mac week v 1 n 14

M Pay as you use Companies turn to shareware Page 20 The color of success The rise of Cricket Software Page 25 Window On Presentations, modems, printers Page 30 Ben Calica says of Mac Expo: “Ttsgoing tobea wonderful show, T'm very interested tosee what stu Will be available 1 forthe Mac IL” Reviews MicroPhone, PowerPoint Page 45 ZOOMIN Macintosh goes to Boston Whats hotter than a boiled lobster ora Roger Clemens fastball? This week's Mac Expo shapes up asthe biggest Macintosh show ofthe yer. “More than 25000 business users and Mac enthusiass will pack the 700 exhibitor booths at Boston's Bayside Exposition Center to ogle breakthrough products and technologies. Complete expo coverage begins on Page 3; for an A-Z show preview tn to Page 16. AJUX delayed until end of year BY ABIGAIL CHRISTOPHER MacWEEK Staff ‘CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple's UNIX forthe Mac I wll not ship until December or even Inter, according to the company “AMOX will ship around the end ofthe year,” said Charlie Oppenheimer, manager of Macintosh product development. It runs now, ‘but not withthe quality [Apple] insists on.” ‘Apple had previously announced that A/UX ‘would ship this fl. Beta testers agreed the operating sytem is not ready. “I's quite obvious tha it's gota long way to go," one said Some said Apple has successfully developed UNIX forthe Mac, but ‘many have said Apple needs to provide a Mac- like UNIX before A/UX is complete ‘Apple as planned to provide A/UX users with acess to the Macintosh Toolbox so a “Mac-like interface could make UNIX applica- tions on the Mac more user-friendly. “The Toolbox is partially available, but there is no source code available for developers to create a Maclike interface forthe applica tions they develop,” a developer said AJUX reportedly is not compatible withthe Mac's operating system's disk manager, print ‘manage, disk initialization, device driver sound, serial, AppleTalk and SCSI drivers. IBM, Tandy fight for Apple’s schoolyard BY ELINOR CRAIG MacWEEK Staff NEW YORK — Two leading makers of per sonal computers took aim last week at Apple's first-place position inthe higher-education mar- ket by announcing aggressively priced PCs. With the move, IBM and Tandy appeared to ive anod of approval tothe Macintosh design. IBM's PS)2 Model 25, the lowest-priced ‘See TANDY, Page 52 Apple sets software future HyperCard bundled with every Mac BY JONATHAN LITTMAN MacWEEK Staff BOSTON — Apple Computer this week wil introduce the next strategic leap inthe evolu tion ofthe Macintosh: HyperCard Apple executives say the controversial sys tem software wil be as fundamental tothe Mac as the AppleSoft programming language was fo the Apple I Some observers view the Mac Expo une ing, made in tandem with Apple's new Finder and System, as a poignant reminder to business users tht IBM’s promised operating sytem — (08/2 —is sill mont aay. ‘The announcement that HyperCard willbe bundled with every Macintosh starting this eek (and offered to all other Mac uses for See HYPERCARD, Page 52 MultiFinder juggles applications BY CLAIR WHITMER MacWEEK Staff BOSTON — Malttasking onthe Mac has rived, or has it? The MultFinder, long refered to as lugler, willbe exhibited in the Apple boot his week in Boston and willbe bundled with all Mac computes by the end of September. The product will give users ofthe Mac ‘See MULTIFINDER, Page 52 TAKE A PICTURE. ANY PICTURE. Itcan be a photograph, art- work, a technical drawing. Feed it into the Microtek Ineligent Image Scanner, and INCOMPARABLE VALUE. For ascanner this sophisticated, you'd expect to make a heavy investment. But the Microtek Image ner is less than the cost of a laser printer and can pay for itself inno time in saved labor and production costs. It’s simply the best way to improve your publish- sharpest Oe p printer can handle ing image. For more information call 800-654-4160 (Inside California 213-321-2121). And be sure to ask about the MACINTOSH OR IBM COMPATIBLE. Microtek OCR Scanner as The Microtek Scanner can be used with either well, which integrates text MICROTEK And naturally, it works with the most popular publ and images. software for both. 6901S. Western Wve, Gardena, CA See us at MACWORLD Expo « August 11-13 « Booth 500 We are showing MS-300A, MSF-300C, MS-300C, SCSI Interface Mac WEEK NEWS Aug. 11, 1987 0 3 CONTENTS NEWS HyperCard is expected to spawn numerous new products 06 Apple will introduce ImageWriter LQ, fax modem, EtherTalk card at Mac Expo 06 Sun Microsystems announces competition forthe Mac II B Expo expectations: What to look for in Boston 16 Many companies are turing to “shareware” —thepay-as-you-usesoftware 20 Business Watch: Microsoft acquires Forethought to bolster graphics position 25 Winpow On, Desktop presentations: Animated presentation systems generate excitement 30 Modems: Telecommunications is becoming routine in business 3 Printers: Today's sophisticated printers have users looking for more features 38 Reviews Software Ventures’ MicroPhone terminal emulation package 45 Forethought's PowerPoint desktop presentation package 4 ‘What’ ot in newspapers m4 MarketWEEK on data communications 2 John Edwards: Communicating 41 Steve Rosenthal: Visible Results 2 Lawrence Magid: The Long View 4 Mac the Knife st LATE NEWS Software Supply to introduce tools for power users SUNNYVALE, Calif, — Two tool for Mac power users, PowerStation and Suitcase, willbe introduced by Software Supply this week at Mac Expo in Boston. PowerStaton isa platform fr opening applications and documents and is an altemative to Apple's Finder. Suitcase isa uility that allows Desk Accessories and fons tobe always avaiable without requiring that they be insted into the Syste ‘Both packages ar priced at $59.95. Each package includes Pyro! — a bonus sereen-saver util it that automatically blanks the Mac seen and display a fireworks show after ausersetable ‘amount of idle time. Software Supply is located at 599 N. Mathilda Ave, Sunnyvale, Calif 94086; (408) 749-9311. Fifth Generation set to launch Fastback for the Mac BATON ROUGE, La. — Fifth Generation Systems Inc wll introduce Fastback forthe Macintosh at Mac Expo in Boston, Fastback is a software program tat provides ahard-tsk backup and restores data from dam- aged disks. It can back up a 10-Myte disk in les than 10 minutes. Fastback is priced a $99.95, Fastback, which appears as an icon ona hard-disk menu, uses aproprietary-device driver that allows it direct acces othe disk. I commands the disk to transfer documents that have been selected. Fifth Generation Systems Inc. is located at 11200 Industriplex Blvd, Baton Rouge, La. 70809; (604) 291-7221 What a deal! SuperMac offers bigger disks for same price MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif, —SuperMac Technology wil discontinue its 20-and 40-Mbyte ‘external hard disks and begin shipping 30- and 60-Mbyte disk for nearly the same pice. ‘Continuing SuperMac’s wave of new products and product announcements the DataFrame ‘XP30 and XP6O SCSI dives will replace the XP20 and X40 and be priced at $1,195 and $1,695, respectively, according o Tom Rielly, SuperMac’s marketing manager. The company also plans to replace its DataFrame 40-40 package witha 60+40 package for $2,595 ‘SuperMacTechnology is located at 950 N. Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View, Calif. 94043; (415) 964-8884. MacPeak performance for SEs BY JIRI WEISS. MacWEEK Staff AUSTIN, Texas — A 25-MHz accelerator board that will make Macintosh SEs run twice as fast as Mac Is will begin shipping in Jan- uary by MacPeak Systems, the company sid ‘MacPeak, formerly Peak Systems, also announced itis dropping prices on its existing (rion accelerator boards and is shipping two new products, large-sreen monitor board that can be used with monitors fom atleast two manufacturers and a hardware print buffer. The acclerator board, tentatively named Orion 25 is based ona 25-MHz 68020 proces- sor, said Michael B, Shapiro, MacPeak’s presi dent. Ins the hardware design, however, that boosts the board's performance, he aid ‘The board uses 85-nanosecond RAM and a Think Technologies BY EMILY KAY Special to MacWEEK BEDFORD, Mass. — Think Technologies Inc ‘plans o introduce three new products atthe ‘Mac Expo: two add-ons to the firm's existing programming language environments and an extension othe Macintosh system fi ‘The add-ons, priced at $75 each, are eitor- FIFO (first in it out) data cache (dual-poted RAM), Shapio said. "It brings data in one side and kicks it out the other as opposed to a eau See MACPEAK, Page 4 debuts 3 products construction kis for Think’s Lightspeed C and Lightspeed Pascal compilers. They are designed to make it easier for programmers to add textediting capabilities to their Think developed programs. ‘The third product, HFS Navigator, wll be ‘one of oly two such products onthe market See THINK, Page 4 Living Videotext colors MORE BOSTON —The wave of color washing through the Mac industry has hit Living Video- text. Now a division of Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif, the company has added full- color support to it outlines and dsktop-pre- sentation package MORE. The new version LIC will be officially introduced here atthe expo and will start shipping immediatly Buyers ofthe color version wil receive the Desk Accessory outliner Acta, also in color, from Symmetry Corp of Mesa, Ariz, Users can get the MORE upgrade and Acta for $40. Living Videotext’s president, David Winer, stid the decision to bundle Acta was prompted by users’ requests fora Desk Accessory for use with MORE. “We could have built our own, but tis way we can tum our developing efforts to other ares,” said Winer. Version 1.1C, compatible with all Macs, lows selected words and phrases tobe high- lighted with color. Color aso canbe ineorpo- rated into the MORE bullet chats. Charts canbe enlivened with different co! ‘ons forthe thee elements of the file: the back- round, the inside of boxes and the outlines. To incorporate all the different options, Living Videotex invented what it tems “new user-interface technology,” Winer sid ‘The interface takes the form ofan outline of all the options available instead ofa conven- tional pull-down menu with ist of options. “If you've got alot of options, but they're not organized in a cohesive way, you get over loaded. The user doesn’t have enough room in his mind, So we had to inven anew user intr face,” said Winer. Living Videotextis at 117 Easy St, Moun- tain View, Calif. 94303; (415) 964-6300, Cricket ships one program, yanks another MALVERN, Pa. —One graphics software product is coming, but another ison indefinite hold, acording to Cricket Software. ‘Thats probably not a poor average indus- ‘trywide, but if you were counting on buying (Cricket Retouch, an image-processing and ‘painting program recently announced forthe Mac, kep counting. Meanvsil, in the here and now, Pict-O-Graph will be inroduced this ‘week at Mac Expo in Boston, Cricket Retouch is designed to manipulate 300-¢pi scanner images. “We found technical breakthroughs as we go into development. We ‘want fo bring tout inal its glory, probably Tate fall,” a company spokeswoman sai. ‘At $295, Pict-O-Graph sa library of graph- iesicons, which are prefab bit-mapped images, plus a variety of tools for customizing images. Pict-O-Graph is said to suppor all versions ‘of image Writer and Laser Writer. Cricket ofers ‘special “film-recorde version ofthe pro- gram, which translates images into high-resolu- tion, presentation-qualty color slides. Cricket Software is located at 30 Valley Stream Parkway, Great Valley Corporate Cen- ter, Malvem, Pa. 19355; (215) 251-9890. MacWEEK Aug. 11, 1987 NEWS MACPEAK Continued from Page 3 larcache, whichis just a chunk of memory.” ‘The board also includes a high-speed static RAM cache, which is used fo hold the contents ‘of ROM while the board i in operation, ‘A 68881 math coprocessor and 68851 smemory-management nit are optional. Orion 25 will be available in Ito 32- “Mbyte configurations. MacPeak plans to ship rion 25 next January wit a target pice fora [Mbyte uit of $3,995, Shapiro sad. THINK Continued from Page 3 that allow for instant folder and document access, according to Tink Viee resident Andrew Singer. At $59.95, Navigator is similar to Findswell from Working Software Inc. of Monterey, Calif, he said Think'seditor-constuction its, called CAPPS’ (CAPPS Prime), are for use onal Macs and provide programmers with ine-or- ented set of industria-strenth tools for adding textediing capabilities to their programs, CCAPPS' is based ona software library called PE (Program Edit), created by Think because the Mac Toolbox Text Edit package “didnot provide the performance or the fune- tionality we wanted forthe integrated editors in ‘our programming environment,” said Singer. ‘The products were name for Steve Capps, the member of the Mac development team who created Mac Toolbon’s original tex-edit tines. Users have complained the routines are slow with large amounts of tex. Think’s kits can quickly handle huge blocks of text, up 10 16 Mbytes of memory, Singer said ‘CAPPS’ consist ofthe same PE, GREP and volume navigation libraries used in ‘Think’s Lightspeed language products as well as complete documentation for those libraries. Also available are two complete, ready-f-use, stand-alone editors based onthe libraries PEait full-featured program-eltingappica- tion similar to the editor in Think’s Lightspeed Cand Apple Eat, a Desk Accessory program editor. Both come with documented, machine- readable source code ‘The kits are fr al levels of programmers, said Singer."We developed Lightspeed C and {many major developers] developed their products, like Adobe Illustrator, Quark XPress and PageMaker 20, using our languages,” he said. LHS Navigator adds functionality tothe (Open and Save commands of any standard “Mac application by providing ause-definabe, pop-up menu that affords instant acess to any folder ina volume. “This allows you to cut through a hierarchy and to go from the bottom of one hierarchy tothe bottom of another instantly,” said Singer. ‘Working Software’ product, which has been shipping fora few weeks at $49.95, func- tions only inthe Open command, according to Dave Johnson, president of Working Sofware. [Navigator allows users to create new fold- crs inthe Pt situation and to search a directory fora volume or folder by name or partial name. ‘Think Technologies is at 135 South Road, Bedford, Mass. 01730, (617) 275-4800. “MacPeak’s $495 large-screen monitor board, called Galaxy LS, can be configured for both single-page vertical “portrait” monitors and horizontal two-page “landscape monitors.” ‘The Galaxy LS will support monitors from Moniterm Corp, and from a second source sil under negotiation, Shapiro sad. Users ofthe Galaxy LS can switch between the large screen and the Mac's own screen with Desk Accessory included with the board. While other monitor boards limit the user one ype of monitor, the Galaxy LS board can be configured to work with different monitors, Dealers install the monitor board directly con op of the Orion accelerator board and ‘mount a connector in the expansion door on the back ofthe Mac. ‘The Galaxy LS is available immediatly. MacPeak also is shipping an $895 hardware LaserWrite buffer called PLUS-Spooler, hich provides considerably better perfor- mance than softvare spooks, Shapiro said ‘A software spooler lets the user get back to work once the Mac has converted the file into PostScript, Shapiro sid. “But the processor keeps on sending the parts othe file.” With the PLUS-Spooler, the Mac sends the whole PostScript filet the prin-buffer unit at ‘once, Shapiro said. "You dump it in our box, and ital tothe Laser Writer independent.” MacPeaki cutting its price on its 16-MHz Orion boards. The 2-Mbyte configuration is dropping from $1,995 to $1,795. MacPeak also is shipping a 1-Mbyte version for $1,495 and a 4-Mbyte version for $2,695 “MacPeak Systems is located at 1201 Spy- glass, Austin, Texas 78746; (512) 328-0747. to have We didnt make Just Ever since paper replaced cave walls as man’s favorite ve~ hiole for,expression, the attempt to communicate ideas has been an enduring source of frustration. ‘hat frustration has just been eased dramatically. Because Letraset introduces Readly, Set, Go! 400—an enhanced version of what InfoWorld called “the new champion among Macin- tosh desktop publishing programs” ‘Simply put, Ready Set, Go!40 tideas. Sinn is the easiest, fastest, most cre- ative way yet devised of helping you organize, visualize and edit your thoughts onto professional- Guay pages Infact, itremoves any mean- ingful distinction between what you can do at your desk and what might otherwise require large toget ong Jead times anda stu- dio full of designers. ‘The technically inclined will be pleased to note that it has Imagen: “If you can’t BY ELINOR CRAIG MacWEEK Staff SANTA CLARA, Calif. After long battle to establish its DDL page description language asa viable competitor with Adobe Systems” PostScript, Imagen Corp. has made a major concession by offering a PosScript-compat- ible language forthe ImageServer XP line of Taser printers Imagen plan to sel its poge-description language asa lower-cost, compatible altema- tive to Palo Alto, Calif.-based Adobe's PostScript, company spokesman Bob Angus said. "We can now handle many languages, ‘whereas PostScript i only one,” he said ‘The PosScrit-compatible language will become the third component, after DDL and {mPRESS, in magen's page-description sup- port strategy. Production deliveries are expect- ed to begin inthe fist quarter of 1988, but the language willbe shown a conferences this fall. MacWEEK NEWS Aug. 11, 1987 015 Imagen is licensed with Linotype fonts and provides font scalings, as does PostScript, according to Frank Lassman, Imagen’spresi- dent, Imagens implementation of the language emits printing of PostScript files without ‘modification to those files. “This acess tothe Linotype font library could give Imagen the edge it needs to compete against others,” said Craig Cline, associate edi- torof The Seybold Report. Imagen Corp. can be reached at P.O. Box ‘58101, Santa Clara, Calif, 95052-8101; (408) 986-9400. |_| beat ’em, join °em” I ‘It any easier a unique block architecture that enables you to envision the fin- ished page before it’ finished. Integrated word processing with real-time hyphenation that lets you create and design text and image simultaneously. Plus such essential tools'as arbi- trary runarounds, custom page sizes style sheets and support for high-resolution graphics, For those more concerned with the ultimate outcome of these features, Ready. Set, Go! 40 will help you make a raw concept blossom into a newsletter of finished elegance. ‘Transform random brainstorms intoa report of symphonic coher- ence, Or create a dazzling busi- ness ene from a jumble of brillant insights. And although other soft- ware packages may talk about do- ing all this, Ready Set, Go! 40 is ams ty Gls tem an ei tanner the only one that can actually put it- down on paper For more information, cluding the location of your near- est authorized Letraset. graphic design software dealer just call (800) 722-0377. If you purchase idy, Set, Go! 3.0 between June 1- st, you receive an upgrade at no chat Letraset & ESSELTE Layered bringing new accounting products to Mac Expo BY EMILY KAY Special to MacWEEK BOSTON — Layered Inc. hits Mac Expo this week with new products anda join develop- ‘ment agreement o expand it Insight account ing series. Layered will introduce several new mod- ules for it high-end Integrated Series, includ- ing an inventory-control package priced at {$595 and multi-user versions ofits General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivables, priced at $895 each. ‘The company will also introduce two entry- level, stand-alone products fr smaller firms: Insight One Writ, priced at $295, and Insight Alkin-One, at $595, The company will also announce a pact with Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. ‘The deal will involve joint marketing and development, a Layered spokeswoman sid. Layered’s product announcements are aimed at ensuring the company's role as & ‘major accounting-based developer for Macin- tosh software, acconding to Stephen Burakof, president of Boston-based Layered “We're broadening our product ine to make sure we remain the dominant solution for Macintosh-based accounting and financial management need,” said Burakof. Layered is among the five largest develop- rs of Macintosh software, Burakoff sid. “Accounting may not be one ofthe most colo- ful applications around, but it’s clearly where the sles dollars are,” he said Insight One Write is aimed at small service ‘companies and professional offices that use the “lance forward” accounting method, I offers tightly integrated general-ledgr,accounts- receivable and accounts-payable features, and its data-entry screen are modeled after the ‘one-wrte manual bookkeeping systems used by many small businesses. Available in September, Insight OneWrite allows users to fil out familar forms like ‘checks and deposit sips and automatically update the appropriate acount files. ‘The product provides automaton so users ‘won't have to lear a new accounting system, Burakoff ssi, “The combination of the Mac tosh interface andthe one- write forms approach is about as intuitive as you can get,” he sad Insight AlLin-One, available in November, isa stand-alone package for smaller manufac- turing distribution and retail businesses. It coffers fll integration among its general-ledger, receivables, payables, inventory, payroll and {job-costng components, according toa Lay- ered spokeswoman, ‘The multi-user versions of Insights Inte- sated Series modules let several users work on records atthe same time inthe same modules. Layered In., whose products run onal models ofthe Macintosh, is located at 529 Main St, Boston, Mass. 02129; (617) 242 7700. Apple peripherals harvest for Expo ‘BOSTON — Apple wil introduce the fllow- ‘ng hardware products this week at Mac Expo: ‘+ The ImageWriter LQ will fill long- standing gap in Apple's printer line. I isthe only Mac-compatible, wide-catiage, leter- quality, dot-matrix printer, price estimates from Apple run between $1,300 and $1,500. ‘Although nota PostScript printer, the LQ has variety of fonts inthe ROM and, subse- ‘quently, relatively high speed of pining: 115 characters per second in letter quality. ‘The ImageWriter LQ features a27-pin print head, which can print 216-by-216 dpi, three times the resolution ofthe Mac sereen, ‘The printer will be ready o ship late this year, according o Apple. The LQ has a 15- inch catiage with versatile paper handling capabilities, notably an automatic envelope feed, and up to three bins for feding in sheets. +The AppleFax Modem is intended to be a strong challenger in the expanding facsimile market, Manufactured inthe United States by Apple, the AppleFax Modem can lnk users to more than 2 million fax machines worldwide. ‘Image Writer LQ options include a four-clor ribbon fo high-resolution color text and graphics. Priced from $600 to $800, the stand-alone AppleFax Modem lets users exchange files with ther similarly equipped Macs — from ‘computer computer — at 9,600 baud. ‘AppleFax Modem features an auxiliary port soa standard modem can be daisychained onto itfor the full range of telecommuniations ‘The modem package includes two pieces of software for transatng documents into the Fa- simile format, AppleFax Resource converts files into Group 2 and Group 3 protocols, han- les document transmission to a facsimile address or delays the transmission ‘The AppleFax Applicaton program fea- tures multpe-file transmission; keeps the di tribution ist, address book and activity report; and allows user to send and receive facsimiles Without supers «The EtherTalk Interface Card will plug Mac Is into the popular Ethernet network, ‘making Apple more competitive in the engi- neering and business markets. ‘At $699, the EterTalk Interface Card pro- vides a faster networking altemative to AppleTalk, Apple said, With transmission rate of 10 megabits pr second, the card increases throughput dataintensive appica- tions and allows up to 254 nodes per network. Individual nodes can be 3,000 feet apar. ‘The EtherTalk card is manufactured for Apple by 3Com Corp of Santa Clara, Calif HyperCard’s “stackware” promises explosion of applications BY CLAIR WHITMER MacWEEK Staff BOSTON — When HyperCard hits Des Moines, there's going tobe pandemonium in that city’s users’ groups ‘That was the prediction of one analyst who had seen the application in action. There may bea similar reaction among software develop- ras the commercial possiblities of Hyper- Card ae realized. Hand in hand withthe unveiling of Hyper- Card will be atleast ive announcements of “sackware” products. Stackware is the erm used to describe software add-ons to Hyper- Card, “YyperCard has been seeded to 100 develop- er, some of whom will show stackware prod- ucts at Mac Expo. Or these, atleast two programs are aimed at the business market: Business Clas, a graph ics-oriened travel guide aimed atthe business traveler, and HyperDesk, a clien/project-dead- line manager. Both were designed by author anny Goodman and published by Activision. ach two-diskst sells for less than $100, Dialog information Services willbe using ‘HyperCard to provide a graphic log-in and consistent search formats for its on-line data services. The Whole Earth company is working ona stackware catalog, sid Apple representa: tives. Borland Intemational also wil be incor- porating HyperCard features in SideKick. ‘Accounting firms Arthur Young and Peat Marwick have received copies of HyperCard. If HyperCard finds a place inthe business aren, it wll probably be as an inexpensive and asy-{o-use alternative to database and on-line data services, according to analyst Bll Lan- genes of Creative Strategies of San Jose, Calif. Langenes said he estimates there willbe rough- ly 100 stackware products on the market by the end ofthe year and 1,000 by the end of 1988. Although two-thirds ofthese may be share- ware, Langenes said, he expect that at last five major traditional publishing companies will gt involved in marketing slackware, cen- tering onthe business and training arenas, Claris, Apple's spinoff software company, will ot bean active developer of stackware, said John Zeisler, vice president of marketing. Since the programming language, called ‘HyperTal, incorporated in HyperCard is very “Engish-like,” actual Macintosh software pro- gramming will become far less complicated. ‘Apple as already made an effort to pro- rote the stackware market by seeding Hyper- Card to developers a well as to 20 higheredu- «ation institutions. ‘Although these developers only received the product six weeks ago, at least ive stck- ‘ware products willbe ready by Mac Expo, and at east 10 more projects are under develop- ment. No technology license is required to market a product based on HyperCard,class- fied by Apple as basic Macintosh technology. But some analysts and developers think the precedent that Apple has set with HyperCard for low-cost software will scare away develop- ers who are not interested ina product for ‘which there may be minimal profit margin. To promote the new class of authors and developers it anticipates will spring up around HyperCard, Apple has setup a seven-pronged program, including a certified developer pro- gram, technical support, evangeism and seed ing, co-marketing suppor, and distributor and publisher “matchmaking.” ‘The target markets, in Apple's opinion, are ‘educators, courseware developers, instruction and traning designer, bares and informa- tion services “The ultimate marketplace is masive, potentially the size ofthe installed base ofthe “Macintosh,” sid Peter Black, president of Xiphias, a company that is producing a stack- are series called Time Table of History, in essence a HyperTalk encyclopedia ““HyperCard will spawn a whole different industry, run by people more concerned with editorial judgment than with bits and bytes,” Black sid. While writing a book about HyperCard, Goodman was smitten with ideas about how to use HyperCard in his own business. The results of his ideas willbe exhibited at Mac Expo. Goodman sai he feels the market for stack ‘ware is potentially a very lucrative one. Someone who is willing to take te calculated risk will do very well,” sid Goodman, He also said, however, that commercial stackware will have to compete with share- ware. “Even if a piece of slackware has the most spectacular information-handling abilities in the worl, ifit has amateurish-ooking sraphics, it won't have any perceived vale,” Goodman said. Potential problems for stackware develop- ers, Goodman said, will include the temptation to tum out products without adequate testing ‘due to the ease of programming and resistance from retailers unwilling to provide technical support for a product without a large markup. (Othe hidden traps awaiting future stack- ‘ware authors, according to Black, ae licensing complication arising from the use of graphics and sound. “There's almost nothin [in these areas} that isn’t licensed,” said Black. MaCUVEER EXECUTIVE EDTTOR Datel Ray News EDITOR Sona itn ARTDIRECTOR {be Veen ‘MANAGING EDITOR Bre Beer SENIOR EDITOR ey Nor ees) ‘TECHNICAL EDITORS Du Cau, Rc Fad Boss) SEIOR WRITERS, Absa Ces, Rik LePage Bos) ASSOCIATE EDTOR hates Haile ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR lod Kea Her ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Gal Wager ‘STAFF REPORTERS Elmar Cag. J Weis, Rusty Ws, (hr When, Cit aban ‘cory eprorsaciNaTORs Stay en Cs et, CONTRIBUTING EDrTORS Jon Eva, Lawrence Mai ‘Seve Roni BUSINESS MANAGER Kara aman ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANTS amas Cars, Mice Gaus INFORMATION DIRECTOR Emly Brower PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Ban Kinpaan PROMOTION DIRECTOR ya et RCULATION RECTOR Wit EDITORIAL CONSULTANT ew SHER Mie Toong ADVERTISING MANAGERS ‘iin uk (We), Bre Hered a) rand avers afc $2 ran 8 Fanci, aH 9161). East Ove Sq, Cantrige, MA (2139 (ainsi Pach Consus CHAIRMAN Gera Puch {RESDENTMErexecuTVEomceR Moe F Bigs ce reesmercaer FINANCIAL OMACER Don igereespevrmsiness vez. onsen ‘oRouPPuBLisHeR lcd Goat ae sa pete To we a een WE 5 Braman Sin Pcie CH 07, a= onan HS Wagon ‘ri So Sey et ¢ site US 0 osaer ess gS Pc ‘vl, ad aie alg tes ot aie “ rh Gener Tic ght (he Con! i a Sees ‘ihetpesa sto pe MASTER: Sn aes hangs MrsvEtk sume S Sn Fr ‘Sur Pee alow wel fr od chang posi National Semiconductor Wewere read for the Mac Ilalmost before they were. INTRODUCING THE NS8/16 MEMORY EXPANSION BOARD =~ FORTHE MACINTOSH IT National has been providing high- level add-in products for over a decade. We've helped well over a hundred thou- sand multi-tasking, multi-user business environments run faster and better. So even before Apple was ready with the new Mac" II, we were ready with the expertise and technology to help it work harder. In fact, we viewed the Macintosh” II as an ‘open’ invitation to provide power users with the right tools. And now we're proud to introduce the NS8/16 Memory Expansion Board, GET 4, 8, 12, OR 16 MBYTES OF RAM FEATURING: 1 Apple/UNIX® (A/UX) compatibility @ RAMAdisk software. @ Advanced NuBus™ support. Speed through memory hungry appli- cations like: CAD/CAM. Desktop Publish- ing. High Resolution Graphics. Big Macintosh and Mac are ademas of Apple Compute, ne LUNI isa registered trademark of ATR Bell abs Nuts isa trademark of Texas struments lnorporte 101987 National Semicandotor Corp. << Databases and Spreadsheets. Financial / Accounting packages. And Al Program- ming. Just to name a few. AND RUN A/UX MORE EFFICIENTLY High-end applications will run at top performance levels under A/UX. Without modifications. And the NS8/16 remains completely transparent to the user. Inthe Macintosh II operating system, the RAMdisk utility allows an application to treat the NS8/16 as one, or a series, of pseudo disk drives, accessing files at NuBus memory speeds So memory intensive applications will go much faster. As will switching between applications. ALL WITH QUALITY AND SUPPORT YOU CAN RELY ON Geta full 5-year warranty on the NS8/16. Backed by the leader in memory products. And customer service. National is the company you should think of for add-in products. Now, with our NS8/16 Memory Expansion Board. And in the future—you can expect to see a whole line of add-in products for the Mac IL It's experience that lets us make a promise like that. So now that you have the Mac I ready to run, you know who. can help you see how far it can go. FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL THE COMPATIBLE PRODUCTS GROUP AT 800-345-4006 OUTSIDE OF CALIFORNIA CALL 800-538-8510 National Semiconductor [| MacWEEK [| Aug. 11, 1987 NEWS Apollo brings custom tool kit to X-Windows BY RICK LEPAGE MacWEEK Staff CHELMSFORD, Mass. — Apollo Computer Inc. recently broadened it network computing strategy wih the introduction of Open Dis Togue,a graphic interface tol kit for applica: tions that run on Apollo, Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corp. and IBM works tions under the X-Windows network environ ment MegaGraphics’ monitor offers multiple resolutions BY ABIGAIL CHRISTOPHER MacWEEK Staff BOSTON — MegaGraphics Inc. of Canoga atk, Calif, wll amounce the MegaSereen 2001 Video System, a Mac T-compatile ver sion ofits 19-inch, 124-by-900-pine, ‘monochrome monitor, tis week at Mac Expo. MegaGraphics was previously known as Micrographic Images. The change of name also will be announced atthe show. The $1,995 MegaScreen 2001 supports rmliple resolutions. Is standard resolution of 1,024-by-900 pixels is suitable for desktop publishing engineering and design-intensive tasks. But users can select 512-by-348pinels to ‘maintain full fot size onthe large screen. The MegaScreen 2001 Video System also includes a NuBus design interface card that provides mulile sockets for clock oscillators to regulate video output speed. ‘Two sockets are provided with the system, (One regulates video output compatible withthe ‘monitor, the other is NTSC- and PAL compat ble for standard American, Japanese and Eur pean videotaping of black-and-white graphics and animation produced on a Mac Tl MegaScreen 2001 also includes MegaTalk 220 software tha allows bulletn-board system displays, messages and applications like CAD and desktop publishing to run atthe same time. ‘The video interface kit, including the video card, cable and software, is available separately for $795. Without the video card, the monitor iscalled the MepaScreen Il and costs $1,295. ‘MegaGraphics also announced the color MegaBrot Card, which allows the Mac I 10 generate @ Mandelbrot set of mathematically intensive computer: graphics tasks. Developed by Benoit Mandelbrot, a renowned computer-graphics scholar, the Man- delbrot set is a group of complex. graphic rou tines represented by numbers, moch like the Macintosh’s QuckDraw routines. ‘The user can zoom in on areas ofthe Man- <etbot set, manipulate the color palette and save images created withthe MegaBrot sof ware. According to Gary Landis, developer of te board and software, the MegaBrot card generates complex fractal graphics at 5 milion calculations per second “Megagraphics has not yet announced a price for MegaBrot. MegaGraphics Inc. is located at 20954 Osbome St, Canoga Pak, Calf 91304; (818) 407-0571. Open Dialogue reportedly will allow pro grammers to crate specialized usr interfaces for applications writen to the X-Windows standard. Ths includes customized menus, ia Tog boxes, scroll bar, buttons and other screen objects. Once the interface has been completed, it will rm on any Apollo, DEC, Sun and IBM ‘machine that uses X-Windows. X-Windows, a public windowing standard criginally developed atthe Massachusettes Insitute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. runs under UNIX and allows an application — without modification — tobe able to run ona ‘numberof diferent vendors’ machines. Sites with workstations from multiple vendors can run the same application on each machin. ‘According to Mark Hatch, product market- ing manager fr Apollo’s Domain series, Open Dialogue is intended to provide a unified user interface for X-Windows applications. He aed that Open Dialogue builds upon X-Win- dows’ existing interface tol kit but adds a numberof new features. Open Dialogue initially wll be made avail- able for Apolo workstations lat this year, Apolo software developers willbe abe to purchase the toolkit in October. General release will be in January 1988. Apollo hopes to spa version for DEC GPX machines in February 1988 and versions for Sun worksta- tions andthe IBM RT PC in March 1988. Open Dialogue will be priced at $2,000 for a single copy. Apollo Computer In. is located at 330 Bil- lerica Road, Chelmsford, Mass. 01824; (617) 256-6600. Corel fishing Mac waters BY JIRI WEISS MacWEEK Staff OTTAWA — The WORM 800-Mbyte optical disk-drive sytem scheduled to ship in Septem ber will more than halve the curent price of the technology for Macintosh users, Until now, Macintosh users who wanted 0 take advantage of the large storage capacities of WORM (Write Once Read Many) optical disks have been abe to purchase drives from cone source: LoDOWN Corp of Seots Jntroducing “Our Latest Sider, Model C46. 40 Megs Primary srctrscasinsncsmacines ac Storage. 60 Megs Integral Tape Backup. $1995.00 Total. m: ity of sul those specifications. Bu the price tags wh to downright catastrophic First Class, The Solution. that. Sure, you get capacity, speed, pe restore, You get a slim, smart-looking, easy-to-install unit that is compatible with the Macintosh Plus, SE. an well And with our 60 meg tape (not i0 meg, like the competition), you get ba do ith the peripherals you attach as it does the computer itself Take ass storage. For many companies, h cheap WORM drives WORM drive from LoDOWN costs $8,945, Starting in September, users wll be able to parehase one with the same capacity from Corel Systems Corp. for $3,995. ‘The price has been high because LoDOWN has been the only game in town, said Rick Young, senior industry analyst with Dataquest, a market-research frm in San Jose, Calif Even withthe price drop, WORM is not First, The Problem. Apples telling the world these days that the power, versal and compatibility ofthe new Macintoshes are going end forever any doubts that these But wiht kind of business you tually get down to has as much to rious business means nothing less 40 megabytes of primary capac- and atleast an equal amount backup —idealy in the same bsystem package A few packages do exist with are absolutely stratosphieric— hich for many companies anxious get down to business can he The Sider Model C16 changes all of a formance, reliability, backup and ithe Apple 1+, Ile and Ics as ickup you can lockup for security and, thanks to total Sider cartridge interchangeability you get data you can pack up and take anywhere. But what astounds isa price tag the others can only envy. Ibe Ttalso reads FirstClass Peripherals for those of you wondering how that price could possibly be attached to this product, For years, the names “Sider” and “First Class” have been synonymous with truly affordable, zero defect mass storage among Apple tus Th Nov, we intend toe standard in the Macintosh world With a family of subsystems that includes, besides the Model C46, both 0- and 40-megabyte hard disk Sider subsystem and a Sider 60 megabyte tape backup subsystem. Call us tol free for the name of the lass Peripherals dealer nearest you, And fi easy it is to get down the price of getting down to business, 800-982-3232 3579 Highway’ 50 East, Carson City, Nevada 89701 likely to make a bg splash, sad Young day-to-day basis, WORM drives ar fil con fined oa niche area, atleast until their acess speed matches or surpasses that of Winchester disks ‘The drive itself is manufactured by Ricoh Corp. of San Jose, Calif It hasan average 168 milliseconds and plug into ‘SI port. The optical disk, which is encased in a removable cartide, has 400 Moytes of storag to Corel. New cartridges ae available for approximately $250. you get that really is $1995, ablish the same d out for yourself how Unlike conventional drives, WORM disks cannot be erased or reformated. “The bad ea suid Patrick Beime, Corel’ vic search and development. “It doesn't matter anyway, as you can get 20 years’ wort of medical joumals ona disk years” [worth] with pic Corel Systems Corp. is located at 1600 Car ling Ave., Ottawa, Ontario K1Z 7M4, Canada; 3200. Desktop Express allows MCI to transmit formatted files and graphic images BY EMILY BROWER MacWEEK Sta PRINCETON, NJ. — Dow Jones and Co. has begun shipment of Desktop Expres, anew communications program that allows Macin- tosh users to transfer inary files and graphics to both Macintoshes and PCs via MCI Mail With Desktop Expres, MCI subscribers are 10 longer limited to transiting text-only fils. Instead, formated files, such as Micro soft Word documents and graphic images can be sent between Deskiop Express users. Because the program is compatible with Lotus Express — the PC version of Desktop Express — user can transfer similarly for matted files, such as Microsoft Excel and Lotus spreadsheets, from a Macintosh toa PC. Deskiop Express was developed o appeal to oth novice and expert MCI users, said Pete Hirshberg, marketing manager at Aple Com puters desktop communications di Users can create and eit messages locally or off-line using Desktop’s built-in text editor and then et the program communicate with MCI while ints interactive mode. Desktop Express automatically perform the log-on, mail scann ing and message-eading procedures. Ret messages canbe read locally or oft According to Stuart Davidson, an MCI mar keting executive, about 10 percent ofthe mated 100,000 MCI subscribers use Macintosh to acces the service. Desktop Expres is the product ofa tr gic alliance among Dow Jones, MCT and Appl Computer formed nearly thre years ago. “The focus of Apple's desktop communications i on end-user solution,” said Hirshberg ‘Two oer pieces of software fom Sou tions Inc, Glue and Straight Talk, ar incorpo rated in the program, which sll for $149 and requires a Macintosh with at est $12 Kbytes, aamodem and one 800-Kbyte drive (or two 400-Koyte drives). Glue makes possible the exchange of graphics between Desktop Express users, Straight Talk provides acces to Dow Jones News Retrieval. Fee passwords to MCI and Dow Jones are included ‘Dow Jones and Co. canbe reached at PO. Box 300, Princeton, NJ. 8543-030; (608) 520-408. More Ma Espo product nen on pes 12 and 50. On September 30, 1985 we announced the most powerful, most versatile spreadsheet ever. 66lf youre a spreadsheet user, Microsoft Excel is one of the best reasons to buy a Macintosh ... After being loyal and dedicated 1-2-3° users for several years, we've just recently converted all our 1-2-3 files over to Microsoft Excel. It’s that good.99 Don Crabb, InfoWorld, November 10, 1986 6¢6Microsoft Excel is unquestionably the most powerful spreadsheet program available on any personal COMPULEL.ID ‘on Por, stcsort September 1985 6¢/n terms of features and ease of use, Microsoft Excel makes 1-2-3 look rather pale. 2 9 ‘The Seybold Outlook On Professional Computing, October 20, 1986 66 Microsoft Excel is easy to learn, but better, it’s also easy to use. Best of all, you can easily get at Microsoft Excel’s powerful macro capability.9 9 Jerry Pournelle, Byte, April 1986 66 Microsoft Excel has implemented the most all-inclusive and powerful use of linking yet seen in micro spreadsheets... It offers what appears to be an almost unlimited range of ie possibilities.99 Will Tompkins, The MACazine, Vol. 2, No. 10 66A powerful spreadsheet T0S0 Ort ®/ program with equally Exce/ powerful data-base and faa f charting (or graphics) cap- f abilities, it offers substantial _ f improvements over compar- f able pc-pos programs in all three areas.99 Se William Zachman, Computerworld, December 8, 1986 Itseems we underrated it. Microsoft: 10 Megabytes / 10 Minutes | For The Macintosh | Fast backups for your hard disk. mul = Colby develops portable Mac prototype BY JIRI WEISS ‘MacWEEK Staff FRESNO, Calif. — While Mac users have ‘been holding their breath in expectation of a portable Mac from Apple Computer, itl known Colby Systems Corp. has been quietly making prototypes of a portable out of CPUs taken out ofthe Macintosh Pus. In October, Colby wil ship is 5-inch-high 1-inch-deep and 16-nch-wide Wallac. At 15 pounds, the WalkMac is good deal heavier than PC-compatible laptops, but Charles . Colby, the company's president, said Walk- Mac's design makes up forits weight A basic $4,999 WalkMac includes a Mac Plus CPU, 1 Mbyte of RAM, one 800-Kbyte floppy drive, a power supply, an AC adapter, mouse and a standard Mac Plus keyboard. ‘WalkMac’s orange plasma 10.-inch screen has the same number of pixels as the Mac. ‘The WalkMac will be initially marketed to the military, Clly said ising tested by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin istration (NOAA) in Seatle for possible use by the Army infield exercises, said Robert Ablsedt, an NOAA contracting officer. But Colby may havea hard time selling its portable, said John Snook, director of business development at Falcon Microsystems, acom- pny tht holds an Apple contract forthe feder- al government. “Apple is rumored to be coming out with its 3p. People are going to wat and see ‘a en erie yom themselves” Snook said. ‘Snook has seen Mac-compatile laptops from Colby; Dynamac Computer Products In. cof Golden, Col.; and Iellitee Systems Corp. of Fairfield, Iowa, “All three companies are shoestring operations. i's not wort it tous to negotiate with them heavily, given the fact that Apple is going to do something sooner or Jar” he said Colby aso sells aemovable 40-Mbyte harddisk with an average acess time of 25 nilliseconds for $1,499. WalkMac’s RAM can be upgraded to 4 Mbytes, and the machine can be used with al accelerator boards. With a software interface designed by (Colby, users can print ona $499 pocket sized inkjet printer, the Diconx, from Eastman Kodak. Documents canbe transmitted through $199 pocket modem from Touchbase Sys- tems Inc. of Northport, N-Y. ‘The WalkMac can be used simultaneously with extemal video monitors, most common ‘Maitisyne color monitors and 1BM PS/2-com- patible monitors as wel as large-screen mon tors from companies suchas Radius Inc of San Jose, Calif; E-Machines Inc. of Tualatin, Ore; and SuperMac Technology of Mountain View, Calif, Colby said. ‘With two $59 battery packs available at any Radio Shack, WalkMac can be used on plane flights. Bult of removable modules, Walk Mac is designed so travelers can open afew screws and st the screen and keyboard on ther table, leaving the computer at ther fet, Colby sid. The power supply, CPU unt, Noppy drive and hard-disk drive ae ll modules encased in aluminum that can be removed in seconds ‘without tools. The mouse shipping with the computer is ‘based on a nylon roller and doesnot depend on gravity for operation. ‘The WalkMac with seren, keyboard, prit- ex and modem fits into a suitcase 19 inches by 7.5 inches by 12 inches. “ts the modularity that will sll the prod- uc,” Colby said “The WalkMac wil allow companies to keep spare modules on hand,” he said. ‘Another advantage ofthe modular design is that users can remove the harddisk and pu it ina coat pocket. The modular design also will let users upgrade their hardware changing their Mac Plus CPU o that used onthe SE. The company plans to introduce a 9-pound version in November. A Coy-designed key- board wil weigh just 1 pound compared tothe '.5-pound Mac Plus keyboard that will ship with the curent system. Ml Coby Systems Inc resident Charles E. Coy sid the modular esgn ofits WalkMac “wil sel the product.” Fifth SYSTEMS, INC. 1130 nti, Bae ig, LA MG, Sls OR 201 ee Ave, Se nin, CTA (80) 2862776. (714) ROLL Winn ina ee thre Per nt eGo is md da Camp UNLEASH THE POWER Now for Macintosh! Speed, accuracy, and power. Now Fastback, the leader in disk backup software, is available for the Macintosh. Fastback for the Macintosh is the only program that can back up a full 10-megabyte hard disk in less than 10 minutes! This ean mean an over 85% savings in time and money! Fastback is also the only program that uses advanced error correction techniques to recover data from damaged backup disks. And Fastback is powerful ~ an backup ll yur fe, sleet folders and files for beckup, or havo Fstoack select only the files which have changed, Protect the data on your hard disk now. Remember, among those who use hard disks on their Macintosh systems, there will only be two types ~ those who use Fastback, and those who wish they had! See your dealer today, and unleash the power of Fastback as your Macintosh defense! Sun announces competition for Mac II BY ABIGAIL CHRISTOPHER MacWEEK Staff ANAHEIM, Calif. — How many product introductions can you fit inthe space of three months? Ask Sun Microsystems, They've got their timing down, ‘The day before the opening of SIGGRAPH. here, the Mountain View, Calif, company announced the 3/60 workstation — its first ‘Mac Il competitor. Sun’s key competitors, Apollo Computer Inc. of Chelmsford, Mas, Digital Equipment Corp. of Maynard, Mas, and Silicon Graphics Inc. of Mountain View, Clif, have reacted to ‘Sun’ earlier announcements by introducing their own pric cus, low- and high-end work “With this machine, we offer one-and-a- half to two times the performance ofthe Mac 1, The 360 isan upgradable workstation for applications such as CAP (computer-aided publishing), CASE (computer-aided software engineering), CAD (computer-ided design) and artifical inteligence. The user can gradu- ate to a 10-mips Sun 4 system,” sad Les Poltrack, Sun 3/60 product marketing engincer. “The Mac I snot being marketed asa cus- tom workstation," said Apple's Dave Kulbarsh, ‘manager of engineering markets, "We're appealing to a larger market. We want more than 36,000 Mac Ils out there in the next year. ‘Sun has an installed base of 36,000 after five stations, and apical and network support. The exception in this race is Apple Com- pater, Sun has introduced a Mac I competitor four months afer the announcement of Apple's ‘open architecture Macintosh, With a 19-inch monochrome monitor, 4 “Mbytes of man memory and UNIX, the 360 costs $7,500, Unlike Sun's $4,995 3/50, the 360 has an option for 8 it planes of coor and runs a £8020 processor at 20 MHz and 3 mips (nil- lion instrations per second) with a standard 68881 floating-point processor, offering asys- tem comparable to and in some cases supass- ing the Mac I. its fist Mae ears inthe workstation business.” ‘Contrasting the UNIX operating system — equipped withthe Sun View graphical inter- face — with the standard Macintosh operation system aso shows the key diferences between the two companies. “Sun applications have no consistent user interface. We have over 2,50 applications pro- grams written tothe Mac OS,” Kulbarsh said ‘Suns tir party Catalyst program includes ‘more than 900 application programs forthe “With this machine, we offer one- and-a-half to two times the performance of the Mac II.” ‘Sun workstations. Despite what the competing vendors say, the two machines have a ot in common. The ‘hardware specifications of the 3/60 and the Mac I are very similar, ‘The 68020/68881-based Sun 3/60 worksta- tion rns t 20 MHz and 3 mips and has an option fr 8 bit planes of color. ‘The Mac Il also is a 68020/68881-based system with n option of up to 8 bits of color, butt clocks slower processing speeds of 15.6 MHz and 2 mips. Sun offers the 360 with from 4 to 24 Mbyfes of main memory: Apple provides from 08 Mbytes. ‘The entry-level color 360 system includes 16:nch1,152-by-900 pixel color monitor. "Near comparable color monitors from Apple's third parties, sch as SuperMac Technology of ‘Mountain View, Calif, and Personal Computer Peripherals Corp. of Tampa, Fl. ad about $4,000 to $5,00 tothe price of a Mac I Like al the Sun workstations, UNIX and themet are included in the base price. AJUX, ‘Apple's UNIX, and Ethemet support will be offered separately as options. A/UX is expect- cd tobe priced at approximately $2,000 ‘The 3/60 also can be a server for six to 15 nodes. ‘Mass disk storage on the Sun 360 is from 1 o 282 Mbytes, anda 60-Mbyte tape backup option also is avaiable ‘The Mac Il provides from 40 to 80 Mbytes ‘of mass storage and tape backup of 40 Mbytes. Configured with 4 Mbytes of main ‘memory anda 19-inch 1152-by-900 pixel ‘monochrome monitor, the 360 is $12,900; $1490 with 16-inch color monitor. ‘AMac I wth | Mbyte of memory and a toris approximately $13,350, including A/UX and Ethernet. The price is $14,100 with a 13- inch 640-by-480 pixel color monitor. ‘Sun also introduced its CXP line of graph- ‘es workstations for 3-D applications at SIG- GRAPH. Bach ofthese systems includes a graphics accelerator and software developed by the company’s High-End Graphics/ Accelerator Projects Team, formerly Trancept Systems In. ‘of Raleigh, N.C, which Sun acquired in May. ‘Sun Microsystems Inc. is located at 2550 Garcia Ave., Mountain View, Calif, 94043; (415) 960-1300. MacWEEK Aug. 11, 1987 4 NEWS Liquid chromatography on Macintosh Chemical analysis company defies PC domination BY ERIC OLSEN Special o MacWEEK EMERYVILLE, Calf. —“They said we couldn't doit wth a Macintosh,” said Tony ‘Wingo, Rainin Instrument Co.'s software engi- neering manager, *‘Not enough sos, they said, not enough power.”” That was back in 1984, before the Mac Plus, SE and Mac I Ad yt, Rinin dd do it witha Macintosh, even back in "4, Now, the company’s high- through the system, which would graph peaks proportional o heat. ‘The proces, which requires both enormous precision andthe patience of Job, lends itself extremely well compoterizaion A techni- cian can program te system to feed a varity cof unknowns ito the equipment at precise intervals and pressures, go home and inthe ‘moming the analyses are complete performance liguidchromatography system, including the new Dynamax HPLC, the latest in Rainn instrument's series of Mac-based systems, isthe only one of neatly 30 such sys tems onthe market to be controlled by the Macintosh ‘The Dynamax is one of the more sophisti ‘ated HPLC systems ina decidedly PC-orient ed environment “Actually, we were going to do this on aPC like everyone es,” said Wingo, “but back in "4, an Apple rep got tous with a prerelease Mac. I'm glad he di.” High-performance liquid-chromatography systems are used to analyze the components of unknown substances or measure the qualities of substance against desired standards. A sample is dissolved in wate or anther solvent, then pumped under high pressure through a column of fine, non-teactive powder. As the sample passes through the powder, it's broken down into its individual components. Every clement has a unique diffusion rte, and detec- tors tthe other end measure the speed and volume of diffusion of each separate chemic The results a base-line graph with peaks. The base line represents time, and the peaks repre sent different substances. The timing of ech peak, its eight and area can be compared to the profiles of known substances, and from that the unknown canbe determined. ‘A company in Souther California that cans lil peppers, for instance, wanted a uniform hoines in its product, but human taste testers were unreliable So the canner bought one of Rainin’s HPLCs. A sample of every batch of ‘epprs that came to the plant would be run “For the most part, the scientific community is still oriented toward the PC, but there’s a certain seg- ment of that community that likes the Macintosh.” ‘The market for HPLC systems and their sttendant computers is substantial. No ab han- <ling unknown substances of any kind is com- plete without a eat one such instrument, Which range in price from about $10,000 on up. The market is decidedly PC-orented, with an estimated 80 percent ofthe systems today controlled by PCs or compatibles. “For the most pa,” Wingo sad, “the scien tific community is til oriented toward the PC, but there's a certain segment ofthat communi- ty that likes the Macintosh,” might seem odd that a company like Rainin Instruments, with extensive experience designing and marketing precision scientific instruments, would choose deliberately to cre- ate a system fora small market. “The others might be operating in a bigger market,” said Wingo, “but they have to fight tout for what may end upto be smaller pieces oft. We have ‘maybe 20 percent of it to ourselves." ‘Wingo has the voice ofan FM radio announcer, a curly beard and long hair ike a Iate"60s political activist. He spoke while sit- ‘Tory Wingo of Rainn prefers the Mac's: ser interface and graphics. ting in his Emeryville office with a new SE in front of him, a terminal toa Plexus minicom- ter beside him. Rainin’s research group ‘ccupies a fourth-floor suite in one ofa cluster of high-rises onthe edge of the San Francisco Bay. From his desk, Wingo has abroad view ofthe Emeryville mudflats, the Easshore free- way in Berkeley and points noth. With the tide in, the view is spectacular, But Wingo's aten- tions fixed on the SE, which attached to an HPLC system. ‘Asa certified software developer fr Apple, Rainin gets a look at new products before the rest of us. Wingo said he thought the Mac Phas was great when i came out, the SE is spetacu- Tar and he “frankly can't wait” o see a Mac Il, although heals said he thinks he might have to “tweak” his programs abt torun on Wingo came to Rainin witha background in ‘mainframes, o he likes power — the more the beter. His attraction tothe Mac might seem odd given his mainframe experience. Most software developers with a background like his lan toward the PCs, but Wingo like the Mac’s simple, standardized user interface and graph- ies capabilities from the start, and when he set ‘ut to write programs fort, he was determined to make tact as much ike a mainframe as possible. ‘Wingo wasn't hampered by preconceived notions about what some said were the limits ofthe new Macintosh, While other systems collect data, then analyze it, the Mac-based Dynamax HPLC is the only system onthe mar- ket that performs realtime analyses of data as itcomes in, With the Dynamax, a researcher can see graphs being generated on the Mac sereen while the analysis is til running. To a limited extent, he can even change the parame ters ofthe experiment while it’s going on fhe sees trends in data he'd like to explore in di ferent ways. He can also abort the experiment if he decides it's not going wel. ‘The researcher also can nun several pro- ‘grams simultaneously. He can write reports hile the system generates graphs in a separate window or he can write a program while it’s running anther experiment. ‘Wingo said other developers could proba- bly do the same things on PCs if they chose to “tnever occured to me to doit any other way.” He said he wonders whether other developers might have been alte timid about pushing the limits oftheir machines “Mos scientists who used HPLC never cared much if they had real-time analysis, though,” he said. "But many of those who have used ours suddenly wonder how they got along without it” Most of Rainin’s HPLC customers supply their own Macintosh Pluses. Ranin supplies the HPLC instrumentation and software, Which consists of three of what will even- tually be four complete programs. The three available programs area method editor that controls the pumps, data analysis program that gathers data and generates reports and a reprocessing program for reanalyzing olddata. | Yetto come is the ID program, which will ive 5 names to the peaks of the graphs generated by FS the data analysis program. Most competing 5 systems do tis, but as itis, the researcher using the Dynamax has fo make his own ident- fications. Wingo suid the ID program is soon to come. Rainin Instruments has made a total com- mitment tothe Macintosh. The company's entre research group in Emeryville is supplied With Pluses and SES, in addition to the one on ‘Wingo's desk. All the machines are connected through AppleTalk with a single Laer Writer serving the entre complex. Wingo is trying to figure out how to hook the Plexus minicomput- er into the system, He sa he hopes computer aided design capabilities wll come soon. MiniCad”™ Let Others Speak for Us Computer Graphics: “MiniCad even beats AutoCAD. it combines 2D and 3D features in one package.. a sophisticated 2D and 3D. ‘dcafting program that is clearly in- tended for the professional CAD user.” CAD/CAM Journal: "A major contendor in the Macintosh CAD marketplace... MiniCad offers ‘enormous functions for the price.” Graphic Perspective: "MiniCad.. is a wonderful example of ‘one of those pieces of software that slips onto the scene unannounced, quietly surpassing all similar pro- ‘grams that break in on the market ‘with a huge splash.” Personal Publishing: ‘MiniCad bridges the veryday drawing appl Professional CAD programs, and i ‘combines the best of both.” ‘MacWorld: "MiniCad achevies an ideal balance of simplicity and capability... Don't tet the mame fool you., there is nothing ("about MiniCad except the Priced at only $495.00 devel an prac by Diehl Graphsoft Inc. 8370 Court Ave, Suite 202 Ellicott City, Md. 21043 301-461-9488 See us at MACWORLD booth # 1135 WE HAVE THE BEST VIEW OF THE MACINTOSH WORLD 1664x1200 Mice Atoms) |) tea pl Gem N 225 op) —_ Q When they say a picture is LaserView is a noninterlaced For more information on worth a thousand words, monitor, textand graphics are _LaserView, call Sigma Designs they're describing LaserView”" displayed virtually flicker- today at (415) 770-0100. Or ultrahigh-resolution large- free. Even facing pages. visit an authorized Sigma Designs screen monitors from Sigma You can select the default dealer. Designs. display mode of 1664 x 1200 Because for computer- ‘Available for the Macintosh™ pixels (2,000,000 pixels). Or aided engineering, advanced ‘SE and Macintosh I! in choose the standard Mac- desktop publishing and any- 15-inch and 19-inch sizes, intosh resolution of 72 dots thingin between, LaserView LaserView providesa1664x1200 _per-inch which yields an on- offers you a totally new point on-screen pixel display screen pixel resolution of of view. (equal to 11 Macintosh SE 832 x 600 (500,000 pixels). =e igma Designs, Inc screens). And because You can choose from three 46501 Landing Parkway cursor sizes and two system Fremont, CA 94538 font sizes for legibility ie a rea MacWEEK Aug. 11, 1987 1/6 News MAC EXPO PREV Boston in August? It’s a time when Yankees with any sense at all are cooling it on the Cape or Vine= yard. Yet the whole Mac community is assembled in sweltering Beantown this week for what promises to be the hottest show of the year. Here isa show goers guide to Expo highlights. A boards: Speed counts for more than thrills and chills in personal computers; it means higher productivity and improved eae of ue. And with the Mac Il around, how are you ‘ging to keep your SEs down on the farm? The 68020 acelerator| boards that willbe on display from Radius, General Computer, Levco, Peak Systems and others, will boost performance to the 16-MH vicinity The real sereamers —up to 25 MHz — willbe out by next year Peak Systems Orion As: ‘The PC coprocessors may be alot ess exciting in real- ity than they were in anticipation, but they will ill draw big crowds, The big excitement may be over AST's $4,000 PostScript TurboLaser. With those products alongside the recenily announced scanner and hard disks, users might find it difficult squeezing into AST booth, Aesenncn Inc. Bat coninas ‘The hottest action of the ‘show won't take place on the show floor, but in invitation- ‘only meetings in plush hotel suites, Thats where compa nies like Adobe, Lotus, Migent, Lightspeed and Ann ‘Arbor will be previewing their advanced technology for the industry's mover and ‘shakers. Anybody who wan- esa pek is invited ocon- tact Ma the Knif (C ROM and WORM: Optical storage isthe undisputed ‘wave ofthe future, but show goers will ave to search for rch evidence of tha this year. One highlight wil be a three-way announcement from drive maker LoDOWN, PictureBase publisher Symmetry and advertising clip art supplier MultiAd. Another will be the sowing ofthe Med- Line medical library on CD-ROM. But none ofthe bg drive makers, suchas Philips and Toshia, wil bein attendance, and users will have to wait until 1988 for Apple's own play in optical storage. (Ce Will it or won't it announce any of the acquisitions and marketing agreements tat have been under negotiation forthe past month? Only Bill Campbell's barber knows for sure. LY (Ges Thisisthe year ofthe peacock: color printers (HP, CColorocs), color scanners (Sharp, Howiek), color software (MacroMind, Living Videotext, Silicon Beach, SuperMac) and color monitors too numerous to mention. ‘Silicon Beach Super 3D sofware (Cee Sessions: Sixty panel discussions wil help show goers put into context the barage of messages they receive on te floor. Highlights: “The Mac inthe Future" with Guy Kawasaki, Philippe Kahn, Jonathan Rotenberg and others; “Meet the Programmers” with Andy Hertzeld, Scott Watson and others; “Desktop Communications” with Pete Friedman, Nat Goldhaber, Carl Gritamaker and ‘Andrew Singer. Best attended session each day is likely to be Bill Atkinson's demonstration of the show's hottest product, HyperCard. Dae: Software: Years in the making with a cast of hundreds, Ashion-Tate's dBASE, Mac may finally make the scene. But it won't be easy going tothe top ofthe best seller ists, what with Aci 4th Dimension jst released tmay be tempting to view the land's Reflex, Biyth’s Omais 3 and Odesta’s Double Helix also have upgrades jus out or = inthe works Se De presentation: Apple has been telling anyone who il isten that presentations re a bigget market than desktop publishing, PowerPoint, MORE and other programs have helped ‘sablish the argument, but the projectors and image recorders like those from Comirex wil drive the point home. Comire’sImagicer F. ‘modems, Transfer complete documents across the ‘country without leaving your desk. Send files at 9,600 baud. By shrinking a facsimile machine into desktop peripheral — ‘oreven a Mac Il board — Apple, Microtek and others co-opt ‘competitive communication technology into the Macintosh fold. Ge Computer Personal LasePrinter: GCC proves that PostScript isnt everything, at least not when you have access to Apple's QuickDraw routines and Bitstream’ font library Now just plain folks can afford to puta laser on their desks even though they cant share it with office mates. Te printer reesablshes GCC’s reputation asa technology leader while it sets off a price war atthe low-end ofthe laser market, fA GCC PersonlLaserPrintr Hee Apple hasn't ost its creative edge. Jus as (05/2 was threatening the uniqueness of the Macintosh, HyperCard extends the Macintosh operating system toa ‘new realm and leaves IBM eating dust. Apple's decision to bundle FMR National Auto Supply Catalog will pay off [805 cma inresulting | 2 corm 1 RD sales of San ‘omer [ACen] Macintosh =| aS = ramen see ae ise oe tous | Ail 2 weal pet peed le programs: Adobe's Illustrators too exciting a program to go unchallenged. Infact, one contenders from a company called Challenger. Is package may be marketed by a certain software spinoff of a large hardware company. Another was developed bya shop in Texas but wll be sold by a desk- top publishing software company that went public too recently to comment onthe program. ee LQ: Laser Writer quality ona dot-matrix printer? Maybe not, but Apple’s $1,400 ImageWriter LQ uses 27 pins AppleTalk compatibility. Image Writer LQ Jonas Gassee and William Campbell: Apple's chairman, is chief of R&D and the president ofits software spinoff wll give keynote addresses. Scully will issue a clarion call fora second. generation of personal comput eee Campbell wil offer his presci fone "Stcesin Stare” 4 Sele bees This show, you'l beable o get your hands on a ir of laptop Macs from DynaMac and Colby. Screns, dives, Keyboards are OK, but the question i will you want o open your wallet for price significantly above an equivalent Mac. Depends how badly you want portability — and how long you're willing to wait for Apple. LS Image Studio: Quit dithering and get nto real gay- seae editing of scanned halftones. Another million dollar tech- nology comes othe publishing desktop. Letraset also will be showing fits style shet and text-wrap uprade to Ready Set Go! Mocs: sa va say iti 1987 was the year of the SE and tha the Mac Iwas a special ined high-end system. That was a convenient line considering Apples problems manufacturing Mac If components, but Mac Expo will prove he was mistaken, Dozens of exciting products that work best (or only) on the II make it the machine of choice forevery Mac user who can afford one. Mooi os 1: atin ins comes tothe Mac. The $195 program offers its own paint and draw capabili- include upto 512 pieces of artwork. MacroMind’s Mere Center Mocoot many cg risus Forethought), Microsofts head and shoulders above every- ne else in Mac software. Bu is OS/2 taking too much out ofthe company? Chief Operating Officer Jon Shirley wil be out and about reassuring the Mac faithful. Meanwhile, the Fore- thought deal should give pause to Mac developers who thought they could gain a step on Bill Mi f Gates & Co. 1 eer ‘wars, Who is going tose the standard at 9,600 baud? Who is going to undercut whom in inexpensive 2400s? And how will Shiva and Abaton fae in the emerging market for network ‘modems? Those uestions can be considered using Desktop Express, a program so widely distributed in beta that there may ‘not be many paying customers after this week's announcement Mee Like George Jones said, it ain't multitasking, butit's not bad, While its real future ison 68030 Macs, it already functions a a super print spooler and multiple task traffic cop. And who isnt thrilled to have more than one appli- cation loaded, and viewable, at once? Pectin Pt sing misc invitations to one of the big-budget harbor crises, clam bakes NEWS MacWEEK 1 Aug. 11, 1987 7 corrock shows tobe hosted by major Mac vendors. Party sites rang from the superfine (Ritz Carleton) tothe spacey (Hay- en Planetarium) tothe panoramic (Top ofthe Hub) to the loud and boisterous (Metro). 1B Connectivity: Besides AST’s long-awaited copocesors, Took for 3Com’s 3 forthe Macintosh, Tangent’s TangentShare software for PCs on Mac networks and Apple's own EtherCard for Macs on high-speed Ethers networks. Que XPress: For the frst time, a dretors and graphic a scan coor separate PostScript anwork onscreen, Version 1.10 of XPress also supppors importing of Tag Image File Fr- 1a pictures; Microsoft Works and T/Maker Write Now docu- mens. See Rudimentary scanning technology has given way to sophisticated products lke Xerox's 1,200-dpi,256-level gray-scale Pro Imager and alower-resolution Scanjet from Hewlett-Packard, Hand-in-hand withthe hardware is software to manipulate scanned images. Sa ‘Wonders: Te te finds of any show are not the block- buster produts but the hidden gems found in Sprtan booths on the perihery of the show floor. Ths years no exception: Look for a keyboard macro program from CE Software, an HES file organizer fom Think Technologies, an outinr by Mainstay, a filing system from Affinity, and Software Sup- Di longawaied Soe, «Dek Acer orp, Sane PixelPaint: Mac- intosh pining is now avail able with a palete of 256 colors. Running on large- Screen coor monitors frm SuperMac Technology, Personal Computer Peripherals Corp, Mitsubishi and other suppliers, business presena- tions may never quite be he Speer PP same, Ve Watch: Bring onthe Kinks fora rendition of “So Tired of Waiting” if Ann Arbor'sFullWrte and Target's Scoop don’t debut. Also expect a couple of announcements of products we won't see fora year or more Vexonacion Vitti Stam, it's easy to overiok the synergy between the Mac and Dig- ital Equipment Corp.'s VAX minicomputers. At this show, high- and low-end DEC connectivity solutions will be shown by Dove, Kinetics and Alisa Systems Vere Powerful PC drafting comes to the Macintosh courtesy of VersaCAD, but with the Mac interface itis mach nicer than the PC version. A3-D upgrade with hidden lines is in the works. The introduction clears the way for professional architects and engineers to switch to the Macintosh in droves. Expo expectations What are you looking forvardtosecing at Mac Expo? Ash Jain, consultant sible I could be disappointed.” Steve Michel, author and microcomputer consultant, San Francisoo: “New proucts. think there's going tobe los of exciting things. HyperCard and Juggler are two things I'm ooking for- ‘ward to. [hope there's alot of ee San Francisco, Calif arming Gis othr bie It's god to com- ‘pare them side by side. And certainly anything that makes a PC talk to a Mac. I'm also curious about these fax modems, and what Apple really has and what they don't. I'l als be looking at wor processors and scanners and checking out general trends.” Baers epee eee or business. Macintosh’ personal computers are having a positively uplifting effect on business. A fact not lost upon a growing number of FORTUNE 500 companies, as they watch pro- ductivity go up. And training costs come down. All thanks to Macintosh’ point-and-click simplicity its graphics interface and consistency from program to program. But to add fuel to the Macintosh fire, we now present our most powerful computer yet: Macintosh II. a —— Which, because of its talent for easy expansion, is raising even more corpo- rate eyebrows. Just take off its cover and you can easily appre- ciate why. Inside are six expansion slots that repre- sent an entirely new kind of technology. They handle information with extraordi- nary speed. Plus, they have the good manners to “configure” themselves. So however many devices you add, there are never any special switches to set. All you have to do is turn on the power As for the available options, theyre rather revolutionary as well. Add a co-processor card and you can run not only Macintosh programs, but programs you may already be using on IBM PCs. Adda communications card, and you can connect to office networks like Ethernet and company mainframes. And with a video card, you can drive the high-resolution 13’ Apple- Color” RGB monitor To create images of nearly photographic quality, drawing from a pal- ette of more than 16 million colors. Macintosh Il is open for other choices as well. You can expand memory all the way to eight megabytes on the main board. Choose one or two floppy disk drives. And a built-in hard disk that stores 20, 40 or 80 megabytes of work. But expandability is only part of our story At the core of Macintosh Il is the new 32-bit Motorola 68020 processor, clocking in ata firey 16MHz. Plus, it has a math co-processor. So it can perform calculations up to 200 times as fast as conventional computers. We realize, however, that words alone may not be enough to sway you. That's why we've prepared this open invitation: Just call (800)538-9696, ext.300, and we'll promptly give you the name of the authorized Apple reseller closest to you. ys : Then its a simple matter to stop in. Put your hands on a Macintosh II personal computer And uncover a whole new source of power, as Thepowerto beyourbest: 3 MacWEEK Aug. 11, 1987 NEWS PING INTO THE SHAREWARE BOWL BY HENRY NORR MacWEEK Staff ‘When the New York Times produces its daly weather report, the temperature and precipita- tion map is drawn in Adobe Tustrator,ahigh- end program with a price tag to match But the text that accompanies the file is ‘composed in miniWRITER, a shareware txt editor with license fee of $12. And text and art alike are transmitted back and forth among the several labs and data-ollecton organiza- tions that contribute to each day's map by way of Red Ryder, a shareware tlecommunications ‘rogram distributed out of the home ofa for- ‘mer agriulturalistrumed programmer. Gary L. Cosimini, senior at director for 38 and technology inthe Times’ edito- rial department, said he finds miniWRITER an invaluable too for quickly printing textiles and even for preparing PostScript code for ‘downloading toa Laser Writer. As for Red Ryder, Cosimini said the Times “tested it agains al the commercial products and found nothing else that met our needs so well.” ‘Shareware — sometimes calle freeware or _user-supported software — is software dis- tributed freely by developers, on condition that those who keep and use it pay a registration fee directly to the author, Like strictly public- domain software — programs for which no payment is requested — shareware circulates on electronic bulletin boards and disks sold by usergroups and some mail-order services. With no marketing or packaging expenses and no dealer markups, fees fr shareware are far ‘below prices for commercial software, usually inthe $5-$40 range. ‘The Times is not alone among major com- nies in tuning to such programs. Scott Wat- son, the man behind Red Ryder, sid his list of users “reads like the Fortune 100.” He said he “can't even tink ofa U.S. government agency that isn't in on it,” including the Bureau of Standards, the FBI, NASA andthe top national research laboratories. Red Ryders exceptional in its penetration of business and government. More often than not, professional users are “chary and susp- ious” of non-commercial soft Lat, director of printing and mailing services at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. char- acterized the atitudes he held until recently. ‘Many doubt that such products canbe reliable, and some associate them with the widely publ- cized stores of “Trojan horse” programs that destroy data from a hard sk. Sill, hundreds of businesses large and small use non-commercial programs every day. Deacon Maccubhin, president of three Mac- ‘based businesses in the Washington, D.C, are, declared, “I could’t get through the day ‘without some ofthat shareware stuf.” ‘Together, shareware and public-domain ‘programs forthe Mac range in size and sgnfi- cance fom full-blown applications like Red Ryder (185 Kbytes) otny uit like Tog ele, a 212-byte FKey that remaps the Mac key- board so the Period and Comma keys produce periods and commas even when the Shift ey is down. ‘Some programs, lke Set Clock, a 14-Kbyte application that atomically dials through a ‘modem to an atomic clock in Virginia, then resets the Mac's clock to match, ae ony half serious. Others, ik the dozens of graphics demonstration programs, exist mainly to show off the capabilites ofthe compute and the programmer, Stil others, games and oddities like the Talking Moose Desk Accessory, are frankly for fun, But hundreds of items onthe shareware rolls — Desk Accessories, FKeys, INITs and applications — are serious efforts to increase the Mac’s convenience and capability (See related story fora sampler of popular shareware and public-domain programs) From te user's pont of view, shareware offers several advantages commercial products ‘can't mach, Perhaps most important isthe ‘opportunity to give the software a thorough test under real working conditions, according to Richard Brauning, at director at DC Comi [New York. On the recommendation ofa fiend, Brauning tried out DiskTop a shareware Desk ‘Accessory from CE Software of Des Moines, Towa, and now relies heavily on it to manage his recently acquired harddrive. (nthe surface, one might expect better support from vendors of commercial software ‘Ate all all that money must go for something besides packaging! But many shareware users find they get beter backing from shareware developers than from trational publishers. ‘Some shareware developers offer money-back ‘guarantes. (Se illustration on next page) ‘Most shareware developers are quick to revise their programs when bugs ae reported ornew system software requires modifications. Loftus E. Becker's TimeLogeer Desk Accesso- 1y, a program designed to help professionals keep a record of client contacts and other expenditure of ime, has gone through no fewer than 14 revisions since its introduction at the end of 1986, Such programs are not neves- sarily any bugger than commercial releases, it's jut that shareware developers, with virtu- ally no distribution costs, can make new ver- sions available as soon as problems are dscov- ered and solved. Sometimes programmers even make cus- tom modifications to their software for regis- trans with special need. When Joshua S. Boger, esearch chemist at Merck and Co, Inc., wanted to have his documents date- stamped inthe European syle (4dfmm/yy), he asked Becker o revise his popular Date Key to ‘generate the desired format. “Shareware peo- pl,” Boger said, are “much more responsive than commercial publishers. They have to worry about eating,” (Boger, who cated his personal Mac into work everyday fora year when the company was sill on a strictly PC standard now super- vises a VAX-based program library for Merck’s growing numbers of Mac users. Among the 450 programs i the library, about 375 are shareware, Boge sid, and his depat- ‘ment alone has spent more than $1,500 in reg- istration fees.) ‘Some of the programmers who produc this “Shareware people are much more responsive than commer- cial publishers. They have to worry about eating. ‘wealth of low-cost software, like Ron Risley, ‘author of a Desk Accessory called BackDown that downloads files while other applications are open have lng experience as professional programmers. But others come from more sur- prising careers, Dr, Carlos Weber, whose FKey ‘Manager programs have extended the easy-to- use Mac interface into what had previously been an esoteric comer of the operating sys- ‘tem, isa San Francisco physician who had ‘never written a program until he purchased his ‘Mac. Becker, one of the most prolific and respected ofthe shareware programmers, is a professor of criminal, constitutional and federal tax law at the University of Connecticut. ‘Why do obviously talented ‘tum to shareware to distribute their work? In ‘some cases, itis for lack of an alternative. John Michell, author of FEAit, a powerful programmer's file utility, sought in vain to find ‘accommercial publisher when he completed the ‘program in September 1984, “At the time,” he ‘aid, “it was shareware or die.” Two years later, only 215 users had paid the $30 registra- tion fe, although the program was widely ci- culated and even distributed by Appl to soft- ware developers and Mitchel decided to ake itout of shareware disrbution, Now employed as acting manager of software quality assur- ance at Apple, he sells FEdit +, an enhanced ‘commercial version of the original program, on 8 commeril bass and expresses litle nos ‘gia for his days asa shareware author, For some developers, shareware is a cause as well as a pragmatic altemative, At CE Soft- ware, where MockWrite and other early share- ‘ware programs were marketed under the ““MacHonor System,” programmer Don Brown and partner Dick Skeie have in recent years “taken some steps sideways from shareware” by licensing their Desk Accessories to Borland International to become SideKick for the Mac ‘and by selling some of their newer products through retail channels. Yet Brown still speaks cof the “emotional satisfaction” that comes with ‘See SHAREWARE, next page MacWEEK NEWS A ug. 11, 1987 A shareware sampler ... Every fan of shareware and public-domain software has his or he own favorites. The list ing below includes a mer 15 from among the hundred of useful and reliable programs avail- able, All are distributed by users’ groups and by CompuServe, GEnie and other electronic bulletin board systems. AutoBlack 1S: The simplest and most able of several shareware screensaver rou tines, This on loads as an INIT resource from the System folder. When there hasbeen no keyboard or mouse activity fora user-specified interval or whenever you move the cursor to the upper-right comer ofthe sreen, AutoBlack will darken it except fora real-time analog clock bouncing randomly across the display. Works during downloads and printing. Created by iy Hy Co Sr Cait Ree istration fe: $5. BackDown (Delta:2): A Desk Accessory that provides something few Mac applications can offer: downloading of fils inthe back- round while ther applications ae in use, Work reliably and at speeds as high a 9,600, baud, Writen by Ron Risley. Registration fee $30. Boston II Font: The bes font for near- typewriter-qulity output from the ImageWrit- Comes in a variety of sizes, optimized for “MacWrite and Microsoft Word. Designed by Charles E. Maurer. Registration fe: $10 Clipper 1.5/1.6: An FKey, installable with Carlos Weber's FKey Manager, that automa cally inserts cariage returns at specified inter- ‘alsin text copied to the Clipboard. Also can be used in reverse to strip unwanted carriage returns. Indispensable for those who regularly ‘communicate via services lke MCI Mail and ‘CompuServe. Does not work directly with word processors ike Word or MacWrit, but text can be copied into mini WRITER or Mock- Writ, processed withthe Clipper key and then pasted hack into a word processor. Writen by Loftus B. Becker J, Fee. DiskTop 1.22.0: Offers virtually ll ofthe functions ofthe Finder and more, even while nother application is open, Volume directories ‘an be examined; new folders canbe created; and files canbe located, deleted, copied, ‘moved or renamed. Written by Gil Beecher and distributed by CE Software of Des Moines, Towa. Version 1.2 is availabe to anyone wish- ing to try the program; Version 2.0 is dstribut- ed only to those who register or buy i retail Registration fee: $39.95, FKey Manager 25: A ily program that makes i easy to install remove and otherwise manipulate Fkeys — the 1) smal system-level routines accesible at any ime by pressing the Command and Shift keys and a number. Many Macuser ar familiar only withthe buie-in routines that eect disks and generate sereen dumps, but dozens of oh- ers are available, including keys to enter the dat into a document, launch Desk Accessories without the mouse or copy a section ofthe sereen othe Clipboard. Pop-Keys, distributed with the Manager, creates a pop-up menu that provides ready acess to any number of FKeys, while the KeyPad INIT lets you use the numer- ic keypad for FKeys. Writen by Carlos Weber, MD. Free. Fontsie 306; Fontse lets you use any font you have stored in a designated font folder even fit is not nstale in your system file, Invaluable for desktop publishers and others ‘who need occasional access to a wide variety of fonts. Written by Loftus B. Becker J, Regis- tration fee: $10, ini WRITER 1.39: A mini-word proves- sor convenient available at any time from the ‘Apple menu. Especially help- Oe ful for taking notes, compos- ing messages or reading ZA plain-text files during telecom SZ" sessions or while using a spreadsheet, database or graphics program. Comparable to Mock Write but with many features missing from that pro gram: Undo; choice of fonts, sizes an lne- spacing; bold and undertned text; built-in word-andline-count; and access to several ‘print modes, including near letter quality, on the ImageWritr printer. Writen by David Dunham, author of Acta and several other pop- ular shareware and commercial programs and distributed by Maitreya Design of Goleta, Calif. Shareware fee: $12 MockiTerminal: A Desk Accessory telecommunications program that kts you g0 ‘on-line without closing your main application, Used with BackDown, MockTerminal allows many telecommunications transactions to be caied out entirely fom within an unrelated application, Writen by Don Brown and dis- tributed along with Mock Write (below), ‘MockChart (a Desk Accessory charting pro- ram) and other excellent utilities as part of CE Software's MockPackaget. Registration fee for the entre package: $35. MockWrite 4.3.4 The original Desk Accessory text eitor, Mock Write is one ofthe ‘oldest shareware programs forthe Macintosh and sill one of the most useful. Same asthe "NotePad+ module in Borland Intemational’ SideKick 2.0. Lacks an Undo function and uses only the Monaco font but does suppor variable tabs. License fe forthe complete MockPack- age): $35. Oasis 13/143: One of several speedy shareware alteatives to the Finder, Oasis lets you create a Desktop of lick {able buttons that will launch any application or document ‘on your disk, whatever is postion in the folder hierar STEIN chy. Offers nearly all Finder See SAMPLER, Page 23 MacWEEK 2}2 Aug. 11, 1987 N E W 5 SHAREWARE Continued from previous page shareware. Although the “exciting” software he is curently developing willbe marketed com: ‘mercially, he expects to make a more limited ‘version ofthe forthcoming program availble through the bulletin board system and user- group circuit But ike John Mitchell before them, such developers have learned some harsh lessons Registration rates for most shareware programs are frightflly low. Watson who calls himself “a capitals throtled by a sense of faimess and morality,” side has “no idea” how many users have registered Red Ryder, but he was nevertheless wiling to estimate that some 30 percent of its users — three quarters of them, according to him, from the business world — have registered the product. But for other pro- ‘grams, developers’ estimates — admittedly sheer guesswork — run a low as percent. [What about suppor? No, T don’t have a |weny-four hour 800 gripe line don't have la Customer Suppor Staf. (You know them, Ine guys whose salary comes out of your license fees, whose jos to hold your hand hile Keeping you from aking to the people Iwho really know whats going on.) What Ido have is a US. mal box (1955 Edgemont Stet, San Diego, CA 92102), CompuServe \73547,240), GEnie (R-Squaed), and the lknowledge it takes to answer your questions light, the fist time. When you end me a problem ora suggestion, it goes directly to jhe top. Believe me, I don't forget who pays [my sary. ‘Rise’ garanice fram he wer manual to Ron Rises BackDorn. Becker, who has produced over a dozen highly regarded utilities for the Mac, sid he {still some distance from covering the costs incured in developing and supporting hs soft- ‘ware. The software industry, Becker sid, is the worst when it comes to registering share- ware.“ don’t think I've ever gotten a check from an employee of Apple,” he sai, even though several have called him for technical support. ‘Not suprisingly, some shareware develop- ers express more than a tle resentment at those who take advantage of their work and do not pay frit. Brown flatly labels such users “thieves.” Watson and Becker ae more restrained. “I'm nt pointing a finger.” Watson Programmer Don Brown said there is “emotional satisfaction” with shareware. said. “Out way of business makes it hard for people o pay. I's hard to find an envelope and a stamp, but it’s easy to procrastinate I do myself.” Inierviews with business users support Watson's observations. In most organizations, itis difficult, if not impossible, to convince purchasing departments to place an order for software wth an unknown company charging ‘what many see as suspiciously low prices Individual ses like Merck's Boger or Norma Taber, a systems engineer who used Mac as front-end to a VAX ata MITRE Corp. facility in Virginia, typically have to send a personal check for registration fees, then submit an expense claim to their compa- nies. Even scrupulous users have difficulty making sure ther organizations pay forall the software used. Boger keeps careful track ofthe titles in use at his Merc lab and makes sure that developers are compensated appro- priatly. But he said users elsewhere inthe ‘company who copy programs from his library ‘may not be so careful. At Dartmouth, Latz said, the personal computer center maintains an extensive shareware library that staff and students may copy, but he acknowledged that registration rates among such user ae “abysmally lo Inlight of these sometimes arim realities, CCE Software's Brown and Skee are not alone in reconsidering some of ther old assumptions. ‘Watson, though far and away the most success- ful financially ofthe shareware developers, has decided to abandon shareware forthe forth- ‘coming Version 10.0 of Red Ryder. In part ‘because the new release will have — and, according to Watson, wil need — a bound ‘manual, Watson and his associates at The FreeSoft Co. were reluctant to have the soft ‘ware circulate in the usual way. “How,” Wat- son asked, “are people supposed to share & bound manual?” But even as some leading edge into the commercial bg leagues, the ‘Mac shareware scene continues to flourish On atypical day, anywhere from five t0 20 new programs o updates may be uploaded to CompuServe, Many prove ephemeral. But past experience suggest that among them are likely tobe some gems that will offer ‘new capabilities and convenience for the Mac user Insiders’ sources for getting shareware ‘There ae thre principal channels through which shareware and public-domain software circulates among Mac users: electronic bul- Jetn-board services, mail-order enterprises specializing in shareware disks and non-profit uses groups The most complete and and up-to-date col- lections are in CompuServe's Mac Users Forum, the “Coffee MUG” on GEnie andthe ICONiact forum on Delphi. A 125-pagecata- log tld “The Best ofthe Macintosh Forum,” With a tutorial on downloading and list of favorite files as of February 1987, is available through CompuServe Customer Service. Several commercial outlets distribute share- ware and public-domain disks a prices ranging from $3.50 to $9 per disk. EDUCOMP, a Solana Beach, Cali, company that claims to be the oldest and largest such operation inthe nation, ists 361 400-Klyte disks, witha total Continued on next page Software for Pennies! EDUCOMP’s got the hottest Public Domain/Shareware software for less! “The Best of EDUCOMP! ck sa pachad wt progr or buns, ssseadon sekop pasting, onuranman mere Vol. 1, with: Amorize, Home Inventory, Talk ing Moos, Backgammon, Mogareids, Fonts, RamDisk, Switcher, & moro! (5 Disks) $30 Vol. 2, with: PrinProview, BoopINIT, Layout, 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 Pinal, FKEY Manager, Dotio-Dot, Bovery 1 1 1 1 We 1 1 1 1 1 Hills Font & more! (5 Disks). $30 TBVot. 3, with: BlackJack, MockWrite, Phone Book, Fonts, AutoBlack, BackDrop, Casi, Ait Traffe Control, Lunar Lander, Clip Art Sampler & morel (5 Disks), $30 I'D" - Five 800K cisks! ‘ChackBook, Bio- thythm, NewSerap, Billards, Eraser, Big See TH251-BoveryHite ura high qualty...$8.50 [B)230.4nt1 Fonts-101 foreign lang’s 8.60 iP ART {1246-Shadowottes sihovette clips ....8.50 1D)243 Portraits of famous poople ......8.50 121369-371 NFL Postors 3 disks 20.00 1ESK ACCESSORIES. 11275-TimeLog vack your Mac use ...8.50 {IB91-Bost of DAs Blacklack, PhonoBook, DiskTop, Suporfuler. king Moose, fais 650 [1B12-Best of DAs. [SusiNEss {[1293-Personal Finance for Excol.....8.50 {B1204-Business Analysis for Excol 8.50 8.50 }ESKTOP PUBLISHING J 122Pageltakar Templates for bsioss ‘cards, envelopes, labels, tc 8.50 H_03363-Font Editor with instructions .....6.50 EDUCATION 11267-GraphToote plot ary function... 8.50 ' {sp dng Around in cate 8 avis ‘book on o50 H [tee armel crave ho oar rom ary ‘angie and altude in 2D 050 Tcames 1 1° C1st2-Pinba 18 citeont machines ...850 {B3t6-Dungeon of Doom fantasy game 8.50. [Gl2ei-Buackjack & Slot Mochine «8.50 TPERSONAL ! 11250-Biorhythm & StarChart os | | GiaisacRoote goreobay pea 850. umiimes 1178-Resource Ettor customize Moc ..8.50 [_Go0ikctoBick,PintPrevion 0: 8.50_ 1G Pleose ond me your FREE 126-pege catalog! ty Clones CISA CH | 1 1 SS Disses wegn tr stinang a hancng. Cason aacomm H Teper CALLNOW! | [esi Continued from previous page ‘of mor than 3,000 programs available. Prices begin at $8.50 per 400-Kbyte disk, with dis- ‘counts and fee disk offers for large orders. Among the company’s regular customers, according toa spokesman, ae users from ‘Apple, NASA, TRW, Kodak and Peat Mar- wick. ‘Shareware developers have mixed feelings about these services. Some, like CE Software's Don Brown, ae infuriated atthe idea of others profiting from their wor, typically without ‘even asking their permission to distribute copy- SAMPLER Continued from Page 21 function. Written by Jan Eugenides. Version 1.43 is for registered users only; Version! 3s available as shareware. Registration fee: $15. Other .. 309: A Desk Accessory that sives you temporary use of anyother accessory file on your disks without using the FonlDA Mover to instal itn your System. Other forth- ‘coming programs (Oiduvai’s DA-Switcher and ‘Steve Brecher’s much-anticipated Suitcase software) may provide even more convenient acces to unlimited numbers of Desk Acces- sories, but this is tried and true program at an It. Registration fee: $5 Packt IT 1.2: An application designed to save money and hassle uring electronic file- By transfers by combining two or GA) tes opens tw ‘compress and enrypt data. Q Denizens of Mac bulletin boards quickly become that indicates that an uploaded file will need to be “unpacked” before it canbe used. Write by Harry Chesley. Registration fee: $15. most versatile and powerful telecommunic- tions program availabe for the Macintosh, Certainly the most successful shareware current version lacks the sick graphical interface of some competitors, but the Write a Procedure for Me command makes it easy to automate tedious vice. The built-in procedural language allows for macros so complex that entire telecommu- nications sessions canbe conducted unattend- ced. Registration forthe curent version is $40. of Philadelphia, ‘Talking Moose 1.21: A delightfully inev- erent creature who drops down from your Menu Barat intervals to cheer {just to beg fora pizza. Creat- AS oS ey Sivas MD. the YS moose installs himself as a Desk Accessory and requires Apple's MacinTalk speech synthesizer in your unbeatable price. Written by Loftus . Becker more files into one. Also familiar withthe file-name extension pit” Red Ryder 9.4: By general consensus the program forthe Mac. The operation like logging on to an electronic ser- Wiiten by Soott Watson of The FreSoft Co. ‘you and jeer you or maybe System folder. Fre. righted code. Others like Loftus E, Becker Jr, argue that EDUCOMP and its competitors make share- ware available to many who would otherwise have no access oi. Te best ofthese compa- nies, Becker said, have begun — sometimes under pressure fom angry programmers —to ‘make efforts to remind buyers that making an initial payment to acquire the disks doesnot absolve them of responsibility to register and pay forthe shareware programs they keep and tse. ‘Non-profit user groups form the third chan- Mac WEEK NEWS Aug. 11, 1987 nel for shareware distribution, According 10 Apple's user group evangelist, Ellen Lease, tere are some 600 Macintosh groups across the United States, and most offer some sort of software distribution. With 6,700 members at last count, the Boston Computer Society's Macintosh Users Group is reportedly the larges