QuickTime reportedly will make some dramatic moves in the coming months that will culminate in the multimedia architecture getting a major new upgrade during the middle of 1995.
Meanwhile, new components expected before the end of the year will add to QuickTime 2.0 3-D simulations and video conferencing and propel it into Windows.
> QuickTime Interactive. Apple is readying a major upgrade to QuickTime called QuickTime Interactive (QTI), sources said.
As the name suggests, the most significant new feature is a complete, integrated scripting language. The language will allow title developers to either export from their favorite multimedia tool a stand-alone, interactive QuickTime movie or work directly in the high-level language, sources said. Users will reportedly be able to play back a QTI file without a player application.
The inclusion of interactivity in QuickTime caused some sources to question Apple's commitment to Script X, including one source who said the company was "tired of waiting" for Kaleida Labs Inc. to deliver its cross-platform interactive media standard. Sources added that QTI for Windows should ship a few months after the Mac version.
QTI will also make extensive use of software compression to provide full-screen, full-motion video playback without additional hardware. Sources said Apple has licensed TrueMotion, a processor-independent compressor-decompressor (codec) from The Duck Corp. of New York, which can play full-screen video at a rate of 30 frames per second.
Duck said it has already signed TrueMotion licensing deals with Sega of America Inc. and all major 3DO developers. According to Duck, TrueMotion's intraframe compression permits much smoother video motion than the interframe compression provided by MPEG.
In addition to TrueMotion, QTI will also include a software-based MPEG decoder. Apple reportedly has licensed the MPEG technology from another third-party developer.
> QuickTime VR. Sources said Apple in October will offer a QuickTime VR construction kit to registered developers. The new technology plugs into QuickTime 2.0 and generates seamless 360-degree scenes from as few as 16 photographic or rendered images. A file containing the 360-degree view occupies less than 1 Mbyte of disk space, and individual views can include interactive features such as buttons.
Apple demonstrated QuickTime VR in June at the Digital World conference in Los Angeles (see MacWEEK, June 20, Page 20). The company said it will ship by the end of the year.
> MovieTalk. Apple will also release a desktop videoconferencing extension for QuickTime to users by year-end.
MovieTalk, which Apple featured in technology demonstrations in May (see MacWEEK, May 23, Page 1), is network-, codec- and protocol-independent. It runs on unmodified AV Macs and transfers video and sound over any carrier, including phone lines.
Apple declined to comment on any upcoming commercial software that uses MovieTalk.
> QuickTime 2.0 for Windows. Apple confirmed that it has be-gun shipping beta copies of the QuickTime upgrade for Intel-standard PCs.
Like its Mac-based counterpart, QuickTime 2.0 for Windows includes support for full-screen, full-motion video; new MIDI capabilities; and enhanced audio and text features. In addition to MPEG, it supports Display Control Interface (DCI) compression for video playback within Windows.
Apple said QuickTime 2.0 for Windows is still on track for a fall release.
James Staten contributed to this report.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Altsys redrawing FreeHand
Version 5.0 to feature plug-in architecture
By Carolyn Said
Altsys Corp. is drafting a major upgrade to FreeHand that will improve the drawing package's handling of text, colors and objects and offer a plug-in architecture.
Sources said FreeHand 5.0 is due in January. That is when Richardson, Texas-based Altsys will regain control of FreeHand from Aldus Corp. as a consequence of the merger between Aldus and Adobe Systems Inc. (see MacWEEK, July 18, Page 3).
The upgrade will directly address the FreeHand-Illustrator competition, with new features that reportedly will rival or surpass similar ones in Adobe Illustrator. Enhancements will appear in several areas:
> Text. Altsys is enhancing text-handling considerably, sources said. FreeHand 5 will add a spelling checker and text search and replace, both critical features for the hundreds of newspaper graphics departments that rely on the drawing package. Shortcut keys will let users change font attributes, such as bold and italic. New highlight, strike-through and underline attributes are also included.
An improved text ruler will let users change tab alignment, position and leader characters.
> Tools. Third parties will be able to extend FreeHand's capability with plug-ins called Xtras, sources said. Xtras can be used to add tools, path operations, device drivers, and to open and save various file formats.
Altsys plans to include several Xtras, including a tool that draws open paths in the shape of a spiral.
An improved Knife tool will offer options for cutting lines in either a freehand or straight-line mode, for adjusting the width of the knife cut, and for closing paths created along the knife's path.
> Objects. New menu items will let users copy and paste object attributes, allowing them to quickly change attributes without having to define a style.
A new Clone/Copy feature will let users clone an object at the same time it is positioned. Users can snap to any object and can move and position text along a path using left, right and center handles.
> Color. FreeHand 5's Color List will display CMYK or RGB values for colors and tints. Users will be able to create and adjust graduated and radial fills using up to 64 colors. The Tints palette will also be moving to the Color Mixer for consolidated access.
> Views. Version 5 will have a larger pasteboard, and the Document Inspector palette will let users move around in an image more easily. The new FreeHand will also allow eight different views of a document to be open simultaneously.
Layers will be configurable; selected layers can be viewed either in keyline mode, which draws to screen much faster, or preview, the full WYSIWYG view.
Altsys is positioning FreeHand 5 to win any drawing precision contest as well. The upgrade will offer magnification levels up to 1,638,400 percent, fine enough to draw bacteria at actual size, according to sources.
> Interface. A redesigned Preferences window, similar to that in Microsoft Word 5.1, will list functional categories such as colors, object editing and palettes.
The upgrade will also have new "smart" palettes; choosing a palette will automatically pop it open from either a closed or collapsed state and bring it to the front. Users can specify to have palettes in different locations depending on whether they are fully open or collapsed. It will also be easier to quickly hide all palettes.
In addition, users will be able to Command-click or Shift-click to select multiple colors in the Color List, layers in the Layers palette or styles in the Style palette.
> Printing. The new version of FreeHand will reportedly offer more-sophisticated trapping than before. As was the case with FreeHand 3.1 (but was removed in Version 4.0), users will be able to specify an automatic spread value to compensate for registration inaccuracies. Another returning FreeHand 3.1 feature will let users specify a custom line-per-inch or dpi setting for an entire document.
In addition to the new features, sources said, Altsys is determined to improve speed throughout the program.
Altsys declined to comment.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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News: Beefy Word, Excel hard to swallow
By Stephen Howard
Macintosh managers are taking their time evaluating the components in Microsoft Office 4.2. The resource requirements in the latest releases of Word and Excel pose a problem for large sites populated with older Macs.
"It's more than just investing in software," said Brent Baisley, senior analyst at Home Box Office Inc. in New York. Despite having an Office site license, he said, "We're going to take our time testing [the suite] to see if we really need the upgrades."
A major stumbling block at HBO and other companies is the prevalence of 80-Mbyte hard disks. With typical installations for Word and Excel weighing in at more than 10 Mbytes each, sites are feeling squeezed.
Although he likes the new features, "you can't leave the user with 5 Mbytes available space," Baisley said.
Synopsys Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., has an Office site license, but it also has about 200 Macs with 80-Mbyte drives. Systems Technologist Richard Kline told management it would take four weeks of planning and testing before he could recommend whether to upgrade; a full rollout might be delayed for six months, he added.
"Because of the resource load, we're suggesting people upgrade their hardware," said Marc Jeffries, computer systems specialist at Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco, Calif. "A lot of machines won't make the jump."
Genentech's departmental managers are ticked off at Microsoft Corp., Jeffries said, because the new Office products are too slow and too big for their installed base of Mac IIsi models. Indeed, the 68030-based IIsi was mentioned by several sites as a problematic machine because it's not fast enough for the new Microsoft applications, and it can't be upgraded easily.
"Resource requirements wouldn't be that much of an issue if [the Office programs] seemed faster," Baisley said. Slow launch times are a particular problem at the company help desk, he said, because technicians launch the same applications all day.
Not all users see the new Office versions as inconvenient, however. "We made a commitment several years ago to have 16 to 24 Mbytes of RAM" in each Mac, said Tina Owenmark, a marketing consultant and Word beta tester at Graham Marketing Group in Fremont, Calif. All the data files for the company's seven Macs are stored on a server, leaving local disks free for applications and personal files. And even on '030 CPUs, Owenmark had no problem with Excel or Word's performance.
Concerned Mac managers do not say the grass is greener on the other side. They said the latest versions of Office software for Windows were unfit for much of the installed base of Intel-standard PCs.
On Windows machines, the latest version of Word is "a hog," said Dan Felder, director of information systems at Chronicle Books in San Francisco. Felder recently converted about 35 Mac users to 486-based PCs with 4 Mbytes of RAM, but "our hands-down conclusion [about Office upgrades] is that if you don't have 8 Mbytes, don't bother."
Genentech's Jeffries said, "They're equal-opportunity hogs." Word for Windows is slow on anything less than a Pentium-class machine, he said.
Baisley said Office applications are faster on HBO's PCs, but he attributed that to the prevalence of clock-doubled 486 CPUs with fast hard disks.
Microsoft competitors can take little comfort in the wavering over upgrades, however. Microsoft Office site licenses are common, so dissatisfaction with one program rarely forces a switch. Baisley said he has tested WordPerfect 3.1 for the Mac and it seems faster than Word 6. He's considering breaking out of the Microsoft suite and buying Excel and WordPerfect separately because few of his users need Microsoft PowerPoint.
"But then it's that Office thing," he said. "It's cheaper to buy them together [from Microsoft]."
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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News: New Now Contact to sport server
By Robert Hess
With the successful shipment of its Now Utilities package behind it, Now Software Inc. is readying an update to its Now Contact information manager. Version 3.0, with a new interface and workgroup capabilities, is expected to arrive in time for Christmas.
Sources said the most eagerly awaited of Contact 3.0's new features is a network server that will offer shared data, much like the company's Now Up-to-Date group scheduler.
Within an address book, users will be able to assign individual contact records to categories -- some categories are private and stored locally while others are public and stored on a server. Certain fields, such as personal notes or call histories, that are attached to individual records may be kept confidential, although the rest of the record is public, sources said.
Unlike the current version of Now Up-to-Date, which uses a system extension-based server, the Contact 3.0 server will be an application. This reportedly makes it possible to start and stop the server without rebooting, as well as to monitor user names and activity levels.
The interface for Contact is also undergoing considerable change, sources said. An optional tool bar will run across the top of windows with icon buttons providing quick access to basic functions, such as print, delete, find, omit and new event. Like the just-released Now Utilities 5.0, Contact 3.0 will have a help system that explains tool-bar functions as the user moves the cursor over an item.
Many of the fields in the new version support autofilling, which accelerates data entry by watching what the user types and automatically entering the closest match found, according to sources. For example, entering the letter "p" in the title field offers "President" as a likely entry. The user may continue typing, for which additional alternates are provided, or override the suggestions.
A word processor is being built into the update to improve the product's extensive printing and document-management capabilities. Sources said the module is powerful enough to provide fairly complex mail-merge capabilities without having to leave the application.
A "call" event is being added to the contact manager, with an event timer and improved connectivity to Up-to-Date. Sources said Now is also working to improve the interaction and performance of the two products, making it easier to use them together.
The QuickContact extension, which gives users searching features from within any application without opening Contact, is being improved to show far more information about found entries. Buttons to dial any of a contact's phone numbers, copy a full record to the Macintosh Clipboard and create new contacts will also be included.
Several features to aid the maintenance of a large number of records are reportedly being added. A synchronization option will automate the combining of address books, and the Find Duplicates item can be used to locate a variety of data types within records.
Sources said Now is hoping to have the Mac version available for the Christmas buying season and the Windows version ready in the first half of 1995. The company reportedly is also working on a new version of Up-to-Date that offers considerably more scheduling and meeting-reconciliation functionality, as well as resource and meeting-space reservation.
Now Software declined to comment on any upcoming products.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Intuit loads Quicken 5 with extras
Financial Calendar, tax planner added
By Jon Swartz
Intuit Inc. is banking on Quicken 5 for Macintosh, an upgrade of its popular personal-finance package, to continue its dominance of the Mac business-software market.
The program, scheduled to ship Oct. 13 with an expected street price of $39.95, features Quicken Financial Calendar and other enhancements aimed at simplifying financial forecasting, tax planning and investment tracking. A native Power Mac version is due in 1995.
Quicken Financial Calendar tracks monthly transactions on an electronic datebook and allows users to drag and drop entries from one date to another. The calendar can also schedule recurring transactions, such as mortgage payments, and lets users attach electronic sticky notes to specific dates.
Other new Quicken 5 modules and capabilities include Financial Forecasts, which graphically depict cash flow up to one year in the future; a comparison report that shows the current year's spending against last year's; QuickReport, which creates a report in seconds on specific expenses, such as telephone calls; a tax planner that uses technology from Intuit's MacInTax to estimate taxes based on current Quicken information; and QuickMath, a new pop-up calculator.
According to the Software Publishers Association, Quicken was the top-selling Mac business package last year, with a whopping 87 percent of retail unit sales of business software in North America.
In other product news, officials at Intuit said that a Macintosh version of QuickBooks, its accounting software that tracks invoicing and accounts receivable for one to 20 users, is slated to ship in early 1995. Pricing has not been set.
Quicken 5 will be available directly from Intuit for $49.95; upgrades are $29.95. The product includes a 60-day unconditional guarantee.
Intuit Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., can be reached at (415) 322-0573 or (800) 624-8742; fax (415) 852-0155.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Norton Utilities for Mac 3.0 gets Disk fix
Symantec Corp. has released an update to the Speed Disk portion of Norton Utilities for Mac 3.0. The update, Version 3.1, fixes a bug in the previous release that, in concert with the package's Disk Doctor, could result in data loss (see MacWEEK, Sept. 12, Page 3).
According to Symantec, only a very small number of users were affected by the bug. The new version has been shipped to registered owners, an updater has been placed on major on-line services and product already shipped to retail stores has been replaced.
Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., can be reached at (503) 334-6054 or (800) 441-7234; fax (503) 334-7400.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: HP breaks into oversize output with new 4MV
By Matthew Rothenberg
Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Mac printer family will expand this week when the company ships the LaserJet 4MV, which undercuts today's market prices for full-bleed tabloid-size output.
Priced at $3,549, the 4MV is based on Canon U.S.A. Inc.'s 600-by-600-dpi LBP-BXII engine. In addition to printing 16 letter- or eight tabloid-size pages per minute, the new printer can output over-size sheets measuring up to 11.7 by 17.7 inches.
Besides the Color LaserJet, which HP rolled out last week, the 4MV is the only HP laser to output tabloid-size or larger pages.
In another HP first, the 4MV also can be outfitted with a 42-Mbyte internal hard disk for $499.
HP's model is priced far below competing printers based on the same engine. QMS Inc.'s 1660 Print System and Xante Corp.'s Accel-a-Writer 8200, which both use the LBP-BXII engine, start at $4,199 and $4,495, respectively (see MacWEEK, July 25, Page 4, and July 4, Page 4).
The new HP model will ship with Adobe PostScript Level 2 and 35 Type 1 fonts, and it switches automatically between PostScript and enhanced HP PCL 5. The printer also features HP's Resolution Enhancement Technology software, which smooths rough edges on printed text and graphics.
The 4MV includes HP's multiprotocol JetDirect interface card for Ethernet and LocalTalk networks. It runs on a 33-MHz Intel i80960 CF RISC processor and will come standard with 12 Mbytes of RAM, which users can expand to 68 Mbytes.
The printer will ship with 250- and 100-sheet paper trays; a 500-sheet universal paper tray is priced at $449.
Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif., can be reached at (800) 752-0900; fax (800) 333-1917.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: mPower makes multimedia easier
Users can draw on variety of devices
By Robin Meyerowitz
Multimedia Design Corp. in October is slated to ship mPower, a Mac multimedia presentation package aimed at novice users.
mPower, priced at $295, allows users to incorporate video, sound and graphics from a number of digital or analog devices into presentations.
The company said users who have a digitizing card or AV Mac can capture audio, still images and full-motion video from a VCR, laser disc or video camera. Users can also integrate media from Photo CDs and audio CDs as well as via the Mac's microphone. mPower lets users play analog video directly from its source into a presentation and import QuickTime movies.
The program uses a standard slide metaphor for creating presentations. Interactive capabilities include hot buttons that can launch other applications or start audio or video clips.
mPower will ship with a library of 64 backgrounds, and users will be able to create their own backgrounds from imported PICT files. It offers drawing tools; simple charting with five chart types; and the ability to import PICT, EPS and PCX graphics.
Users will be able to print slides, notes and handouts and create self-launching presentations, Multimedia Design said. mPower will let users of Mac systems with an encoder record presentations to videotape.
Instead of the standard Mac interface, mPower employs a push-button interface; buttons change automatically with each step in the process of building a presentation.
"[mPower] makes it look like you really know what you're doing," said beta user Mary Curran, associate professor of nursing and director of Nursing Informatics at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. Curran is responsible for training faculty members in the use of media and information technology.
While Curran said she appreciated mPower's ease of use, she noted the program's lack of customization options. "It's not Macromedia Director, but I don't want it to be because I don't have four months to teach my faculty how to use it," Curran said.
Multimedia Design said it will ship a Power Mac version in November and a Windows version in 1995.
While the company recommends running mPower on a 68040-based or faster Mac, it said it can run on any color Mac with at least 4 Mbytes of RAM, a 640-by-480-pixel color monitor, and System 7 or later.
Multimedia Design Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., can be reached at (704) 523-9493 or (800) 921-9493; fax (704) 523-9938.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Apple to distribute Connectix Mode32
By Cate C. Corcoran
Connectix Corp. and Apple recently announced two deals that tie Connectix's utility software to specific Macs.
Through a licensing agreement finalized this month, both companies will distribute the newly completed Version 7.5 of Connectix's Mode32 system extension. Mode32 7.5 will allow owners of Mac II, IIx, IIcx and SE/30 systems to use the 32-bit-addressing mode required to run System 7.5.
Apple previously licensed technology found in Mode32 and incorporated it into the System 7 32-Bit System Enabler, but this extension is not compatible with System 7.5, Connectix said. Mode32 7.5 is free on the CompuServe, America Online and AppleLink Connectix forums or through Apple at (800) 767-2775. The utility is also available from Connectix for a $9.95 handling fee.
In an effort to anticipate future changes in the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star requirements, Apple will also bundle Connectix Desktop Utilities (CDU), a $99 utility package that includes an energy-saving module, with three high-end Macintoshes. Starting next month, CDU 1.0.4a will ship with the Power Mac 7100 and 8100 and the Quadra 950, Connectix said. Apple said these three computers currently comply with the EPA's requirements, but CDU's power-down functions will further reduce power consumption and may help the machines comply with the soon-to-be-tightened Energy Star standards.
Sources said that as part of Apple and Connectix's negotiations, a demonstration version of Connectix's RAM Doubler utility will be bundled with all Macs except Performas. Connectix and Apple declined to comment on the RAM Doubler agreement.
Connectix Corp. of San Mateo, Calif., is at (415) 571-5100 or (800) 950-5880; fax (415) 571-5195; connectix@aol.com.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
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(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: Frankenberg charts new course for Novell
New leader outlines plans to refocus network giant
Robert Frankenberg, the president, chairman and CEO of Provo, Utah-based Novell Inc., spoke with John Dodge, executive editor/news of PC Week, at the NetWorld+Interop 94 show in Atlanta about taking the helm of the networking leader.
Dodge: Was the Novell you inherited a mess?
Frankenberg: I would not describe it as a mess. It was adrift, kind of like the Roman Empire. You sent in your taxes and put up the right standard, but you didn't have to give up your religion, culture or other things to be part of Novell. When people refer to themselves as an Excelan person five years after the merger, you know [the company] has not been welded together.
Dodge: How many customers have you visited so far?
Frankenberg: My first customer visits were to Detroit to Ford, Chrysler and EDS. I did that within five or six days of joining the company. I have since visited with more than 100 customers.
Dodge: What are their top five concerns about Novell?
Frankenberg: At the top of the list is stable products. NetWare 4.01 was a disappointment; I knew that going in. We made a big step with 4.02.
The second issue, and this is especially from large accounts, is support. They mean support directly from Novell. Third is network management. It's still a nightmare, especially when there are lots of servers. Four is a stronger applications-serving capability with NetWare.
And five, I'd say, is making the stuff easier to use. [Customers] spend an inordinate amount of time and a lot of money and then use a tiny piece of the [software].
Dodge: Let's go through some of these. Is NetWare 4 fixed?
Frankenberg: [Version 4.1 is] in beta. The reports back are glowing; 4.1 is going to sell in very large quantities. NetWare 4.01 had bugs and was missing utilities to manage the directories.
Dodge: Describe your initiatives in support.
Frankenberg: First, we want to bolster the capabilities of the reseller. Second, we are offering, through resellers, the ability for customers to work with us directly. We are very careful not to get in between the customer and the reseller.
I've asked John Lewis, who was COO of WordPerfect, to handle support. Kim Cooper, who did support under John, has the end-user side. Jan Newman, who was in charge of Novell support, has the [reseller] side.
Dodge: What are your plans to improve network and systems management?
Frankenberg: The network-management efforts were spread around the company, and they spent a lot of time arguing. [They've] been combined under one leader, [Vice President] Vic Langford. He worked for me at HP and was the guy who started OpenView. He's already had an impact by bringing the groups together.
He's also had an impact on us working with other systems, like OpenView, SunNet Manager and NetView 6000. The plan of attack now is to extend [network management] to applications and content. It's not only the iron and hubs; it's software distribution, licensing, configuration, upgrading and metering.
Dodge: What are super network operating systems?
Frankenberg: You have a very thin OS layer, then you put the NetWare microkernel over that and Unix on top of that. That way, you preserve the performance of NetWare. That has immeasurable impact on the [performance] of Unix. If you do it the other way around, you have thousands of additional instructions to execute. What's more important is that different services can go on different servers. With super NOSes, you not only have applications separate from network services, you can also break out services.
Dodge: What were your first impressions of Novell? As an outsider, was it difficult coming in?
Frankenberg: I thought it would be difficult. It hasn't been. I've been welcomed with open arms. People told me about the warts coming in -- they weren't kidding. I talked with 100 people or so the first month for an hour or more and learned the problems very quickly.
Dodge: Did former CEO Ray Noorda stay too long?
Frankenberg: No. I think that ... [long pause] Novell grew incredibly fast and needed to structure itself into multiple businesses earlier. Had that happened, the job Ray had would have been doable. Virtually all of the significant decisions came to the top. That's fine in a single-business company. It's not fine in a company with 19 businesses, which we have identified.
Dodge: In other words, Novell had a weak second and third tier of managers?
Frankenberg: I would not describe it that way. It was a structural problem. When I walked into Novell, there was one P&L statement for the whole company, so responsibility for P&L decisions was at the top. No human being can do that and make it work. We have some very strong managers at the second and third levels -- just not enough of them to cover the spaces we are in.
Dodge: What are the prospects for longtime Novell executives like Executive Vice President Mary Burnside and Chief Technology Officer Kanwal Rekhi?
Frankenberg: Mary is one of the best operations people I've met in 30 years in this business. She is absolutely incredible. We'll probably add a little to her existing role. Kanwal has decided he does not want to continue [as chief technology officer]. He is continuing on my staff as a key strategy adviser. He has helped enormously [to] pull together elements of the empire.
Dodge: What percentage of executives will be brought in from the outside?
Frankenberg: I think about a third.
Dodge: Are any more layoffs coming?
Frankenberg: None are planned at this point.
Dodge: How do you feel about rising interest in Microsoft Windows NT and its perceived superiority to NetWare as an application server?
Frankenberg: I think NT is more a competitor to Unix. The networking capabilities in NT are basic file and print and TCP/IP. On the other hand, I don't dismiss NT. I think they've fixed some of the reliability problems.
Dodge: What are the consumer products you have talked about?
Frankenberg: Well, 25 percent of the homes in the U.S. have PCs in them. The cable companies want to provide networking to those PCs. We're a natural choice to do that.
Dodge: Are you partnering with a cable company?
Frankenberg: Yes.
Dodge: Are you close to striking a deal?
Frankenberg: Yes.
Dodge: Can you tell me who it is?
Frankenberg: Not quite yet. But this is one part of it. Another part is, I still strongly believe PDAs will succeed. They may call them something else because there are some spectacular failures out there, but [I believe in] appliances that are built for a particular purpose. Interactive TV is one of those; intelligent phones are another. We'll provide networking software to the companies that [create these]. We will provide the products that make those networks possible.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
News Page 6
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: WordPerfect 3.1 harnesses horsepower of 7.5
Uses Apple Guide, adds QuickCorrect
By Robin Meyerowitz
WordPerfect, the Novell Applications Group, beat Microsoft Corp. to the punch again this week when it started shipping native Power Mac and 680x0-based versions of WordPerfect 3.1.
The upgrade takes advantage of several System 7.5 technologies, including Apple Guide, the interactive on-line help system; Drag Manager, which lets users drag and drop text or graphics between documents and applications; QuickDraw GX printing; and PowerTalk, now enabled on the Power Mac. WordPerfect 3.1 also includes a fat binary option that lets users launch the word processor from a server no matter which type of Mac they use.
Another feature introduced in 3.1 is QuickCorrect, an interactive spelling checker that can alert users to common punctuation errors. The latest Grammatik, Version 6.0, will not be included with the program. Instead, Version 5.0 will continue to ship with the program.
WordPerfect 3.1 comes with Macintosh Easy Open and DataViz Inc.'s compound filter for Microsoft Word 4.2, 5.0 and 5.1; this lets users import and export Word documents without leaving the application.
WordPerfect 3.1 is the second Power Mac version of the word processor to ship. Microsoft is due to ship the first native version of Word by the end of October.
The suggested retail price of WordPerfect 3.1 is $395, $100 less than previous versions, with an introductory offer of $99 through Jan. 31. WordPerfect users can upgrade for $59 through Jan. 31; users of competitive programs may upgrade for $99.
WordPerfect of Orem, Utah, can be reached at (801) 225-5000 or (800) 451-5151; fax (801) 222-5077.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
News Page 88
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
News: CatchLight snaps moving subjects
By Cate C. Corcoran
At the Photokina expo in Cologne, Germany, last week Leaf Systems Inc. demonstrated CatchLight, a digital camera back for professional-quality live-action photography.
Featuring a color CCD (charge-coupled device) with 2,048-by-2,048-pixel resolution, the CatchLight single-exposure camera back can capture color images of moving subjects in daylight or studio lighting, the company said.
Capturing 14 bits per color or 16,384 levels of gray, the $55,000 CatchLight can use shutter speeds from 1/1000 of a second to one second. Compatible cameras include Hassleblad 553 ELX and 500 EL series, Mamiya RZ67, Fuji GX680, and the Sinar p2 and e. The camera back is slated to ship by the end of the year.
CatchLight comes with two software packages, CatchLight-GA for commercial and catalog photography and CatchLight-P for portraits. CatchLight-GA comprises Leaf DCB/CatchLight, a native Power Mac program for capturing photos, controlling tone and cropping and CatchLight Processor for batch image processing. CatchLight-P includes a native Power Mac application for picture taking, image processing, pose selection and package print formatting.
A Power Mac 8100, one free NuBus slot for the interface card and at least 72 Mbytes of RAM are required for use with the camera back. A display system with 1,024-by-768-pixel resolution is also necessary.
The camera back measures 5 by 5 by 4.3 inches and weighs 1.9 pounds.
Leaf Systems Inc. of Southborough, Mass., can be reached at (508) 460-8300; fax (508) 460-8304.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
News Page 89
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: Norton Admin installs apps on Macs
Network manager can inventory PCs
By Robert Hess
Symantec Corp. last week shipped Norton Administrator for Networks 1.5, a LAN-management application that can inventory and update networked Macs.
Network administrators can use the central Mac or Windows console in Norton Administrator for Networks (NAN) to control software and hardware inventorying and software installation on Mac or Intel-standard PC clients. The program can also remotely trigger virus scanning, software-license metering, security and disk repair on Windows clients.
The inventory function documents the state of DOS, Windows, OS/2 and Mac clients. Mac hardware data includes CPU speed and make, NuBus boards installed, SCSI devices attached, and ADB devices plugged in. The software cataloging includes applications, fonts and system extensions. Network-related information can also be obtained, including network type, user name and network address.
Information on Windows clients' hardware setups are also acquired, including BIOS information; CMOS settings; bus type; memory configuration; network cards; and attached disks, keyboards and screens.
NAN can install software on Macintosh, Windows and DOS clients. The process is automated and can be scheduled for off-peak hours. In addition to installing new files over the network from Apple Installer scripts, existing files may be updated or deleted.
The Macintosh installation technology in this version came from NetDistributor Pro and Installer Pro from Trik Inc., which Symantec acquired this year.
Software usage metering is available only for DOS and Windows users. According to sources, Macintosh metering is in Symantec's long-term plans, but no work has begun.
NAN is sold in packs of five users to 1,000 users, with street pricing expected to range from $44 to $65 per user, according to Symantec.
Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., can be reached at (408) 252-3570 or (800) 441-7234; fax (503) 334-7400 or (800) 554-4403.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Gateways Page 12
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: Asante plans Mac 100BASE T card
By Stephen Howard
The Mac market hasn't heard much from Asante Technologies Inc. over the past several months, but the leader in Macintosh Ethernet is preparing announcements for this fall and winter -- including the first 100-Mbps Ethernet cards for the Mac.
This month at NetWorld+Interop 94 in Atlanta, Asante announced its membership in the Fast Ethernet Alliance, an industry consortium formed to promote 100BASE T and related 100-Mbps networking protocols. Asante is the first networking vendor with a Mac focus to join the alliance; no other vendor has announced plans for Mac 100BASE T products.
The formal announcements will come in October, but Asante said it expects to ship 100BASE T cards in January or February and deliver hubs later in 1995. PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) cards will ship when Apple makes PCI-based Macs, said Bruce Stancombe, Asante director of product marketing. Stancombe said Asante may be able to ship a single PCI card that works on Macs and Intel-standard PCs; it is also considering combination cards that run standard and Fast Ethernet.
According to Stancombe, Asante signed up in favor of 100BASE T because "all our customers are moving toward it." Asante also wanted to signal that it would lead the Mac market in introducing high-speed network-interface cards, he said. He referred to the main competing standard, 100VG-AnyLAN, as a "cult religion HP's got going." Hewlett-Packard Co. joined IBM Corp. a year ago in supporting that 100-Mbps technology. Asynchronous Transfer Mode currently holds little interest for Asante, Stancombe said.
Although Asante introduced several models of hubs in the past year, the company makes the bulk of its income from Ethernet cards. The Macintosh card market became more competitive in 1994 after Apple began making its own low-cost cards, shipped all Power Macs with built-in Ethernet, added Ethernet to high-end PowerBooks and withheld card specifications for the Communications Slot in its low-end CPUs.
Despite these moves, Stancombe insists Asante is not losing market share to Apple. Further, the market for Mac Ethernet cards continues to grow, he said, because the installed base continues to upgrade from LocalTalk and switch from token-ring networks.
Asante Technologies Inc. of San Jose, Calif., is at (408) 435-8388 or (800) 622-7464; fax (408) 432-7511; sales@asante.com.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Gateways Page 12
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: Palm Computing rewrites Newton
Near-perfect input with writing utility
By James Staten
Handwriting could become the preferred input method for PDAs after all. This fall, Palm Computing Inc. will ship a handwriting utility that delivers instant and near-perfect recognition.
Graffiti is a letter-by-letter recognition system that requires the user to learn a revised alphabet with unique pen strokes for each letter. Graffiti strokes are closely related to the capital letters of the alphabet with a few exceptions, such as the letter K represented by the "<" part of the letter.
Almost all of the 83 shapes in Graffiti's repertoire are formed by single strokes, allowing it to respond faster than a multistroke recognizer. This, and the fact that the number of shapes recognized at any point is much smaller than Newton's built-in recognizer, is how Graffiti produces nearly perfect results, the company said.
"This is the best [recognition system] I've seen," said Kimbell Brown, a market analyst at Dataquest Inc. in San Jose, Calif. "There are two ways to do handwriting recognition: Get the computer to learn your writing style or train the user to write a certain way. I don't think the first way will ever get good enough."
After Graffiti is activated, a button appears on the screen. Tapping the button displays a floating slip with a 1-inch-square entry space. When users write strokes on the space, text appears wherever the I-beam cursor is on the screen. According to Palm, Graffiti works with all built-in Newton applications and should work with most third-party software.
Palm said most test subjects were able to learn the new system in about 20 minutes and become proficient, writing up to 30 words a minute, in two hours.
"I was very, very impressed with how good the recognition was," said Ian Knight, account manager for OEM sales at Claris Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif., who was a part of the test group. "When I [wrote] the letters right, it gave me 100 percent recognition."
In addition to the lowercase alphabet, Graffiti recognizes much of the extended character set, including numbers, punctuation, capital letters and special characters. Special pen strokes are used to get the equivalent of the Shift, Option, Caps Lock and Num Lock keys. There are also buttons on the entry slip for Caps and Num Lock.
Palm's recognizer lets users enter predefined text via shortcuts. For example, a complete thank-you note could be input by writing "th."
Graffiti is priced at $79. In addition to versions for Newton and the Casio Zoomer, Palm said it would support most major PDA platforms, including Microsoft Corp.'s WinPad and General Magic Inc.'s Magic CAP. A trial version will be available to download on most commercial services this fall.
Palm Computing Inc. of Los Altos, Calif., can be reached at (415) 949-9560 or (800) 881-7256; fax (415) 949-0147; dg@palm.com.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Mobile Computing Page 18
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: Apple ships PCMCIA card cage
By James Staten and David Morgenstern
PowerBook 500 users will finally be able to play cards when Apple this week ships its removable PCMCIA card cage.
Priced at $219, the PowerBook PCMCIA Expansion Module weighs 4 ounces and fits into the left battery bay of the all-in-one laptops. Apple said the device complies with the PCMCIA Re-lease 2.1 standard and will work with compliant storage and modem cards, including cellular cards.
The module accommodates up to two Type I or Type II cards or a single Type III card. It can simultaneously use cards with different functions -- a modem and storage card, for example.
Cards can be inserted or removed without restarting; inserted cards appear as icons on the desktop. A new Control Strip module called Quick Eject allows users to remove cards using the module's auto-eject feature.
The following is a preliminary list of cards approved by Apple for use with the Expansion Module. As Apple continues to test card compatibility, an up-to-date list with contact information will be available via fax by calling (800) 462-4396 and requesting document 10307.
> Data fax modems. TDK Systems Development Center offers the $529 DF2814, a Type II fax modem capable of 28.8-Kbps data and 14.4-Kbps fax transmissions. Angia Communications Inc.'s Type II SafeJack SJ192, priced at $249, provides 19.2-Kbps data and 14.4-Kbps fax speeds.
Apple's Newton Fax Modem Card, priced at $199, provides 2,400-bps data and 9,600-bps fax transmissions in a Type II form factor. It can be shared between the PowerBook and Newton.
Type II 14.4-bps fax modems are available from Epson America Inc., Megahertz Corp., Motorola Inc., PreMax Electronics Inc., Smart Modular Technologies, Supra Corp. and TDK. These cards sell for as little as $149.
> Storage cards. Calluna Technology Inc. offers Type III hard drives with capacities of 105, 130 and 170 Mbytes, priced at $399, $499 and $599, respectively.
Epson has a $629 170-Mbyte Type III drive and also offers a series of Type II flash-memory cards with capacities from 2.5 Mbytes to 20 Mbytes costing from $349 to $1,299.
Integral Peripherals Inc.'s Viper 170 mechanism is used in the $575 PocketFile 170, a Type III hard drive with a 170-Mbyte capacity. MiniStor Peripherals Corp. has a $399 130-Mbyte hard drive in Type III form factor.
Intel Corp. is offering 5-Mbyte and 10-Mbyte Type II flash-memory cards, priced at $386 and $583, respectively. SunDisk Corp. has a family of Type II flash-memory cards with capacities from 1 to 40 Mbytes. SunDisk said the street price for the 1-Mbyte card is about $150, and the 40-Mbyte model is available for between $1,499 and $1,599.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Mobile Computing Page 18
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: Analysts predict rapid PDA market growth
By James Staten
The handheld-computer market will expand exponentially in the next five years if forecasts, released this month by two top research firms, prove true.
BIS Strategic Decisions Inc. and Forrester Research Inc., both of Cambridge, Mass., each predicted a rapid market expansion for PDAs that could top $1 billion by 1999. Both said that while Apple's overall market share would shrink, its position as market leader would remain.
"It is Apple's market to win or lose," said Susan Cohen, senior analyst at Forrester.
Both studies predicted that Apple's main competition would be devices running GeoWorks Corp.'s GEOS and General Magic Inc.'s forthcoming Magic CAP OS. BIS forecast that Microsoft Corp.'s WinPad operating system would commandeer a 9 percent share of the market by 1998, while Forrester excluded the WinPad OS from its study.
Jeffrey Henning, senior analyst with BIS, said he expects Microsoft to pick up significant market share as custom vertical applications currently written using Visual Basic are ported to WinPad PDAs. He also cites Microsoft's move to bundle the WinPad organizer into Windows95 as a key part of its adoption strategy.
"It will be natural for users to move to a smaller device when it uses the exact same calendar and database," Henning said.
But Forrester's Cohen is skeptical about Microsoft's entry. "Our sources don't think [Microsoft] will be able to get it to run on [an Intel 386 processor] like they plan," she said.
Both organizations said that while market growth is expected to be substantial, PDAs will remain primarily vertical solutions.
"A horizontal [consumer] PDA market won't exist until after the turn of the century," Cohen said.
The two studies differed mainly in identifying secondary factors that would drive the market. Forrester predicted that Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) technology and agent software will be key factors in PDA market growth.
"People will need very simple ways to retrieve information through these devices [if they are] to ever become consumer products," Cohen said.
BIS suspects wireless will remain too expensive for everyday use and cites integration with desktop computers as a key growth factor.
"Most users see [PDAs] as an extension of the desktop -- a way to take the functionality they have at the office with them," Henning said.
Both companies also predicted that PDA prices will fall steadily, nearing $299, by 1998.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Mobile Computing Page 18
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: PPC Cactus RIP does large-format output
By David Morgenstern
Users of large output can pin down processing performance when Cactus next month ships a $36,000 package of its CactusPower RIP, a new Power Macintosh large-format RIP, and Cactus Layout, a new layout application.
CactusPower RIP is based on Adobe's PostScript Level 2 CPSI (Configurable PostScript Software Interpreter) and offers 10 times the speed of the company's current Mac product, Cactus said. The RIP incorporates Cactus' error-diffusion screening, color-correction and interpolation technologies.
Cactus Layout lets users scale, crop and align images and can automatically panel oversize print jobs. According to the company, the software supports multiple concurrent stochastic and traditional half-tone screening algorithms and calculates different output resolutions for individual graphics elements within a document. Designers can apply higher resolutions to product images and text, while giving backgrounds a lower resolution that can reduce the total image processing time, Cactus said.
CactusPower systems use FastNet, a proprietary networking protocol running over Ethernet that provides sustained and maximum data transfer rates of 800 Kbytes and 1.2 Mbytes per second. FastNet also supports a dual-RIP architecture that improves the efficiency of the printers, the company said. The package includes a license for two RIPs on a network.
The RIP package is compatible with Encad Inc.'s NovaJet and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP DesignJet 650C plotters and Xerox Corp.'s 8900 series of electrostatic plotters. It also supports Cactus' proprietary electrostatic toner controller hardware and custom inks that improve output consistency on the 8900.
Cactus of Fairfield, N.J., can be reached at (201) 575-8810; fax (201) 575-5512.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
GA Page 24
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
GA: HSC releases native Live Picture
By Carolyn Said
Broadening horizons for its products, HSC Software made a series of announcements at Seybold San Francisco this month.
The company, which has recently relocated, announced:
> Power Mac software. HSC said it will ship next week native Power Mac versions of Live Picture, its $3,995 image-compositing and editing software for large images, and KPT Bryce, its $199 software for generating 3-D landscapes. Live Picture upgrades are free; Bryce upgrades are free except for shipping and handling.
> IVUE tool kit. Live Picture developer FITS Imaging of Soquel, Calif., released the IVUE tool kit, which lets developers access the image-viewing technology used in Live Picture.
Two tool sets are available. The $295 I/O Tools -- which allows an application to create, read and write IVUE files -- will let developers of scanner drivers, conversion utilities and existing image applications support IVUE format.
The second set, priced at $5,000 plus royalties, contains I/O Tools along with Viewing Tools, which lets developers create applications that browse, edit and manipulate images. Viewing Tools functions include fast zooming, panning and geometrical transforming.
> SGI ports. A Silicon Graphics Inc. version of Live Picture will ship in 1995, according to HSC, FITS Imaging and SGI of Mountain View, Calif. HSC will be the software's Western Hemisphere publisher. Pricing has not been set.
The companies said they expect the SGI version of Live Picture to usher the technology into the world of animation and video, an area for which SGI is known. Links to Open GL, a 3-D standard on Unix platforms, and other SGI development tools will propel Live Picture into 3-D and motion, according to HSC. SGI also plans to make I/O Tools available to all SGI developers.
HSC also said it has shipped a $495 SGI version of Kai's Power Tools 2.0 as well as filters and extensions for Adobe Photoshop and Alias Research Inc.'s Eclipse.
> KPT Convolver. HSC graphics guru Kai Krause is whipping up what he calls "an infinite Photoshop filter generator." Convolver, due by January for about $200, puts a graphical interface on Photoshop's filter controls, allowing users to interactively design and preview filters. Convolver uses slider controls rather than requiring users to type numeric coordinates for variables, such as blur, sharpen, hue, saturation and brightness.
HSC Software, now of Carpinteria, Calif., can be reached at (805) 566-6200; fax (805) 566-6385.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
GA Page 24
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Apple short on most Mac models
Performas, Quadras, Power Macs scarce
By Lisa Picarille
While sporadic product shortages seem to have become the norm at Apple, the level of back-ordered systems has apparently increased to the point where distributors, dealers and users can't get most Mac models.
On top of a nagging three-month-long backlog of orders for Apple's PowerBook 500 series (see MacWEEK, Sept. 12, Page 1), the company reportedly is having trouble keeping up with demand for its Performas, Quadras and Power Macs.
Several dealers, who asked not to be identified, said that nearly all of the Performa consumer line -- with the exception of the Performa 475 -- have been unavailable the past month. They said the Quadra 630 and 950 are also in short supply.
In addition, dealers claim supplies of Power Mac 7100 and 8100 models have been limited the past several weeks. One Midwest dealer said he was told by Apple that 6100- and 7100-series machines wouldn't be available until late October.
Some analysts, however, put a positive spin on the shortages. "It's a sign of life in the Mac franchise," said Jeff Matthews, general partner of RAM Partners, a Greenwich, Conn.-based investment firm. "It's better than three months ago, when no one thought Apple had a chance of living until Christmas."
Meanwhile, dealers said they are feeling the pinch trying to stock their Mac shelves. "We can't even get floor models to demo the products to customers," said one dealer, who claims to have spent thousands of dollars advertising Apple products he can't get. "We can't get any product, so we have to return customers' money. We can't stay in business doing that."
The root of Apple's chronic shortages are hard to pinpoint, according to industry observers. A purchasing manager at a leading Apple distributor blames supply problems on miscommunication between Apple's sales and marketing department and the company's manufacturing department. The source said the problem was compounded by Apple's knack for "consistently and grossly misforecasting" the amount of new product it will ship.
Pieter Hartsook, editor of The Hartsook Letter, an industry newsletter based in Alameda, Calif., said that Apple's glut of products and its penchant for discontinuing products soon after they are announced has added to the confusion. Since 1984 Apple has introduced 91 models, and 49 of those are still on the price list, he said.
"The buck stops with the product manager when it comes to forecasting new products," Hartsook said. "Apple is probably losing sales to the Intel platform because users want machines and they want them now."
Bill Milton, an analyst at Brown Bros. Harriman, a New York investment banking firm, said: "Dealers are less and less willing to carry inventory. So instead they expect Apple to carry the inventory for them."
While Milton admits that in the past Apple has "proven unable to predict the mix of demand" for products, he said the problem is also prevalent at Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM Corp.
"Nobody has a crystal ball," said Tom Santos, president of MACadam Computer Inc., an Apple dealer in San Francisco, who said he hasn't noticed any unusual supply problems. In fact, Santos said, "every currently shipping Apple product can be gotten pretty easily. Most are readily accessible and in stock."
Apple could not be reached for comment.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
BusinessWatch Page 32
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Federal court dismisses Apple appeal
By Jon Swartz
Apple's long and winding legal journey appears to have come to the end of the road.
A federal court last week rejected the company's appeal in its 6-year-old "look and feel" copyright suit against Microsoft Corp. over Windows. The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also dismissed Apple's claims against Hewlett-Packard Co., which produces the NewWave operating system.
The appeals court then returned the case to the lower courts to determine if Apple should be asked to pay attorney fees for Microsoft and HP in the case. Both companies have spent millions of dollars fighting the landmark case.
The court reaffirmed earlier decisions by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who ruled that a 1985 licensing agreement between Apple and Microsoft covered visual displays used in the graphical user interface, not the interface itself. He subsequently compared symbols used in both interfaces to see if they were identical and found they weren't.
"Considering the license and the limited number of ways that the basic ideas of the Apple GUI could be expressed differently, only 'thin' protection against virtually identical copying was appropriate," said the ruling, which was written by Judge Pamela Ann Rymer.
Apple had argued in a July appeal that the lower court should not have thrown out Version 1.0 of the Finder, "requiring Apple to rely only on the graphical user interface of the obsolete Lisa computer" in proving that Windows and NewWave violated Apple's copyrights (see MacWEEK, July 18, Page 24).
The company also asserted that a jury should have heard the case.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
BusinessWatch Page 32
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Windows95 war chest: $100 million
By Jon Swartz
Microsoft Corp. is sparing no expense putting its money where its forthcoming Windows95 operating system is.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant has pumped $100 million into promoting Windows95 with a battery of TV ads, reseller programs and a new logo. The product is expected to hit dealers' shelves in May 1995.
"This launch will supersede any launch done in Microsoft history," said Rogers Weed, Windows95 product manager. He said the company is targeting not only personal computer enthusiasts but consumers as well.
At the same time, Apple has set aside a war chest to finance its Mac OS promotional campaign, which began last week (see MacWEEK, Sept. 19, Page 72).
Microsoft is kicking off its marketing blitz with a special Windows95 preview program this fall. The plan gives resellers copies of the latest beta release of the OS; a series of seminars teaching value-added resellers how to install and support Windows95 is scheduled to follow.
The company also has ambitious plans to make Windows95 upgrades available through a wide range of dealers. In addition to offering the $99 upgrades through its reseller chain, Microsoft is authorizing mass merchants, wholesale outlets and consultants to sell upgrades.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
BusinessWatch Page 32
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Editorial: Clone or no clone, it's money
Last week Apple went public with its Macintosh licensing plans. Well, almost. Company officials explained the licensing strategy but didn't say who they've signed up to build Mac clones. They did have a lot to say about what those licensees will get -- more than enough for Apple to build a healthy OEM, if not clone, business.
On the software side, licensees get everything from the Finder to QuickDraw GX. For hardware, the list is shorter -- a handful of application-specific integrated circuits, the PowerPC CPU and, of course, the Mac ROMs. Together, these components form the Macintosh RISC Architecture (MRA), the underlying technology necessary to build your own Mac.
This licensing structure is part of MRA Phase I. When Phase II comes along, all that specialized hardware will not be required. In theory, as long as it has the Mac operating system and a PowerPC processor, any clone maker will be free to build its own design.
Phase I is essentially an OEM business. For one thing, it is not likely that many of the licensees will start up whole new manufacturing operations to build what Apple is already assembling.
What's more likely is either Apple will ship systems with the licensee's logo on the plastics or licensees will buy board-level products and wrap their own chassis around them. For example, we'll probably see these Macs in specialized packages, such as kiosks or point-of-sale systems.
This is a time-honored and profitable business model that most major computer companies develop with fervor. Having a balance of both OEM and end-user sales provides a predictable revenue stream that builds up profit margins while it helps control both manufacturing and forecasting.
If Apple is successful with Phase I, it is not likely that the company's OEM business will fade away when Phase II starts. Instead, Apple will become a bigger, stronger company as a result of both phases. And that's good news for all Mac users.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Editorial Page 38
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Second Decade: Word 6.0's bulk could shift balance
By Henry Norr
It's not likely to be the rout that early exit polls and returns from outlying precincts might have suggested, but it's beginning to look as if Microsoft Corp. might be in for an unexpectedly tough battle in the Mac word processing race.
The central issues are the new Word 6.0's resource requirements and performance: Word 6.0 makes heavy hard disk and memory demands, yet lags far behind Version 5.1a in important operations on most Mac models. Launch time, a variable that's both practically and psychologically significant, is particularly poor. (Tip of the day: The more fonts you have, the longer Word takes to load.) The issues are especially acute for those who use and support Macs with 68030 CPUs and small hard disks, including the vast majority of PowerBooks.
An on-line firestorm
These issues, along with concern about the influence of Windows on the new behemoth's look and feel, dominated discussion on ZiffNet's MacWEEK Forum on CompuServe when two Microsoft representatives -- Don Pickens, Mac product line manager, and Ben Waldman, Macintosh technical manager -- were featured guests earlier this month. (An edited transcript, msconf.sea, is in Library 4 of the MacWEEK Forum.)
Pickens and Waldman put up a forceful defense, citing the program's breadth and flexibility, the scores of user-requested improvements, the advantages of a common interface and file format across platforms, and the increased speed and storage capacity of current Macs. The visitors scored some points with the crowd, as much for their willingness to listen as for the substance of their arguments. But in the end, unease seemed to remain pervasive even among longtime Word supporters. And the discussion was a love fest in comparison to the strident Word-bashing sweeping other on-line forums, notably comp.sys.mac.apps.
Not down for the count
Word 6.0 still has plenty of advantages: an unmatched feature set, the power of incumbency and the undeniable appeal of cross-platform consistency. (It also gets to ride on the strength of Excel 5.0's coattails.) Many of those complaining today will grudgingly bow to the program's resource demands (even at the cost of upgrading hardware), master its new interface and eventually learn to love it. As a loyal, if sometimes frustrated, Word user since Version 1.0, I won't move on without giving Version 6.0, including the still-unreleased native Power Mac version, more time to show its stuff.
But I definitely intend to give the alternatives a closer look. Fortunately for everyone this side of Redmond, Wash., this fall should bring a bumper crop: Version 3.1 marks another step in WordPerfect's dogged advance; a long-overdue make over might finally bring Nisus Software Inc.'s Nisus, now called NisusWriter, into the mainstream; and even Akimbo Systems' FullWrite Pro 2.0 looks lean and mean after seven years of hibernation.
In the short term, dissatisfaction with the new Word could hurt the Mac, as some sites, pushed to upgrade anyway, switch to 486 or Pentium boxes, where the Microsoft program runs with a sprightliness most Mac users can only envy. But in the long term, renewed competition will benefit the Mac platform -- not least by convincing Microsoft not to take us for granted.
Henry Norr, editor emeritus of MacWEEK, welcomes feedback in the MacWEEK forums on CompuServe or eWorld or at henry_norr@macweek.ziff.com.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Second Decade Page 38
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
MacWEEK Insider: Apple short on dollars and sense
By Rick LePage
I don't know about you, but I'm damn tired of seeing Apple product shortage stories in MacWEEK. And it's cold comfort to hear the phrase "It's the right problem to have." It's not, and Apple better get off the dime and fix it.
Let's talk about the 500-series PowerBooks. What happened there? Did somebody on the assembly line lose a Torx screwdriver? Did a misguided Apple manager figure that it had another dog of a notebook and scale back its projections? Did Intel Corp. buy the manufacturer of that $2 part that every PowerBook 5x0 has to have and then give the workers a sabbatical?
If you're waiting for a PowerBook right now, you don't care why Apple has botched its availability, you just want your computer. Last week, I talked to someone who had been waiting for six 540c machines for more than eight weeks. Now he's only waiting for two. He didn't get four 540c models; he just bought four IBM ThinkPads and removed four PowerBooks from his order. If the ThinkPads work out before the remaining 540c machines show up, he just might cancel the whole order.
This fellow didn't want to buy IBM laptops, but they'll do in a pinch. Will he complain to Apple? No, he's got a business to run.
According to a number of dealers, educators and other insiders we've talked with, Apple's shortages are real. They cut across the whole line of the company's products. Today we heard from someone who said that his university was able to get plenty of the new Quadra 630s but couldn't get any of Apple's Ethernet cards for them. And since Apple has discouraged third parties from developing cards for the communications slot in those machines, there are no outside vendors to fill the void.
Even Power Macs are reportedly in short supply, but their allocations don't seem to be as tight as other Mac models -- one bright spot in this whole mess.
Last year, I took a tour of Compaq Computer Corp.'s impressive manufacturing facility outside Houston. One of the tidbits that stuck with me from that visit was that any assembly line in this computerized factory could make any product Compaq sold, and it took less than a single shift to convert a line from building a printer to building a laptop or a server. The point of which, my guide informed me, was to be able to react better to changes in the marketplace today, instead of two months after the fact.
Apple might have similarly configurable plants, but it is the quick response time that helped bring Compaq back from the coma it was in a few years ago to its position at the top of the heap. It also helps that it has good product. Apple has good product too, but the company needs to do a better job of reacting to the conditions and demands of the market.
Rick LePage is MacWEEK executive editor/news. He welcomes feedback at rlepage@eworld.com or rick_lepage@macweek.ziff.com.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
MacWEEK Insider Page 3
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Word 6 packs in features, slowed by baggage
By Dale Coleman
The wealth of new and improved features Microsoft Corp. has bestowed on Word for Macintosh 6.0 is designed to ensure that the program continues as the hands-down most popular Mac word processor. To achieve that end, the company has placed the same emphasis on ease of use and added functionality that it did with Excel 5.0, which with Word forms the core of the Microsoft Office suite.
Because Word 6 is a functional and visual clone of Word for Windows 6, it is also an attractive cross-platform option.
Word 6 is also big and slow.
With minimum system requirements of a 68020 Mac and 4 Mbytes of RAM, Word 6 forces users of older Macs to stick with Word 5.1 or adopt a competing product. Our tests show that even 68030 Macs, such as the Macintosh IIfx, are just barely up to the Word 6 task. The $339 Word 6 is also too slow in emulation -- even on a Power Macintosh 8100 -- to be worth the bother of installation. The native-mode version, due shortly after press time, is supposed to yield better results. For most users, though, Word 6 is a Quadra-specific product.
The hardware requirements are large but not seriously out of sync with Macs shipping today. A full installation consumes 24 Mbytes of storage; a minimum installation takes about 6 Mbytes. The application works best with 3 Mbytes of RAM but can run in 2. If you have the hardware, the real issue is what Word 6's new features can do for you and how easily you can access them.
All the features you can use
Based on features alone, Word 6 is better than any alternative simply because it does everything, or at least it leaves us with that impression. Microsoft touts its research-driven design methods, and the result in this case is something for everyone. Flexible variable-width columns, character styles, multiple undos, append to clipboard, a usable grep-style Find dialog, pattern matching and zoom views are concepts that first appeared in competing products such as Nisus Software Inc.'s NisusWriter or WordPerfect Corp.'s WordPerfect Mac. Other features, such as document wizards and extensive use of tool bars, are unique to Microsoft products.
If the lack of a specific feature has kept you from embracing the Microsoft standard, your obstacle has been cleared. The press kit trumpets more than 100 new features and almost as many improved features. For example, WordBasic finally debuts on the Mac side of the Microsoft family. There's also beefed-up support for Apple's latest system technologies, including PowerTalk and QuickDraw GX printing.
OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) 2.0 provides in-context editing and enhances the integration among the Office suite components (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and MS Mail). Drag and drop now works between Word documents and documents created by other OLE 2-aware applications.
Integration is further enhanced by the consistent interface shared by Word and Excel on both platforms. Given the generally more liberal design standards running amok in the Windows environment, Word 6's modern, relatively attractive interface is a major improvement. In color and in gray scale, it's a 3-D affair that is more effective than older designs, as evidenced by the Word Help window, which was not upgraded.
Word has 10 available tool bars; fortunately, you rarely need to display more than one or two at a time, and you can add and remove buttons and entire tool bars as needed. You also have complete freedom to add and remove commands from menus -- even to add and remove entire menus if you like. The average user may take advantage of this feature only occasionally, but it makes Word an ideal candidate for many customized applications, especially when combined with scripting.
Word has always been too dependent on dialog boxes and nested dialog boxes for our tastes, and it still is, this burgeoning bevy of buttons notwithstanding. But now those dialogs are easier to navigate. Some include preview windows, and many use a tab scheme to organize options into related groups that you access by clicking the tab. The Options dialog, which corresponds to the Preferences command in most Mac products, is a good example. It includes 12 tabs and lets you see at a glance what the relevant option categories are.
Same old, same old
It's still Word, however, for better or worse. For every innovation, you may discover a relic demonstrating the program's heritage. These include temp files littering your hard disk and dialog boxes that shouldn't be modal but are. Journalists and legal secretaries will appreciate being able to view line numbers on screen, although they may find accessing this feature a minor challenge.
But the emphasis on improving ease of use and ease of learning is readily apparent. For example, Mail Merge, called Print Merge for the past few versions, has been tamed considerably.
Many have found Word's user styles confusing in the past, and experienced users still may with Version 6. Once mastered, Word's styles are among the most powerful available and can enhance productivity. The addition of character styles increases their flexibility.
Task-oriented approach
As with Excel 5 (see MacWEEK, Sept. 19, Page 1), much work was done in Word 6 to streamline the steps needed to achieve specific tasks. And in this respect Word 6 succeeds: Even the minor interface inconsistencies are more than compensated for by the excellent and pervasive help system.
A help button that summons relevant topics is included in most dialog boxes, and if you forget what a certain tool-bar button icon means, the ToolTips feature shows you the name of each button as you point to it. Word can also display on the horizontal status bar a brief explanation for each button as you point to it.
Wizards make their Mac Word debut with this version. Conceptually similar to document templates, wizards are small applications that automatically build a particular document template for you after you answer a few simple questions in a short series of dialogs. Word ships with 10 wizards for complex tasks, such as creating newsletters and legal pleadings, plus a selection of useful document templates. Old hands may scoff at the wizard concept, but it's the shortest route between the point of conception and the print button, and it consistently yields predictable, professionally designed documents.
The new AutoFormat feature, found only in Word, automatically applies styles to a document. During the process you may review its proposed styles sequentially, accept them all or reject them. It's almost flawless at formatting text documents that you've received from on-line sources. It applies subhead styles where appropriate, for example, and strips out those pesky line-feed characters that until now have been the bane of Word users.
The waiting room
Word 6, however, suffers from a major flaw. It is a slow word processing program compared with WordPerfect, Nisus and even Word 5.1. Word 6, arguably, has more features than the alternatives, but ease of use and productivity both suffer if an application is slow to respond when asked to perform even a common task, as is the case in many instances with the new Word.
We tested Word 6 on several machines, including a Quadra 840 AV and a Power Mac 8100/80 and compared the results to Word 5.1. Word 6 is much slower than Version 5.1a at some tasks, such as a simple word count. Some of its new features, including AutoFormat, are so slow when applied to large files that we think many users will not use them.
If the native Power Mac version wasn't due to arrive so soon, we would have been particularly distressed at Word 6's predictably dismal emulation-mode performance figures. Applying AutoFormat to the 424-Kbyte real-world test document underlines the problem. For all but very small, simple documents (for which Word 6 is overkill, in any case) the minimum acceptable configuration is a 68040 Mac. Unless you need a specific Word 6 feature, we recommend leaving lesser Macs configured with Word 5.1 or earlier.
Documentation and support
The task-oriented documentation consists of a Quick Results tutorial and a nearly 900-page user guide. Many will consult the very good user guide infrequently, however, since the on-line help system is so thorough and readily available.
Conclusions
Mediocre performance seriously detracts from Word 6's general appeal. On a suitably fast '040 Mac, however, Word 6 is still compelling, if not as fast as the alternatives. We have not seen a beta of the native version, but it should provide at least Quadra-level performance. The interface is less successful than that of WordPerfect 3.0, but it's by far the best interface Word has ever had.
Other than the issue of its leisurely performance, Word 6 is an attractive choice, especially in the business environment. For some, features such as 100 levels of undo or the degree to which you can customize the interface will clinch the decision. Others may be impressed with the highly touted AutoCorrect feature, although similar functionality has been available via Baseline Publishing Inc.'s Thunder7 for many years. If you're responsible for Macs in a mixed environment, the new Word's thorough compatibility with its Windows sibling can help make the choice automatic.
If only it were faster.
Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., can be reached at (206) 882-8080; fax (206) 936-7329.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Reviews Page 1
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Avid's VideoShop 3 stays on the right track
Low-end video editor offers good features, fickle interface
By Ben Long
Avid Technology Inc., which dominates high-end Mac-based video editing with its Media Suite Pro package, has released an upgrade to its low-end product, VideoShop. Aimed squarely at the market topped by Adobe Premiere, the $395 VideoShop 3.0 includes interface changes and support for QuickTime 2.0 and Power Macs.
VideoShop requires a Mac with at least 4 Mbytes of RAM, System 7, QuickTime 2 and Sound Manager 3.0; QuickTime 2 and Sound Manager 3 are included with the package.
Mixed media
As with Version 2.0, VideoShop 3's interface consists of three windows: the Sequencer, where clips are arranged and layered; the Canvas, where you view your movie while you edit; and the Desktop window.
You begin the editing process in VideoShop by locating and importing the media you want to work with. Rather than using an Open or Import dialog, you use the Desktop, a Finder-like window that replaces the Mac's desktop and is used to manage files. With the real Finder's desktop hidden, VideoShop displays its own set of icons for all currently mounted volumes. Clicking on a volume opens its root directory, letting you navigate through the volume's folders.
Unlike the Finder, VideoShop displays only those files it knows how to import -- QuickTime, PICT, PICS, Photo CD, AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format), text, Audio CD and MIDI files. New folders can be created and files rearranged by dragging and dropping.
Double-clicking a QuickTime movie opens a Player window, where you play the movie and set In and Out points. In and Out sliders positioned below the QuickTime shuttle control let you drag your edit points left or right; you can also press "I" or "O" to set an In or Out point at the current location. With your movie trimmed, you place the clip into your project by dragging the content area of the Player window into a track on the Sequencer. You can also drag audio or video clips from one of VideoShop's Finder windows directly into a Sequencer track.
Recording
With the proper hardware, video can be digitized directly into VideoShop at full-screen, 60-fields-per-second quality. A Recording window lets you preview your video and provides simple slider controls for adjusting hue, saturation, brightness, contrast and sharpness. However, the program still lacks professional vectorscope functions for calibrating video sources.
New to VideoShop 3 is support for VISCA (Video System Control Architecture) and Sony serial deck control. VideoShop's Logger tool offers easy tape logging as well as batch digitizing, but for output, the program still does not provide a facility for creating edit-decision lists.
Sequencing
The VideoShop Sequencer window can be set in Storyboard or Time view. In Storyboard view, each clip fills one cel of a track. You can drag clips from cel to cel to quickly rearrange your movie. Switching to Time view gives you a time-based display of your movie with tracks arranged vertically and time stretching horizontally.
Upon opening, the Sequencer defaults to one video and one audio track. The Add Track button in the Sequencer's tool bar lets you easily add more video, audio, title or MIDI tracks. (VideoShop supports QuickTime 2's MIDI features.)
Each clip is displayed as a series of thumbnail frames. Directly below the thumbnails sits a horizontal line that controls the amount of transparency (for a video track) and the volume (for an audio track). As in Premiere, clicking on the line adds a movable control point.
Beneath this control is a red bar that is used for moving and trimming. Clicking and dragging somewhere in the middle of the bar lets you move the clip from side to side but, unfortunately, not from track to track. To move a clip from one track to another you must use standard cut and paste controls.
Clicking at the beginning or end of the bar turns your cursor into a clipping control, which lets you shorten or lengthen the clip. The tool bar also includes a handy Stretch tool that lets you stretch or squash a clip's duration, resulting in faster or slower video.
A Trim dialog lets you view the edit point between two video clips and dynamically adjust the location of the edit point with simple sliders.
Effecting a change
You can apply Transition and Filter effects by selecting the desired frames in the Sequencer window and using the Filter command. A wide range of filters is provided; the program also supports Adobe Photoshop-compatible filters.
Once you've selected a filter and adjusted any necessary settings, the program calculates the new, filtered frames. A blur bar is placed above video frames that have been filtered. Transition effects between clips work the same way.
Because all effects and transitions are compiled directly into the individual video tracks, you are left with a very uncluttered Sequencer window. Unfortunately, it is also very difficult to look at the Sequencer and have any idea of what is going on. Video users accustomed to the idea of A and B rolls will find no visual equivalent within VideoShop. All users will most likely be perplexed by the lack of visual cues within the Sequencer's track information.
Unlike Premiere, VideoShop has no separate Preview command. Because necessary computations are performed when you apply an effect or transition, you can press Play at any time to view your movie with all applied effects. However, the manual warns that performance can be sluggish if a complicated clip is not optimized -- and it is. The Optimize command performs a compilation process that is meant to improve performance of complicated effects. Unfortunately, we found even optimized performance far more sluggish than that of Premiere.
Avid boasts interface improvements in VideoShop 3, but we found the interface filled with more inconsistencies than improvements. For example, to select frames for editing or filtering, you drag over a track's thumbnails, but to select frames for optimizing you drag through the time ruler. To access the Filter dialog you select frames within the Sequencer and press the Filter button, but to access the Transparency dialog you must select a movie within the Canvas window.
Moving movies
VideoShop's Canvas window offers simple motion-control tools that let you define multiple-point, straight-line paths. In addition to creating paths, you can resize movies over time to create zooming and flying effects. Similar in interface to Aldus Corp.'s CoSA After Effects, the Canvas window lets you drag a movie around the screen or resize it using handles, making multiple-image video-wall effects a snap.
For compositing and layering, the program includes straight transparency controls that let you change the opacity of an image over time. Matting, keying and compositing are achieved through some of the program's multitrack filters, which let you select two tracks and perform alpha-channel or chroma-key compositing.
The program also includes a full-featured Titling window for creating multicolored still or moving titles with or without drop shadows. For flying text or long scrolls, this titler is by far the easiest and most powerful of any we've tested.
VideoShop 3 maintains the same excellent output quality as previous versions, but we were still disappointed with the program's performance. It sometimes drops frames during playback of complicated sequences and, unless you have a large memory partition, filter effects often don't work or they produce nothing but static. At other times, no effect at all was created; the only way we could get an effect to work was to make a new file and start from scratch.
Documentation and support
VideoShop ships with a user guide, reference manual and tutorial. They are thorough in scope but often haphazard in presentation, making them trying reads for beginning video users. We found more than a few inconsistencies; the documentation needs a thorough edit.
The program comes with a CD of royalty-free audio and video as well as a copy of Specular International Ltd.'s LogoMotion, a very good 3-D flying-logo creator that runs native.
Conclusions
VideoShop suffers from its share of problems -- particularly its non-intuitive interface and flaky performance -- but the program has very good motion control and titling and capable cuts-only editing controls. Consequently, if your editing needs are simple and you only occasionally require an effect, the program's price and excellent output quality will suit your needs well. If you have higher video aspirations, however, we recommend that you look elsewhere.
Avid Technology Inc. of Tewksbury, Mass., can be reached at (508) 640-6789 or (800) 949-2843; fax (508) 640-1366.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Reviews Page 41
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Organizer links dates, names
Claris PIM uses intelligence to integrate contacts, calendar
By Jeffrey Sullivan
Wading into the treacherous waters of the personal information manager marketplace, Claris Corp. has released Claris Organizer, its all-in-one solution for the information age. Featuring ease of use and intelligent assistance, the $49 single-user program is aimed at small businesses and mobile and higher-education users.
Organizer's slim 1.7-Mbyte disk requirements and even slimmer 1.2-Mbyte RAM requirements make it a welcome option for PowerBook users and anyone running plenty of applications simultaneously. The program requires System 7.0 or later. A native Power Mac version is expected this fall.
The structure
Organizer is an integrated PIM like Symantec Corp.'s ACT!, providing a contact manager, agenda, task list and note pad. Each module maintains a separate window and is accessed through a floating button palette. The contact, note and task modules can be displayed in configurable list and detail views; list views can be sorted by up to two fields.
The contact module provides the standard fare of contact fields, including two addresses, four phone numbers and four user-customizable fields. (Unlike Aldus Corp.'s TouchBase Pro and Now Software Inc.'s Now Contact, Organizer's custom fields cannot be configured as phone numbers and dialed automatically.)
The agenda handles all scheduled events in daily, weekly or monthly views. Daily and weekly windows can show several days or weeks at a time. Agenda items include appointments, multiday events and special dates. You can drag Agenda items across days to reschedule them, but you can't Option-drag to copy them. You can attach alarms to any Agenda item.
The Task window is where you list your to-dos. Tasks have one of five priority levels and a due date, but there is no support for subtasks or an outline format. Uncompleted tasks can carry over to the next day.
Smarty PIM
Intelligent assistance is one of the cornerstones of Organizer's appeal. The contact module supports several data-entry shortcuts, including automatic completion of a field's value based on the first keystrokes entered and pop-up menus with common entries for many fields -- features also found in TouchBase Pro.
One of the best examples of intelligence is Organizer's implementation of attachments. You can attach any item in Organizer to any other. There are many ways of attaching items, the easiest of which is drag-and-drop. Dragging one item onto another attaches them; dragging an item onto a module's palette button or empty window area creates a new item of the module's type attached to the dragged item. Attachments created in this way are intelligently named. For instance, dragging Uma's contact record onto the Task button creates a "Call Uma" task, while dragging it onto the Note button creates a "Conversation with Uma" note.
Even better is Organizer's autoattach feature, which uses an item's title to fill in desired information when creating agenda items. Enter "Lunch with Sarah at Acme," and Organizer will attach the contact named Sarah who works at Acme to the appointment.
Items with attachments have a small paper-clip button on them; clicking on the paper clip shows a list of all current attachments and a submenu that lets you create new attachments or detach existing ones. Attachments are bidirectional, easing navigation.
Search me
Once you've got your data entered and cross-indexed, you'll want to find it again. The quickest way to search is in list mode; just begin typing what you're looking for, and Organizer scrolls to the first entry matching those letters (as determined by the primary sort field). The Find dialog allows traditional searches on any single field or all fields. As with autoattach, Organizer uses plain-English phrases to narrow the search.
The most powerful search mechanisms, however, are Organizer's views. Instant views let you quickly select matching items by a single category or from a list of relative dates. Custom views are full-blown general search engines. Using them, you can search any combination of fields in any or all modules. Custom views can be saved in the View menu for repeated use.
Dialing and printing
Organizer supports automatic dialing, through the Mac speaker or a modem, but not Apple-events dialing, which is used by third-party dialing and telephony peripherals. You can print detail or list information from all modules, and print call lists, fax covers, envelopes and labels. You can also print both contacts and calendars in several day planner formats.
Configuration options are flexible, including double-sided and folded output. You can select which address to use at print time and whether to print attachments; the program also includes templates for labels and envelopes. We found that working with these configuration options was more complex than in TouchBase Pro and Now Contact, however.
Disorganize
Organizer lacks menu-bar-based quick-access tools similar to Aldus DateBook Pro Menu or Now Contact's QuickContact; these tools are quickly becoming de rigueur for PIMs, and we'd like to see Organizer follow this lead.
The procedure required to detach an attachment is somewhat awkward, involving a modal dialog and five mouse clicks to make a single detachment. Also, attachments are listed only by title; an icon preceding each type of attachment would be nice.
As good as Organizer's intelligent use of keywords in autoattach and searching is, you can't edit the list of "smart" keywords (or even view them), so you'll have to experiment a little to find their range.
Finally, though its performance is generally very good, Organizer is slow in responding to arrow keys in list views (a last-minute bug fix introduced a noticeable delay when moving from record to record).
Claris plans to address these shortcomings in a maintenance release and add new features -- including a menu-bar tool and workgroup support -- in upcoming releases.
Documentation and support
Organizer's slender manual gives a solid overview when learning the program but, without an index, it isn't a useful reference manual. In accordance with an evolving Claris policy, the on-line help covers much more material and is faster and easier to use. Technical support, available via toll call and on-line services, was slow to respond. (We even had e-mail to Claris' CompuServe account returned to us because its mailbox was full.)
Conclusions
With seamless integration among its modules and easy-to-use intelligent assistance, Claris Organizer is an attractive entry into the PIM marketplace. Though it lacks some features common to leading PIMs, its relatively low price makes it an appealing option. This version may fall a little short for entrenched users of other PIMs, but low-end Mac owners may find it fits their pocketbooks -- and their needs. With its next revision, Claris Organizer could be a PIM to reckon with.
Claris Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at (408) 987-7000 or (800) 325-2747; fax (408) 987-3032.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Reviews Page 44
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: DesignReality 1.0: A surrealistic experience
Modeling app weighed down with crashes, clunky interface
By Sean Wagstaff
Periodically, a respectable Macintosh software vendor launches a product out of desperation, and it falls on the market like a lead balloon. Ashlar Inc.'s DesignReality has landed with just such a thud.
For several years Ashlar has taken heat for failing to offer surface modeling and rendering as an option for its otherwise very good CAD program, the $2,995 Vellum 3D. This program works in wireframe only, so you can't realistically render objects -- and many free-form objects are difficult to create in the parametrically oriented product.
DesignReality, a hastily ported 3-D modeling program with its roots in the Motif Unix operating system, is ostensibly aimed at quelling these concerns. In fact, the $1,995 DesignReality does offer free-form surface modeling and smooth-shaded rendering. However, it falls short in a number of ways.
DesignReality requires a 68030-based Mac with an FPU (floating-point unit), 16 Mbytes of RAM (32 Mbytes recommended) and System 7.1. A Power Mac version is also available.
Un-Mac-like
DesignReality has the dubious distinction of offering the most un-Mac-like interface we've encountered since MS-DOS. Standard command keys, such as Command-X for Cut and Command-Q for Quit, are augmented by downright silly buttons called Black Hole, Disintegrator Gun and The End.
Instead of putting tools on widely understood and accepted floating palettes, Ashlar has nestled them into a fanciful pop-up palette fixed in the upper-right corner of the monitor. This palette cycles through four different sets of tools -- one set for every time you sweep your mouse off the right side of the screen. This means you can't resize your work window (which occupies the entire monitor) because groping for the nonexistent resize box at the lower-right corner of the screen merely results in a new swath of tools jumping to the fore.
Deciphering the meaning and usefulness of the 20 or so tools in the swath palettes is another challenge altogether. DesignReality's documentation is skimpy almost to the point of uselessness. The illustration examples in the manual include a blocky telephone and a series of spheres, squiggles and blocks. The sample files included on the single floppy disk are not any more impressive. Even when we asked Ashlar for good examples of work users had created in DesignReality, we received a series of models that looked as if they had been built with Legos. This is hardly the type of output we'd expect from a $1,995 design tool.
The modeler is similar in some ways to Strata Inc.'s StudioPro, in that you push and pull on vertexes to tweak a model. You can set a range of influence for this Stretch tool to push and pull on surrounding vertexes as well, but there is very little sense of control over these adjustments. The program does offer basic Extrude and Lathe tools as well as a simple lofting feature, but you're required to start with profiles aligned to one of the standard coordinate planes. Some tools, such as Duplicate-on-Surface, are actually quite useful, but they are limited by the rest of the package. In particular, the program is a surface modeler lacking Boolean operations, so you can't derive shapes from multiple objects, although you can "punch" a hole in one object with a profile shape.
DesignReality has a separate mode for simulating NURBS (nonuniform rational B-splines). These normally let you make smooth, flowing curves. However, DesignReality is a polygonal modeler, and the result of using its splines is faceted curves.
It only gets worse
We found numerous problems in this first version of DesignReality, particularly in the import and export features. For example, we could not import a Vellum 3D file.
The following excerpt from the manual did little to improve our level of confidence in the program: "Under situations when you run out of memory which results in a system crash, DesignReality creates a crash backup file called CrashBackup in the current Catalog folder." According to Ashlar, this feature is "really common in large CAD systems because they crash a lot." In fact, on a Quadra 950 with 64 Mbytes of RAM, we experienced numerous crashes when attempting to use DesignReality -- sometimes while doing things as simple as switching between tools. And in our experience, other surface modelers on the Mac rarely crash at all.
A different point of view
Ashlar said its users appreciate the program's speed, particularly the capability to flip through menus and modify a model quickly. And, the company added, "the interface grows on you." Ashlar also expressed a commitment to improving the program in future generations, something that's reasonable to believe given the fluid power provided by Vellum 3D. That program's Drafting Assistants and other features are a model of good interface design.
Conclusions
While we empathize with Ashlar's attempt to meet its Vellum users' demands, DesignReality is not an acceptable response. Its interface, performance, features and price all add up to a lousy value -- especially compared with the many fine alternatives available for equal or less money. Ashlar could have made much better use of its resources by developing the capability to export StrataVision 3d's native file format, as Diehl Graphsoft Inc. has done with MiniCad 5.0. Ashlar could also offer better file importing and exporting for any of a number of existing modeler-renderer applications.
In fact, we can't help wondering if DesignReality has been deliberately overpriced to keep potential customers from buying it, so as to avoid embarrassment. The manual proclaims: "If you are a Vellum user, the simple interaction of files between Vellum and DesignReality will excite you. If you are not yet a Vellum user, you may want to become one!" We think Ashlar ought to face the reality of the Mac design market; any association with this product is likely to damage Vellum 3D's good reputation.
Ashlar Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., is at (408) 746-1800 or (800) 877-2745; fax (408) 746-0749.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Reviews Page 45
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: PrimeraPro prints color for budget watchers
Thermal-wax, dye-sub printer brings quirks with its low price
By Bruce Fraser
Using Fargo Electronics Inc.'s PrimeraPro color printer is like watching a horse play the piano. The surprise is not that it performs well, but rather that it performs at all.
Like its predecessor, the Primera (see MacWEEK, Feb. 7, Page 54), the PrimeraPro is an inexpensive dual-technology color printer that uses either thermal-wax-transfer or dye-sublimation media. The PrimeraPro offers a higher resolution -- 600 by 300 dpi as opposed to the Primera's 203 dpi -- and prints 16.7 million colors in dye-sublimation mode.
For $1,549, the PrimeraPro's output quality is little short of staggering, but making the printer live up to its potential is a sometimes frustrating exercise because of quirky software and an occasionally balky paper-feed mechanism.
The PrimeraPro is tiny -- 13.8 by 5.8 by 10.2 inches -- small enough to fit conveniently on most desktops. The paper tray folds out from the front and holds a maximum of 10 sheets of dye-sublimation or 30 sheets of thermal-wax paper. Setup is pretty straightforward. Two clearly marked ribbon carriers are supplied: one for thermal wax, the other for dye sublimation.
Installing the ribbon in the carrier is easy, and a clear diagram in the printer shows the correct orientation of the supply and takeup rollers. The dual ribbon carriers make switching between dye sublimation and thermal wax a snap -- the carriers protect the unused portion of the ribbon from dust or scratches. The printer has only two ports on the rear, one for the external power-supply brick and one for an eight-pin DIN connector that can be used for either a direct serial or a LocalTalk connection. Optional Ethernet adapters for either twisted-pair or thin coaxial cable are $425.
Backgrounder check
The software consists of a Chooser-level driver and an optional Fargo Backgrounder application that lets you print documents in the background and queue print jobs for batch printing. Because the PrimeraPro is a "dumb" printer, all the rasterizing takes place on the host Mac. The supplied driver is strictly a QuickDraw driver, so when you print from applications, you get the screen preview rather than the PostScript document. An optional Adobe PostScript Level 2 CPSI (Configurable PostScript Software Interpreter) driver is available for $399; we were unable to obtain one in time for this review.
The QuickDraw driver does a good job of rendering type, either TrueType or PostScript Type 1 with Adobe Type Manager, even in dye-sub mode. The text anti-aliasing option helps the appearance of dye type considerably.
When you print to the PrimeraPro, the driver spools the page image to disk and sends it to the printer. If you print directly rather than using the Backgrounder, your Mac is tied up for the time it takes to print the page. This time varies depending on the model of Mac, the type of material being printed and the print options you choose, but five to 10 minutes per page is typical.
If you print to the Backgrounder application, you get your Mac back very quickly, but the foreground performance suffers badly; occasionally the Mac will grind to a halt. The Backgrounder is more useful as a batch processor -- you can print jobs to disk when the Backgrounder isn't open. The jobs will be added to a job queue; when you run the Backgrounder, it will process all of the jobs in the queue sequentially. You can reorder the queue, delete items or temporarily halt processing.
Quirky software
The software has some quirks: We were unable to print slides from Aldus Persuasion 3.0, and quite a few applications produced garbled output when we tried to print at 600-by-300-dpi resolution, although they worked when we switched to 300 by 300 dpi. We also ran into trouble when we tried to print simultaneously from two machines, one running the Backgrounder and one printing directly. The printer became hopelessly confused, and we had to abort the direct print job.
The PrimeraPro has no way of sensing what kind of media is loaded -- dye-sublimation, three-color thermal-wax or four-color thermal-wax -- so you have to make sure you choose the correct media type in the Page Setup dialog box. This could cause problems on a network, particularly if another user switches media without telling you.
By far the most serious problems we encountered, however, were with the paper handling, particularly with the dye-sublimation paper and transparencies. While the thermal-wax media was reasonably well-behaved, we had to baby-sit the dye-sublimation media and transparencies, which were plagued by misfeeds and paper jams. At approximately $1.65 for a dye-sublimation print and $3.50 for a dye-sublimation transparency, this can be expensive as well as frustrating.
Output
The software includes three color-matching modes. While all entail some trial and error, they offer sufficient flexibility and control to produce output that is worthy of most desktop scanners. The dye-sublimation output is free of banding or streaking; produces strong, saturated color; and holds detail well in the highlights. The thermal-wax output is also very good, particularly when using Fargo's own proprietary dithering algorithm, but it doesn't have the photo-realistic quality of dye sublimation.
Conclusions
Despite its problems, the PrimeraPro produces very high-quality output comparable to much more expensive printers, particularly when using the dye-sublimation media, although both the three-color and four-color thermal-wax modes work well, too. We can't recommend it for network use, but it's small enough to fit on your desktop, where you can keep an eye on the paper feeding and check which media is loaded before you print.
If you have the money, you can get a more reliable plug-and-play printing solution. But if you're on a tight budget and want quality color printing, the PrimeraPro will get you into the game at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
Fargo Electronics Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn., can be reached at (612) 941-9470 or (800) 258-2974; fax (612) 941-7836.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Reviews Page 48
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
ProductWatch: Cross-platform C++ tools come of age
Writing applications with cross-platform tools should be simpler than coding a series of platform-specific programs.
By Stephen E. Cummings
For companies that run multiple platforms, the maturing market in cross-platform C++ developers tools means they can cut development time dramatically.
Developers attempting to build applications that will work identically in different computer environments face many technical challenges, such as dissimilar graphical user interfaces, contradictory data encoding schemes and diverse memory management methods. The largest makers of software development tools have offered few products that address the needs of cross-platform programmers. However, smaller vendors have been filling the gap.
For its part, Microsoft Corp. appears to be making good on a pledge to deliver a cross-platform development path for Windows programmers who use its Visual C++ compiler. Due for release in late October, Visual C++ Cross-development Edition for Macintosh Version 2.0 requires that all programming and debugging be done on a Windows PC connected to a 680x0-based Mac. While the product promises Windows developers a fast track to the Mac, experienced Mac developers may chafe under this limitation. A Power Mac version of the compiler is in development.
Apple, however, halted work in January on Bedrock, a library of C++ classes for Mac and Windows programming that it was developing with Symantec Corp. Apple has announced that Bedrock technology will become part of OpenDoc Parts Framework (OPF), a tool kit for building OpenDoc parts for the Mac and Windows, but OPF won't be available until mid-1995.
Another alliance between major vendors to produce cross-platform C++ development tools fizzled last month. Novell Inc. announced that it is killing its AppWare Foundation, half of the Object Windows Library for AppWare Foundation under development with Borland International Inc.
The little guys
On the other hand, cross-platform tools from smaller software companies have proved themselves in corporate development efforts.
One such product -- Poet, a C++ data management tool kit from Poet Software Corp. -- is at the heart of an ambitious cross-platform development project under way at The Associated Press in New York. The project, known as AP Server, aims to speed electronic delivery of text and photographs as well as match the diverse computer hardware AP's customers use.
According to Fady Khairallah, director of research and development at AP, the AP Server system will deliver news data via satellite to each subscribing newspaper. The information will flow first to an object-oriented database managed by a PC running OS/2, IBM Corp.'s multitasking operating system. Using Mac and Windows clients connected to the OS/2 server, editors can retrieve text and photographs from the central database.
AP chose Poet as the database engine for the client and server portions of the AP Server application. "We wanted to go with an object-oriented design because of all the different media types we have to deal with," Khairallah said.
Poet's availability for a wide variety of platforms was equally important. "Poet eliminates the problem of moving data from one platform to another," Khairallah said. "I can define an object on OS/2 and read it on the Mac without worrying about the translation."
At other organizations, cross-platform user interface tools are cutting development time for applications that must work similarly on Macs, PCs with Windows and other GUIs, despite the look-and-feel differences among these environments. C++ products of this type include Zinc Application Framework 4.0 from Zinc Software Inc., XVT-Power++ 3.0 from XVT Software Inc. and StarView 2.2 from Star Division Corp.
These application frameworks supply C++ classes for building GUI components such as windows, menus, dialog boxes, buttons and scroll bars. Visual-design tools let the developer lay out these elements interactively without having to write program code. The developer can code the entire application using the supplied classes, which in turn call on any necessary platform-specific routines internally.
Get your minerals
Zinc Application Framework has been tapped by the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington, D.C., to build an application for managing seismological data. Geologists in the Department of the Interior and around the world will use the application.
After creating a platform-independent format for the data, the USGS programming team turned to Zinc to build the user interface, according to Nils Lahr, lead contract developer on the project at the Office of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Engineering in Menlo Park, Calif.
"We needed to create a cross-platform editor and database interface for seismological data," Lahr said. "There might be 10,000 data structures; every structure is different, and you have to have some way of [viewing] all this information."
"We had already written versions of the program for DOS and the Mac, but when we decided to go to Windows and X Window we realized we'd be spending a lot of time learning each new environment," he said.
Zinc 4.0, scheduled to ship in October, will be the first version to fully support the Mac. Zinc-based applications will have drag-and-drop user functions, printing, and new screen controls, including tables, status bars and notebook tabs like those in Microsoft Word.
User interface issues also figured heavily in Data Exchange Corp.'s choice of the XVT-Power++, a cross-platform application framework. The Camarillo, Calif.-based company supplies and services computer components for manufacturers such as Digital Equipment Corp. and Data General Corp.
According to Joseph Hopkins, a software developer at Data Exchange, several applications have been built with XVT, including a portion of a mission-critical inventory and order-tracking system. Running on Macs and Windows PCs, the XVT-based component of the application receives orders and service requests and sends out notifications to customers when orders are shipped.
Version 3.0 of XVT-Power++, released in June, offers several enhancements, including support for portable bit-map images, improved access to fonts and a hypertext help system for applications built with the tool kit. It also includes Rogue Wave Software Inc.'s Tools.h++, a multiple-platform library of C++ classes for handling a variety of data types.
For Hopkins, the new cross-platform help compiler has proven especially useful. "You can create your on-line help once, and XVT will compile it for all the graphical environments you have," he said. "It builds all the hypertext links for you."
Tools such as XVT and Zinc provide a uniform, cross-platform C++ wrapper for accessing each platform's own high-level GUI functions, such as menu and window routines. By contrast, some cross-platform development products dispense with existing GUI functions and instead create similar functionality using primitive graphics functions. Products in this category include WNDX from WNDX Corp. of Calgary, Alberta; Galaxy from Visix Software Inc. of Reston, Va.; and C/S Elements from Neuron Data Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. Though developers can add C++ modules containing program logic, user interface elements cannot be manipulated via C++.
Tool kit potpourri
Other tool kits are available to cross-platform C++ developers. Examples include CodeBase Multi-Platform, a specialized database management tool kit from Sequiter Software Inc. CodeBase provides a library of C functions and C++ classes for manipulating standard xBase data and index files used by Borland's dBASE and Microsoft's FoxPro database management software.
SmartHeap 2.2 is a cross-platform C/C++ memory management library from MicroQuill Software Publishing Inc. According to the company, the memory routines of C++ compilers are slow and inflexible, hampering performance and splitting memory into small, unusable fragments as a program runs.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
ProductWatch Page 51
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mac the Knife: Formerly known as System
It seems exquisitely ironic that Apple has at last adopted a logo for the Mac OS. Looming license agreements with third parties may or may not generate the revenue Apple needs to stay on the cutting edge, but at least the Mac OS finally has its own logo. And a logo, even an average one, is an important part of any product image. Just ask Prince.
It's not a bad logo, really. Microsoft, characteristically (and despite petty rumors to the contrary), is poised to abandon the homegrown logo on its Mac products in favor of Apple's new Mac mark the moment it gets the OK from Legal. If that approval comes quickly enough, the logo may make its debut on boxes containing native Power Mac versions of PowerPoint and Word 6.0, which are still on track for the end of October.
Of course, the subtleties of graphic design will be lost on anyone who's enduring the water torture of running Word 6 in emulation. Those so afflicted are only interested in getting their hands on the native software, and justifiably so.
The large-of-girth and slow-of-pace native Word release hasn't quieted booming Office sales. Perhaps Power Mac Office users are willing to accept a coupon for Power Mac Word if they must -- anything to get native Excel. With native Word 6, Microsoft has quietly added Apple Guide support to help users navigate the sometimes tricky business of integrating data from different suite components.
Third outing
Although Claris has nothing in its arsenal to compete with Office, it has successfully wrenched control of the Mac "works" market from Microsoft. The Windows version of ClarisWorks has been moderately successful, despite being a version behind its Mac sibling. That problem will be fixed nicely when ClarisWorks 3.0 for both platforms debuts next week. It's a minor upgrade for Mac users, but a big deal for the Windows crowd, which will finally be in feature tandem with the Mac folks. About the only notable improvements for 2.0 Mac users are the addition of wizardlike intelligent assistance and word count.
Version 3 will have but a brief moment on stage, however, as ClarisWorks 4 is already in progress. Sources say it should be ready in both flavors in six to nine months.
Left them blue
Compared with Mac models, software versions are nearly immortal. First, there's confirmation in an official communique that the Knife is sometimes more accurate than some would have you believe. Not long ago, Apple insisted that the Knife's tip about the end of the 540 was wrong. Now Apple is sending dealers notification that the 540 is no longer available. On the same memo, one of the two remaining configurations (4/160) of the once-popular Quadra 605 was killed. And only one available configuration is about as blunt a hint as you'll ever get that the model in question will be history as soon as the remaining inventory can be dumped.
Not much grinnin'
The extremely frustrated dealers who gathered at Opryland in Nashville last week weren't concerned about any specific model, however. So desperate for product were they that most would have accepted almost anything Apple might ship during this long drought. Their frustration reached the flash point when Michael Spindler, the scheduled speaker, failed to show. So much for hopes of a solution from the top. The brief corporate-line song-and-dance performance by Apple exec Jim Buckley was less than satisfying. Even the cab drivers were talking.
Now that you've snagged that Billy Ray Cyrus memento you've always wanted, how about a souvenir you won't be embarrassed to leave out when company comes? Those secret Knife-MacWEEK mug affairs always begin at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3651, AppleLink (MacWEEK), Internet (mac_the_knife@macweek.ziff.com) or CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac.
MacWEEK 09.26.94
Mac the Knife Page 90
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
