Next month Global Village Communication Inc. will demonstrate why its OneWorld LAN servers are so vital to its long-term vision when it debuts a new top-of-the-line model combining network faxing, modem sharing and Apple Remote Access serving. Sources said the devices are also central to the modem maker's plans for becoming a national Internet access provider.
At Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Global Village will show the OneWorld Combo, an all-in-one upgrade to its telecommunications hardware that will allow users to send faxes and will accept incoming Apple Remote Access, or ARA, 1.0 or 2.0 calls; it will also serve as a shared modem for LAN users.
The company will also unwrap the OneWorld Network Modem, which will give users on a LAN access to a shared modem and add network-modem functions to the OneWorld Fax model. The new models are slated to ship in mid-January.
The company reportedly will then announce how it plans to use the OneWorld platform to become an Internet e-mail provider.
Sources said the company plans to rent OneWorld servers and unique Internet domain names to businesses desiring a presence on the Internet. The OneWorld boxes will store mail sent by LAN users and periodically check in with the to-be-formed Global Village Internet service to exchange waiting messages.
The next step, sources said, will be for Global Village to become a full-service Internet provider. When users wish to utilize real-time Internet services, such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or World-Wide Web, they will instruct OneWorld to establish a live TCP/IP connection to Global Village's host. Once the user has finished accessing the Internet, the OneWorld server will disconnect.
Sources said Global Village sees itself competing with other Internet providers, such as MCI Communications Corp. and Netcom On-line Communication Services Inc., in giving businesses access, via a toll-free number, to the Internet and charging low monthly fees with hourly usage rates.
Global Village declined to comment on the Internet aspects of this story.
OneWorld Combo will come in two configurations. The first, priced at $2,099, will include two Global Village PowerPort/Mercury modems providing 19.2-Kbps data and 14.4-Kbps fax transmissions. The second configuration, priced at $1,499, will feature empty slots for the addition of any two PowerPort modems. All Combo and Fax models come with a 30-user license of the company's GlobalFax software.
"This device allowed me to replace my LanRover, NetModem and 4-Sight Fax server," said beta tester Mark Anbinder, director of technical services at Baka Industries Inc. of Ithaca, N.Y.
OneWorld Network Modem, priced at $1,199, will include one PowerPort/Mercury modem and allow networked users to take advantage of modem capabilities without needing dedicated modems and phone lines.
At the introduction of this model and the Combo, Global Village will discontinue the OneWorld Remote Access server.
"We have a stronger ARA story in combination with the other services [on the Combo]," said Rod Rasmussen, OneWorld product manager. "Even if [users] do not take advantage of fax, the server is still a good value when you look at complete costs involved with other ARA-only solutions."
OneWorld Remote Access servers can be upgraded to OneWorld Combos for $399 each.
OneWorld Fax 1.5 will be available in two configurations. The first, priced at $1,499, will feature one PowerPort/Mercury modem, while the second, priced at $999, will include a 9,600-bps PowerPort/Bronze II and will hook up to LocalTalk LANs only. Global Village said this configuration cannot be upgraded to support Ethernet.
In addition to new shared modem capabilities, the fax server will gain support for billing codes, an option that will require users to enter a PBX account code before sending a fax.
Existing OneWorld Fax devices can be upgraded to Version 1.5 for $49 or to the Combo for $199.
OneWorld Administration software included with each server will allow managers to configure the functions of each port, assign privileges to users and monitor use. The single application will track fax, ARA and network modem usage in the same log.
Global Village Communication Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., can be reached at (408) 523-1000 or (800) 736-4821; fax (408) 523-2407; sales@globalvillag.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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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 suit: Video for Windows cribbed from QT
By David Morgenstern and Stephen Howard
Charges of copyright infringement and wrongdoing were raised last week by Apple, which filed an intellectual-property suit against The San Francisco Canyon Co., a small third-party contractor for Apple. But the scope of the court action encompasses industry giants Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp.
Canyon worked on digital video software for both Apple's QuickTime for Windows and Intel's Display Control Interface (DCI). Apple alleges its copyrighted code found its way into the shipping version of Microsoft's Video for Windows and will be used in future software from both companies.
San Francisco-based Canyon, a programming tools company formed in 1988, concentrates on digital video and networking. It was hired by Apple in 1992 to develop QuickTime for Windows 1.0 and, later, Version 1.1.
In addition to developing Apple's video product, Canyon also produced code for Intel's Video Display Interface (VDI). This software is reportedly the precursor to Intel's DCI used in Video for Windows.
In court documents examined by MacWEEK, the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleges that DCI code posted by Intel on CompuServe and included in developers kits was identical to that used in QuickTime for Windows.
Canyon said that Apple knew of the concurrent development of the two products. Canyon also said it was not aware of any code sharing and complained that Apple had not given it any time for an internal investigation before the complaint was filed.
The suit alleges that a senior officer of Intel, after seeing demonstrations of QuickTime for Windows and Video for Windows at Comdex/Fall '92 in Las Vegas, asked Canyon to provide software to Intel that would make Video for Windows' speed comparable to that of QuickTime. Seven months later, Canyon delivered its code to Intel, giving video for Windows 1.1D performance parity with QuickTime for Windows 1.1.
"The lawsuit is without merit, but they are out to destroy us," said Fred Gault, president of Canyon. He said that two months ago, Apple was looking to his company to develop Version 2.0 but balked when Canyon refused to proceed until its complaints of late payments, contract violations and difficulties with Apple personnel were resolved. "I was told [by an Apple manager] they would 'fix us' over this," Gault said.
The court document revealed that Apple has been given the right to subpoena Intel's DCI source code and any other digital video software developed by Canyon for Intel, as well as DCI code in Video for Windows and related developers kits.
"It involves DCI sample code and the spec put out by Intel and Microsoft. It does not apply to Video for Windows," said Rick Segal, manager of multimedia developer relations for Microsoft's Systems Division in Redmond, Wash. "Video for Windows doesn't use DCI-2. Nothing in [Windows 95] does, either. It's a derivative works issue. The lawyers are getting into it now."
Apple was also granted the right to take depositions from Canyon and Intel employees.
"The suit alleges infringement of Apple's copyrights in the Apple work, QuickTime for Windows," an Apple spokeswoman said. "We are seeking to protect our intellectual property and stop all infringing users."
At press time Intel had not seen the complaint and would not comment.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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News: StarNine preps e-mail server for Q1 delivery
By Robert Hess
The Mac will finally become a player in the Internet mailing-list market in January when StarNine Technologies Inc. announces Email-on-Demand, an automated e-mail management server for the Mac.
Like Unix-based utilities, such as listserv and majordomo, Email-on-Demand, or EOD, which is slated to debut at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, will let users create an automated e-mail distribution system. The product will be able to take a piece of mail and route it to the members of a list, and it will handle administrative tasks, such as incoming add or drop requests.
Via a powerful set of rules-based scripting options, StarNine said, a user will be able to set up EOD to handle complex situations. For example, incoming mail will be processed and, based on its content, rerouted to a user or saved to disk on an AppleSearch server for indexing.
EOD will be able to reply to mail with prescribed text and binary enclosures; using Apple-events scripting, it will be able to communicate with external software packages.
Automated mailing list servers on the Internet are used primarily for private discussion groups, but StarNine said it envisions commercial applications of EOD, such as e-mail response servers. These servers resemble fax-on-demand systems; customers could send mail to an EOD server, which interprets their request and replies via e-mail with sales information. A future version of EOD will support charge-back capabilities, opening the door to companies that provide profit-generating services.
Gavin Eadie, an associate director of university information systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, maintains a Unix-based distribution list of more than 340 users of AOCE (Apple Open Collaboration Environment).
"I'm excited by EOD because listserv is just one of the things you can do with it," Eadie said. "Other applications will spring up in addition to this one."
"I like the general tool-like nature of EOD," he said. "It lets me tailor applications to be the way I want them to be."
Toby Weir-Jones, a network consultant at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., said: "A listserv for me would be an excellent opportunity to answer a lot of support questions all at once. I would run a digest instead of an [automatic] group remailer. Right now, Cornell students are allowed to apply for a mailing list through the on-campus information technologies people, but the process is unnecessarily complicated owing to the highly technical nature of the existing listserv machine."
StarNine will offer two versions of EOD. A personal version will work with CE Software Inc.'s QuickMail, Microsoft Mail and Post Office Protocol 3 servers. Once a mail administrator has created a mail account intended to be used as the EOD reflector address, users of any Mac will be able to run a client software package that will log into that EOD account and manage its mail.
A server-based version of the product will act as an independent SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) host on a TCP/IP network. Both products should ship in the first quarter of next year, Star-Nine said. Pricing has not been determined.
StarNine Technologies Inc. of Berkeley, Calif., can be reached at (510) 649-4949; fax (510) 548-0393; info@starnine.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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News: PPC may turn corner for CAD
By Cate C. Corcoran
For the already small Mac CAD market, Autodesk Inc.'s decision last month not to upgrade the Mac version of its top-selling AutoCAD application was a bad sign. Vendors and users alike, however, place their hopes on the Power Mac platform to sustain and possibly revitalize CAD on the Mac.
While architecture and design may seem to be a natural application for the Macintosh platform, the Mac is currently a minor player in the CAD game, according to market watchers. Daratech Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research company specializing in CAD/CAM, estimated the worth of the 1994 Mac CAD market at $16.6 million. That is a fraction of the $720 million projected for DOS- and Windows-based CAD.
"It's never really become a large market," said Gisela Wilson, CAD/CAM analyst with International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass. "The first [CAD software] on the Mac was excruciatingly slow. By the time it caught up, the PC had taken hold."
Harry Golemon Architects Inc., an architecture firm in Houston, made an initial investment in a Macintosh-based CAD system but was discouraged by the performance when using AutoCAD. "We've lost a great deal of time due to the fact that when we tried to run AutoCAD on the Mac, the speed just wasn't there," said Ken Black, a project manager at the firm. "We've relegated our Macintoshes to doing spreadsheets and typing letters."
For users and vendors wary of putting as mission-critical an application as CAD onto a platform with performance disadvantages, the advent of the Power Macintosh would seem to be the key to a market turnaround.
Important Macintosh CAD products, including Ashlar Inc.'s Vellum, Diehl Graphsoft Inc.'s MiniCAD and Blueprint, and International Microcomputer Software Inc.'s TurboCAD for Macintosh, are now available or will soon be available in native Power Macintosh versions.
Sausalito, Calif.-based Autodesk, however, says it currently has no plans for a Power Mac version of AutoCAD, widely held to be the industry standard. Timothy Johnson, principal at Johnson and Johnson Design/Build of Newton, Mass., said AutoCAD's absence may boost the success of alternative applications. But he added that it could harm the viability of the entire Mac platform for CAD. "I would say that if nothing is done to develop AutoCAD for the Power Mac, serious CAD users may change platforms," Johnson said.
At Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, an architectural firm in Pittsburgh, CAD users who adjusted to the demise of both ClarisCAD and FlexiCAD from Amiable Technologies Inc. are now looking to the Power Mac for their next CAD software solution.
"There was talk of leaving the platform to go to the PC, but ... we are waiting to see what programs go to the PowerPCs," said Mike Maiese, an architect with the firm. "We looked at the cost of switching to the PC to run AutoCAD. It is cheaper to stay with our systems now."
Smaller players, including Ashlar, International Microcomputer Software and Graphsoft, expressed optimism about the future of CAD on the platform. "We are very bullish on CAD for the Mac," said Martin Newell, chairman and chief technical officer at Ashlar, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company whose Power Mac-native version of Vellum has been available since September. "People who use CAD are office workers," he said. "So to the extent to which the Mac is a good office productivity machine, it is a good CAD platform."
Richard Diehl, president of Columbia, Md.-based Graphsoft, said he thinks the Macintosh's graphics capabilities make it particularly well-suited for CAD applications.
"CAD is a presentation medium, not just design drawing," Diehl said. "The presentation and communication is as important as the design medium." The company's record sales of $3.5 million last year bolstered its initial public offering this month.
Creighton Nolte, marketing manager for technical markets at Apple, said that while evangelism to the CAD market experienced a temporary ebb, Apple is increasing its efforts in the area.
He said that development of the Power Macintoshes is Apple's show of commitment to the CAD and other technical and scientific fields. "Making that transition from CISC [complex instruction set computing] to RISC is probably the boldest step and the greatest one [we] can make," he said.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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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: Cheap transceivers vault Tut into ATM
By Stephen Howard
This Tut has a good prophesy: Asynchronous Transfer Mode cards for less than $300, available within six months. Tut Systems Inc., a small vendor of specialty Ethernet products, thinks it can make good on that promise with a combination of patented technology and licensing deals.
Tut's focus for the past three years has been long-distance Ethernet connections over unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) wiring and plug-and-play Ethernet daisychains made from low-quality telephone wire (see MacWEEK, Jan. 3, Page 26). At the heart of these products is the company's proprietary scheme for discerning a useful network signal from a chorus of background noise.
This month, the company said its technology can put 155-Mbps Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM, traffic on Category 3 UTP at very low costs through new transceiver hardware. The transceiver is the part of a networking card or hub that connects it to a particular kind of wiring. No current transceiver can make ATM work on the Category 3 wiring used for 10BASE T Ethernet.
"It would be great if there was some breakthrough and we could run ATM on Cat 3, but I'm skeptical," said George Prodan, director of marketing at Fore Systems Inc. of Warrendale, Pa., which next quarter is slated to ship the first ATM cards for the Mac, starting at $1,795 each.
Industry watchers were more bullish on Tut. "They understand [that] the crux of the [product's] cost relative to ATM is the transceiver," said Michael Heylin, an analyst with Creative Strategies of San Jose, Calif. Tut predicted its transceivers will cost a fraction of the price of current transceivers used on Category 5 wiring.
"I believe ATM, if the price can get down, can be almost an upgrade business" from 10BASE T Ethernet, said Tut CEO Sal D'Auria. Support for Category 3 wiring, which would eliminate the costs of rewiring, is the key, D'Auria said. "There are so many people working on reasons to need the bandwidth," he said.
Rather than market its own finished hardware, Tut plans to license its technology and components to ATM vendors, and, in the process, build the company from its estimated $4.5 million in 1994 revenue to more than $280 million by 1999.
That strategy makes sense, analyst Heylin said. Because of Tut's small size and current LAN focus, "they don't enjoy the same credibility as the folks with wide-area networking experience," he said. Well-known ATM vendors Bay Networks Inc., 3Com Corp. and Fore Systems said they have had no formal discussions with Tut.
"Those aren't all the people out there," D'Auria said. He would not identify licensees but said Tut plans to announce several in January.
And LANs aren't the only market that Tut sees for its technology. Last week the company announced a joint-development agreement with E/O Networks Inc. of Hayward, Calif., to boost the bandwidth of copper connections to rural homes and businesses in the United States and developing countries. The companies said Tut's transceivers will enable a 6-Mbps link over UTP wire running between homes and E/O's planned optical network. This high speed is for incoming data only; outgoing data will travel at 384 Kbps.
Tut said it was in discussions with other telecommunications companies to incorporate its technology in information superhighway applications, including telephony over cable TV wiring and 51.84-Mbps data rates into homes and businesses over UTP wiring.
Tut Systems Inc. of Pleasant Hill, Calif., can be reached at (510) 682-6510 or (800) 998-4888; fax (510) 682-4125.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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News: Dayna puts Ethernet into Comm Slot
Dayna Communications Inc. expects on Jan. 3 to ship the first third-party Ethernet card for the Communications Slot found in 630-series Macs and other models.
The 10BASE T DaynaPORT E/CS-T will cost $109; Apple's card is $99. Currently, only Apple makes network cards for the Communications Slot, and it has refused to issue documentation on the slot so other vendors can build compatible cards. Dayna said it will guarantee its cards' compatibility with the slot.
The company will follow up with a $119 Communications Slot card for thin-net Ethernet on Jan. 30. "We know it's a relatively short-lived slot," said Dana Harrison, vice president of marketing at Dayna, "but it's found on some of the faster-selling machines."
Earlier this year, users with the LC 575, in which the slot originated, complained they couldn't get Apple's cards. Sources said 630-series users recently had a similar problem .
Dayna Communications Inc. of Salt Lake City is at (801) 269-7200; fax (801) 269-7363.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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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: Stalker LAN messaging system
CommuniGate will carry fax, e-mail and pages
By Stephen Howard
At Macworld Expo in January, Stalker Software Inc. will roll out an extensible LAN communications system with, initially, a very low price.
Stalker's CommuniGate will be a full-function network fax setup. It will feature support for faxing from within applications, automatic cover-page creation, multiple outgoing and incoming lines, advanced dialing controls, call grouping, time blocking, and priority scheduling. CommuniGate will cost $299 for unlimited users; however, Stalker will offer the product until June for $29 to users who own any competing fax product.
According to the company, the Apple events-based, client-server software will be capable of carrying e-mail, pager notes and file transfers. Stalker plans to release a voice-mail module at the expo and follow up with a pager gateway; it plans to ship an e-mail add-on in March. All features and messaging types will be congregated in the client software. And, when used with PowerTalk, the CommuniGate add-ons will function as personal gateways.
The CommuniGate server engine will be a faceless background application, and the gateways are small code libraries rather than system extensions; they will use only a few hundred kilobytes of memory and so won't be as susceptible to conflicts with other software, Stalker said. With the administrative program, managers will be able to load and unload the server and add-in modules without restarting the host Mac.
A native Power Mac server is scheduled to ship later in January.
Stalker Software Inc. of Larkspur, Calif., can be reached at phone or fax (415) 927-1026 or phone (800) 262-4722; sales@stalker.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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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: Nanao readies lower-cost display line
By Cate C. Corcoran
In a push to reach a broader market and more Mac users, Nanao USA Corp. this month announced a full-featured line of lower-priced monitors and new distribution agreements.
To ship in the first quarter of 1995, the new monitors will range from 15 to 21 inches and will cost as much as $300 less than their predecessors.
All new models except the 15-inch configuration will include Nanao's ScreenManager front-panel-adjusted on-screen controls, including moire reduction, image position and size, pincushion, distortion, and balance.
All the new models will have an autoadjustment function and will be bundled with Berkeley Systems Inc.'s After Dark with Ecologic screen saver and Sonnetech Ltd.'s Colorific color calibration application.
> The FX2*21 will be a 21-inch color display priced at $2,957. With a 0.26mm dot pitch and an Invar shadow mask, the model will display any Mac resolution with on-board video and go up to 1,600 by 1,200 pixels at a refresh rate of 80 Hz with the proper video card. It will have an anti-reflective, anti-static panel.
> The F2*21 will be a $1,790 21-inch Invar shadow-mask model with a 0.26mm dot pitch. It will display 1,280 by 1,024 pixels at a 75-Hz refresh rate with Mac on-board video.
> The F2*17EX will be a $999 17-inch model with a flat square shadow-mask tube with 0.26mm dot pitch. Its maximum Mac resolution will be 1,280 by 1,024 pixels.
> The T2*17TS will be a $1,041 17-inch model with an aperture-grille tube with a 0.25mm grille pitch. It will display up to 1,280 by 1,024 pixels with Macintosh video.
> The F2*17 17-inch display, at $890, will have a 0.28mm dot pitch and a maximum resolution of 1,152 by 870 pixels at a 75-Hz refresh rate.
> The F2*15 will be a $564 15-inch model with a 0.28mm dot pitch that displays 1,152 by 870 pixels.
The new models will be compliant with Energy Star, VESA DPMS and MPR II standards. With the exception of the FX2*21, all feature anti-glare and anti-static coatings.
In other news, Nanao plans to ship FlexColor, a $300 colorimeter for color calibration and adjustment, in the first quarter of 1995.
Nanao also announced distribution agreements with resellers Ingram Micro Inc. and Merisel Inc. and mail-order distributor MacMall.
Nanao USA Corp. of Torrance, Calif., is at (310) 325-5202 or (800) 800-5202; fax (310) 530-1679.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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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: New MO drive line offers NSR standard
By David Morgenstern
Users cross with multiplatform data transfer performance can look to Micro Design International Inc.'s new magneto-optical drives. The line offers a new cross-platform file standard to Mac users.
Micro Design's 230-Mbyte- and 1.3-Gbyte-capacity drives will include the company's SCSI Express for Macintosh driver as well as formatter software compatible with the International Standards Organization's ISO/IEC 13346, a recently accepted platform-independent format for removable media.
The new format is commonly known as NSR because it uses a nonsequential recording format. It accepts both WORM (write-once-read-many) and rewriteable media and can be read by both Unix and desktop systems.
Micro Design's driver will require users to mount NSR-formatted cartridges and will not permit mixed Mac and NSR partitions on a single side of a disc. The company said it expects to offer the software as a stand-alone product in the first quarter of 1995 for an estimated price of $195.
The $1,199 ES-230R-Mack is a 230-Mbyte, 3.5-inch MO drive with an average data transfer rate of 1.47 Mbytes per second. The 5.25-inch model, the ES-1300M-Mack, costs $3,099 and has an average data transfer rate of 1.8 Mbytes per second. The mechanism has an MTBF (mean time between failure) of 180,000 hours, Micro Design said.
Micro Design International Inc. of Winter Park, Fla., can be reached at (407) 677-8333 or (800) 228-0891; fax (407) 677-8365.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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Gateways: SoftArc FirstClass 2.6 talks TCP/IP
Messaging system gets free upgrade
By Stephen Howard
E-mail's rapidly rising star, SoftArc Inc., in November shipped Version 2.6 of its multifunction messaging system, FirstClass.
FirstClass 2.6, a free upgrade, is the only version compatible with SoftArc's new $995 TCP/IP Protocol Module, which allows client log-ons and server-to-server communication via the popular Internet Protocol. The base product handles AppleTalk and IPX LAN clients and remote log-ons via modem and other methods compatible with the Macintosh Communications Toolbox. Pricing starts at $95 for the 2.6 server alone and $395 for five LAN clients or 50 modem-only users. The Version 2.6 server runs faster on Power Macs but is not native, SoftArc said.
The prospect of the TCP/IP option presented a licensing conundrum for managers seeking remote log-ons via the Internet or other TCP/IP-based WANs. SoftArc charges different rates for full users, who can connect through any means, and for remote-only users, who typically connect via modem. But with TCP/IP, a remote user on the Internet might connect through the same physical network as a LAN user. SoftArc's answer: The Version 2.6 server uses the client's source address to identify local and remote TCP/IP clients.
The company distinguishes between the total number of users licensed for the server and the number allowed to connect simultaneously. For TCP/IP clients, managers must purchase remote-user licenses, just as they would for modem callers, and Remote Port Upgrades to add simultaneous remote sessions. The base FirstClass server allows two remote users to be on-line at a time; a Remote Port Upgrade adding four sessions is $395.
Also, the company recently said a Windows 3.1 server would ship in the second quarter of 1995 for $95. A server for Windows NT is due at that time or soon after, though pricing for the 32-bit software has not been set. A Windows 95 server is also in the works.
The Version 2.6 client software for Macs and Windows is available via on-line services; registered users can download the updated server software from SoftArc directly.
SoftArc Inc. of Markham, Ontario, can be reached at (905) 415-7000; fax (905) 415-7151; sales@softarc.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Gateways Page 10
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Gateways: LAN technology growing faster than market
By James Staten
The products, advertising and hype of wireless LANs are here, seeming to indicate a market about to kick into high gear. Yet market research shows deployment of these solutions is languishing in neutral.
According to Ann Lynch, senior analyst at BIS Strategic Decisions Inc. in Norwell, Mass., the U.S. installed base of wireless LANs will total only 200,000 nodes by the end of 1994 -- and the Mac market represents less than 1 percent of this figure.
Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research Co. of Wilmette, Ill., said wireless throughput, which is often slower than that of LocalTalk, is commonly cited as the reason users are not buying wireless LAN systems. But he said this reservation indicates that the benefits of wireless LANs are not understood by computer managers.
"People don't have enough experience with this [technology] to properly evaluate it and figure out how it should to be used," Brodsky said. Wireless LANs will commonly be applied in low-traffic situations, so speed is not critical, he said.
Gerry Purdy, editor of The Mobile Letter, an industry newsletter based in Cupertino, Calif., summed up the appeal of wireless LANs as "a desire to always be connected to the network." He said that any solution that eliminates the time required to hook up to a LAN and configure the AppleTalk connection in a new environment is significant, no matter what its throughput.
Two technologies are being applied to these user problems: infrared and radio frequency. Purdy said infrared is best for short-distance connections, such as those within a single room, while radio is better when the range is greater or in areas where wiring between rooms is not possible. Radio LANs, unlike infrared ones, can communicate through walls or floors.
The DaynaLINK system, from Salt Lake City-based Dayna Communications Inc., is the latest wireless release to target Mac managers (see MacWEEK, Oct. 31, Page 12). It uses frequency-hopping techniques over spread-spectrum radio; this method constantly moves the signal from channel to channel to avoid interference on any particular frequency. Dayna said its system will achieve actual throughput of up to 400 Kbps, with higher speeds coming later.
Digital Ocean Inc. of Lenexa, Kan., uses the alternative scheme, direct-sequencing radio, in its pioneering Groupers. According to the company, this system reduces the protocol overhead and thus increases speed -- to about 400 Kbps, according to the company -- while better fighting interference.
Jeff Allum, Digital Ocean's Newton product manager, said direct sequencing stays on a single channel and concentrates on overpowering other signals rather than avoiding collisions. Taking the radio-eye view, Allum said: "I'll live through most of my collisions, while [frequency hoppers] will spend most of their time figuring out what was lost in the last collision."
Infrared comes in two forms: broadcast and IrDA, named for the Infrared Data Association. Broadcast infrared provides the sustained connections needed for multi-user LANs; IrDA is a point-to-point technology. Photonics Inc.'s Cooperative Transceiver, priced at $349, implements broadcast technology to provide throughput of about 230 Kbps.
Even if users understand how these low-speed systems can be applied in their environments, industry experts observed, they lack software to specifically support wireless devices.
Mobile Letter's Purdy said making applications, operating systems and network drivers "wireless-aware" is key. Such software would re-establish users' LAN connections automatically when they move in and out of the range of the nearest network access point. Users want this functionality from their primary applications, but Purdy said mainstream developers are reluctant to invest in the small wireless market.
Apple underscored this reluctance last month when it stopped holding onto its wireless LAN, code-named Frogger, for its own future products and offered to license the technology to all comers (see MacWEEK, Nov. 14, Page 26).
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Gateways Page 10
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Gateways: SMDS in '95
The year of the public packet-switched network
By Richard Rawles
Switched Multimegabit Data Services, the wide-area standard for connectionless data networks, stands on the threshold of providing subscribers with a nationwide high-speed data path.
Interexchange carriers MCI Communications Corp. and Packets Inc. are vying for national customers as regional Bell operating companies pursue local customers; they hope to help companies gain commercial Internet access through Switched Multimegabit Data Services, or SMDS.
Operating at speeds from 56 Kbps to 34 Mbps, SMDS could offer high-speed data transfer to anyone who subscribes to the public packet-switched data network. Six of the seven regional Bell operating companies provide some form of access, and the lone holdout, Nynex Corp., is expected to have an offering in 1995.
Frame-relay fast-packet technology, which allocates bandwidth for data networks on the basis of customer-defined permanent virtual circuits, limits the number of potential partners. In contrast, SMDS allows the subscriber to have as many partners as are on the network.
This may be good news for Macintosh users. According to Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp., a strategic-planning consulting firm in Voorhees, N.J., "SMDS is very Mac-like in its architecture." Like the Internet, SMDS has unpredictable traffic flow among sites.
SMDS has found followers in the Mac graphics and pre-press community. The need for high-speed anywhere-to-anywhere connectivity on an occasional basis has made SMDS attractive to a number of publishing companies. Widely dispersed groups of artists, contractors, pre-press bureaus, printers and publishers with large data transfer needs can communicate through SMDS within a Local Access Transport Area (LATA) and even outside a telephone company's service area.
Pre-press house Group Infotech of East Lansing, Mich., depends on SMDS to communicate with publishers in New York and printers in the South, as well as to handle local jobs over Ameritech Corp.'s LATA SMDS network for high-end color work and OCR. "It makes somebody else's computer look like an extension of our network," said Bill Ray, president of Group Infotech.
By contrast, frame-relay data networks, which emulate leased-line connections, enforce a structured, hierarchical approach to data exchange, better suited for fewer sites with a predictable, structured information flow. The drawback is that a mesh topology, like a frame-relay network, "whittles away at the available bandwidth," said Rich Pyecroft, director of sales at Santa Barbara, Calif.-based MultiAccess Computing Corp., a provider of SMDS direct-access cards for the Mac and other platforms.
SMDS, on the other hand, as a connectionless data service (without direct or virtual connections), imitates a LAN and "doesn't enforce any permanent relationships, doesn't require you to specify any kind of traffic patterns, and doesn't penalize you in a cost sense if you're trying to be flexible," Nolle of CIMI said. He suggested that a break-even point in making SMDS cost-effective compared with frame-relay networks would be five or six sites, but this figure varies from region to region.
Getting served
Because SMDS is a metropolitan-area network specification, it has been limited to use within LATAs. Interarea connections needed for a national network have been harder to come by. Although coast-to-coast communication among local SMDS networks is possible through standard direct lines, local networks have not been uniformly consistent in either the pursuit or implementation of SMDS. They are, in fact, prohibited from collaborating with each other and forming ties by the terms of the ruling that divested AT&T. Consequently there has been less demand for SMDS than frame relay, and it has proved a harder sell.
"Service availability is the limiting factor right now," said Pyecroft of MultiAccess Computing. For their part, the regional companies point a finger at the interexchange carriers. "We are extremely frustrated at the lack of response from MCI," said Mindy Peters, data communications specialist with Bell South Business Systems in Miami.
The availability of 56-Kbps SMDS connections may change this picture. Initially a T1- and T3-level service, SMDS became available at slower speeds when several companies that make the channel service unit/data service unit (CSU/DSU) equipment (which connects customers' equipment to the local exchange) got together to provide a lower-rate interface. Called digital exchange interface, it encapsulates cell-based SMDS datagrams into variable-length frame packets that can be carried over the 56-Kbps lines and converted back into SMDS 53-byte cells at the other end. CSU/DSUs for 56-Kbps connections are significantly cheaper than for higher-speed T1 or T3 services, and the routers and other equipment that support digital exchange interface are compatible, which is not always the case with specialized equipment that uses the higher-speed SMDS interface protocol.
The net effect of the digital exchange interface standard has been to make SMDS competitive with frame relay. The cost of subscribing to the service is close to the same (about $200 per month for 56-Kbps connections and $800 per month for T1) as leasing several frame-relay ports. Some nonregional Bell SMDS service providers, such as Co-Net Communications Inc. of Orlando, Fla. (an SMDS network aimed at the graphics industry), charge a premium for their services, which includes inter-LATA connections, customer equipment, software and store-and-forward capabilities. As in the case of interexchange long-distance carrier MCI, there is also a usage fee for inter-LATA connections based on the total transmitted megabytes. MCI charges a per-port fee plus a usage fee. Packets charges a flat rate starting at $500.
"If the customer were to do it himself, he'd have to be sure that the other companies that he wanted to exchange with were attached to the same network with compatible equipment," said Chuck Turner, vice president of sales at Co-Net. The customer would also have to buy or lease an SMDS-capable router from Cisco Systems Inc., Bay Networks Inc., Advanced Computer Communications Inc. or 3Com Corp., among others, and a CSU/DSU box from ADC Kentrox Inc. (a division of ADC Communications Inc.) or Digital Link Corp. Prices for routers vary widely, depending on network configuration and speed; customers can pay between $2,500 and $20,000.
MultiAccess Computing provides a less expensive direct-connection solution for Macs with its NuBus cards for 56-Kbps and T1 speeds. The slower speed requires only the addition of a CSU unit, which is less than $1,000. A specialized SMDS CSU/DSU costs about $3,500 for an SMDS interface that can run up to T1 speeds. Less expensive solutions are available for standard frame-relay-compatible CSU/DSUs: $1,500 at T1 speeds and $500 for 56 Kbps.
While frame relay and SMDS are virtually on par at 56-Kbps speeds, the differences show up at higher speeds. Frame relay, being "connection-oriented" -- it emulates a dedicated line -- is more expensive at higher speeds than SMDS.
Simplicity itself
SMDS enjoys a reputation of being easier to set up and manage. Bill Ray, who uses a MultiAccess Computing card on his Novell NetWare server connected to a General Datacomm CSU/DSU, said, "It's exactly what I like in communications technology: I don't have to think about it." Frame-relay connections, on the other hand, generally require, in addition to a CSU for each permanent virtual circuit, that a company set up and monitor traffic flow on multiple permanent virtual circuits in case congestion builds up on one of the circuits. Overloading a permanent virtual circuit beyond the committed information rate causes data to be discarded at the switch. Nevertheless, according to Nolle, individual SMDS sites can also overload and discard somewhere else, probably at the router.
Although some potential SMDS users have expressed fears about running corporate data over a public network, SMDS gives customers the ability to decide who they want to receive data from. "The capability of having an inclusion-exclusion security list is so much simpler to implement and to keep up to date" than maintaining permanent virtual circuits, said Steve Garner, business development manager at Packets.
Road to ATM
Opinions differ on whether frame relay or SMDS is the natural migration path to the high-bandwidth asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology optimized for future wide-area multimedia applications. SMDS uses the same 53-byte cell structure as ATM, but ATM is a connection-oriented technology, like frame relay. Frame relay tops out at T1 speeds, while SMDS runs well over ATM connections. "The road is clear for ATM as a transport to carry connectionless SMDS traffic," Garner said.
According to Nolle of CIMI, however, most customers will have the 56-Kbps digital exchange interface, which is a frame-based interface with no greater ATM affinity than frame relay and is unsuitable for multimedia because of the slow speed. "The big challenge to migrate to ATM is not so much which service is a precursor in a logical sense to an ATM service -- it's, how in the world would we ever make a T3 multimedia connection to a graphic artist at a rate they could afford to pay?" Nolle said.
SMDS remains primarily a data-only network, not optimized for delay-sensitive isochronous traffic needed for voice and video. Providing SMDS access to the Internet, however, lessens some of the problems associated with implementing wide-area multimedia applications, according to Pushpendra Mohta, director of engineering at CERFnet, a division of General Atomics, which provides Internet access to commercial customers over SMDS. The Internet Protocol translates well to the connectionless nature of SMDS, he said. "SMDS works in some sense like a wide-area Ethernet: Everyone can talk to everyone else," Mohta said.
Apple uses CERFnet's SMDS service within the Pacific Bell LATA 1 to give eWorld Internet access and to exchange information with router vendor Cisco. Commercial Internet Exchange, a consortium of commercial Internet providers, has also adopted SMDS for parts of its network. Erik Fair, Internet architect at Apple, said he sees the potential for SMDS to "flatten the market for Internet access" and favors SMDS over ATM. The one drawback he said he sees is the 25 percent overhead that the SMDS interface protocol eats up at T1 and higher speeds. He said he would like to see the digital exchange interface extended to T1 and T3.
Despite its growth, SMDS still suffers: Every regional Bell operates differently, and there is little consistency of service. Each carrier may sell the three technologies (frame relay, SMDS, ATM) at different speeds, and some regional Bells offer a rate structure that favors leasing equipment from them, while others offer the service only.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Gateways Page 10
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Mobile: PB500 docking station does cable connections
BookEndz system to ship this month
By James Staten
Pilot Technologies Inc. is expected to ship a docking station later this month that works with the PowerBook 500 portables.
The BookEndz BE500 Series are small, tight-fitting racks that lock onto the back of any PowerBook 500 and serve as a cable bypass system for all the notebook's ports. Peripherals connect to SCSI, ADB, external monitor, Ethernet, modem, audio I/O and AC power ports in the back of the docking station. The station aligns the peripheral connections with the PowerBook's ports, ensuring quick and accurate hookups, the company said.
Like the Duo MiniDock, the BookEndz station allows the simultaneous use of the PowerBook's display and an external monitor. A $40 stand is available for holding a monitor over the PowerBook. Pilot said access to both battery bays, the internal floppy drive and the rear security slot is not blocked by the station.
The BE500, priced at $149, provides pass-through connections for all ports except Ethernet. The BE500E, priced at $175, includes an Ethernet pass-through port. Both stations will be available with Pilot's monitor stand for $189.95 and $214.95, respectively. MacAlley's 105-key extended keyboard and mouse are available for an additional $124.95.
Pilot Technologies Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn., can be reached at (612) 828-6002 or (800) 682-4987; fax (612) 828-6806; pilot.tech@applelink.apple.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: Wireless alliance could strengthen market
By James Staten
An alliance was formed in November among Ardis, RAM Mobile Data L.P. and Cellular Digital Packet Data vendors to develop a common communications layer. This set of protocols will allow applications to support all three wireless WANs without having to write to each service's proprietary drivers.
The Portable Computer Communications Association, which is guiding the development of the standard, said that in addition to increasing usage of WANs, the joint effort will lead to greater competition among the networks, faster software development, and lower prices for hardware and air time. The standard is expected to be issued in January.
Randy Sukow, editor of Wireless Data News, an industry newsletter based in Potomac, Md., agreed that this move will increase the appeal of wireless WANs, but added that obstacles remain to its acceptance.
"[Service providers] are still a long way from making [wireless WANs] affordable and usable by the mainstream," Sukow said. "They need to interoperate more and need more attention from Microsoft [Corp.], Apple and Intel [Corp.]."
Most two-way wireless networks are digital packet-based systems differentiated by airlink methods. Digital packet systems break messages into small data packages that are sent over the airwaves in bursts. Error-correction and encryption data is sent with each package, which the receiver collects and uses to reconstruct the message.
This system makes efficient use of radio waves, allowing more users to share a single channel. However, it is significantly slower than wired connections and is still very expensive because of the costs involved in building a wireless infrastructure. For this reason, most digital packet service providers are focusing their sales efforts on mobile professionals and vertical markets with a need to send and receive small, but critical, e-mail messages or database queries.
RAM and Ardis operate in the same frequency bands; Cellular Digital Packet Data, or CDPD, does not. Ardis modems frequency hop, which helps avoid other traffic and interference on a channel; RAM modems do not.
Unlike RAM and Ardis, CDPD shares the cellular bandwidth with voice calls. As a result, it requires a more complex transmission scheme to avoid colliding with telephone service. CDPD modems must wait and listen for pauses in voice transmissions and, when a window opens, send a packet. If one channel is full, the modem hops to another channel and repeats the listening process.
Both RAM and Ardis are national networks providing coverage for nearly 90 percent of the business community, allowing a user from Chicago to communicate with his home network while traveling in Florida, for example.
In contrast, the CDPD system is composed of several private networks covering about the same percentage of U.S. businesses. However, because it is not based on a unified network, users cannot connect with their CDPD modems outside the range of an individual carrier. This means that a user based in Chicago might as well leave his CDPD modem at home when traveling on the West Coast.
The CDPD Forum, founded this fall, hopes to make these regional systems interoperate and to resolve related pricing issues. Rand Baldwin, executive director of the forum, said cooperative trials are under way.
The slow speed of wireless has been cited as another stumbling block to its acceptance. However, experts see its speed, up to 4 Kbps on the RAM network, for example, as a nonissue.
"Wireless is really only for short, bursty communications," said Martin Torbert, spokesman for RAM Mobile Data. "You don't want to transfer a 40-Mbyte file wirelessly because the cost and time will kill you no matter what the speed."
In addition to speed and interoperability issues, Andrew Seybold, editor of the Outlook on Mobile Computing, an industry newsletter based in Brookdale, Calif., said there are three additional barriers to wireless acceptance: lack of large, corporatewide installations; lack of combined voice-and-data systems; and the high cost and bulkiness of wireless modems.
Seybold said he believes gaining large corporate sites would be the hardest challenge to overcome but also the most important if service providers are to achieve the economies of scale necessary to address other shortcomings. "Vendors [now] need to provide ways for early adopters to experiment with wireless data that do not require a corporate blessing," he said.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: Colortron gives users true colors
Matches printed color to actual object's color
By Cate C. Corcoran
Mac users who want to produce printed colors that match physical objects can look to a new device from Light Source Computer Images Inc. that combines a spectrophotometer, densitometer and colorimeter into a single system.
The $1,195 Colortron package consists of a handheld 32-band digital spectrophotometer and an application that stores, communicates and compares color information. Because it is for use with reflective objects of any shape or size, or emissive objects such as monitors or light tables, the company said, Colortron is well-suited to a variety of vertical markets, including textile manufacturing and food quality control.
The ADB or serial device captures spectral information through its 3mm by 6mm aperture, taking about two seconds per measurement.
Groups of captured colors can be saved in EPS files called Palette documents. These files can be integrated into the color palettes of any application that can import EPS files, including Adobe Illustrator, Aldus PageMaker and FreeHand, and QuarkXPress. Other applications can access measured colors through Apple's Color Picker.
Colortron's software comprises a group of modular tools for describing, matching and exporting spectral data. These tools let users perform such tasks as graphically representing a color's spectral information, displaying CMYK percentages to reproduce a target color with a four-color printing system, and matching Pantone colors to measured colors.
Colortron's Density tool lets the device act as a densitometer, measuring the thickness and concentration of ink on paper or the emulsion on films. The Colorimeter tool shows values for a given color in terms of different measurement systems, including RGB, HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) and tristimulus color spaces.
Light Source said that the Colortron software is extensible, allowing for the creation of third-party modules for vertical applications, such as paint mixing and manufacturing.
Brian Blackwelder, general manager at Rapid, a color pre-press house in San Francisco, recently used Colortron for a catalog job. "A client who manufactures clothing sent us fabric swatches and transparencies for a catalog," he said. By reading the swatch colors with Colortron, he was able to dial in color information while scanning the transparencies. "We hit the scan the first time, right on," he said.
According to Light Source, a hardware attachment and software for monitor calibration will ship free to Colortron users by March.
Light Source Computer Images Inc. of Larkspur, Calif., can be reached at (415) 925-4200 or (800) 994-2656; fax (415) 461-8011.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: Apps, 8100/110 aid digital video for Power Mac
By Roger Karraker
Digital video on Power Macintoshes is finally ready for prime time.
The first iteration of the PowerPC-based Macs had significant drawbacks for digital video, including errors in the NuBus Controller chip that prevented burst-mode data transfer between NuBus cards, some application and QuickTime incompatibilities, and relatively slow emulation speed for non-native applications.
That has finally changed. Digital video users and developers point to four significant factors that have propelled video production on Power Macs: the supercharged Power Mac 8100/110, released in November; Apple's fix for the NuBus Controller chip; new bug fix versions of system software, such as the Apple Multimedia Tuner; and native versions of key applications, such as Adobe Premiere 4, Data Translation Inc.'s Media 100 2.0 and Radius Inc.'s VideoVision Studio 2.0.
Increasingly, according to developers and users, Power Macs -- especially the 8100/110 -- are becoming the CPUs of choice for digital video production. And developers are downright sanguine about the prospects of 1995 Power Macs with a superfast PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) bus that will sidestep the Mac's weak link, its slow NuBus architecture.
K.C. McElligott and his partners at AV Technica of Sunnyvale, Calif., used a Workgroup Server 9150 to produce two recent digital video projects that included computation-intensive special effects. Using Specular International Ltd.'s LogoMotion in conjunction with Adobe Premiere and Photoshop, McElligott created a 35-second product-introduction video based on 33 still photos and stock footage.
McElligott said the Power Mac and the native-code applications dramatically reduced production time, especially for rendering of special effects. "We feel like we're a factory again," he said.
At Novato, Calif.-based Broderbund Software Inc., project manager Matthew Leeds has done extensive evaluation of Power Mac 8100 machines and said he likes features such as improved interface with storage arrays. But Leeds also noted that the now-discontinued Quadra 840AV still has the fastest video digitizing throughput of any Mac and said he is looking forward to the improved bus speed of PCI Macs.
Leeds said Broderbund digitizes all its video -- most of it destined for QuickTime movies on the company's CDs -- on Quadra 840AVs and 950s with PowerPC upgrade cards.
In Cleveland, video professionals were choosing the Power Mac 8100 even before the 8100/110's introduction, according to reseller Michael Balas of Computer Site in Strongsville, Ohio. "Since September, I've sold nothing but 8100s, although I still recommend the Quadra 950 for those who have to have more than three expansion slots," he said.
Andrew Eisner, Radius' director of product evaluation, said the company's VideoVision hardware-software system, coupled with the 8100/ 110 and Premiere 4.0, offers dramatic speed improvements over 680x0 digital video. "In some tasks, we're seeing a fivefold improvement," he said.
Marlboro, Mass.-based Data Translation Inc., another manufacturer of video solutions, also saw dramatic speed gains when its high end went native. "The Macintosh is the system of choice for video professionals," said Patrick Rafter, Data Translation's resident evangelist. "The Power Mac 8100/110, coupled with native code, provides substantial performance improvements: pure, raw speed for transitions, special effects, titling and rendering."
Santa Clara, Calif.-based RasterOps Corp. said its MoviePak II runs in emulation on Power Macs. The company said it plans to release new hardware system in January that will offer "dramatic speed improvements" but declined to specify if the system would run native.
Apple's three-slot Power Macs have created a problem for Tewksbury, Mass.-based Avid Technology Inc. Its Media Suite Pro 2.2, a high-end hardware-software editing system requires four NuBus slots, necessitating use of a Quadra 950 or an expansion chassis. Avid, which recently introduced a one-board version for Windows, has pledged to port Media Suite Pro to the PowerPC platform and will reduce the number of boards to do so.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: AOL buys its way onto the Internet
Three companies bought in past month
By Lisa Picarille
America Online Inc. is jockeying for a position as the premiere Internet service provider by ponying up the cash to match its ambitions.
Over the past month, the Vienna, Va.-based on-line service company has spent more than $70 million in cash and stock to acquire three small Internet service providers. These companies will form the core of AOL's Internet Service Co., a new division formed in September.
Last month AOL bought NaviSoft, a Hillsborough, Calif., company that develops servers as well as authoring and publishing tools for companies trying to establish a commercial presence on the Internet.
AOL also gobbled up BookLink Technologies Inc., a Wilmington, Mass.-based company that developed InterWorks, an OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) 2.0-compliant programmable e-mail and Internet browser. The technology will continue to be sold under AOL's forthcoming Internet brand of products -- due out next year -- and its capabilities will also be integrated into the next version of AOL's on-line service.
David Cole, former chairman and CEO of NaviSoft Inc., is president of AOL's Internet division and plans to lead the charge by offering a host of Internet services.
Earlier this month, AOL acquired Advanced Network & Services of Elmsford, N.Y., a high-speed network company originally formed by IBM Corp. and MCI Communications Corp. ANS is best-known as the creator of the backbone for the Internet.
Cole declined to comment on just how much AOL's Internet Service Co. will bring to the company's bottom line, but he did say he expected it to be a "significant business over the next year."
AOL is bracing for dramatic overall growth in the next 12 months. Steve Case, AOL president and CEO, said he expects AOL's subscriber base to almost double by the end of 1995.
Jupiter Communications Co., a market research firm in New York, estimates that by the end of 1994, with 1.5 million users (up from 600,000 in 1993), AOL will surpass rivals Prodigy Services Co. and CompuServe Inc. to have the largest on-line subscriber base.
The on-line service provider's revenues are also racing upward. Sales for AOL's 1994 fiscal year ended June 30 were $104 million, up from $40 million for the previous year. Net income doubled to $6.2 million, compared with $3.1 million for 1993. Both sales and income for the most recent quarter tripled, compared with the same quarter last year.
Cole described AOL's rapid expansion as "being part of an organism rather than part of a company."
For others in the on-line service market, things have not been as rosy. Prodigy last week was forced to lay off about 100 of its 700 workers. It was the second downsizing effort by the 11-year-old company, which has not turned a profit after devouring more than $1 billion from its parent companies IBM Corp. and Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Rather than going after the growing on-line chat portion of the market, Prodigy chose to concentrate on shopping and transaction-oriented services.
"AOL has the strongest position of all the on-line services," said Gillian Mace, president of the InTech Group, a Mountain View, Calif.-based market research firm specializing in home and office computing. "They are going after the Internet portion of the market pretty deliberately."
MacWEEK 12.12.94
BusinessWatch Page 30
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
BusinessWatch: Feds ban imports of PhoneNET clones
By Jon Swartz
Farallon Computing Inc.'s year-long quest to stop the importing of illegal PhoneNET connector clones won government approval this week.
The International Trade Commission issued a "general exclusion" order banning the importation of LocalTalk connectors that are not licensed by Farallon. The decree authorizes the U.S. Customs Service to confiscate such products, said a trade commission attorney who asked not to be named.
Farallon has licensing deals with more than two dozen LocalTalk developers. Farallon President and CEO Alan Lefkof said the agreements, including a pact with Focus Enhancements Inc. of Woburn, Mass., call for either royalty payments or settlements that bar a vendor's importation of PhoneNET clones.
Lefkof said that only two vendors -- one of them Technology Works Inc. of Austin, Texas -- have balked at signing an agreement. Because Technology Works resells Focus products, it will be allowed to import those connectors legally; the same doesn't apply to its own connectors, however, according to the trade commission attorney.
Technology Works officials did not return calls.
Farallon, based in Alameda, Calif., filed a complaint with the Washington, D.C.-based International Trade Commission in October 1993 seeking a "cease and desist" order against 16 LocalTalk manufacturers.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
BusinessWatch Page 30
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Editorial: Developers need timelier tools
Breakthroughs in developers tools seldom send hearts racing in anticipation. But the consistent advances made by Metrowerks Inc. are exciting for the Mac market.
Predictions that the company's CodeWarrior 2.0 will include the fastest Pentium-code compiler -- while the development system itself runs on Power Macintoshes -- are impressive, if true. Macs, long disparaged as not powerful and versatile enough for programmers, could emerge as the developer platform of choice in 1995.
More good news came last month from, of all places, Apple, when it released its software developers kit for the Mac OS, which included many tools and application frameworks for hitherto programmatically orphaned technologies.
The problem with this shiny silver lining is the cloud that encompasses it. Apple's tools group is consistently late in delivering the products necessary to make Apple's hot new technologies anything more than eye candy for demonstrations on trade-show floors.
For example, the company unleashed AOCE (Apple Open Collaboration Environment) on the world a little more than a year ago. Yet the specific tools to support it weren't available until 10 months later. Apple tells us that AOCE is a strategic technology, right up there with OpenDoc. But when was the last time you used an AOCE-enabled application from a third party? Perhaps this has something to do with the lack of developers tools. This is not an AOCE problem alone. The same could be said of QuickDraw GX and AppleScript.
And speaking of strategic products, OpenDoc insiders say that one of the reasons for delaying its beta release was the lack of developers tools. Maybe an alpha version of the application frameworks will be in the OpenDoc release next month. Maybe not. It's only a strategic product.
Developers can build software for multiple platforms. If Apple makes it easier for them to get applications out the door and generating revenue, they're more likely to choose Macs. Without tools, you can have the coolest technology around that no one uses.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Editorial Page 34
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Second Decade: With choices comes pressure on Apple
By Henry Norr
After 11 years in pursuit of a proprietary strategy, Apple makes a firm commitment to open licensing of its basic hardware and operating system, and how does the Mac world react?
With deafening silence. Peruse the press, log onto your favorite Mac newsgroup or on-line forum, or just listen where Mac users gather, and what are the hot topics? The Pentium math bug, the wait for Doom, why Word sucks, the latest Netscape beta, what PCI means, but (at least where I've looked and listened) hardly any consideration of just what licensing will mean for Apple or its customers.
Maybe it's because the question is too abstract for now. After all, the first clone Macs won't be out until next summer, and an open, Wintel-style market won't begin to take shape until 1996. It's certainly true that no one can make firm predictions without knowing who the clone makers will be, what kind of hardware they'll offer and how their prices will compare to Apple's.
But I think we can already discern one consequence of Apple's licensing plan, and to my mind, it has profound implications: Apple will no longer be able to take its installed base for granted -- or, at any rate, doing so will put its hardware business in jeopardy.
A captive market
Until now, Mac users and managers in need of new hardware have had two choices: Buy Apple or change platforms. The reality is that few among us have made the latter choice (except under duress from, say, a Wintel-oriented IS department); voluntary abandonment of the Mac platform remains a rarity.
That's mostly because Apple continues to make good products, and it has drastically reduced the premium it demands for them. We still believe that the Mac environment offers far more by way of real, end-of-the-day productivity than any alternative.
But there's another very powerful reason we stay with Apple (and it's the same reason that Intel-based PC users often stick with their platform): The costs of changing are overwhelming. We'd need new software, new peripherals and, in many cases, new networking infrastructure. Our hard-earned Mac expertise would suddenly lose all value, and (except for the rare few who are already experts in both worlds) we would have to relearn the tricks of our trades, clawing our way along the PC learning curve.
Open the gates
So, by choice or by inertia, we mostly stay with the Mac, and that has meant staying with Apple. Even when (like now) Mac prices lag; even when Apple can't deliver the systems we need; even when Apple continues to sell us defective Malaysian mice, GeoPort pods and Duo keyboards; even when we have to dial for an hour to get through to SOS-APPL -- and then wait another 45 minutes on hold.
But when other vendors offer Mac compatibles, we'll no longer have to put up with such indignities. If Apple doesn't treat us right, we'll be able to change suppliers without having to settle for an inferior environment and without incurring the enormous costs associated with changing platforms.
For its sake, I hope Apple, from top to bottom, realizes the high stakes and cleans up its act. But if it doesn't, we'll at last have someplace to turn besides Wintel. It's going to be a whole new world.
Henry Norr, editor emeritus of MacWEEK, welcomes feedback in the MacWEEK Forum on CompuServe or eWorld or at henry_norr@macweek.ziff.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Second Decade Page 34
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MacWEEK Insider: 1994: Goodbye and good riddance
By Andy Gore
The best thing I can say about 1994 is there are only 19 days left in it.
It's not as if we didn't start the year with our eyes open; the whole Macintosh industry knew 1994 was going to be tough. After all, the beginning of a major architectural transition is bound to have repercussions. But the Mac community seemed damned and determined to make matters worse.
At the top of the masochism hit parade was Apple. No surprise here; the folks in Cupertino have always thrived on crisis. Probably '94's most critical example was the first Power Macs. While Apple did an excellent job designing the hardware and building a bulletproof 680x0 emulator, somehow the company missed one minor detail: native PowerPC developers tools.
If it hadn't been for Metrowerks Inc.'s last-minute cavalry charge over the hill, it would have been a very depressing fall indeed.
There are, of course, other examples. I would have loved to have been there when the decision was made on how many PowerBook 500-series portables to build. The discussion must have gone something like this:
"This is the first new all-in-one PowerBook design we've come up with in two and a half years, and the previous design was our best-selling portable ever. It features a radical new chassis with lots of groundbreaking technology, and it's our first 68040-based laptop. So, how many should we build?"
"Um, 10?"
Apple's not alone in the '94 hall of shame. There's Microsoft Corp. and its 70-Mbyte gorilla Office 4.2. Not only was the company late with native Power Mac versions of its all-too-critical applications, but one of those applications, Word 6.0, turned out to run slower on a 680x0 machine than 5.1 did. And, before I get a call from Redmond, I'd like to say that I'm not alone in this assertion. I have the reader mail to prove it.
There are many other examples of the Mac industry shooting itself in the foot in '94, some of which you'll see highlighted in the Year in Review Special Report in MacWEEK's Jan. 2 issue. But the point is not that the Mac industry is populated by screw-ups. The recent Pentium debacle is evidence enough that there are plenty of things to be embarrassed about on both sides of the computer business.
The point is Apple and the rest of the Mac industry have a lot of opportunities to shine next year -- PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Macs; PowerPC-based portables; Mac clones; more and better native applications; and if Apple is true to its word, System 8. As a result, the industry can ill afford to repeat 1994's mistakes in 1995, or we might not all see 1996.
As cliched as it may sound, we're all adrift in the same lifeboat. And it better be everyone's New Year's resolution to work together to keep it afloat and find land.
Andrew Gore is executive editor/news at MacWEEK. He welcomes feedback at agore@eworld and 72511,224@compuserve.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: Fractal Design Painter 3.0
Version 3 takes on QuickTime painting tools
By Ben Long
Since its introduction, Fractal Design Corp.'s Painter has carved out a niche in the graphics market on the strength of its natural-media painting tools, which mimic their real-world counterparts to create astounding painterly effects. With Painter 3.0, Fractal Design continues to improve its unique application. The $499 Painter 3 incorporates PainterX2's object-oriented editing tools and offers about 50 enhancements, as well as Power Macintosh support.
Experienced Painters will find themselves facing a very different-looking program when they open Painter 3. Most of Painter's interface and palettes have been redesigned, adopting some of the interface features found in the company's Dabbler program.
Always a palette-oriented application, Painter 3 now has eight palettes, which all have extra features that can be toggled using a small zoom box. Many palettes, such as the Brush palette, also feature a Dabbler-like drawer. Clicking the drawer expands the palette to reveal a selection of brushes. The five most recently used brushes are stored at the top of the palette.
The new drawer mechanism is somewhat faster to use than Painter 2's scrolling list of tools, but it's still large and clunky enough to be uncomfortable. Painter's interface is great to look at with all its nicely rendered buttons, but a much smaller, less intrusive interface is greatly needed.
It's also unfortunate that Painter doesn't always follow standard keyboard conventions. For example, to add to the current selection, you hold down the Command key (rather than Shift), while to subtract from the current selection you must hold down Option-X.
Retooling
Painter provides an incredible selection of realistic tools -- far too many to list. As before, each tool can be modified through two pop-up menus, one controlling the Method Category of the brush, the other describing how the paint interacts with the canvas.
New to Painter 3 is a Controls palette that provides sliders and controls for each tool. For example, when you use a brush tool, Opacity and Grain sliders let you easily change the brush's settings.
The new Bristles palette lets you customize a brush's bristles by using four simple sliders. You can independently adjust the thickness of the brush's bristles, the clumpiness of the bristles, the density of the bristle's individual hairs and the variation in bristle size.
As in previous versions, brush controls are also provided for changing the brush's size and shape as well as the spacing between individual brush dabs. All of these settings can be saved as a Look and retrieved using the new Looks module in the Brush Controls palette.
If that's not enough, the Advanced Controls palette lets you define raked strokes, specify how paint wells and bleeds in your brush, and control the randomness of your brush. The palette also offers Expression sliders for setting other brush properties. Finally, you can now create your own brush shapes by drawing a shape on the screen and capturing it as a brush.
Painter's old Paper and Color controls have been incorporated into a new Art Materials palette. Five buttons on the top of the palette let you change the palette from a Color Picker to a Gradient Builder or Paper Selector. Other controls allow you to access predefined color sets and Painter's new Weave palette.
Also appropriated from Dabbler is the capability to rotate your canvas. Just as you might tilt a piece of paper to create strokes in a particular direction, Painter 3 lets you rotate your entire image within its window to paint at a particular angle.
Getting hosed
One of the most interesting new tools in Painter 3 is the Image Hose. After you load a series of images, or a nozzle, into the Image Hose, painting with the tool will spray a random selection of those images across your canvas. For example, you can create a nozzle out of five or six pictures of different pieces of gravel. Then, using the Image Hose, you can quickly spray a parking lot into a scene.
Like many of Painter's tools, the Image Hose can be made direction-sensitive: If you're moving your brush toward the top of the page, the images are oriented in a different direction than if you were moving the brush toward the bottom of the page.
QuickTime movies can be easily made into a nozzle. When used, random frames will be applied to your image as you move your brush. As with the other tools, the Image Hose has a large number of modifiable properties, including pressure and velocity.
Onions and stacks
Painter 3 can use QuickTime movies for much more than Image Hose sources. The program can now open a QuickTime movie to let you paint on individual frames.
Using an excellent onionskinning interface, Painter lets you open a movie for editing to create rotoscoping or animated effects. You can select and open a movie from the Open dialog, then save it as a standard Painter file. When opened, this new file appears in a standard Painter document window and the new Frame Stacks palette is opened.
The Frame Stacks palette allows you to navigate through your movie. Standard VCR controls let you play the movie or step through it one frame at a time, with each frame appearing in the document window.
You can use any of Painter's tools on the movie's frames, or you can play back recorded sessions on each frame. Painter's movie-editing controls are excellent, allowing you to choose such settings as whether paper grain should stay the same over time or vary with each frame.
In traditional animation, onionskinning is the process of tracing over previous frames using thin sheets of onionskin paper. This way, the animator can see, among other things, the path and movement of an animated object. When Painter's Tracing Paper option is turned on, previous frames of a movie are displayed in decreasing levels of opacity (the number of layers depends on how many onionskin levels you selected when you opened the movie). As you step forward or backward in the movie the onionskins are updated, making it simple to follow an object's path.
The list of improvements in Painter 3 goes on: spiral gradients, lighting libraries, new cloners, the capability to abort most operations with Command-Period, Bezier selections and more. To truly find them all, you'll need to spend a good deal of time just playing and painting.
Documentation and support
Painter 3 now ships with separate tutorial and user guides. While comprehensive, the latter's explanations are text-heavy and sometimes difficult to follow. Most of the time, it's best to set the manual aside and start pressing buttons. However, Painter's tools have so many variations and modifications that it's easy to miss something.
The program ships with a CD-ROM containing brushes, papers, Image Hose nozzles and other components. It also contains some sad "multimedia" presentations intended to show you some of Painter's new tricks. Unfortunately, they look like little more than unfinished marketing materials.
Conclusions
Painter 3 is an impressive program with capabilities and features that no other application attempts. In addition to its exceptional painting tools, the program's new QuickTime interface should make the program useful to multimedia and video developers as well as painters and illustrators.
Painter's painting tools and many of its operations (such as rotating, scaling and manipulating floating selections) offer good performance on a Power Mac but still feel somewhat sluggish when working with large images. In addition, the program's interface feels so bulky -- both in screen real estate and in the amount of mouse mileage to navigate it -- that painting in Painter often feels like standing in front of a canvas wearing a suit of chain mail.
Despite these complaints, Painter 3's new features make it an essential upgrade for current users as well as an excellent addition for anyone who creates or manipulates images.
Fractal Design Corp. of Aptos, Calif., can be reached at (408) 688-5300; fax (408) 688-8836; http://www.fractal.com.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: MacTools Pro 4.0
Upgrade may be end of the line for Symantec-owned program
By Loftus E. Becker Jr.
MacTools Pro is back for at least one last hurrah.
Version 4.0 of the disk utility package from the Central Point Division of Symantec Corp. contains a full suite of repair tools and a host of novel ideas. Because Symantec also owns Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.1 (see MacWEEK, Oct. 17, Page 33), the future of MacTools Pro is uncertain, but for now it is fighting hard. Along with standard features -- such as disk and file repair tools, virus protection, a backup program, and an undelete utility -- the $149 program can create and run from a RAM disk, undo unsuccessful disk repairs, and contains extensive help and reporting capabilities.
MacTools Pro requires System 7, at least a 68020 processor, 6 Mbytes of disk space and 8 Mbytes of RAM (background functions use more than 1 Mbyte of RAM). Almost every component is Power Mac-native. You can install any or all components on a single Mac or over a network; administrators can grant or deny users the ability to modify the standard installation.
Medical center
The center of the package is MacTools Clinic, which combines most of the utilities into one application, including the Anti-Virus, FileFix, DiskFix, Undelete, Optimizer and RAMboot tools.
By default, MacTools Clinic boots to a QuickAssist screen with check boxes of common problems, such as crashes, delays or lost files. You simply check the symptoms that apply, and MacTools Clinic automatically performs the appropriate tests. If you prefer, you can bypass the QuickAssist screen to bring up the main MacTools Clinic window and manually pick the tools you wish to use.
With the TrashBack extension installed, MacTools Clinic was outstanding at recovering deleted files, with a higher success rate than Norton Utilities. Most utilities of this kind simply record the location of deleted files; if the file system thereafter decides to write over them, they're gone. TrashBack improves on this in two ways. First, it attempts to keep the file system from overwriting deleted files as long as there's enough free space. Second, it maintains a (user-modifiable) list of files to ignore, so your list of deleted files won't be filled by dozens of temporary files that you normally never (and don't want to) see.
With TrashBack off, MacTools' recovery methods were more spotty and did not perform as well as Norton Utilities when the latter's FileSaver protection feature was turned off.
Tools of the trade
The MacTools Anti-Virus utility can scan individual files, folders, disks and Aladdin Systems Inc.'s StuffIt archives for viruses. It can perform background tests, check files when they're opened and watch for disk initializations when Clinic is not running. These virus-protection capabilities are a small but significant improvement over John Norstad's free Disinfectant utility but not as full or elaborate as the $99 Symantec AntiVirus for Macintosh 4.0.
MacTools' AutoCheck feature can perform a customizable set of disk and virus checks in the background when your Mac is idle. It can fix many problems automatically without user intervention and save a report of its actions. Unlike Norton Utilities' background checking, which keeps no record of its activity, AutoCheck creates reports that can be directed to a network administrator's machine. AutoCheck also keeps a record of crashes and can display a graph showing the frequency of crashes over the past week or month.
MacTools' Optimizer for defragmenting and reorganizing disks is no speed demon, but it is trustworthy, with optional integrity checks before and after optimization.
RAMboot lets you automatically create and use a start-up RAM disk on most Macs after the LC II. This is a great convenience for novices and Duo owners, but mavens probably know how to do this manually. Also, the RAM disk takes up about 3 Mbytes of RAM, so it reduces available memory. As a result, sometimes sessions run from the RAM disk aren't as productive as identical sessions run from an emergency floppy disk.
MacTools Backup is little changed in this release. It will back up to any Finder-mountable media, including floppy disks, SyQuest and Bernoulli cartridges, and most DAT mechanisms. It's a respectable medium-duty backup program with an awkward interface that will require heavy use of the manual. We often had to wait while it insisted on doing something we didn't want, such as cataloging an entire hard disk we didn't want backed up. Still, at the cost of some convenience, it gets the job done, offers compression and encryption, and lets you schedule backups to run automatically whenever you choose.
DriveLight and FastCopy are both useful tools. DriveLight is a control panel that displays peripheral activity with small flashing icons in the menu bar. FastCopy can duplicate floppies (including disks formatted for Intel-standard PCs) and can read and write Apple DiskCopy images and its own proprietary image files.
Performance
For major disk problems, MacTools Pro is almost on a par with Norton's Disk Doctor. One advantage of MacTools is its capability to undo DiskFix repairs that didn't help -- a rare but not unknown problem with disk utilities. However, Norton Utilities provides a "volume saver" feature that can restore an otherwise unrecoverable volume and also includes a disk editor that experts can use as a last resort. The bottom line is that MacTools Pro is very good, but Norton Utilities is still the champ for serious recovery needs.
For minor problems, such as bad bundle bits, damaged resource forks and incorrect modification dates, we found MacTools consistently better. In these areas, Norton more often found and fixed problems that weren't problems, such as mistakenly claiming that a file or folder's custom icon bits were set incorrectly or that a file's bundle bits should be turned off.
Documentation and support
Along with a decent manual, MacTools Pro contains a helpful set of on-line tip screens, called SmartTips, that offer advice on matters beyond the scope of MacTools itself, such as SCSI termination and INIT conflicts. These screens contain a small gold mine of information that novice users will appreciate.
Unfortunately, telephone support is available only on payment of a substantial fee. (Central Point offers several options; for occasional calls, it's either $25 per call or $2 per minute.) This is unacceptable. At the very least, users should have a brief period of free telephone support to take care of installation and start-up problems.
You can get free support on the major on-line services through Central Point's bulletin board or fax service.
Conclusions
Because Symantec purchased Central Point, it now owns the two best disk repair utilities for the Mac. MacTools Pro 4.0 is equal in value to Norton Utilities 3.1.
Although Norton Utilities is better at disk recovery in the really tough cases, most users with common problems will find MacTools Pro does an adequate job. TrashBack is the best undeletion utility on the market, and we preferred MacTools' background scanning to Norton's because it creates reports that let you confirm that the scanning has been done. MacTools also provides good virus protection, although it's not as good as Symantec AntiVirus for Macintosh 4.0. Novice users will appreciate the on-line tips for diagnosing and fixing problems beyond the scope of the software.
Whether Symantec is going to continue developing both MacTools Pro and Norton Utilities or merge them into a single package is not known. For the moment, you can't go wrong with either one.
The Central Point Division of Symantec Corp. of Beaverton, Ore., can be reached at (503) 690-8088; fax (503) 690-8083.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Reviews Page 39
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Power Macintosh 8100/110
By Dale Coleman
Apple's Power Macintosh 8100/110 packs a performance punch designed specifically for those who need the fastest Mac yet and are willing to pay for the privilege.
Its PowerPC 601 processor's 110-MHz clock rate -- 38 percent faster than the 8100/80, which until now was the fastest Mac made -- is primarily responsible for pushing this $6,379 (ApplePrice) model to the head of the personal computer procession.
The single available configuration supports the RISC processor with a 256-Kbyte Level 2 cache, 16 Mbytes of RAM, a CD-ROM drive and a 2-Gbyte hard disk. The $6,000 street price is about $1,100 more than an 8100/80 with a 1-Gbyte hard disk but otherwise similarly configured.
Is the 8100/110 worth that extra cash? If you're a solvent graphics professional, the answer is a resounding yes.
We put an 8100/110 through its paces with Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operations' MacBench 1.1. The results of the processor and floating-point tests supported our initial subjective impression of a 20 percent to 40 percent improvement over the 8100/80. The built-in video, however, is impressively fast, besting many video accelerator cards.
As the disk-mix scores show, the 2-Gbyte drive included in our 8100/110 was slightly slower than the 1-Gbyte drive in the 8100/80. Apple's bundled drives usually fall in the performance midrange; other 8100/110 units may offer slightly different performance, depending on drive manufacturer.
Overall, our unit was reliable during testing. The 8100/110 requires System 7.5.1, which ships with the unit; it cannot be booted with an earlier version.
Finally, Apple has included a new NuBus Controller chip in the 8100/110 (similar to the one in the Workgroup Server 9150) that supports the NuBus expansion chassis and should ease some difficulties with card-to-card data transfers. However, the NuBus runs at 37 MHz on the 8100/110 vs. 40 MHz performance on the 8100/80, so some data transfers can be slower. Overall system throughput is still faster on the 110, though, thanks to its faster processor.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Reviews Page 40
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Epson Stylus Color inkjet
With a resolution of 720 dpi, Epson raises bar for HP, Apple
By Rick LePage
In a market where resolution appeared to have topped out at 360 dpi, Epson America Inc. recently doubled the stakes with the shipment of the Stylus Color, a liquid inkjet device that boasts a maximum resolution of 720 dpi.
Epson uses a proprietary piezoelectric ink delivery technology to push the Stylus Color's resolution much higher than that of printers such as Apple's $525, 360-dpi Color StyleWriter 2400 and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s $719, 300-dpi (for color) DeskWriter 560C (see MacWEEK, Nov. 7, Page 39). Epson said this technology lets the $699 Stylus Color print a smaller ink dot with less splatter than other inkjet printers. The result is that you get more photorealistic output and richer colors than you normally would from a liquid inkjet printer.
Setting up
The Stylus Color is a light, compact unit, though not as small as the StyleWriter 2400. Like its immediate competitors, the Stylus Color is a serial-based unit, and you'll need to purchase a cable to connect it to your Macintosh. (Epson is planning to provide a $229 LocalTalk interface board to allow you to put the Stylus Color on a network, but we were unable to test it.)
Getting the printer up and running is simple. As with most low-end printers, the parts are minimal. Two ink cartridges -- one CMY, one black -- are supplied and snap easily into place. This is probably the most complex operation you'll have to perform with the printer.
The Stylus Color was designed to work with either Macs or Windows machines, and print drivers and documentation for both platforms are included. If you purchased a printer before the Macintosh driver was finished, you can get it from Epson or download it from either CompuServe or Epson's BBS.
It had been reported that GDT Softworks Inc. would write the Mac driver for the Stylus Color, but it ended up being written by Epson's Japanese parent, Seiko Epson Corp. The company did a good job: Printing with the Stylus Color driver is as straightforward as it is with any other Mac printer. In case you get stuck, there is built-in help that explains the different print options.
In addition to the driver, a background printing application is provided with the Stylus Color.
Proof in the printing
Early inkjet printers required special paper to print properly, but HP changed that with its DeskJet and DeskWriter models, which are able to print on plain paper with a minimal amount of ink splattering on the page. The Stylus Color will print on plain paper, but only at 360 dpi. If you want to print at 720 dpi, you'll need Epson's coated paper.
Epson offers two coated-paper stocks for the Stylus Color, one for 360-dpi output and one for 720-dpi printing. The 720-dpi coated paper lists for $25 for 200 sheets, while the 360-dpi paper sells for $21 for 200 sheets. These prices are much lower than the coated glossy stocks for other inkjet printers but are more than twice the cost of high-quality laser and noncoated inkjet paper.
The advantages of the coated papers are evident when you print a few sample sheets on different stock. Colors printed on the Epson papers are much richer and have less ink saturation through the paper. By contrast, color prints on noncoated paper are satisfactory, but the colors are nowhere near as vivid.
When printing monochrome text, the differences between the coated papers and plain paper are not as dramatic as they are for color output, but we think most people will opt for coated paper where possible for the best output. We found the 360-dpi paper very good for most color printing, preferring to use the 720-dpi paper for photos and final output.
We do have one caution, however, about the paper: If you inadvertently mix up the two coated paper types, there will be no way to tell them apart other than to try a test print. Lower-quality output will be obvious when you have printed on a piece of 360-dpi paper in 720-dpi mode.
Epson also sells transparency film and high-quality 720-dpi glossy paper, but most of the time you'll want to use plain paper or the primary coated papers.
Early next year, Epson also plans to provide backprint film for the best possible output on the Stylus Color. While we didn't test it with our unit, we saw a number of print samples and were very impressed with the film's level of detail and richness of color.
Although you are limited to 360-dpi resolution with the transparency film, slides we printed were as good as, if not better than, those printed with the Color StyleWriter 2400.
Performance
The Stylus Color's print speed at 360 dpi is comparable to its competition's. At that resolution, we printed a 10-page Microsoft Word monochrome text document in a little more than nine minutes, a color Adobe Illustrator file in five minutes, and a color ClarisDraw page in two and a half minutes.
In our tests at the 720-dpi resolution, the print times roughly doubled, even for plain-text files. Of course, the quality of the output at the higher resolution is more than worth the extra time, but for text-based files, we think you're better off sticking with the lower resolution. (The Stylus Color also has a 180-dpi draft mode for quick printing of text.)
In terms of compatibility, we had no problems printing from any Mac application we tried, including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint; Illustrator; Aldus FreeHand; Claris Corp.'s FileMaker Pro, ClarisDraw and ClarisImpact; and WordPerfect.
Conclusions
It's not often that we find a product that lives up to its advance hype, but the Stylus Color comes very close.
At 720 dpi, it provides by far the best output of any printer in its class. Even at 360 dpi, if you use Epson's coated stock, the Stylus Color outshines its competition. When printing on plain paper, the playing field is a bit more level.
The only drawback is that you'll have to spend a little extra money to print on the higher-quality paper stock. However, the flexibility inherent in the Stylus Color is impressive enough to make this a minor issue. In every other respect, Epson has truly raised the bar in the liquid inkjet arena.
Epson America Inc. of Torrance, Calif., can be reached at (310) 782-0770 or (800) 289-3776; fax (310) 782-4214.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: CD-Recordable software
Two new packages offer tools to burn your own discs
By Alan M. Chan
As the installed base of CD-ROM drives and the demand for discs reach significant proportions, many people are becoming interested in desktop systems they can use to create original discs. These CD-Recordable systems consist of specialized drives and mastering software used to record, or burn, the disc.
Two companies recently released new versions of their CD recording software, each of which works with several CD-R drives. Elektroson USA's $995 Gear for Macintosh Multimedia 2.4 and Incat Systems Software USA Inc.'s $1,495 Easy-CD Pro 4x 1.4 are primarily designed for premastering multimedia titles. (For information on CD-R-based data archival applications, see story, next page.)
Getting premastered
The most significant use of CD-R technology to date has been with CD-ROM developers who use it to premaster their final products. Premastering is the process of creating a few test discs before starting full-scale production of a CD-ROM.
To premaster a disc, you first gather the files to be included on the CD and create an image of the data. Both Elektroson's Gear Multimedia and Incat's Easy-CD Pro support two types of images: virtual and physical. A virtual image stores pointers to the original files, whereas a physical image contains a bit-for-bit copy of the subsequent CD volume. Using either application, you can also dump data directly from a Macintosh Hierarchical File System volume or a connected SCSI device and even copy audio tracks from an audio CD.
Though similar, each product has its own strengths and weaknesses for this process. Easy-CD Pro provides a more intuitive and easier-to-use interface. For example, as it imports files into the image, it lets you rename files and directories, create directories, and change file attributes. Gear Multimedia can import files only as they are in the Finder. You can create new folders, but you can't rename anything.
Easy-CD Pro can also show you exactly where a file will reside on the CD-ROM, which will be a major factor in the disc's performance. Gear Multimedia places files on the disc in the exact order that they were imported into the image.
Formats
Gear Multimedia offers many more formatting options, however. It supports writing to tape drives, which is a standard medium for delivering CD-ROM image files to CD-ROM manufacturers.
It can also create a number of foreign CD image files, including CD-I discs, as well as custom formats. Gear Multimedia can correctly write the post-gap after a CD-ROM session, which is important for multisession discs. Incat said that Version 1.5 of Easy-CD Pro, due this month, will include multisession support.
Both Gear and Easy-CD Pro support the CD-ROM industry-standard ISO 9660 format, but they also provide override measures that are specific for Mac users. For example, you can either keep the original Mac file name or be asked to choose an ISO 9660 file name for any file that does not conform to the standard. Gear can also automatically generate an ISO 9660-compliant name for the file. Gear and the forthcoming Easy-CD Pro Version 1.5 also offer support for hybrid CD-ROMs.
Recording a CD
Recording the disc is the most daunting step in each application, primarily because of the hardware requirements for the process. Our test bed consisted of a double-speed Phillips CDD521 Upgraded recorder with a 256-Kbyte cache and a Quadra 840AV with an internal DEC DSP3105S 1-Gbyte hard drive and an external Compaq 2112 1-Gbyte hard drive. We used a 500-Mbyte test folder consisting of 2,892 TIFF, Adobe Photoshop, sound, QuickTime, text and Photo CD files on the external drive.
We constantly ran into buffer underrun errors when the hard drive could not maintain a constant data stream to the recorder's drive head. Fortunately, both Gear and Easy-CD Pro provide a test function that determines if the source device can provide data quickly enough to the recorder at the selected recording speed. While this function usually provided accurate results, we did run into a problem with Gear once when it passed the test mode but ran into a buffer underrun error when we actually recorded the disc.
Recording the test folder as a physical image file to a CD in double-speed mode took about 30 minutes for each application, with Easy-CD Pro faster by less than one minute. There were significant differences in the time needed to create virtual and physical images, however. Gear created the 500-Mbyte virtual image about three times faster than Easy-CD Pro (5 minutes, 11 seconds vs. 15:51), but Easy-CD Pro was 25 percent faster at creating a physical image (16:49 vs. 22:36).
Documentation
Our biggest gripe about Gear is the quality of its documentation. The manuals are difficult to understand and can confuse even those who know what they are doing. Easy-CD Pro's manuals, on the other hand, are clear and to the point. They explain all the necessary concepts without getting lost in unnecessary details.
Conclusions
While CD-R technology has certainly made some major progress in the past few years, it is still relatively new and ample room exists for more developments.
Gear Multimedia and Easy-CD Pro each have their own strengths, but neither was able to completely satisfy our wish list. Gear is aimed at a more professional audience that needs and can take advantage of the extra formatting options it provides for CD-ROM development. Easy-CD Pro, on the other hand, is aimed at users with simpler needs or those who may just be getting started in CD-ROM development. Depending on your specific requirements, either product will help you along the path of CD-ROM production.
Elektroson USA of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., can be reached at (610) 617-0850; fax (610) 617-0856;elektro@sci.kun.nl.
Incat Systems Software USA Inc. of Campbell, Calif., can be reached at (408) 379-2400; fax (408) 379-2409.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Reviews Page 46
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Review: Meridian Data NetScribe 2000 2.1
By Alan M. Chan
Besides premastering multimedia titles, the other primary use for CD-R technology is for data archival. Meridian Data Inc.'s NetScribe 2000 2.1 lets multiple users access a single networked CD-R recorder for archiving their data. The $2,495 server software provides cross-platform capability so that both DOS/Windows and Macintosh users can write to and read from the same disc.
The $7,895 NetScribe 2020 server, which includes the NetScribe software, an unlimited user license and a double-speed Personal Scribe CD-R recorder based on a Phillips CDD522 mechanism, comes ready to be attached to an existing Ethernet/IPX network. Connectors are provided for both thin-net and 10BASE T networks. The NetScribe hardware includes an internal 215-Mbyte hard drive, which serves as a cache to ensure that the server can deliver data to the recorder in an uninterrupted stream.
The package also includes Access software for the clients and the files needed to communicate with the server. In its current version, the NetScribe software supports only Phillips mechanism-based CD-R recorders. Future support is planned for the Yamaha CDE100 and CDR100 quadruple-speed recorders, as well as the upcoming Sony 920 double-speed recorders.
Mac users connect to NetScribe through the Chooser. Once connected, you can use the server drive as you would a hard drive: copy files, launch an application, perform incremental backups, and erase or replace files with newer versions.
When finished, you log off so the next user can access the server. As you log off, you can either finalize the current session or place a checkpoint on it that allows subsequent writes to the server (by you or the next user) to occur in the current session. A disc that has not been finalized will not be readable by a regular CD-ROM player. The NetScribe server supports writing in either single- or multisession formats.
Proprietary extensions to the ISO 9660 standard support Mac file names and icons while maintaining compatibility with Intel-standard PC file names.
Some problems
Although the NetScribe system is a promising product, we ran into a number of problems while testing the server software. For example, while theoretically only one user is supposed to be able to access the server at a time, we were periodically able to log on two or more users at once. Sometimes having multiple users crashed the server and required a restart of both the server and the connected users, while at other times no problems were encountered. The system would also sometimes fail to recognize a log-off and prevent anyone else from accessing it, and it would occasionally lose connection during a file transfer.
While none of these errors led to data loss, the prevalence of these bugs makes us doubt the stability of the product. Calls to Meridian often confirmed our problems but did not offer any working solutions.
Conclusions
Meridian Data's NetScribe takes us one step closer to using CD-R technology as an archival tool. However, the many problems we encountered lead us to suggest that you wait until some of the bugs have been worked out. If Meridian can address some of these issues quickly, it could have a very appealing product, but the current version needs work.
Meridian Data Inc. of Scotts Valley, Calif., can be reached at (408) 438-3100; fax (408) 438-6816.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Reviews Page 47
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
ProductWatch: Steady growth for Power Mac tools
Third-party vendors have consistently released Power Mac tools for the developer community.
By Nicole Westmoreland
The Power Mac native application market has picked up speed from forward-thinking companies that have forged ahead to produce third-party developers tools.
One such pioneer, Metrowerks Inc., released CodeWarrior, which lets developers port programs from 680x0-based Macs to Power Macs. The environment works in C, C++ and Pascal and includes compilers, linkers, a syntax coloring editor, standard ANSI C and C++ libraries, and a new application framework, called PowerPlant. The tools also use Apple's new Universal headers for 680x0 and Power Mac development.
Dennis Cohen, a senior software engineer at Claris Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif., said, "CodeWarrior is fast and convenient, and I didn't have to jump through hoops to make it do what it should do."
Cohen also said CodeWarrior's debugger is somewhat fragile but that each release brings improvements. Claris used CodeWarrior for Power Mac versions of ClarisWorks, MacDraw, Impact and MacWrite Pro.
The tools come in two versions: Bronze and Gold. The Gold generates both PowerPC and 680x0 code; the Bronze generates 680x0 code only. Both versions run on 680x0 Macs or Power Macs.
Multifaceted
Another multilanguage tool, The Debugger from Jasik Designs, has received high marks from its users. It is a low- and high-level debugger, allowing users to trace program execution and view the values of variables of compiled programs in C, C++, Pascal and Fortran.
The Debugger has a source-end assembly-level debugger, coverage analysis and memory protection, which no other debugger has. "You can debug INITs, control panels or anything at source level and can drop to assembly when you need to," Claris' Cohen said.
But the tool has too many features for the occasional user, Cohen said. "The interface is somewhat daunting, and it's easy to lose track of how to use the many features," he said.
Another Power Mac programming environment that integrates C, C++ and Pascal is ACI US Inc.'s Object Master. It includes a source-code editor, project window, flexible browser to edit select pieces of code and class tree window for object-oriented programmers. The environment comes in two versions: Object Master and Object Master Universal. Object Master supports C and C++ languages, and Universal has a built-in syntax checker and parser for C, C++ and Pascal.
Joel Powers, software engineer for CE Software Inc. in West Des Moines, Iowa, said the editor in Object Master is the best he's ever used. Powers is developing on a Quadra 840AV, and the only problem he's had in development is a buggy Symantec C++ compiler.
Motorola Inc.'s PowerPC C, C++ and Fortran compilers have also been ported to Power Mac. They require Apple's Macintosh Programmer's Workshop. The compilers let developers optimize code for each present and future chip implementation.
C and C++ only
Among tools just for C and C++ is XVT-Power++ from XVT Software Inc. "I had my application up in one week after using XVT-Power++ to port my code," said David Marrow, director of development for the Procurement Automation Institute in Boulder, Colo. Marrow builds procurement systems for NASA using XVT's tools on a Power Mac 6100.
The XVT-Power++ application framework integrates Rogue Wave Software Inc.'s Tools.h++ data structures and includes portable images, native font access and a hypertext help system. Marrow gave XVT Software's support high marks.
Some of the key features of Symantec Corp.'s environment are the Think Class Library for building Power Mac-compatible applications, a visual architect, a new Think inspector and a C++ compiler. Symantec said a version of its compiler front end will be in a future release of Apple's MPW compiler for the Power Mac, code-named Rainbow. Recently, Symantec announced a cross-development kit that works with System 7.0. However, this may be merely a preview of coming attractions. Symantec, however, has not fared as well in support.
Apple's Power Mac development kit has undergone a name change, from Macintosh on RISC to MPW Pro for both 680x0 and Power Mac development. These C and C++ environments are closely related, since all the MPW Pro software is included in ETO (essentials, tools and objects). ETO includes Symantec's C++ 680x0 tools and has automatic updates for its users; MPW Pro users buy updates separately.
MPW Pro has an integrated multiwindow text editor and command shell, a C and C++ compiler for the Power Mac, and an assembler for 680x0 Macs and Power Macs.
"The ability to use MPW Pro and ETO for large groups, as well as the customization of the tools, is the best feature for my needs," said Alex McKale, senior engineer at Blyth Software Inc. in Foster City, Calif. However, McKale added, "I don't feel Apple is putting enough resources into the tools."
Among visual interactive programming development systems are VIP-C and VIP-BASIC from Mainstay. These tools include an application framework, integrated resource editors, on-line access to all Mac toolbox calls, an intelligent debugger and an interface event dispatcher.
"With VIP-C, you can program in C and still bypass Mac interfaces, which slowed my development down," said David Zahniser, vice president of scientific affairs for Cytyc Corp. of Wellesley, Mass. "You can create sophisticated applications with minimum problems."
Interact, visually
Recent developments in another language, Fortran, include Language Systems Corp.'s LS Fortran for the Power Mac, which is in beta. It's an ANSI Fortran77 compiler with advanced diagnostics and a highly optimized code generator. It generates native code to create Fortran programs. Programs can run in the background, and text output appears in a scrolling window.
The company said it expects to increase the compile and execution speed by four to 10 times for large programs on the Power Mac.
"LS Fortran is a great system, especially when you compare it to PC-based development tools," said John Eidinger, president of G&E Engineering Systems in Oakland, Calif. But one area Eidinger said needed work is the compiler.
LS Object Pascal from Language Systems is also in beta testing for the Power Mac. As one of the few Pascal compilers on the market, many developers will be hungry to try it.
The Pascal compiler was developed in partnership with Apple and is fully compatible with Apple's Object Pascal Version 3.3. The Power Mac version has new runtime diagnostics.
"There were some code-generation problems, but nothing we didn't expect, since we were working with its alpha and beta versions," said Howard Shere, president of Green Dragon Creations in Water Valley, Miss. "And the problems were resolved quickly."
Another Fortran compiler, the Fortran77 software development kit, is available from Absoft Corp. This kit has been designed and optimized for Power Macs. It includes an optimizing compiler, a linker and a multilanguage source-level debugger. It's also fully compatible with MacFortran II Version 3.3 for the 680x0 platform.
"There's no deficit at all from [680x0] to the Power Mac platform. All I had to do was write a few lines of code and ported it right away," said Adam Brower, a Mac programmer with Lindo Systems of Chicago. "F77 suffers from all of the problems compilers on a new technology have -- it's not lightning-fast," Brower said. "But Absoft has made it easy for developers to export code from Macs to other platforms."
To translate 680x0 code to PowerPC assembler source code, MicroAPL Ltd.'s PortAsm for Macintosh is available. The original source code is analyzed to determine the context of each instruction and then an efficient PowerPC equivalent is produced. The objective of this tool is to let developers keep one copy of source code for both targets, producing reliable code in both environments.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
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: Can Doubler hit be duplicated?
Unless your heart stumbles and your stomach sinks when you contemplate the next two years, punctuated as they apparently will be by new landmarks along the road leading to the final disintegration of yet another administration, things are looking up.
In San Francisco the taxi drivers are happy and secure in the knowledge that their pockets will be a little fatter next month. That's because Macworld Expo draws more attendees to the city (and thus into the clutches of the city's various and sundry merchants) than any other San Francisco event, planned or otherwise. The Knife favors increased convention revenue as much as the next nosy snoop, but the real meaning of the expo is found in cool product and rumors of cool product.
Sometimes it's easy to spot winners. One of the biggest hits last January was Connectix RAM Doubler. With sales in the intervening months since the introduction at just over the half-million unit mark, it's not surprising that the January expo is considered good luck around Connectix when the topic of product introductions arises. But RAM Doubler's going to be a tough act to follow, given that it does what it does so well.
Up next
The odds of two consecutive Connectix home run hits may not be very good, but the company is going to make the attempt. Sources are spreading the word that Connectix will announce and shortly ship a mysterious new product. These sources are being coy, but did divulge it's a highly optimized, very intelligent and very well-done replacement for Apple's disk cache. Draw your own conclusions, but you should know that the product has tentatively been christened "SpeedDoubler," assuming the name passes muster with the trademark crowd.
The next two products from the Connectix hit factory are RAM Doubler for Windows and QuickCam for Windows, which the privileged class will see in private expo demos. That slick, little QuickCam, by the way, is also a huge winner; so much so that they're back-ordered to the tune of several thousand units.
Can't get enough
Newer Technology also seems to subscribe to the school that says: Announce at Macworld Expo if at all possible. It's going public with an accelerator for those Macs already equipped with Apple's Power Mac upgrade card. If you have to ask which, then you probably don't own or have access to a Quadra 700, 900 or 950.
The Power Pump, whose name will surely win some award from the National Committee on Gratuitous Evocation, accelerates both the 601 on the Power Mac upgrade card and the original 68040, so you can stop fretting about when Apple is going to do something about the speed of its emulator. Instead, run those 680x0 applications on the original 68040 processor on the logic board. So if you don't mind an accelerator that has one leg firmly planted in the empty ROM socket and the other planted in that NuBus slot that's partially blocked by Apple's upgrade board, the Power Pump may be a temporary cure for those speed-bump blues.
Bumpy ride
The Power Mac 8100/110 may be the new king of the Mac hill, but the glory that is RISC computing will shortly be portioned among three additional new models. This object lesson in sharing starts at the expo when Apple formalizes the arrival of the speed-bump replacements for the original Power trio: the 6100/66, the 7100/80 and the 8100/90. What could be simpler?
If you think the Knife's going to hang around during the holidays waiting for the opportunity to reward a kind and generous tipster with a MacWEEK mug, then you've done your homework. The worth of your tip is revealed at (415) 243-3544, fax (415) 243-3651, Internet (mac_the_knife@macweek.ziff.com), AppleLink (MacWEEK) or CompuServe/ZiffNet/Mac.
MacWEEK 12.12.94
Mac the Knife Page 94
(c) Copyright 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
