our programs rather than on the basics. The person who is going to win is the end user." ColorSync to prove WYSIWYG color No surprises. That's the point behind Apple's ColorSync, the Macintosh color-management system designed to give real meaning to WYSIWYG color by providing users a match - with no surprises - between the colors displayed on screen and the colors scanned in and printed out. WYSIWYG color will be a two-step process. First, ColorSync will ensure that all color-capable Mac applications, monitors, and input and output devices can communicate in the same color language, whether they speak in RGB (red, green, blue) values or CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) values. ColorSync will accomplish this with its Color Matching Utilities (CMU), which will translate RGB and CMYK values to and from the CIE (Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage) 1931 XYZ color space, a device- independent standard for defining color. With the CIE XYZ values as the common reference language, the CMU will be able to translate colors from monitors and graphics applications (which usually define colors using RGB values) to printers and imagesetters (which usually define colors using CMYK values). After the conversion is done, ColorSync's second step is to match the colors on the screen with the colors supported by the input or output devices. This color-matching process, which will be handled by ColorSync's Color Matching Method (CMM) engine, is tricky because of differences in color gamuts and differences in perceived colors. The gamut is the range of color that any given device actually can reproduce: If the color on the monitor is outside the scanner or printer color gamut, or those in the scanner or printer gamut are not supported by the display, it's up to the CMM to assign the best substitute color. This process is made even trickier because even if a color is included in both the gamuts of the display and printer, the color still may not look the same on each device because of inherent differences in RGB and CMYK. Again, it's up to the CMM to find the best possible match between the color display and the perceived color the user expects on the output device. While Apple's CMM will be the default color-matching method, users will be able to replace it with a third-party color-matching engine, such as ColorSense from Eastman Kodak Co. of Rochester, N.Y., and EfiColor from Electronics for Imaging of San Bruno, Calif. Apple's CMM is intended as a baseline - while it will be a pretty good color-matching system for most users, those users who need the highest-quality color matching may opt for the more sophisticated third-party products. In addition to the CMU and CMM, ColorSync includes an important third component: device profiles, which describe, or characterize, the specific color parameters and capabilities of color devices such as monitors, scanners, printers and imagesetters. Profiles are important to WYSIWYG color because different devices may describe the same colors in different ways. Apple will provide the device profiles for its color peripherals. It also will provide developers with a ProfileMaker, a utility that will allow them to put the color characteristics of their devices in the ColorSync format. While application developers do not have to modify their programs to work with ColorSync, they will have to make modifications if they want to take advantage of ColorSync's color-matching features, such as spot- color matching and color page preview, said Ross Ely, Apple product manager for ColorSync. Eventually, developers will have to rearchitect their applications to take advantage of the color-management system when it is released as part of QuickDraw GX. ColorSync developers can build on baseline Developers say the best thing about ColorSync is not that it will help make WYSIWYG color a reality, but rather that Apple has acknowledged the importance of incorporating color-management technology into the Mac platform. "What a company like Apple can do by putting color management into the operating system is to get application developers to support it, to support color," said Adam Stock, product manager for EFI, the developer of EfiColor, a high-end color-matching system that can be used in place of Apple's default color-matching engine. "With ColorSync Apple has provided a rudimentary color-matching model that will work on all Macs," Stock said. "But ... to get really good color, you have to do some work, because it's an illusion to think that color management comes for free. Users will want to invest in more- sophisticated third-party systems." But having ColorSync in place, with Apple's default or third-party color-matching engines, is just the beginning. An important part of the WYSIWYG color puzzle revolves around ensuring that there are device profiles - files with descriptions of the specific color parameters of peripheral hardware. Profiles are important because peripherals may describe the same color in different ways. Image files will be tagged with the device profile information so that the color-matching engine has a reference point that tells it how the source peripheral defined colors. Creating these profiles is not a trivial task, said Apple's Ely. "Measuring the color capabilities of their printers is the challenge, and there will be an opportunity for other developers to create profiles," Ely said. EFI already has seized the market opportunity to develop profiles, which Stock likens to "creating a font." Last week at Seybold San Francisco the company announced its profile library, including 17 device profiles of popular printers and five of monitors. The profiles, which work with the company's EfiColor system, will be upgraded to support ColorSync when it is released early next year. The printer profiles will be sold like fonts and range in price from $100 to $350, Stock said. EFI plans to sell the device profiles directly to users as well as peripherals developers who will bundle them with their printers. OCE to reach out to global networks Collaborative computing, like international computing, is rich in potential, and realization of that potential has similarly been held back by the slow pace of software evolution. Under the technical direction of AppleTalk architect Gursharan Sidhu, Apple began a major project some three years ago to extend the Macintosh platform to support significant collaborative activities. The result is the far-reaching collection of facilities called OCE. "The goal of this project has been to build the foundation technologies into the system software that will enable collaborative computing," said Veronica Dullaghan, product marketing manager, "and we're adding some specific new capabilities that are essential." Front- and back-end application programming interfaces to OCE provide a well-defined way for Apple and third-party developers to extend its reach out to global networks on one hand and into the user's Mac application environment on the other. The interfaces also support the creation of computerized "agents," which automatically would aid in managing information. OCE expands the Mac's boundaries in several important directions. One is fundamental support for electronic mail and messaging. (Apple defines mail as communications between people and messaging as communications between applications.) A Standard Mail Package in OCE gives programmers a tool kit for easily adding store-and-forward mail capabilities to applications, much like the Mac's Standard File Package long has simplified and standardized the process of locating, creating and naming files. The capabilities cover a full set of operations one would expect from an E-mail system, such as addressing, sending, receiving, forwarding, replying and enclosing attachments. In addition to supporting applications' native document formats, OCE defines both a standard image format and a standard interchange format. Like fax, OCE's image format is designed to be universally readable. The standard interchange format accommodates text, pictures, sound and movies through translation modules. A user's desktop mailbox handles all incoming mail, regardless of its type or origin. A second critical component in the support of collaborative work is a directory system. OCE incorporates a strong, general-purpose mechanism for giving both users and applications access to many forms of information, from E-mail addresses to images, stored in flexible hierarchical directories. Users maintain personal directories, and both users and applications have access to multiple directories. Taking aim at the deepest roots of traditional paper-based operations, Apple also is introducing sophisticated systems with OCE that promise to maintain trust and security during electronic communications. Apple-licensed technology from RSA Data Security Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., is used to create "digital signatures," one step in the authentication process. One way the process could work, according to Dullaghan: "Users fill out a form and sign it once with their real signature in front of a notary, and in return they get an electronic certificate that uniquely represents them. That electronic credential is something I can take with me on a disk, or I can put it on my machine if I want to. To use it, I can drag files to the certificate, and it will prompt me for a password." OCE can apply a digital signature to any stream of bytes so it may apply to a whole document or only to one box in an electronic form. The digital signature does not encrypt the data but uniquely identifies the signer (such as a notarized signature on paper) and flags any unauthorized change made to the signed data. (Among other applications, digital signatures may be used to fight computer viruses.) OCE's Authentication Manager, in conjunction with ASDSP (AppleTalk Secure Data Stream Protocol), can be used to verify identities and set up secure, server-based links between applications. Group publishing to take hold in '90s Desktop publishing might have been the buzzword of the 1980s, but in the '90s the focus will be on workgroups and collaborative publishing - a trend that developers see as possible in part because of Apple's OCE technology. "When Apple first briefed us on OCE," said Bob Baldwin, vice president and co-founder of Managing Editor Software, "we were ecstatic because the proposed environment pointed directly toward what our company believes to be the future of publishing: a migration away from the notion of monolithic, centralized databases toward independent workgroups loosely bound by a plug-and-play form of publishing operating system. OCE provides a series of services that dramatically advance that concept." The Elkins Park, Pa., company, which develops products for publications management, already is at work on its second-generation products that redefine the notion that publishing projects are put together under one roof. "With our forthcoming products, OCE, and faster network and disk access speeds, our company believes that publishing operations will be able to expand and contract freely and will function independent of geography or location," Baldwin said. "Reporters shouldn't necessarily have to come into the newsroom to file stories. Rather, the publishing-management software should have an almost 'intuitive' ability to know where to seek out and find all the information necessary to produce the publication." Baldwin also is pleased with the level of authorization OCE offers, saying the digital signature could solve security problems. But one of the greatest benefits of OCE to small developers such as Managing Editor Software is that Apple is building it, along with new networking and communications technologies, into the Macintosh platform. Adds Baldwin: "We're not Microsoft - our development staff could not afford to produce core technologies and evolve sophisticated publishing applications at the same time." GA Page 38 MacWEEK 09.28.92 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- Review: CPU By Dale Coleman Many of us are so infatuated with the PowerBook that it's hard to imagine that there's a lot of room to improve its operating software. But there is room for improvement: The screen, CPU and hard disk all consume large amounts of power, requiring careful watch over precious battery charge; the several seconds it takes to wake up a sleeping PowerBook become so onerous that you're tempted to skip the sleep feature when running on AC, thus risking LCD burn-in; since a PowerBook can be set up almost anywhere, you never can be certain who will access your data; and some users will never be completely comfortable with that tiny trackball. Connectix Corp.'s $99 CPU (Connectix PowerBook Utilities) package is the first commercial collection of PowerBook utilities, and it addresses all of these problems and more. CPU is a simple control panel, but its many settings can be saved in separate groups. This lets you recall settings for any situation: You can have custom settings for use at the office, at home, on the plane or at the beach, for example. The major CPU features are broken down into 12 categories, each of which is represented by a different "panel" in the main window. These panels are Battery, AC Power, Hot Keys, LCD Saver, Display, Indicators, Security, Panic, Cursor, Keyboard Power, Instant Wake and Instant Sleep, and Expert and Help. Running down CPU. Each panel in CPU has a range of configuration options, as follows: >Battery. The PowerBook battery charge doesn't last long enough, so there's a brisk trade in tips to prolong the life of the charge. The processor, screen and hard disk consume power in the largest chunks, so the Battery panel lets you set times after which the processor rests, the hard drive spins down and the screen dims. The Battery panel also includes control over when to invoke sleep mode. >AC Power. The AC Power panel is identical to the Battery panel except that it controls system timeouts when the PowerBook is plugged in. We weren't able to come up with compelling reasons to rest the processor or spin down the hard drive when connected to AC power. CPU automatically changes between Battery panel settings and AC Power settings when you switch power sources. >Hot Keys. CPU offers a comprehensive suite of keyboard equivalents for its control-panel settings. The program defaults to Shift-Command-Option combinations, but you can change these to just about anything you like. Keyboard commands to brighten and dim the screen are handy, but they illustrate CPU's tendency to offer more features than you might really need. You can get confused as to whether you dimmed the screen with CPU or with the PowerBook control. >LCD Saver. This panel inverts the screen momentarily at a user- specified level or when a user-specified keyboard equivalent is issued. To some people, this feature can be annoying, especially in a meeting where attention is drawn to your PowerBook instead of a presentation. >Display. This panel will be of great interest to those running the PowerBook off the battery. It optionally displays, in the right portion of the menu bar, the time and percentage of power remaining in the battery based on current usage; CPU speed (useful to PowerBook 170 users only); and the date and time. The panel lets you control the rate at which the menu alternates between two or more of these items. >Indicators. This is a second optional menu-bar status display. It includes a graphic battery-charge indicator and impending spin down and sleep indicators. Our favorite, however, is the Caps Lock indicator that warns us that we've inadvertently hit the Caps Lock key. Unlike Apple's Caps Lock Extension, CPU lets you disable the Caps Lock key altogether. >Security. This panel controls access to the PowerBook when it's first awakened or started up. In keeping with CPU's propensity to offer every conceivable option, you can choose to invoke security in either or both states. CPU doesn't limit security to passwords: It also lets you specify a hot zone in a PICT graphic in which you then click (with modifier keys, if desired) to wake up your PowerBook. This graphic security scheme may be satisfactory, but it leaves us with the nagging feeling that it shifted the mathematical odds in favor of the system intruder. >Panic. This panel is used to instantly hide the PowerBook display by displaying a predefined PICT image when activated by a hot key. It works equally well at hiding your plans from the competition as it does for hiding your latest Super Tetris challenge from your supervisor. >Cursor. Submarining comes and goes, but on the PowerBook 100, 140 and 145 screens, the cursor sometimes seems to go down and stay down. The Cursor panel gives you three options for I-beam cursor thickness, plus a user-definable keyboard command for locating a submerged cursor. >Keyboard Power. This panel is an excellent example of an old idea that makes a great deal of sense on the PowerBook. It's aimed both at those who can't get used to the trackball and those who prefer keyboard equivalents. It allows you to control all menus via the keyboard with a Control-modifier-key sequence. CPU offers three configurable ways to access menus with the cursor, all of which worked as expected. Keyboard Power works with everything we tested, ranging from betas of unreleased applications to a 1986-vintage shareware game. >Instant Wake and Instant Sleep. Apple's implementation of the Sleep and Wake commands has driven otherwise sane citizens into the arms of the "just-say-OK" crowd. Instant Sleep puts the PowerBook to sleep immediately without that annoying dialog box warning that there might be other users connected. Conversely, Instant Wake omits the 10 or 20 seconds checking AppleTalk and Apple Desktop Bus connections. There are situations in which such caution is prudent, and for these CPU provides remedies. >Expert and Help. The Expert panel provides even more control over how CPU manages the PowerBook's resources, including overriding some settings when you switch between sets. The Help panel succinctly replicates the documentation. The CPU documentation is complete, well-organized and clearly written. The Using CPU section will serve the majority of PowerBook users. The Reference section will answer most questions of serious tweakers. Conclusions. CPU performed almost flawlessly during the review process. Once the rotating status display failed to occur when we switched from one application to another. Twice in one session when CPU had automatically dimmed the screen we were unable to reawaken it. We were not able to duplicate the problem nor had technical support received reports of failures from other users. CPU achieves its goal of making PowerBook users more productive. You can get some of CPU's features, including a wider I-beam cursor, enhanced battery-life indicator and Caps Lock indicator from user-supported software distributed by user groups and electronic services. But CPU provides all this and much more; any of several small subsets of its features would be worth the $99 price. You should be prepared, however, to spend a little time training yourself how to manage CPU's overabundance of features effectively. As this review went to press, Connectix was preparing an update to CPU to provide more-accurate information about remaining battery-charge life and to address an Ethernet compatibility problem and a conflict between HyperCard and LCD Saver. A few rumored and real competitors to CPU are looming on the horizon. The most visible one is After Hours Software's GUM, which should ship this fall and could provide stiff competition to CPU. For now, however, Connectix has the market to itself. Connectix Corp. is at 2655 Campus Drive, San Mateo, Calif. 94403. Phone (415) 571-5100 or (800) 950-5880; fax (415) 571-5195. Score Card CPU (Connectix PowerBook Utilities) Connectix Corp. Overall value **** List price: $99 CPU is a robust utility - consisting of 12 individual components - designed to enhance the PowerBook-specific features of portable Mac computing. The program monitors battery charge and deals with display management, password security, sleep and wake management, keyboard shortcuts, and more. Although functional equivalents of some of the utilities are available elsewhere, CPU integrates the most complete set of utilities to date for portable Mac computing. Some users will probably be overwhelmed by the configuration options, however. Performance **** Features **** Ease of use *** Documentation/support **** System 7 Compatibility CPU Balloon help Yes TrueType Yes Publish and subscribe n/a Apple events n/a 32-bit addressing* Yes *According to vendor. Reviews Page 53 MacWEEK 09.28.92 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- BusinessWatch: FTC to close Microsoft probe By Jon Swartz and Lisa Picarille Redmond, Wash. - The Federal Trade Commission reportedly is on the verge of concluding a two-year investigation of Microsoft Corp. with charges that the software giant engages in unfair business practices. According to a story quoting anonymous sources in the Sept. 28 edition of BusinessWeek, staff attorneys in the FTC's Bureau of Competition are about to recommend that the FTC bring action against Microsoft for "exclusionary behavior." Indeed, the FTC staff thinks it has evidence showing Microsoft took actions designed to damage its competitors without any benefit to Microsoft or consumers, the story said. An announcement could come as early as next month but no later than the end of the year, the story said. Microsoft declined to comment on the investigation, which has not been made public. The FTC declined to comment on the probe of Microsoft. The FTC probe, industry sources said, is based partly on the $2.8 billion Redmond, Wash., company's dominance of both operating-system and application markets. Its control of the application arena is especially striking in the Mac market, where it has 70 percent of spreadsheet sales and 53 percent of word processor sales, according to The Hartsook Letter, a market research newsletter based in Alameda, Calif. The 17-year-old company also controls nearly half of the fast-growing $1.3 billion market for Windows applications in North America, according to industry analyists. MacWEEK 09.28.92 BusinessWatch Page 44 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ----------------------- Mac the Knife: New Mac LC: Good and cheap? Sometimes you have to thank the powers that be for institutionalized breaks from such ongoing concerns as this year's campaign debategate controversy. The prospect that the entire campaign might draw to a conclusion without the benefit of a meaningful, issues-oriented dialectic between the two statesmen seeking the highest office in the land was beginning to dominate almost every discourse. Until, that is, the Seybold gathering gathered itself together to discuss the weighty matter of bringing color desktop publishing to the masses. The simple axiom applying to such matters is that if it's both good and cheap, the masses will bite. The trick is to know when a product successfully meets these two criteria. For color desktop publishing, the matter has perhaps yet to be settled. But if the Knife's sources are correct, Apple is seriously considering redefining both of these elements for a new Mac LC it's planning. This new low-cost Mac is scheduled for release early next year along with the new color Classic. The concept is a color '030-based LC complete with hard drive and monitor for less than $1,000 retail. Of course, in this case complete may be the operative term. To reach this ambitious price goal, Apple managers are employing a zero-sum method of evaluating just what really needs to be included in a cheap Mac and what is just so much hardware fluff. The results of their reasoning may surprise you. Nothing is finalized, but the cheapest LC is projected to come standard with 2 Mbytes of RAM, expandable to 8 Mbytes, along with the familiar LC PDS expansion capability. According to the proposed specs for this LC, Apple is betting that if the price is right, you won't care that there's no LocalTalk and no SCSI. Storage will be relegated to an internal IDE 40-Mbyte hard disk. Even the lowly SuperFloppy has come in for its share of "right-sizing" under this proposal. The Knife has learned that Apple is prepared to abandon the traditional automatically ejecting unit in favor of a more cost-effective manual-eject unit. IIvi or not IIvi. As many have suspected since word of the Mac IIvx and IIvi leaked on an unsuspecting world, Apple has decided that the IIvi model will not be available in these United States. Some originally had argued that the education market might find a 16-MHz '030 Performa sans FPU and cache attractive, but Apple has decided otherwise. And when the two "v" Macs are discussed, can talk of CD-ROM be far behind? Not in this case, in which the Knife is confirming that initially there will be no external version of Apple's hot new high- speed CD-ROM drive. Instead, until supplies loosen up, Apple will stick with the slow and aging unit it currently peddles. That should present a profit opportunity for any third-party vendor who can find a few CD mechanisms that, unlike Apple's external, read multisession Photo CD discs. Word 5.1 word. Word 5.1 is already getting a good word-of-mouth reputation among those who always seem to get their mouse on prereleases before anyone else. But some users are peeved that the new release still won't include WordBASIC, the programming language that was once supposed to ship with Version 5.0. The new Mac release may look like the popular WinWord 2.0, they report, but appearances can be deceiving. The Knife's sources now claim that a November ship date looks like a sure thing. And, if these sources are correct, you won't even have to save up the $129 upgrade fee that Microsoft previously has charged. This time the fee is expected to be a more reasonable $25 or so. There never will be a debate over the inevitability of MacWEEK mug ownership for those willing to share their industry secrets. Contact the Knife at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3650, MCI (MactheKnife), AppleLink (MacWEEK) and CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac. MacWEEK 09.28.92 Mac the Knife Page 122 (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. -----------------------