>From: SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc Subject: Murph's VAPORWARE column for March 1990 Date: 25 Feb 90 02:32:33 GMT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ VAPORWARE Murphy Sewall From the March 1990 APPLE PULP H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter $15/year P.O. Box 18027 East Hartford, CT 06118 Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739 Permission granted to copy with the above citation Quicker, Redesigned Apple IIgs. The new Apple II CPU Promised by John Sculley for September 1989 (if Microsoft is frequently a year late delivering promised new products, should Apple be any different?) has finally shipped to beta test sites. Currently known only as the ROM 04 machine, it's not a radical departure from the current ROM 03 IIgs. Some features are subject to change. The video resolution will be improved to 600 by 400 and the one MHz video problem has been fixed by adding a new graphics processor. Writes to the video screen are at full CPU speed and the improvement is dramatic. The beta test model is shipping with a 5.8 MHz chip (being pushed to 7 MHz), but an even faster version may be installed by the time the product is announced. Apple is experimenting with the slot architecture. There may be some sort of 16-bit extension to the current 8-bit Apple II standard, or the slot speed may simply be a separate control panel option. Although the beta version doesn't have the SWIM chip to make it possible to read IBM and Macintosh high density 3.5 inch formats, it's not too late to add that feature. Most existing IIgs programs which are copy protected fail to run on the ROM 04 machines. Deprotected versions work. A decision to market a new IIgs hasn't been finalized, but the planning date is September 1990. - found in my electronic mailbox (note: there are more details here than I gave Cringely for the 29 January InfoWorld column; I did want one of his coffee cups, but I also saved some of the good stuff for my friends) Even More New Apple II Products From Apple. Operating System 6.0 for the IIgs featuring some new sound tools and other toolsets should be released in the near future. HyperCard IIgs (see columns from last month, last December and last August) is likely to be delayed. The beta test version is too slow and requires too much memory (would you believe 2 Mbytes of RAM and 4 Mbytes of disk space?). On the plus side, the new DMA SCSI card should be announced this Spring (possibly along with OS 6.0). It will transfer 1 meg per second on a IIgs and 1/2 meg per second on a IIe for an apparent speed increase 3 times greater than the existing Apple SCSI card (the ROM 04 IIgs described above may come with this SCSI capability built in). Along with the new SCSI card, look for drivers for the Apple scanner, the LaserWriter 2SC, the new Apple laser printer described below, and a streaming tape backup system. The new card will retail for $129. - more goodies found in my electronic mailbox Mac IIxi. The enhancement to the Macintosh IIx expected this month will be more than simply a CPU speed increase to 25 MHz. Upgrading a IIx will require a motherboard swap, and don't be surprised to find LaserWriter SIMMs ($700 per Mbyte; available only from Apple) inside. - InfoWorld 12 February An Order of Magnitude Faster. Motorola's new 25 MHz 68040 CPU processes 20 million instructions per second (MIPS) which is about one-third faster than the originally anticipated 15 MIP performance. A 25 MHz 68030 delivers about 6 MIPS. Even more impressive is the floating point performance of 3.5 megaflops (compared to 0.25 megaflops for the 25 MHz 68030 with 68882 math coprocessor). The 68040 is a 32-bit microprocessor with 8K bytes of internal cache memory and built in math coprocessor - features shared with the Intel i486. Samples should be available this month at a price of $795 - almost four times the combined price of a 68030 and 68882 math coprocessor combination. Motorola expects to offer a 50 MHz version of the 68040 in about a year. The first computer using the new Motorola CPU could appear in the form of the NeXT color computer announcement as early as next month. - PC Week and InfoWorld 22 January What to do (with) NeXT. Steve Jobs' NeXT computer desperately needs applications software and peripherals if it is to be taken seriously by the mass market it needs for economic survival. As many as six (oh wow!) major new applications are expected by summer. Third party developer Dyna Communications plans to supply one truly needed peripheral - a 3.5 inch floppy drive (due to be announced this month). - Wall Street Journal 18 January Look Ma, No Modem! IBM and Motorola have announced a joint venture firm, ARDIS (Advanced nationwide Radio Data Service), to develop a wireless hand-held computer that can communicate with a network host using radio waves. The new online service would utilize IBM's existing network which already covers 90% of the U.S. The proposed hand-held computer would have instant access to the network at 4800 baud (speeds up to 19.2K bits per second have been documented in metropolitan areas). IBM wants to use the technology in buildings and will offer wireless networking in future products. - InfoWorld 5 February and Computer Chronicles 10 February Laptop Workstation. Toshiba is developing a SPARC-based Unix laptop for later this year. A unit with 4 Mbytes of RAM will retail for about $7,000. - PC Week 12 February "Phonebook" Laptops. NEC, Toshiba, and Zenith all are working on a new "phonebook" class of portable computers for release later this year. These eight to ten pound laptops will be built around the 80386SX CPU and use 2.5 inch instead of 3.5 inch floppy drives. - InfoWorld 12 February Vest Pocket Lotus. Texas Instruments and Lotus have joined to produce a hand held 1-2-3 pocket computer. Small enough to fit in an inside jacket pocket, the 512K RAM with 1-2-3 version 2.2 in ROM and two optional 1 Mbyte RAM/ROM card slots unit features a (very small) QWERTY keyboard and a 55 column by 16 line LCD display. Optional PC-Link software permits file transfers with the desk PC back at the office. - InfoWorld 22 January The Osborne Lives. Adam Osborne, president of Paperback software, for whom the famous (or infamous) Osborne portable computer was named, has joined a partnership with Silicon Valley Technology to market Indian-made i486 motherboards in the U.S. Osborne says an i486 system with 4 Mbytes of RAM, a floppy drive and a small hard drive will retail for $4,200. - InfoWorld 5 February New Apple Printers. Even though Apple sold it's Adobe stock, the two companies continue to cooperate. Apple will soon announce a new low-end ($2,500) four page per minute LaserWriter (Postscript printer) that actually produces pages at nearly that speed. At the high end, a color LaserWriter is planned for the end of the summer. Also, there is likely to be an Apple version of the Adobe fax board that turns any Adobe Postscript printer into a plain paper fax machine. - InfoWorld 29 January Atari's STacey is for Real. After a couple of false starts, Atari's portable ST (known as the STacey) is finally on the market (see last June and October's columns). - Seen on the Computer Chronicles 10 February New Apple II Accelerator. Applied Engineering will be replacing the current Transwarp II accelerator with a new model (that will cost $20 more) during the second quarter. Company spokespeople deny that Zip Technologies' successful suit against the Rocket Chip had any bearing on the redesign (uh huh). - found in my electronic mailbox What will "Ivan" Think of Sticky Bear Bop? A Canadian group will be marketing Apple II compatible computers in the Soviet Union. - An advanced peek into the May 1990 InCider from Joe Abernathy Latest on the "Golden Gate." InfoWorld's Cringely still believes in the simultaneous Mac and Apple IIgs computer code-named Golden Gate (see the November 1988 column), but Apple insiders tell me that what Cringely hears comes from engineering while the marketing types have "concept tested" the product with K-12 educators and found the whole idea seriously wanting. The problem is the Golden Gate will cost nearly as much as a Mac SE and a IIgs. At those prices, educators say they'd rather buy two computers rather than only one. - found in my electronic mailbox When Ingenuity Fails. Third party developer Applied Ingenuity has had a falling out among partners. The departure of the firm's technical wizard has shelved the Apple II video tape backup card (advertised last Fall), the 100 Mbyte Innerdrive, and several other products. - found in my electronic mailbox Pagemaker 4.0 for Windows 3.0. Aldus has made it clear that it will follow up its announcement of Pagemaker 4.0 for the Macintosh with an MS-DOS product as soon as Microsoft releases Windows 3.0 (currently projected for April, but the date has slipped so often already that any month after this one is credible). Once Windows 3.0 is released, look for a Windows version of Adobe Type Manager (bringing something resembling Display Postscript to the MS-DOS world). - PC Week 22 January and InfoWorld 12 February dBase IV 1.1 Update. Beta testers say to expect delivery of dBase IV version 1.1 (see last month's column) in the second quarter. Apparently there are problems with the program's installation procedure as well as some remaining unresolved bugs. Meanwhile, Ashton-Tate has shipped the dBase compiler to beta testers. Insiders expect a long test period. - PC Week and InfoWorld 5 February