mac week v 3 n 1

V._— MEEK 3 January 1989 $2.50 Vol. 3 No. 1 A/UX due for upgrade soon CUPERTINO, Calif. — A/UX will get a sorely needed upgrade Tater this year as Apple makes its Unix operating system more com- patible with standard Mac software, but some users and dealers said little, too late. Likely to be shown at this month’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco and available to users in February or March, according to sources close to Apple, A/UX 14 will feature comprehensive support for Macintosh Toolbox routines. ‘These standard system services, built into the Macintosh ROM and widely used by Mac OS software, ‘were not fully supported in the origi- nal version. Arriving almost one year after its original introduction, A/UX’s first See A/UX, Page 8 ———— 3Com announces mail links SANTA CLARA, Calif. — 3Com Corp. and Telesystemes Reseaux, a division of Cogecom, France Tele- com Group, last month announced an agreement to co-develop an X400-based gateway and X.25-based router that will enable workstations on 3+Open networks, including Macs, to exchange mail with IBM's PROFS, DEC's ALLIN-1 and Tele- net's Telemail. The products, called 3+Open Reach/X.400 and 3+Open Inter- net/X.25, won't be available until mid-year. 0 Word 4.0 release delayed REDMOND, Wash. — The re- lease of Microsoft Word 4.0, sched. uled for October 1988 then pushed back to the end of 1988, has been re- scheduled for mid- to late February. Microsoft officials explained the latest delay as a result of efforts to improve the performance of the pro- gram and to make certain it is free of the kinds of bugs that embar- rassed the company when Version 3.0 was released two years ago they feel the enhancements are too Jasmine serves up networking DirectServe a speedy, low-cost alternative to dedicated Mac | BY JON SWARTZ SAN FRANCISCO — Corporate MIS directors confronted by the high cost per node of Mac networks should get a price break soon. Jasmine Technologies Inc. is poised to unveil a new AppleTalk Fil- ing Protocol-compatible file server that significantly decreases Apple- Talk network node costs. ‘The San Francisco-based compa- ny said it will announce Direct- Serve, a $1,299 external device and THE COST OF FILE SERVING (by price per node) DirectServe 10 nodes AppleShare 2.0 © 20 nodes TOPS (COURTESY JASMINE Taiwanese Mac clones in pipeline AND EMILY BROWER TAIPEI, Taiwan — A team of experienced developers in Taiwan Mac managers speak out New Organizational Mac section, see Page 24 appears close to releasing a fully functional Mac clone. On Dec. 25, a new Taiwanese company called Akkord Technolo- gies Inc. introduced a Macintosh “semi-clone” and announced plans to release a laptop model at this spring’s Comdex trade show. ‘A Mac-compatible ROM chip set, which its Taiwanese designer insists is legal, is now under development and will be available by summer, Akkord is offering $1,100 sam- ples of the semi-clone, including a case with an 800-Kbyte floppy disk drive and power supply, keyboard, mouse and monitor — everything except the Mac ROMs. The compa- ny is also offering the ROM-less motherboard separately for $220. The board includes a SCSI int face, a 4-Mbyte RAM area, two serial ports, a Centronics printer port, external and internal floppy disk drive ports, an AppleTalk port, and connectors for a mouse, monitor and keyboard. ‘As with Atari STs equipped with MagicSac or Spectre 128 Mac emula- tors, users of the current Akkord See CLONES, Page 8 software at this month's Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The product is scheduled to ship in February. DirectServe’s software is com- patible with AppleShare 2.0 and pro- vides a similar set of access privi- leges and user functions. Unlike AppleShare, however, DirectServe does not require a dedicated Mac and operates 20 percent to 40 per- cent faster than a Mac-based server, depending on the number of nodes and traffic, according to director of products Michael Shapiro. The speed improvements over Macintosh-based AppleShare serv- ers are due primarily to the place- ment of the AppleShare code in ROM and data caching techniques, said Charlie Cheng, group product manager at Jasmine. In addition, the Motorola 68000 microprocessor at the heart of DirectServe doesn't have to support a monitor or key- board and is dedicated solely to file serving activities. The box will ship with 1 Mbyte of RAM, but memory can be expanded up to 4 Mbytes. It can ‘support up to seven SCSI devices and provides an AppleTalk connec- tor and a serial expansion port for communications peripherals. AppleShare work group software is included with the package, allow- ing management of the server from any Macintosh on the network. Support for Ethernet is planned | for a future release of the product. Jasmine js located at 1740 Army St., San Francisco, Calif. 94124; (415) 282-1111.0 Related story and comparison chart on Page 8. 030 SE fills gap in Apple line BY BY JONATHAN PERROW SAN FRANCISCO — When Apple's 68030-based Mac SE debuts at the Macworld Expo this month, it will be touted as a high-performance file server, a music workstation and a “general productivity tool” for con- sultants, accountants, faculty and students, according to a product plan for the machine reviewed by MacWEEK. The Mac SE '030 is essentially a scaled-down version of a Mac IIx, with a built-in 9-inch monitor, a See SE, Page 8 RasterOps blitz due Color boards, QuickDraw accelerator BY JONATHAN PERROW CUPERTINO, Calif. — Ras- terOps Corp. is preparing a whirl- wind of new products to be intro- duced during the next few months, including the following: * a new family of eight-bit color display boards; * a “full chun- ky” 32-bit video board; * two mono- chrome display sys- tems; and 1966 * QuickDraw acceleration soft- ware that the company said could improve the Mae II's graphics per- formance up to 60-fold. During the first quarter of this year the Cupertino, Calif.-based company will roll out four new eight- See RASTEROPS, Page 9 The Macintosh Year in Review Come Visit us at MacWorld Expo Ifyou wanta full page monitor for your Mac SE, but don't want to pay full price, we havea simple suggestion. Look into a PageView from Sigma Designs. Priced less than $1000, this new full page screen delivers the lind of feafures you cant get or twice the money, Like our exclusive Multimode operation. A remark- ably versatile feature that lets you create artwork in FET TECAc ah RT view the entire t jl Ww 8,5"x 11” layout. SO YOU alWaysS ijt, Po ceke monitor ubere atten sit Nout wasting me sro atood cru the printer, Our 15" high contrast flat screen also vi eliminates distortion or glare. And our 96 He refresh ble cee ng ee Soe ea sae jgetthe whole story on what separates PageView from everybody else, Call Sigma Designs ec) ~ 770-0100 and ask for our PageView representative. pacar : Sigma Designs, Inc 46501 Landing Parkway Fremont, CA 94538 New, mutant viral strains ring in the new year INIT29 termed extra virulent BY EMILY BROWER LOS ANGELES — Mac users may remember 1988 as the year of the computer virus, but last year’s scourge may be only the beginning. Already, the new year has rung in one brand-new virus and yet another strain of the nVIR virus. With many virus-watchers anticipating an increasingly trou- blesome and hostile environment for the Macintosh, commercial and shareware developers of pro- tection programs are rushing to update their software to combat the most recent infections (see related story at right) The new virus, dubbed INIT29 by the Computer Virus Industry Association of Santa Clara, Calif., installs CODE resources to appli- cations and adds INIT resources with an ID No. 29 to all other files. Both the INIT and the CODE resources are 712 bytes in size, according to Robert Wood- HS IN THIS ISSUE B NEWS head, author of the shareware virus-detection program Inter- feron and Virex, a commercial diagnostic and repair application. “The INIT29 is particularly vir- ulent because it infects disks the moment they are inserted into a system with an infected hard disk,” said Robert Capon, presi- dent of HJC Software of Durham, N.C., the publisher of Virex. “Prior to the appearance of INIT29, Macintosh viruses could spread only when an infected pro- gram was used.” INIT29 was discovered at the University of California, Los Angeles, according to John McAfee, president of Interpath, a computer security company in Santa Clara, but it has yet to spread widely in the Macintosh community. A new nVIR strain, called Hpat, was discovered in Dallas late last month. An Apple em- ployee in Nashville, Tenn., report- ed on AppleLink that his office had been infected by Hpat. Instead of nVIR resources, the new infection installs Hpat resources in the system file and applications that use TextEdit. 0 16 The Crystal Mac ments in ‘88 and predicting what the Mac's sixth year will bring in '89. The sce pany to fin: | ruin. Apple video zips loose lips Apple recently launched an Information Protection pro- gram designed to help CEO John Sculley sleep more soundly. at the right, showing a reporter-Infiltrator walking out of a company building with a wheelbarrow full of purloined documents, is taken from a new “employee awareness” video. It depicts Sculley having a nightmare about supposedly secret information pouring out of Apple like water from a leaky faucet and finally bringing the com- True to Apple's egocentric image, the video includes a simulated segment from a Japanese news broadcast that said, “The decline of Apple has virtually destroyed the U.S. economy and caused a sharp decline in real estate values.” But the video ends on an upbeat note: Sculley awakens to listen to a “real” news report about an amazing Apple product announcement that catches the industry off guard. Virus detection products announced BY EMILY BROWER In the wake of the latest discov- ery of new and variant viruses, com- mercial and shareware developers have announced a slew of new ver- sions of detection and protection software for Mac users. * Mainstay has announced a new program called VirOut, a two- part program with a “serum” and a “vaccine.” The serum portion of VirOut will search and destroy all known viruses, while the vaccine portion installs an INIT to protect against future infection of all known high-end accounting departments. 32 Building a better mouse? Mac viruses. VirOut will be avail- able at this month’s Macworld Expo for $99.95, © Virex, first introduced by HJC Software in November 1938, is in its third incarnation. Version 1.2, avail- able this week, will detect both Hpat and INIT29. Upgrades for Virex 1.1 owners will cost $15. © Developer Jeffrey Shulman is also upgrading VirusDetective, a shareware desk accessory that searches for and removes any resource specified by the user. Version 2.0 will check floppy disks as they are inserted and includes a simplified interface, new comment and Get Info options, and a variety of other options. Shulman said VirusDetective 2.0 will be available sometime this month. The share- ware fee will be $20 for those who get the program from on-line ser- vices or users groups and $25 for those who order it from the author. Mainstay is at 5311-B Derry Ave., Agoura Hills, Calif, 91301; (818) 991-6540. HJC Software can be reached at PO. Box 51816, Durham, N.C. 27717; (919)490-1277. Jeffrey Shulman can be reached at PO. Box 521, Ridgefield, Conn. 06877-0521. 0 4 Third parties ready fax modems AppleFax delays continue. 5 Rebus to introduce graphing programs Macworld debut slated. 6 Preferred offers two new DAs Vantage provides text processing; DAtabase does data management. 6 PC remote control program upgraded MacChuck 5 links PCs to Macs via AppleTalk. 10 Interactive Solutions bets on multimedia Mac II system creates interactive mul- timedia presentations. 10 MaclnTouch The Mac at 5. 12 Electronic Arts adds to Studio family Black-and-white version, Thunder IT set for Macworld introduction. 12 New software for visually impaired users Berkeley System Design develops product line for visually disabled. 12 StackWEEK Finding the best HyperCard tools. 14 Linking Macs to Wangs Third parties demonstrate products for transfer, conversion, emulation. 14 Presentation slow to find its audience Desktop presentation elicits mixed reactions from business users. Wi SPECIAL REPORT 16 A look back and a look ahead Reviewing important Mac develop- Industry leaders prognosticate for ’89, 18 The Wishful Mac What volume buyers tant. 18 Best products and upgrades of '88 MacWEEK picks two Top 10 lists. 22 Editorial Multitasking doesn't appear to be in the Mac's cards for 1989, although it would behoove Apple to get cracking on it. 22 Letters 22 Mac Soapbox Lynn Alley gets a headache from visions of LANs dancing in his head. 62 Mac the Knife i ORGANIZATIONAL MAC 24 Peripheral shopping Should microcomputer managers buy ‘from Apple or third-party vendors? 24 The Mac Manager/Don Crabb Getting started with an AppleTalh LAN can be easy with some advance planning. @ WINDOW ON 30 Mac penetration of corporate accounting Slow LAN speed limits processing in Other input devices offer some func- tions that the mouse can't provide. 32. Personal Writer aids typing-phobes 34 Optical mice, trackballs offer options Fewer moving parts and less desktop space make these alternatives to the mouse attractive. 34 Techfiles/Joel West The 030 offers multiple advantages Sor business users. 60 Pilot program supports Mac consultants New hardware, software simplifies | 44 Mail Order number crunching, see Page 28. 46 Ad Showcase 49 Ad Index 50 Classified | REVIEWS 55 Career Opportunities @ BUSINESS WATCH 57 Dealers report mixed sales 57 Irwin targets Mac power users 58 Ashton-Tate, Fox showdown in court 59 IBM exec joins Apple WriteNow 2.0 adds power without complications, see Page 36. Holiday season disappoints some. 36 The Week in Reviews You can correspond faster with QuickLetter 38 Pearl LISP good chance to try LISP Low-cost subset of Allegro CL provides an opportunity to learn about LISP 38 Springboard Publisher 1.06 Low-end introduction to desktop pub- lishing is simple but lacks precision. ‘Mac WEEK is produced using an in-house pstem of Apple Macintosh SEs and Mac Ils; Laser- Writer, Varityper VT-600 and VI-60OW, and QMS ColorScript 100 printers networked on Farallon PhoneNet; a Linatronic 300; an Abo- ton Scanner, RasterOps, E-Machines and Super. ‘Mac monitors; and software including Quark- XPress, Aldus PageMaker, Adobe Iustrator, Aldus FreeHand, SuperPuint, Microsoft Word, LaserPaint, PxelPaint and Cricket Draw 3 January 1989/MacWEEK 3 Mas NEWS Third parties ready fax modems as AppleFax delays continue BY EMILY BROWER CUPERTINO, Calif. — Still struggling to get the bugs out of its ill-fated AppleFax Modem, Apple is facing increasingly stiff com- petition from third-party vendors. + Datadesk International, the Los Angeles- based keyboard distributor, is readying the Datafax 9624, a device that serves as Lotus eyes Mac market with acquisition of PS BY ERIC J. ADAMS. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Hoping to re-enter the Mac market on several application fronts, Lotus Development Corp. reportedly is finaliz~ ing a deal to acquire PS Publishing, a Sausalito, Calif.-based start-up company, sources close to the companies said. Lotus is primarily interested in the text and graphics capabilities of PS Collage, a sophisti- cated drawing program competitive with Aldus FreeHand and Adobe Illustrator, and one of two unreleased PS Publishing programs, the ‘sources said. The company reportedly plans to use the technology in PS Collage as a platform for developing a family of Mac products. PS Compose, the second program under development by PS Publishing, is a profession- al typesetting application with WYSIWYG capabilities and a code-oriented mode that sup- ports PostScript and typesetters such as Compugraphic. Neither Robert Simon, president of PS Publishing, nor Lotus officials would confirm or deny that a deal was imminent. Simon started the company in 1986 with funding from California Partners, a venture cap- ital firm in Menlo Park, Calif. The deal report- edly is for the acquisition of the entire company, staffed by Simon and five programmers. Besides a Mac version of its 1-2-3 spread- sheet, sources said Lotus is also looking to duplicate for the Mac its Agenda personal information manager. Lotus is also searching for a Mac equivalent of Manuscript, its techni- cal word processor. “We are serious about the Mac market, and this time we want to do it right,” said Betsy Kosheff, a Lotus public relations manager. Kinetics ups price WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — Citing ongoing developing and manufacturing costs, Kinetics Inc. last month raised the price of its FastPath 4 communications gateway by 12 percent, to $2,795 ‘The FastPath 4 gateway, previously priced at $2,495, connects LocalTalk, AppleTalk’s cabling system, to Ethernet, the 10-Mbps net- working scheme commonly used in DEC and Unix computer environments. The gateway, which supports such net- working protocols as AppleTalk and TCP/IP, allows Macs to share electronic mail, files, printers and other peripheral devices over net- works linking a variety of machines. DECnet support for FastPath 4 is scheduled for release early this year. Kinetics Inc. is located at 2500 Camino Diablo, Walnut Creek, Calif. 94596; (415) 947-0998. 0 4 MacWEEK/3 January 1989 both a 9,600-bps fax modem and a 2,400-bps data modem on both the Mac and the IBM PC. The company said software to drive the $799 device from the Mac should ship in February. * Orchid Technologies of Fremont, Calif., plans to announce a $599 data/fax modem this month and ship it, bundled with background processing software from Solutions Inc. of Williston, Vt., by March 1. The Orchid unit will transmit both fax and data at 9,600 bps. Apple suspended shipments of its $699 peripheral last October when incompatibilities with some Pitney Bowes fax machines and ring-detection problems with certain private- branch exchanges were traced to glitches in the AppleFax firmware. A replacement ROM began shipping to dealers in November (see MacWEEK, Nov. 8, 1988), but Apple spokes- woman Cynthia Macon acknowledged last month that the company has not yet resumed shipping the AppleFax itself. ‘The latest snag is a software problem that causes letters to overlap when documents from programs that use fractional character are printed with the AppleFax applicat Macon said that an upgraded Version } all the software accompanying the AppleFé now in testing and should be available dealers and on-line services this month. “This delay is hurting Apple, it’s h Mac users, and it's hurting us,” said Evslin, president of Solutions , which developed its BackFax program for AppleFax. % Orchid Technologies is located at Northport Loop W., Fremont, Calif. 94! (415) 683-0300. Datadesk International located at 7651 Haskell Ave., Los Angeles, — Calif. 91406; (818) 780-1673. 0 Macintosh user interface. ©1988 Noval inc., World Headquarters, 122 East 1700 South, Provo, Utoh 84601 (801)379-5900 So when Novell set out to network the Macintosh with PCs, it was with one clear caveat: preserve the Mac environment. Create network software that would feel right to the pickiest of all Macintosh users. And none are pickier than the ones at Apple. Full AppleTalk compatibility. Working directly with Apple, Novell’s programmers cre- ated a version of NetWare® that is compatible with the AppleTalk Filing Protocol (AFP). It’s Novell presents a n even the pickie Macintosh owners have a reputation for being fanatical about their Macs. And rightfully so, when you consider the elegance of the an achievement hailed by Apple President CEO Ji ohn Sculley as “a very significant event for the industry.” And it means that Mac use! can now get all the power and flexibility of number one local area network in the worl without sacrificing any Macintosh functi AFP compatibility also means that NetWare for Macintosh will be fully compat- ible with future Macintosh hardware and operating system versions. So you cantake advantage of new Macintosh product releases - as soon as they become available. § Freedom to choose. NetWare for Macintosh lets you connect Macs with a Rebus readies graphing program for Macworld debut BY CONNIE GUGLIELMO SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Rebus Devel- opment Corp. hopes to make its way to the top of the Mac software charts with a new graph- ing program it plans to introduce at the Macworld Expo later this month. Reveal is a $495 charting and graphing pro- gram expected to ship sometime in the first quarter, according to Dave Formenti, engi- neering manager for the Santa Clara, Calif., company. The program is designed for users who want to create sophisticated technical graphs and who are looking for capabilities beyond those offered in Cricket Graph, the popular $195 charting package from Cricket Software of Malvern, Pa., Formenti said. Reveal generates trend, data compres- sion, scatter, statistical, high-low, forecast, parametric and strip charts as well as his- tograms and graphs containing multiple y axes, Graphs can then be reproduced in a vari- ety of chart formats, such as bar, line, pie and log charts, Under development for the past six months, the program borrows many of its fea- tures from Parameter Manager Plus, Rebus’ advanced data-analysis and plotting program. Reveal lets users import information easily from spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel, Formenti said, adding that the program will accept data in virtually any text format. Reveal’s graphs and charts can be stored in InfoWorld, June 20, 1983 sharing files and peripherals, users worldwide. To satisfy your need for a powerful Macintosh network, plug into NetWare—the work made to satisfy Macintosh user myriad of PC, minicomputer and mainframe environments, including OS/2. So you can choose the workstation environment that best suits your needs while communicating easily between dissimilar operating systems and You get all the performance, security, fault tolerance and functionality of NetWare without changing the way you work with your Macintosh. And you get the power to transpar- ently connect to over two million NetWare network that passed the ultimate Mac test drive. See your Gold Novell Authorized Reseller, or call 1-800-LANKIND. For more information, call from your modem 1-800-444-4472 (8 bit, no parity, 1 stop bit) and enter the access code NVMC24. NNOVELL For network solutions, you should be seei seeing red. PICT format for export to other Macintosh applications. ‘The program also contains a database that stores data in chronological order, based on time or sequence, in row and column format. The database can handle 256 columns with up to 32,000 rows of data, Formenti said. More than 100 functions are built-in to the program, including calculation capabilities and a tool palette for annotating and customizing graphs. It works in black and white, but Formenti said the company is planning to add color support. Rebus Development Corp. is located at 2330B Walsh Ave., Santa Clara, Calif. 95051; (408) 727-0110. Apple joins connectivity organization BY EMILY KAY Apple recently became a charter member of the Information Technology Requirements Council (ITRC), a new, user-driven umbrella group that pushes international connectivity standards. The company was one of two com- puter vendors asked to join the council. Hewlett-Packard was the other. The non-profit group, which has met sever- al times since its incorporation last spring, will formally launch its efforts this month. The new body will be the parent organization of combined U.S. and Canadian MAP/TOP. Users Groups (MTUG), according to Ted Manakas, ITRC’s vice president of marketing. MAP/TOP (Manufacturing Automation Protocol/Technical and Office Protocol) are the manufacturing and office-automation spec- ifications based on the lower four layers of the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSD reference model, an emerging interna- tional standard for connecting heterogeneous computer environments. “Apple stands to gain a lot from this pro- cess in terms of understanding customer needs and plans for the future,” said Mike Lawler, Apple's galactic standards coordinator, manager of its standards group and chairman of the TOP vendors group. User organizations joining Apple on the TTRC board include HP, Boeing Co., General Motors Corp., Eastman Kodak Co., Bechtel National Inc. and the Industrial Technology Institute. The ITRC’s charter is to provide long-term policy guidance, permanent staff support and stable funding for MTUG, said Manakas. “MAP/TOP has been successful over the years as a voluntary ad hoc group,” he said. “If organized and incorporated, MAP/TOP users could better coordinate and integrate the kinds of activities needed to perpetuate user influ- ence in standards-based development.” ‘The ITRC will promote standards across a range of information technologies, including networking, application interfaces, languages and operating systems, Manakas said. ITRC users chose Apple as one of the first vendors on the board because it has been active on the TOPS side, and it has a minority investment in and works with Touch Commun- ications Inc., an OSI vendor, Lawler said. Doug McLean, product marketing manag- er for Apple's internetworking services, said the ITRC users also selected Apple and HP in recognition of their support for MTUG and because “neither one is IBM.” Apple has already made a financial commit- ment to the new group, paying $75,000 in dues for 1988. As board members in 1989, Apple and HP each will owe $100,000.09. 3 January 1989/MacWEEK 5 [NEWS ea neo cel Vantage, DAtabase released Preferred ships new DAs BY HENRY NORR MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Pushing desk accessory technology to new frontiers, Preferred Publishers Inc. last month delivered two feature- packed DAs for text processing and data management: * Vantage, a 108-Kbyte, $99.95 text-editing accessory, includes an interactive spelling checker and 80,000-word dictionary, built-in macro capabilities and a variety of commands designed to speed the processing of text imported from mainframes, workstations and other personal computers. ¢ DAtabase, a 105-Kbyte, $129.95 DA, lets users design com- plex forms, create check boxes and Pop-up menus to simplify data entry, set up calculated fields for numerical information and store color or monochrome graphics as data or background (see MacWEEK, Aug. 30, 1988). ariaree] S.10um nereus usage of Tandscaplng provides rural setting Image Index ART & Orawing Painting Osew Gotner VIDEO ee OCasette Ostins PHOTO Ostiae CGP A rccste Print Preferred Publishers’ new DAtabase desk accessory lets users store images in picture fields or use them in data entry forms. Vantage can open 16 windows at once, with file size limited only by memory. In addition to plain text files, it reads text information from formatted documents produced by Word 3.0, MacWrite 4.5 and 5.0, and WriteNow 1.0. File-format filters are user-installable, and the Memphis, Tenn.-based publisher said others will be available this year. MacChuck Version 1.5 links PCs over AppleTalk BY HENRY NORR NEW BRIGHTON, Minn. — MacChuck, the Vano Associates software package that lets Mac users operate IBM PCs and compat- ibles directly from the Mac, recently underwent its first major upgrade. Version 1.5 of the PC remote control program now works with PCs linked to the Mac over AppleTalk as well as via a direct serial connection. Consisting of an application for the Mac as well as driver and utility programs for the PC, MacChuck puts character-based MS-DOS appli- cations running on the PC into a window on the Mac. Data can be copied to or from the Mac Clipboard, and files can be trans- ferred between the machines at speeds of 57.6 Kbps (see Mac- WEEK, April 26, 1988). According to Mario Vano, presi- dent of Vano Associates, MacChuck has allowed many offices to replace PCs that were used only occasional- ly to search old databases or files, since a single DOS machine equipped with a LocalTalk card can now function as a PC server for an entire network. The license agree- ment allows MacChuck buyers to install the software on a single PC but on any number of Macs. In the absence of a Mac laptop, Vano said, demand for his program also comes from Mac owners forced to use PC-compatible laptops and therefore in need of a fast and eco- nomical way to move information between the machines. Besides network support, the recent upgrade adds a variety of enhancements, including color and larger font options when PC screens are displayed on a Mac II, improved MultiFinder capability and back- ground operations, support for func- tion keys on extended keyboards, and smoother screen response, Priced at $99.95, the package includes cabling to connect a Mac Plus, SE or I] to a nine-pin or 25-pin 5) PC serial connector. Ta pes tee tyres Vano Associates’ MacChuck puts MS-DOS applica- tions running on PCs into a window on the Mac. 6 MacWEEK/3 January 1989 Until Jan. 31 upgrades are free to those who pur- chased the product after Sept. 15, 1988. For earlier cus- tomers, Version 1.5 software is avail- able for $4, while complete new pack- ages are $25. Vano Associates Inc. can be reached at P.O, Box 12730, New Brighton, Minn, 55112; (612) 788-9547, 0 Descended from McSink, a shareware text-manipulation utility by Dave McWherter, Vantage includes commands for sorting and columnizing data in a variety of ways, adding and removing carriage returns and linefeeds, inserting pre- fixes and suffixes, and numbering lines on screen. Both of the new Preferred DAs allow users to install external proce- dures, several examples of which are shipped with the packages. A utility that resembles Apple's Font/DA Mover includes Vantage externals as menu options. In DAtabase, external functions: can be installed into a database form as HyperCard-like buttons. The pro- gram, which stores data as resources, is limited to 50 items, including labels, and 2,500 records per file. Extensive manuals for both programs range from Macintosh basics to technical information for programmers. Preferred Publishers Inc. is located at 5100 Poplar Ave., Suite 706, Memphis, Tenn. 38137; (901) 683-3383, (800) 446-6393. 0 MicroNet set to unveil ‘fastest hard disks on market’ BY RENEE MATHEWS IRVINE, Calif, — MicroNet Technology Inc. will use this month's Macworld Expo in San Francisco to unveil new 330-Mbyte internal and external drives that company President Charles McConathy called “the fastest SCSI hard disk systems on the market.” Based on the Wren Runner drive mechanism from Imprimis Tech- nology, the new drives offer an aver- age access time of 10.7 milliseconds. The 5.25-inch full-height system will be available in two versions: * Micro/1li-330, designed to be mounted inside a Mac Il or Mac IIx; * SBX-330, mounted in a “shoe- box” style cabinet for external use with the entire Mac line. ‘The SBX-330 can also be config- ured with an optional 150-Mbyte tape backup system or a 45-Mbyte removable cartridge drive. The FileMagic INIT out of the hat BY JONATHAN PERROW MUKILTEO, Wash. — Magnus Corp. is pulling three utilities out of its hat to provide a big dose of magic for your Mac. The company’s recently released $99 FileMagic package includes a trio of system enhancement pro- grams called FileMagic, Window- Magic and MultiMagic. FileMagic is a Startup document (INIT) designed to speed file and folder access by adding new capabil- ities to the standard Open and Save dialogs in applications and desk accessories. FileMagic lets users install often- used files and folders in submenus for retrieval. The utility's hierarchi- cal menu replaces the folder directo- ry pop-up menu in the dialog boxes. The program's flexible design lets users put additional functions in the menu by dragging File- Magic modules to the System folder. Magnus ships modules that find, move, copy and delete files, and create new folders. The company said it may add text- search and data-encryption modules ina future release. Magnus also makes FileMagic’s technical specifications available to third parties and users who may wish to create additional modules. The program is positioned to compete against the $59.95 HFS Navigator from Symantec Corp. of Bedford, Mass., and the $59.95 Findswell from Working Software of Santa Cruz, Calif. Bundled with FileMagic are WindowMagic, a utility that main- tains a menu of open windows, and MultiMagic, an INIT that lets users configure multiple sets of applications and DAs for use under MultiFinder. Magnus Corp. can be reached at P.O, Box 744, Mukilteo, Wash. 98275-0744; (206) 742-1633. 9 Micro/Ili-330 will be priced at $3,995, while the SBX-330 will sell for $4,495. Both systems are sched- uled to begin shipping next month, MicroNet will also show its new Twin 45 (Model SB-45/45), a $3,195 device with two SyQuest removable-cartridge 45-Mbyte drives. The company recently began shipping the $1,795 MR45, a single- drive removable system, Additional cartridges are $189 each. The company has also announced MicroCare, an extended warranty plan for all MicroNet sys- tems. For $195 the company will offer an extra 12 months of protec- tion on its 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch half-height hard disk drives and tape backup systems. For full-height drives of any capacity, an extra year of warranty will be $295. MicroNet Technology Inc. is at 13765-A Alton Parkway, Irvine, Calif. MaciWreK Mac, Window On), Rebecca Waring (Reviews), ‘Anita Malnig (GA Supplement) EDITOR AT LARGE/Dale Coleman TECHNICAL EDITOR/Ric Ford (Boston) Jonathan Swartz, Clair Whitmer ASSISTANT EDITORS/Stephen Howard (Reviews). ‘Suzanne Weber (COPY EDITORS /Chartes Lenatti (Copy Ciel). John Battelle (Desktop Chief), Janice Maloney, Carolyn Said, Sue Troy EDITORIAL ASSISTANT/Mizi Waltz Bill Peck, Peter Stange ‘ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES/Carla Daiss, Leslie Hupp, Lee Kerr, Kathy Kottenbach, JoAnn Sturtridge B MACWEEK (/SSN 0592.8118) is published meee 'y, excep for tao weeks at yearend, by Coastal ‘Associates Publishing, LP, One Park Ase, New York, N.Y 10016. Single copy price including postage: $5. One-year rate: US. $78. Canada/Mesice US. $150, International: US. rape — Mac WEEK, PO. Box 5821, ‘Cherry Hil, NJ. 08034; (609) 428-5000, CHANGES | few and old address. Allow 4 to 6 weeks for rom ‘casing POSTMASTER Send addres changes to ‘MacWEEK, PO. Bex 5806, Cherry Hil. BJ (C014. Second las postage paid of Sax France and additional mailing of ‘MacWEEK ia am independent joureal, ne 92718; (714) 837-6033. 0 PRESENTING THE WRITEMOVE PORTABLE PRINTER Most printers are sentenced by theirown sheer bulk to lifelong con- finementon a desktop. Butnow GCCTechnologies™has created a printer for the Macintosh® with considerably more freedom than that. Its called WriteMove™: the “biggest printer ever to come in an incredibly small package WriteMove weighs a scant three pounds It measures just2’«62” x10%4” (Any smaller and you couldnt get the paper in) ) 263-1405 ©1988 GCC Technologies, inc GCC Technologies and V are registered trademarks of Apple Computer. Inc PageMaker But its the only ink jet printer of any size that gives you almost unlim- ited freedom to reduce and enlarge type and documents Because its the only one with outline fonts—imag- ing software that provides function- ality otherwise available only with laser printers. As aresult, you can use Write- Move to compose documents with word processing software like Micro- higher print quality than the Image- Writer*ll, for not much more money. Which could bring a whole new meaning tothe phrase’freedom of the press.” To exercise that freedom, see your authorized GCC Technologies dealer fora WriteMove demon- stration. For the one nearest you, call (617) 890-0880* soft® Word, or desktop publishing XS | Be programs like PageMaker*And then = silently print them outat192-DPlreso- — lution. In other words, you get much ==. TECHNOLOGIES re trademarks and the GCC Technologies logo is a registered trademark of GCC Technologies, Inc Macintosh and a regis mark of Aldus Corp Microsolt is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp Suggested manutacturers retail pnce $699. INTRODUCING THE MOST INGENIOUS PORTABLE PRINTER SINCE THE PENCIL. WriteMove |< sechn on ss. © SAN FRANCISCO — If Direct- Serve sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because the new product's history goes back several years. The memory board was origi- nally developed with AppleShare core technology by Micro Design Systems Inc. of Austin, Texas, before being sold to FerroGlen of London and renamed FerroShare. Although moderately successful in Europe, only 50 copies found their way to the United States, said Jasmine targets the corporate network with DirectServe Michael Shapiro, Jasmine director of products. Jasmine acquired FerroShare, made some changes and renamed it DirectServe late last year, according to Shapiro. “We think the product repre- sents a giant step from the hard disk drive market to the corporate networking market,” he said, adding that DirectServe will be the cornerstone of Jasmine's new product line. — By Jon Swartz How DirectServe stacks up DirectServe ‘AppleShare 2.0 TOPS Company Jasmine Apple TOPS Software Server software DirectServe AppleShare TOPS Price so $799 $189 per user Hardware required Server DirectServe Mac Plus None ‘Administration DirectServe Mac Plus None Price $1,299 $1,800 so Other support IBM With PC AppleShare With PC AppleShare Yes Sun Soon No Yes DEC VAX Soon No Yes SE ) Continued from Page 1 1.44-Mbyte floppy SuperDrive and no NuBus slots. It will be offered in two configurations, a 1-Mbyte ver- sion with a 40- Mbyte hard disk cost- ing between $5,200 and $5,900, and a 4-Mbyle version with an 80-Mbyte disk for between $6,800 and $7,700, the report said. With the speed and memory management of a 16MHz 68030 pro- cessor and with no video card or external monitor required, the new SE is expected to appeal to business users as a file server solution. High on Apple's list of priorities is an upgrade path for current SE owners. Apple will offer a logic board swap, including the exchange of RAM and internal chassis, although no pricing or other details have been disclosed. A SuperDrive upgrade for the SE also will be available, According to the report, the new SE will be sold in business, universi- ty and government markets and will fill a gap in Apple’s product line “between compact and modular Macs.” The new machine will pro- vide users with a platform capable of supporting future multitasking sys- tem software. “It's mainly a compatibility issue. Apple wants its product line to standardize around the 68030 so it can one day move up to a multi- tasking operating system across the board,” said Abe Oswal, former vice president of the Apple divi- sion at Orchid Technologies of Fre- mont, Calif., which sells a color board for the SE. Cards will have to be redesigned to work in the 8 MacWEEK/3 January 1989 new machine, Oswal said. Apple said it expects add-in cards for communication, video, memory, gray-scale and color display, and advanced sound-processing to be developed for the new machine. Rumored to be working on such projects are Avatar Inc. of Hopkin- ton, Mass.; Kinetics Inc, of Walnut Creek, Calif; SuperMac Technology of Sunnyvale, Calif; and 3Com Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif. Tom Cromelin, Kinetics product marketing manager, said: “It would make sense for us to make [an Eth- ernet] card [for the new machine]. Obviously, we want to make prod- ucts that work with all available Macs.” Although it comes as no surprise to many hardware developers, cards that work in either the Mac II or the existing Mac SE will not work in the new machine. Because the 32-bit 68030 has more pins than the 16-bit 68000 used in the SE today, more pins must be available on the bus to han- dle the flow of data. This means that the old SE’s direct bus needs to be widened, In addition, the slot inter- face must be changed and extra pins added to take advantage of the 32-bit architecture, “It's an evolutionary process,” said one developer of SE display sys- tems. “I don’t expect to see a lot of boards for the machine right away. We're going to wait and see what the demand is like.” “Apple could have really gone out of its way and made the new SE compatible with the 68000 cards, but it would have been a mess,” said Matt Brandl, an engi- neer with DayStar Digital of Flow- ery Branch, Ga. Optical drive in Jasmine line 600-Mbyte drive is rewriteable BY RENEE MATHEWS, SAN FRANCISCO — Jasmine Technologies Inc. is gearing up for Macworld Expo to be held here later this month with introductions planned for a 325-Mbyte hard drive and a 600-Mbyte rewriteable magne- to-optical drive that the company said will offer Mac users the lowest cost per megabyte of any storage system on the market. Called the DirectOptical, the 600- Mbyte system is based on a Ricoh drive mechanism and uses 5.25-inch removable magneto-optical car- tridges that store up to 297.6 Mbytes of data on each side. The drive features: * a 50millisecond average seek time; * a 1.2-Mbyte-per-second data transfer rate; © 256 Kbytes of buffer memory, A/UX Continued from Page 1 upgrade could fill major gaps in the product that have kept sales to a pal- try 5,000 units, as estimated by mar- ket researchers. The most basic improvement in A/UX 1.1is its support for the Mac- intosh Toolbox’s Printer and AppleTalk Managers, used by many Mac OS software programs for printing and networking. Color Manager routines also have been added. Color display is considered essential to CAD/CAM and other technical software. CLONES Continued from Page 1 clone must obtain their own ROM chips. The motherboard has a clearly printed warning that says only legally purchased ROMs can be installed. Mare Hara, Akkord’s marketing director, and Lloyd Chen, managing director, said the motherboard design itself is completely legal. Hara said the forthcoming lap- top, with a paper-white LED screen and legally cloned ROM, will sell for about $2,000, Apple CEO John Scul- Jey said last month that the compa- ny's own long-awaited laptop is scheduled to ship in 1989, but not in volume. The Apple laptop is expect- ed to be priced at more than $5,000. Macs repackaged as laptops by Colby Systems Corp. of Fresno, Calif., and Dynamac of Aurora, Colo,, also carry hefty price tags. Chen and Hara are well aware of Apple’s big-stick policy on legal defense, and they said that they are proceeding cautiously with careful review of Apple's existing patents. Chen, who was the first Taiwanese to clone the Apple IJ, has already had one legal run-in with Apple. In ‘The retail price for the DirectOp- tical drive will be announced at the Macworld Expo. The drive will begin shipping at the end of February. The DD300 will be the sixth member of Jasmine’s DirectDrive family of external drive systems. The DD300 uses a Micropolis drive with a 325-Mbyte formatted storage capacity, an average access time Complete Toolbox support should allow applications that follow Apple programming guidelines to run under A/UX 1.1 with few modifi- cations, Apple officials said. “I think Apple does need to add Mac Toolbox support,” said Tony Meadow, president of Bear River Associates, a Mac programming consulting company in Berkeley, Calif. “If they don’t, what do they have — just another Unix box? Those are a dime a dozen.” Hardware managers such as the SCSI and Serial Drivers will remain the only unsupported portions of Bertoolbos in A/UX 1.1, sources said. 1977, Apple took him to court to stop manufacture of the Apollo II, an Apple Il clone. After being reprimanded by the Taiwanese courts, Chen abandoned his Apple II clone and moved on to the safer pursuit of IBM PC-AT cloning. Hara, who also got his start with Apple Il clones in 1977, joined with Chen in March 1988 to found Happy Joiner Co. Lid., a Taiwanese company that has announced Mac- compatible gate-array chips (see MacWEEK, July 26, 1988), Previously, Hara owned another company called Pax Electronica that manufactured Apple II-compatible boards. In addition to this Apple I experience, the Japanese-born Hara also successfully manufactured an IBM clone, which he sold in the People’s Republic of China and to Sears Roebuck in the United States under an OEM agreement. When he announced the Happy Joiner chips, a disk controller and realtime clock, Hara also put out a call for developers interested in cre- ating a legal Mac-compatible BIOS. He said last month that a Taiwanese software designer is working on the project and that the full system is expected by summer. 0 Jasmine's DirectOptical drive uses 5.25-inch mag- heto-optical cartridges that store 600 Mbytes. of 14 milliseconds and a data transfer Tate of 1.6 Mbytes per second, It will cost $2,795 when it ships at the end of February. . The system 1S bundled with Drive Ware ing soft: ware, Symantec Utilities for Macin- tosh, Microseeds Publishing's Redux backup software and other utilities. Besides hard disks, 10- and 20- Mbyte floppy drives and a tape drive, Jasmine’s Direct product line includes the 300-dpi PostScript-compatible DirectPrint announced in August 1988 and due to ship this week, and a file server. which will also be unveiled at the expo. Jasmine is located at 1740 Army St., San Francisco, Calif. 94124 (415) 282-1111. ‘COURTESY JASMINE “The improved version make Unix more useable,” said Mike ley, users group ambassado! Lockheed Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif: {With A/UX 1.0) you had to le: Unix to access such servic! the documentation of managemt systems, and no one was willing do that.” Vernon Keenan, manager of us services for Genentech Inc. of So San Francisco, Calif,, said that will remain a developer's s “Because of its poor graphic inter face, it can’t compare with Sun's (graphic interface] as an end station,” Keenan said. Discussions with dealers confirm that A/UX 1.0 has generated little interest among technical profession- als. Most customers are Mac enthu= Siasts committed to staying on the cutting edge of Apple technology: Few choose the product over other Unix alternatives if Apple loyalties don't exist, dealers said. Analysts point out that Apple's small installed base among eng neers means that it must steal cus- tomers away from other platforms to be successful. “Engineers purchase A/UX, but they inevitably switch back to Mac OS to run other software,” said Tom Chow, president of Alpha Comput- ers of Lake Oswego, Ore,, one of the first dealers to carry A/UX. Alpha has seen modest sales over the sum mer slow to a trickle during the fall, according to Chow. “Enthusiasm for AU/X is very low. The upgrade can't do anything but help,” he said. — By Will McClatchy Fs RASTEROPS RASTEROE Continued from Page 1 bit cards priced between $1,400 and $2,200, The new ColorBoard 108+ is a multiresolu- tion card capable of displaying 256 colors or gray scales. The ColorBoard 108PZ is the same board packaged with additional software providing pan and zoom capabilities. The ColorBoard 108PZY, also a software enhance- ment, supports panning and zooming, tear-off menus, and a “virtual desktop” when the dis- play is used at four bits or lower. The 108PZV board will be bundled with a copy of the Aldus Persuasion desktop presen- tation program. Buyers of the base ColorBoard 108+ will be able to add PZ or PZV capabilities later, according to Kieth Sorenson, company presi- dent, although pricing for the software upgrades has not yet been determined At the high end of RasterOps' eight-bit line- up is the ColorBoard 118, which uses two QPDM graphics coprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, Calif. In conjunc- tion with the company’s QuickDraw accelera- tion software, this board provides up to 60 times the graphics speed of a Mac II using standard display cards, according to Dave Smith, vice president of engineering at Ras- terOps (see related story, this page). Although no official price has been set for the Color- Board 118, Sorenson said it will probably be between $2,200 and $3,000. This image was created by RasterOps artist Jonathan Gibson. In September 1987 RasterOps became the first company to bring 24-bit color to Mac If end users. Because QuickDraw supports no more than eight bits of color information per pixel, RasterOps incorporated a method called “chunky planar,” which uses QuickDraw three times to draw each pixel, once for red, once for green and once for blue. Apple currently is beta testing a new ver- sion of QuickDraw, code-named Jackson Pol- lack, that will allow up to 24 bits of color infor- mation to be displayed on screen in one pass with an eight-bit alpha channel for additional video information. The new QuickDraw, expected to be in the form of an INIT and a new System 6.0.3, which is expected to be released this spring, approximately one year after it was informally announced at an Apple developer's conference last April. Keeping pace with companies like True- Vision of Indianapolis, which is shipping a 32- bit full chunky board, RasterOps is readying two second-generation Jackson Pollack-com- patible boards. The ColorBoard 224, featuring pan and zoom capabilities, built-in support for PAL (the European video standard), and an option to add support for National Television System Committee (the American standard), will offer a selectable resolution of either 1,024 by 768 pixels, 800 by 600 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels. The ColorBoard 232, designed for Apple’s 13-inch monitors, will have a fixed resolution of 640 by 480 pixels but will come complete with alpha channel and NTSC support and a PAL option. Upgrades for users of current RasterOps boards who want to move from chunky pla- nar to full chunky tech- nology are available from the company. Entering the world of black and white, RasterOps is expected to release this month a 19-inch monochrome card and monitor for the Mac II with a reso- lution of 1,024 by 768 pixels. A similar card for the SE, aimed at the desktop publishing market, is in the works for February. Both sys- tems, including card and monitor, will prob- ably be priced around $2,200, Sorenson said. RasterOps Corp. is at 10161 Bubb Road, Cupertino, Calif. 95014; (408) 446-4090, 5 Apple targets business ed BY EMILY BROWER SAN JOSE, Calif, — In hopes of wooing the future leaders of American business to the Mac, Apple hosted its first Conference on Technology in Business Education here last month. “We are launching a major push into busi- ness schools with this conference,” said Bud Colligan, outgoing director of higher-educa- tion marketing at Apple. “We're going to advertise, seed machines, make donations, you name it, to make the Mac a standard for business students.” To underscore Apple's new marketing push, McGraw-Hill of New York was also on hand to announce a “collaborative relation- ship” with Apple to develop and distribute sup- porting instructional HyperCard stacks for business students. McGraw-Hill will publish HyperCard tutorials and problem sets for “Accounting; The Basis for Business Deci- sions” and “Economics,” two leading account: ing and economics textbooks, according to the company, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft also announced new packaging and pricing for academic versions of Works, Word, Excel and Power Point, Microsoft's Academic Edi- tions will be sold through authorized dealers and university stores. The only pricing infor- mation company representatives had was that Word will probably sell for about $120 to students. 0 @ FOR THE RECORD Our preview of WingZ in the Dec. 13 1988 issue listed an incorrect price. The price is $399. RasterOps accelerates QuickDraw CUPERTINO, Calif. — “We've cracked the QuickDraw nut,” said Dave Smith, vice president of engineering at RasterOps, of the QuickDraw acceleration software the compa- ny has developed for use with its new video boards. “With our software the ColorBoard 118 runs many CAD applications up to 60 times faster than normal.” Tentatively named RasterBlaster, the soft- ware offloads selected QuickDraw processes onto special chips on the video boards. The NEWS new ColorBoard 118 has a QPDM chip from Advanced Micro Devices, while the Color- Board 64, 104, 124, 224 and 232 use the Texas Instruments’ 34010. Describing the acceleration software as “a bonus for users who have chosen Ras- terOps and an incentive for those who are still making up their minds,” Smith said it could be available as early as this month. Pricing for the software has not been deter- mined.— By Jonathan Perrow eS 3) oF The First Full. Rest pest Sor Text, ColorTwlages, 3 January 1989/MacWEEK 8 Scr aa Betting on a multimedia future Interactive pitches Mac II solution BY LASLO VESPREMI SAN MATEO, Calif. — By 1995, Interactive Solutions predicts, most major U.S. corporations will be using interactive multimedia for sales presentations, dealer educa- tion, sales training, product demos and other information needs, and Interactive is betting that many of these businesses can be sold on the idea of creating those presentations on its Mac Il workstations. A start-up multimedia developer, design studio and value-added reseller, Interactive calls its hard- ware and software system The Corporate Communicator, and it is pitching its products and service pri- marily at the Fortune 1,000 market. “At the going industry rate, a 30- minute presentation can cost over $100,000,” said Chuck Sorrels, regional sales manager at Inter- active. “We believe we have a prod- uct that will do the job in half the time and at half the price.” The company sends its own designers to assist companies in selecting materials and plan- ning presentations, then assem- bles the finished product in its own studio. Interactive also resells work- stations in a variety of configura- tions, combining Mac IIs with 19- inch color monitors, video cameras and recorders, 24-bit color digitiz- ers, and a Panasonic optical laser disc recorder. Later this year Interactive will release MediaWare, a presentation development software package that will allow in-house designers to cre- ate their own interactive multimedia presentations, according to Bob Luben, director of R&D at the com- pany. The initial version will include drawing, painting and screen-editing tools, with plug-in modules for digiti- zation, audio, touch-screen support, word processing, animation and other capabilities to come with later releases, Luben said. Finished presentations, saved on a hard disk, WORM disk or Sinch master laser disc, can be copied and distributed on industry-standard 12- inch laser discs or CD-ROMs. A sales representative, for example, could take a presentation on the road by hooking up a microproces- Sor-equipped laser disc player to a color monitor in a client's office. The client or sales representative can call up specific information through menu selections or other interactive devices. Each option allows for a differ- ent level of interaction. With the laser disc player, for example, viewers can navigate to different video clips or respond to on-screen prompts by pressing numbered buttons on ordinary TV-style re mote control devices. CD-ROM permits more complex interactions through typed-in commands or HyperCard-like links, but it pro- Interactive Solutions has created a Mac Il-based hardware and software system for interactive multimedia called The Corporate Communicator. ‘DOVE MENUEZ vides only limited full-motion pre sentation capability because digital storage of video requires so much space. Interactive Solutions is located at 901 Mariner's Island Blvd., Suite 475, San Mateo, Calif. 94404; (419) 578-1595. 0 MACINTOUCH/RIC LEPAGE ISSUES & TRENDS The Mac at 5. We expect to see a lot of Mac reminiscence, back-slapping and self-congrat- ulation later this month at the San Francisco Macworld Expo. But, to most of the cele- brants, it will matter little if many of the Mac's original designers — Steve Jobs, Jef Raskin, Andy Hertzfeld, Burrell Smith — are no longer involved in developing Macs. Mingled with poetic ramblings about the heroic rise of the Mac from its less-than-hum- ble roots, we will hear about how the Mac is the business workstation of the future, the hammer refrain from the “new Apple.” ‘That the Mac has made it this far is a testa- ment not only to the machine, but to its cre- ators and subsequent caretakers as well. Apple has much to celebrate, but we hope that the company and its fans shy away from excessive nostalgia and overblown self-importance. What we see when we look at the system are quite a few half-finished ideas and imple- mentations. As the Mac enters its sixth year of existence, we hope Apple really provides us with more than stopgaps and patches to an old design. The Finder creaks on, struggling to make it to System 7.0, where we have been promised an Elysian field of multitasking and productivity enhancements, We surely won't get it all, but it would be nice to get, among other things, a filemanagement system that can handle modern disk capacities and new optical media without choking. We're looking for a few simple things in the next Finder desktop environment: true consistency across the board, integration of essential processes like file backup and text searching, rock-solid reliability, the pro- grammability that other computer “shells” offer, those things the “Human Interface Guidelines” talk about and some detail work like having a Print button in the Page Setup dialog and combining Control Panel and Chooser functions in one place. It would be nice, too, if Apple would im- prove the Mac’s real-world networking abili- ties. AppleTalk 2.0 is on the horizon, but we need better wide-area networking capabilities yesterday. Companies like Shiva have done a AND R C FORD Fifth birthday is time for Mac to grow up lot in this area, but users keep running up against Apple’s roadblocks while third-p. developers struggle to make things out hurting Apple's pride or compatil Apple's track record for providing neede enhancements to the Mac's software has been lackluster. We can be thankful that third-party developers like Steve Brecher, Jan Eugenides and Don Brown have been able to provide the functions that Apple should have offered long ago in the operating system. Unfortunately, Apple now has a habit of leaving big gaps for others to fill, while it tries to scare off develop- ‘ers who want to play with Apple's whiz kids in its private sandbox. rk with- Remembering 1988. Last year, Apple was busy, but not always in a flattering light. Will 1988 be remembered as the year Apple shipped the AppleFax modem and the Mac IIx? The Fax Modem has been a disappoint- ment, roundly criticized for the poor quality of the software that drives it. The IIx is touted as a view of the Mac’s future, but with its “Gee, look at all this new technology” feel, it appears to be a more gussied-up Mac II than a big leap in power. Both products undoubt- edly will be stronger in future versions, but people are getting weary of paying top dollar for mediocre new systems. Luckily, Apple scored well with the LaserWriter IINTX and its Apple Scanner, It was not exactly the best year for Apple from a public relations standpoint, either, The Microsoft/Hewlett-Packard lawsuit and the price increases put a lot of heat on the compa- ny, although Apple has continued to stand tall through it all. ‘The lawsuit angered many in the MS-DOS community, who thought that Apple was over- stepping its bounds and attempting to stifle innovation, Now fewer people think that it will make much difference in the long run. The price increases were more damaging because they hurt those inside the Apple umbrella. The company heard it all — it was price-gouging, taking advantage of a mono- poly, shooting itself in the foot and so on. Few people said they believe that component cost increases were the main motivation behind the action, and it caused many people to scale back their Mac purchasing budgets for 1989. ‘The price increases were especially damag- ing because Apple had been doing so well financially. It was hard for people to compre. hend increases of such magnitude while Apple was reporting a string of record profits. We doubt Apple's motive was solely to make its shareholders happy, and we do acknowledge that Apple’s long-term financial security means that the Mac and its succes- sors will have a chance to grow with the com- pany. But it is strange that a Mac II can be priced at three times the amount of a Mac Plus when the manufacturing costs are virtu- ally the same. Apple spends a lot of money on R&D, which is often cited (along with the lack of Mac clones) as a reason for its high prices. While there was a lot of grumbling about the products announced in 1988 and the price increases, most of the Mac pioneers we talked to are still in the Apple camp. What we also hear, however, is that Apple had better provide a bigger technological leap with next year’s software and CPUs or some of those cus- tomers will be leaping to the next platform. @ BUGS & TIPS Lino detail. Our Dec. 13, 1988, tip for modify- ing QuarkXPress’ virtual memory allocation should only be used for Linotronics that are using old versions of PostScript (Version 38 and earlier). Newer Adobe controllers with recent versions of PostScript will print much faster with XPress as Quark ships it, accord- ing to the programmer who created the modi- fication that Quark uses, Rodime notes. Rodime technical support reports that it has tested the Rodime 140 hard disks with older, beige Mac Pluses and found no compatibility problems. The latest Rodime disk software is Rodime Driver Utility 2.1, The company said that an update disk has been sent free of charge to regis- tered owners, and that the update is also available from dealers. Technical support doesn't recommend downloading the disk software from private bulletin board systems. Spellswell still Works. Mark Galvin from Working Software reported that users who have Spellswell installed with Microsoft Works 1.1 can continue using the same Spellswell dic tionary with Works 2.0. There's no need to throw away the existing dictionary which con- tains the user's own additional entries. 3 Vaccine warning. CE Software's Vaccine cdev (Control Panel device) has an option called Expert Display. Turning on this option changes Vaccine’s normal, clear alerts to small, subtle icons in the corner of the screen that can confuse users at an important deci sion point. We strongly recommend keeping Expert Display turned off, especially when installing ‘Vaccine on someone else’s Mac. If a user gets confused by a Vaccine expert alert in Font/DA Mover, for example, and restarts the machine, it can corrupt the desk accessories so the System file has to be rebuilt from scratch. Delphi’s ICONtact on-line service has added two new anti-virus programs to its pub- lic domain library, John Norstad’s RWatcher INITis a Startup document that works some- thing like CE Software’s Vaccine. RWatcher is designed for programmers and avoids fre quent triggering by programming systems like Symantec's Think C. RWatcher comes with MPW assembly source code, so programmers can modify it or compile a fresh copy. It can also be modi- fied using Apple's ResEdit utility. Pete Gontier’s nVIR Assassin is more of an end-user application. It searches for the nVIR virus on the disk yolume you choose and attempts to remove the virus if it finds it. We have not tested either piece of soft- ware on a real virus, but they may be worth downloading to keep in your anti-viral kit or for their associated documentation files. We welcome your comments and questions on MaclInTouch at MacWEEK, One Kendall Square, Suite 326, Cambridge, Mass, 02139; (617) 577-1033. Electronic mail: MCI Mail: MACWEEKBOSTON, RICFORD, RLEPAGE; CIS: 75056, 1225 (Ric Ford), 75016,350 (Rick LePage); Delphi/PAN: MACWEEKBOS, AppleLink (address to “MacInTouch” in Subject): X0702; MacNET; RICFORD, RICKLEPAGE; GEnie: MACWSEEKBOS, | Internet: RICFORD@CURPORTAL COM. 10 MacWEEK/3 January 1989 a ‘THREE STEPS TO COLOR ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING. 1. Design your page using page layout software. 2..Color correct, retouch and combine scanned color photographs using PhotoMac's unique 24-bit image processing capabilities. 3. Output your page in full color from CMYK separations. PhotoMac makes color desktop publishing asimple 3-step process from start to finish. Fish School ILtakes a long time to become an The next step in desktop publishing is here, and it's in liv- ing color. Introducing PhotoMac® the first color photodesign software for the Macintosh™ II. Use PhotoMac to add experienced su mer, The pid of Ansan sepa which mas color photos to your page layouts. PhotoMac is ic ci teres as bret compatible with all major desktop publishing soft- discouraging md often runs into yean. eavbcaune Wey Se 9 a eo. ware, including Aldus’ PageMaker? Quark XPress® and Letraset’s Ready-Set-Go® And PhotoMac makes color publishing amaz- ingly simple, too. Just design your page, scan = your color photograph, and manipulate it with PhotoMac. When you're ready to print, PhotoMac generates process color separations you can output to the Linotype L300. High resolution photographs | are no problem for PhotoMac, either. Because the Sento mowsbra,anenovs, mil ad 6c pang wl ppm software is designed to handle image sizes up to | i fate en asus aia yous paper outtake wan 32K x 32K pixels, or 2540 dpi. And thatmeans has iui Fe ete Siononnt nate sce crisp, color photos on your page. y spaces ek and on ee Dn fr PhotoMac runs on any 2-megabyte Macintosh II. dpe hed srn| J Te remenat hod nr And it’s compatible with popular color scanners, printers, and film recorders, and directly supports Data Translation’s ColorCapture® video frame see grabber. —p- The next step in desktop publishing is PhotoMac. ea Sa For only $695. Call for the whole story. 1-800-522-0265 Avalon Development Group 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 Ph otoMac PhotoMac is distributed by Data Translation, Inc., 100 Locke Drive, Marlboro, MA 01752-1192. Telephone 508-481- 3700. Macintosh is a mn aE] in | trademark of Apple Computer Corporation. PhotoMac, PageMaker, XPress, Ready-Ser-Go, and ColorCapture are registered trademarks of 5 Breech eben bela Not just pretty pictures Studio/8 goes black and white Mac made accessible Electronic Arts upgrades Thunder BY CLAIR WHITMER AND CONNIE GUGLIELMO SAN MATEO, Calif. — Electron- ic Arts didn't slow down for the holi- days a bit. The company raced through the end of the year to pre- pare three product introductions for the San Francisco Macworld Expo this month The San Mateo, Calif.-based developer is adding a black-and- white version of its Studio/8 color paint program to its graphics reper- toire as well as offering upgrades for two of its stock products — the Thunder spelling checker and the Deluxe Music Construction Set. Encouraged by the reception Studio/8 has received since its intro- duction last summer, Electronic Arts has decided to create a family of Studio paint products. The expo will see the introduc- tion of Studio/1, a monochrome paint program for the Mac Plus and SE that will be priced less than $150. Studio/1 will offer the same tools and special effects found in Studio/8 along with several new features. The company has included direct access to the Apple Scanner by offering the driver controls as a menu option Using the new text layer, users can go back and forth between editing graphics and text. Later this year, the company hopes to introduce a 24-bit color version of the paint program According to Nicholas Lavroff, head of the creativity group at Electronic STACKWEEK/ERIC ALDERMAN AND STEVE roi Panel eae = ies, a glossary for keeping awnnw | Vemrater ean] track of commonly used aR My abbreviations and several —— eu] Writing style analysis tools. sea "R068 The program will ship aerate ard S ini with “compatibility mod- : ules” for MacWrite, Acta ie See |] Advantage, Acta, FullWrite eae | Professional, MORE, 4 (adApp.) (nodons)(Remove)| WordPerfect, WriteNow, @ Microsoft Write, Word 3.0 THUNDER IT7 © Oot | and Works. Users simply iad Cieanimtekeren Glsterece | drag the modules for their applications into their From the Control Panel users can tell System folders and set the Thunder Il to load in selected applications. others aside. Arts, the company will offer an upgrade path for users investing in the Studio product line. The spelling checker, which Electronic Arts took over last year with the acquisition of its original publisher, Batteries Included, will be renamed Thunder II. While the original product was a desk accessory, Thunder II will oper- ate as a Startup document (INIT) and a Control Panel device (cde). Users select applications into which Thunder II will be installed. The $79.95 program comes with an 80,000-word dictionary and a 50,000-word subset for cramped sys- tems. It does batch and interactive checking for five kinds of errors: regular spelling mistakes, missing capitals, capitalization errors, dou- ble words and punctuation mistakes. Thunder Il provides a new batch search-and-replace feature that allows users to enter a whole series of modifications in a single opera- tion. Like the original program, Thunder II will also provide support MICHEL Upgrades will be avail- able for owners of the original Thunder at what Lavroff called “a nominal fee.” Version 2.5 of the Deluxe Music Construction Set adds support for the Mac II to the musical scoring program. In response to several notation packages that have hit the market recently, the company has improved the program's scoring capabilities increasing the number of staves from eight to 32 or 48 ona Mac Il. The program also adds new fea- tures for handling text within the score and in the title section. Staccato and legato markings now also affect MIDI playback. The new version is priced at $129.95, with a $30 upgrade cost. The Deluxe Music Construction Set upgrade is shipping now, Thunder II should ship a few weeks after the expo. Studio/1 is due in the second quarter, Lavroff said. Electronic Arts is at 1820 Gate- way Drive, San Mateo, Calif. 94404; (415) 571-7171.0, for user-created dictionar- to visuall BY CLAIR WHITMER BERKELEY, Calif. — The Macintosh historically has run far behind the IBM PC in terms of mar- keting and development for visually disabled users, but Berkeley System Design is now gearing an entire line of products toward rectifying that situation. The company has developed driver software for a tactileimaging device and is at work on text-to- speech conversion software. “The PC is more technically accessible to the visually disabled because the displays have historical ly been very simple,” said Wes Boyd, company president. “Until recently nobody thought anything could be done on the Mac where what you have is a lot of dots.” Berkeley System Design has already released inLarge, a screen- magnification software program for users with partial vision. A subset of the software is included in Apple's System 6.0 in the form of the CloseView Control Panel option. The company recently added inTouch, a Mac driver for the Optacon II tactileimaging device from Mountain View, Calif.- based Telesensory Sys- tems Inc. (TSI). The Opta- con hardware consists of a pad of vibrating pins and a hand-held camera, with which the user scans the material. The pins are raised and lowered to sim- ulate the outline of each y impaired character, one letter at a time. Building on a computer interface for Optacon II released by TSI in March, inTouch applies the same concept to the Mac interface. Instead of a camera, the mouse is used to scan the text or graphics on the screen. Whatever is underneath the cursor on screen is then simulat- ed on the pin touch pad. The $395 inTouch is being distributed by TSL Berkeley System Design also hopes to build on the audio capabili- ties inherent in the Macintosh. The company has almost finished a prod- uct called outSpoken that will read on-screen text. Based on Apple's MacInTalk speech driver, it can be used with the Optacon/inTouch sys tem. Both products will be shown at Macworld Expo this month. Berkeley System Design Inc. is at 1700 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, Calif. 94709; (415) 540-5535. Tele- sensory Systems Inc. can be reached at PO. Box 7455, Mountain View, Calif. 94039; (415) 960-0920.0 An Optacon device and Intouch software help Mark Sutton, who is blind, use a Mac SE. DrawPict, an XCMD by Michael McClennen Normally, Groupies exists as a s that simply draws a series of up to 15 PICT images to the screen (useful for limited but fast animation); ZipCheck that returns the state postal abbreviation for any given ZIP code; and various string-handling XFCNs, such as LastOffset, LastPathComponent and case conversions. that acts as a traveling menu. The s the field contains all of Groupies’ int So using it in one of your stacks is a copying and pasting the field. Another : improvement, however, is thal you cz a different version of the scripts into : Home stack script, and therefore mak Groupies functions available in any of stacks. You can access the individual tions by entering commands into the | sage box, or by using the function kt the extended keyboard, 3 ‘The Groupies script is clearly w well-commented, so it's easy to make own medications to it. For example were able to quickly modify the | fuaction tube a dreeaeieeie cFCN another package. — E.A. REFERENCE ‘The Developer Stack 1.3r is available | from AnalytX, Box 388, South 18966. Version 1.2r is available fr public bulletin boards, such as Version 1.3r won't be distributed this until the next major update, due in January. Groupies is currently BBS and users group disks. Where to find the best HyperCard tools ments to the interface of the stack itself. Among the new XCMDs and XFCNs_ included are: TitleBar, an XCMD that toggles the title bar of the HyperCard card window on or off (hides the annoying path name of the current stack visible on large screens); Developer PRODUCTS HyperCard development tools are appearing with such frequency these days, it seems like we're always writing about them. Given HyperCard's “erector-set” concept, however, the more pieces we have to choose from, the better our final products will be. So it’s impor- tant to know where to look to find the best of what's available. Developer Stack. The Developer Stack from Steve Drazga’s AnalytX has always been one of the most useful collections of XCMDs, XFCNs and scripts around. Unlike other com- mercially marketed collections, the stack is primarily a compendium of resources, dis- tributed publicly, released by individual developers. Drazga himself wrote a few of the externals, but most are from others. Recently, a new version of the stack was released with some improvements and many new utilities, making it even more of a “must have” for developers of all persuasions, Version 1.3 features many useful tools, including nine new XCMDs and 13 new XFCNs as well as some improve- Groupies. Certified HyperWhiz and Hyper- Card testing team member Sioux Lacy has produced a quintessential utility, Groupies 3.2. Groupies allows you to move, copy, delete and align groups of buttons and fields (just as you can move, copy, delete or “clean up” multiple icons in Finder), Groupies has actually been around for a while, but its latest rele includes more in-stack docu- mentation, support for function keys on extended keyboards, and the ability to select objects by specifying a region (marking the upper left and lower right points of a selection “rectangle”), rather than picking them ‘one by one. Stack ©1987. 1988 Steve Drozga If you have questions, comments or tact us by electronic mail at: MCI: HER AppleLink: D1507 (Steve) or The Developer Stack contains a useful compendium of more than 100 public domain XCMDs and XFCNs. 12 MacWEEK/3 January 1989 PhotoMac by: = AVALON DEVELOPMENT GROUP Color Photodesign Software S695 IT’SA TERRIFIC DEAL. AT $350 IT’S AN OUTRIGHT STEAL. ™ Macworld Expo Special 50% off on PhotoMac® Regular $695. Now $350. phot N \ @ Limited quantities at the Show. So hurry, at this | (ff price they won’t last. (Limit 5 per customer.) ™@ Take PhotoMac with you. Just present your MasterCard, VISA or American Express. QuickCapture}” ColorCapture™ Frame Grabber Boards from DATA TRANSLATION $100 off reg. price At Show Only. PhotoMac and Video Board Offer Good Only at DATA TRANSLATION BOOTH 143. 247A TRANSLATION” Macworld Expo, S.F. Jan. 19-22, 1989 JS ce a Wang reaches toward the Mac Business users weigh ton! coven otdounens PYESENtation programs Third parties link Macs to Wangs BY WILL McCLATCHY BOSTON — Wang minicomput- ers, the dominant system for word processing before the advent of the personal computer, are breaking out of their proprietary isolation, and ‘one of the directions they are reach- ing is toward the Mac. Attendees at Technetron '88, a major gathering of Wang users held here in November, witnessed demon- strations of a half-dozen third-party products designed for file transfer, format conversion and terminal emu- lation between Macs and Wangs. Vendors displaying their wares included DataViz Inc., the M/H Group, MacSoft, Interpreter Inc. and DPZ Systems Inc. DataViz publishes MacLinkPlus/ Wang VS 3.0, a terminal-emulation and file-conversion package for Macintoshes, IBM PCs and Wang VS minicomputers. It includes soft- ware on the Wang that prepares and exports documents created by WP, a standard Wang word processor, and a Mac component that emulates the Wang 2110 asynchronous termi- nal and converts WP documents into popular Mac word processing formats. The recently released Version 3.0 of the $395 package adds a batch mode for processing multiple files; conversion of formats without exporting the file; support for Word- Perfect as well as MacWrite and Microsoft Word formats; and enhanced terminal capabilities, including cut and paste between the Wang emulation and Mac applica- tion windows. “The thing people were asking for most was multiple file capabili- ties,” said Dick Hubert, product development engineer for DataViz. “You can literally assign hundreds of files for translation and let the thing run by itself while you have coffee.” DataViz also provides a $495 version to link the Macintosh to Wang OIS, an older product line. In addition, the company offers a special $895 version for con- € ‘ie Cait Preferences tog nectivity to Wang TC ports. Another product providing file transfer and conversion through 2110 terminal emulation is VsCom /Macintosh from the M/H Group. The program converts WP docu- ments into Microsoft Word and MacWrite formats and transfers files and documents within Wang Office, Wang's electronic-mail system. According to M/H officials, a new Version 3.0 is due this month that will include the conversion of docu- ments from Wang’s latest word pro- cessing software, WP+, the ability to control unattended terminals from a remote location with a script file lan- guage, the ability to utilize shared modems on an AppleTalk network, and copy and paste capabilities between terminal emulation and standard Mac windows. The product's VS component costs $495 and its Macintosh por- tion is priced at $395. Also competing in the 2110 ter- minal-emulation and document-con- version arena is MacSoft’s VSterm, an easy-to-use product aimed at the novice and casual user. Supporting all of Wang’s asyn- chronous ports, VSterm converts WP documents into MacWrite for- mat. Upgrades expected over the next few months will provide sup- port for Microsoft Word and WP+. VSterm costs $250 for the Wang minicomputer component and $195 for the Mac component. While most products demon- strated at Technetron "88 use soft- ware for terminal emulation and format conversion, the $7,500 Smart Kid from Interpreter Inc. takes a radically different approach. An external hardware device, the product uses dedicated conversion chips and software running in a built-in floppy drive to convert documents by itself. The device typically connects to a Wang VS directly through an I/O port and to a Mac with a modem eliminator cable or over phone lines with a modem. AppleTalk networks can also use it as a shared resource as they might a network modem. Introduced last fall, the Smart Kid is a successor to the Kid, Interpreter’s previous conversion device. The Smart Kid provides bidirec- Tink tog VE Morkstation 37 Ready Meteome to | Procedere Show PF Buttond Prev Sern — P Use the Function Newt Sern N ACE) us DisConnect Wome (Top) #1, (2) SEV Usage Conetonts 1D Enter. ©) SHO Program Completion Raport 12) summit] Execute Enter (4) Nanoge QUEUES (5) Manage FILES. IBRARIES (6) Manage DEVICES: <8) Manage COPERICAT IONS CE EY | oo ele ee tel | DataViz's MacLinkPlus/Wang VS 3.0 uses Mac menus and keyboard equivalents to emulate Wang terminal commands, 14 MacWEEK/3 January 1989 among some 26 dedicated hardware systems and word processing pro- grams, including WP and WP+ on the Wang and Microsoft Word and WordPerfect on both the Mac and the IBM PC. The device is bundled with software for any one pair of for- mats selected by the buyer, accord- ing to Interpreter officials. Additional conversion pairings cost $1,000 each. Interpreter provides a Mac communi- cations software program called ICOM at no extra charge. Finally, DPZ Systems will soon enter the Mac conversion realm with VS-Transit. The program will convert WP documents from a Wang VS to MacWrite and Microsoft Word for- mats. WP+ document conversion is scheduled for later this year. VS-Transit costs $1,500. A sepa- rate 2110 terminal-emulation pack- age is expected to cost $195. DataViz is at 35 Corporate Drive, Trumbull, Conn. 06611; (203) 268- 0030. The M/H Group is at 222 W. Adams St, Chicago, Ill. 60606; (312) 443-1222. MacSoft is at 2920 F St., Suite E14, Bakersfield, Calif. 93301; (805) 324-4291. Interpreter Inc. is at 11455 W. 48th Ave., Wheat Ridge, Colo. 80033; (303) 431-8991 or (800) 232-4687. DPZ Systems Inc. can be reached at PO. Box 3066, Boulder, Colo. 80307; (303) 442-1772. 0 BY CONNIE GUGLIELMO CUPERTINO, Calif. — It took less than a year for the concept of desktop presentations to take hold in the Macintosh develop- ers’ community, but business users have viewed the idea with mixed feelings. For the most part, reaction has been positive to Macintosh-based software and hardware solutions that allow users to inexpensively produce high-quality materials, such as 35mm slides, overhead trans- parencies and audience handouts. “I think desktop presentations will be bigger than desktop publish- ing because that’s how we do business,” said Steven Spain, direc- tor of office systems for the Los Angeles branch of Peat Marwick Main & Co. “Our highest level of management is constantly giving presentations, trying to earn new business and present the image of Peat Marwick. So they're very inter- Associated C tations are the lifeblood of his company. ‘00uG MENEZ ‘apital Investors’ Joe Cillo said presen- ested in quality and speed of turnaround.” For Spain, who is responsible for computer purchases and for manag- ing the office network of 400 Macs, the decision to invest in Cricket Software of Malvern, Pa., went beyond the company’s Cricket Presents... package. He was sold on the idea of the Cricket Presents Office, a network-based system that connects satellite users of Cricket Presents... to a Mac II dedicated to image processing and operated by a graphics professional. “They are the only vendor that See PRESENTATIONS, Page 16 Productivity tracker monitors employees BY CLAIR WHITMER ST. LOUIS — When managers at a print shop here felt a need to keep better tabs on employees and their tasks, they turned to the Mac instead of hiring more supervisors. The result, a Mac-based productivity tracker called the Productivity Analysis System (PAS), proved so effective that the developer, Information Management Systems, has decided to market it to other manufacturing managers. Using up to 96 specialized departmental data terminals hooked up to the modem port of a host Macintosh, the PAS system records information such as the time employees clock in, the number of hours they spend on specific tasks, the status of projects, and how much time and resources were devoted to atask. ‘The PAS software can be used to design and print bar-code numbers that identify employees, jobs and tasks. Through a bar-code wand attached to the data terminals, work- ers can inform the system whenever they clock in and out or begin and end a specific task. IMS specializes in bar-code labels, among other technical printing tasks, The company is targeting the system toward small manufacturing companies and professionals who need to carefully catalog how much time is devoted to each client for billing purposes. Information col- lected from the terminals is used to fill out customizable reports on pro- ductivity, daily activity tallies, payroll hours and closed-job tallies. The raw SS data can then be exported to other accounting, payroll, spreadsheet or database packages, according to the company. Since the system requires work- ers to enter the information them- selves through the terminals, the company admitted that the system depends largely on the honor system. “You've got to get your people to é The PAS system uses monitors linked to a Mac to track employee hours and Projects. do it. ‘You want to get paid, you've got to clock in’ is a good incentive,” ‘said company tive Marylee Gruber. The PAS software is priced at $1,500 for a sin- gle site. IMS recommends using a $750 terminal in each work area. The com pany also sells a $25 PAS simulation disk so that users can test the system before making a major investment. ‘ IMS is also offering its printing services to pro- duce the bar codes used by the product at a cost of 40 cents per task or employee and 2 cents for each label printed. The company can also print a reusable, menu for use at a central location where employees clock in or regis- ter daily tasks. Information Management Sys- tems is located at 3684 Forest Park, Blvd., St. Louis, Mo. 63108; G14) 652-6711.0 The how-to developer guide INDIANAPOLIS — Hayden Books has released a new edition of “How to Write Macintosh Software,” a guide for professional developers and serious hobbyists, Written by Scott Knaster, former manager of technical support for Apple and currently a writer-engi- neer there, the 600-page second edi- tion covers such topics as examin- ing compiled code, debugging, using C, and working with Multi- Finder and Macintosh Program= mer’s Workshop (MPW). “How to Write Macintosh Soft- ware” retails for $27.95 and is avail: able at retail outlets or directly from, the publisher at (800) 428-7267. Hayden books, a division of Howard W. Sams & Co., is located at 4300 W. 62nd St., Indianapolis, Ind 46268; (317) 298-5400. 0 SPAN ESENTATION Continued from Page 14 has addressed a fundamental issue: How do you deal with presentations within an organization?” Spain said. “There are really two issues: quality and the preserva- tion of our corporate standards. Not every- one has the right-brain attributes to do stuff that looks good. But everything that is done here is representative of Peat Marwick Main. We need a system that gives people within the organization the autonomy to design their own presenta- tion but that allows the art department to review or create the final output.” The company also needs a way to track requests and expenditures back to individual departments, according to Spain. “The Cricket Presents Office lets us have some way to review, control and manage the process. If there was no Cricket Presents Office, I'd have to write it myself.” Joe Cillo, vice president of product devel- opment and marketing services at Associated Capital Investors of San Francisco, said pre- sentations are the lifeblood of his company. He estimated that the money-management com- pany, which manages about $5 billion annual- ly, gives about 1,000 presentations per year in ‘small group settings. Almost all of ACI’s presentations are black- and-white handouts or overhead transparen- ies, and all of them are created on the compa- ny’s 12 Macintoshes and three LaserWriter printers. “We've created what we call the presenta- tion factory,” Cillo said. “At the starting point, we assemble our key managers around the Mac. We have a Kodak Datashow projector and throw the screen up on the wall. Then we'll start creating a presentation right there on the wall, using PowerPoint and cutting and pasting from other Mac programs.” The company also maintains an extensive collection of clip art, both as hard copy and an electronic file. During the brainstorming ses sion, managers select images from the catalog containing the company’s 300 to 400 approved graphics and then call it up on screen. Usually after about 45 minutes the group has a good representation of what the final presentation will look like. “Before PowerPoint, we used Microsoft Word and [Cricket] Draw. We would print the pages and put them on the table. Then we would literally shuffle them around by hand until we got the order right. If an image or information we wanted wasn't on the page, we would draw it in by hand,” Cillo said. “PowerPoint and the other presentation pro- grams at their essence Jet you shuffle things around and give you continuity when you're looking at a presentation.” Kevin Elwell, a sales engincer at Allied- Signal Aerospace Co. of Torrance, Calif, said he believes it was the advent of presentation software that helped pave the way for the Mac at his company “In marketing it's a powerful tool. In the aerospace world if you can't put a chart or overheads in front of a customer, you're wast- ing their time,” said Elwell, who spends about 50 percent of his time creating presentations. “It’s one of the things that did for my end of the business what desktop publishing did for the rest of the business market It opened the door to the Macs here.” Although there are only about 10 Macs within his division, Elwell said he sees more managers becoming interested in the technol- ogy, albeit slowly, “It's a cultural thing. I think a lot of managers and executives think sitting in front of a keyboard is demeaning,” he said. “But they're beginning to see the element of time that can be saved by creating their own presentations.” Getting managers to use the Mac to create their presentations has not been a problem at Allergan Inc., an Irvine, Calif., pharmaceutical company. According to Mike Garrison, senior director of strategic planning for Allergan, the company, which has about 100 Macs, is mov- ing toward creating and displaying presenta- tions directly on the Mac. “Our executive boardroom and our main conference room are equipped with a rear projection system that we have integrated with a Mac II. We wanted to go with some thing that we could use directly from the com- puter with color,” Garrison said. Presentations are created in Cricket Presents... with information that has been cut and pasted from other programs, including Cricket Graph and the Microsoft Excel spread: sheet. “It’s a vehicle for us to use graphics and charts more readily,” Garrison said. Despite these endorsements, not all corpo- rate users are convinced that desktop presen- tation systems are the way to go. “I've got PowerPoint and Cricket Pre- sents... . While they're nice, they don't have as many features as a page-layout program,” said David Heintz, a marketing director for Reynolds Metal Co. of Richmond, Va. “I think those programs are really for people who don’t do presentations often or who are looking for a gimmicky way to create presentations.” Instead of using Mac presentation soft- ware, Reynolds relies on the QuarkXPress desktop publishing program from Quark Inc. of Denver to design presentation materials, including handouts, transparencies and 35mm slides. “In essence, what I do is use the computer to organize and lay out the slides,” Reynolds said. “We have an in-house department that has the equipment to generate slides. If all you get out of presentation software and the new slide makers is a reduced slide cost, then I don't see a use for them within a corporation. If you’re making a presentation to a very important customer, you don't give a damn if the slide cost $10 or $50." C 4 NUTMEG SYSTEMS LNG: °72 DF #1024 X 768 POELS * MONOCHROME LEONARDO WOULD LOVE IT! The Master would settle for nothing less. Da Vinci's genius for clarity, symmetry, and detail would have demanded the best. Which is why he would appreciate Nutmeg Systems’ newest large screen offering: the Nutmeg 19. Perfection in Macintosh display technology achieved. Crisp. Precise, Proportionate. And priced to make the Mona Lisa smile, See it at your local Apple® dealer or call toll free 1-800-777-8439 for details. 25 SOUTH AVENUE, NEW CANAAN, CT 06840 SPECIAL REPORT/"88 TO ‘89 Delete the old, double click in the new ——— oe n the tradition of great and not-so-great publications everywhere, MacWEEK is christening 1989 with a special section simultaneously looking back and looking forward. In addition to the look back by news editor Henry Norr, the look ahead by executive editor Daniel Farber, and the list of the year’s best products by reviews editor Becky Waring, ictions for 1989 as well as quotes that we've put together wish lists and predi appeared in MacWEEK last year. Finally, what would a new year be with- out a few resolutions? We chanced upon several, and while we can't vouch for their accuracy, we certainly hope you have as much fun with them as we did. X , and opportunities missed. 1988 saw the Mac- intosh continue its march into the business market, gaining new legitimacy in the eyes of once skeptical corporate managers and win- ning the hearts of a million new users. In bread-and-butter business applications like word processing, spreadsheets and database management, new alternatives enlivened once slow-moving markets. In graphics, where the Mac was already a powerhouse, new and enhanced programs for PostScript illustration and image processing, a flood of color paint options, color separation software and the first sophisticated color output devices — printers and film recorders — made the Mac II a pro- fessional tool rivalling far more costly worksta- tions. And powerful new versions of the lead- ing desktop publishing programs, plus a new set of tools for linking the Mac to high-end composition and pre-press systems, helped A LOOK BACK BY HENRY NORR It was a year of consoli- dation and confusion, a year of dreams realized the Mac consolidate its position.as the machine 6fichdlce for a wi of ante c marketing buzzwords Prats, multimedia ind groupware , sometimes uncertainly, ¢ into’re; applications, Fi Financially, the y: ah A LOOK AHEAD BY DANIEL FARBER When George Bush takes the oath of office at the White House on Jan. 20, Apple and the growing community of third-party developers will be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Mac at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Like the transition from Ronald Reagan to Bush, the transition for Apple and Mac ven- dors into the sixth year of the machine should be smooth and without surprises. In Washington, 1989 may be, as Bush promises, the year of no new taxes, but on Apple’s home turf, it will be the year of new machine intro- ductions and, if Apple CEO John Sculley is right, the year of 25 to 30 percent growth. Some pundits might be tempted to dub 1989 the year of multimedia, as products com- bining video, graphics, sound and animation hit the market. But the multimedia pieces are just beginning to fall into place, and hardware costs for the memory- and storage-hungry applications will retard their development. The multimedia craze may be premature, but Apple’s new, more powerful CPUs will be the real thing, All of them will feature the 68030 microprocessor and the SuperDrive, a floppy disk that can read Macintosh, MS-DOS and Apple II disks. A 68030-based Macintosh SE with the Supe s is slated to debut at Mance at Gmgroved ci tower Mac with incr See 1989, Page 19 Tg 16 MacWEEX!3 Ps 1989 y \ ILLUSTRATIONS By GORDON STUDER The Crystal Mac What's ahead in 1989 “We'll see a resurgence of Apple addressing itself to the early pioneers. Once Apple is over the hump of pushing itself as a corporate com- pany, not a consumer company, it can go back to aed people use computers in different Raines Cohen co-founder, BMUG, Berkeley, Calif. “T think we'll see a continuing consolidation of the Mac industry. There were a number of acquisitions of companies in 1988, and this trend will continue in ’89 as the cost of doing business in the Macintosh market continues to rise. Some of the companies in the Mac market have simply overextended themselves.” Heidi Roizen bresident,T/Maker, Mountain View, Calif. “The laptop could come out in '89. And we could end up with a Mac II with a DSP (digi- tal signal processor), as in the NeXT machine. Apple has to match NeXT at the very least in product category.” Tim Baje vice president, Creative Strategies, Santa Clara, Calif. “We try to stay out of the predictions game, but I would say that we will see a moderation in growth for next year. After a year of spectacu- lar growth, some slow- ing is to be expected, But we'll always do bet- ter than the shoe manu- facturing industry.” Ken Wasch Ken Wasch director, Software Publishers Association, Washington, D.C. “Easy predictions: It'll be the year of Macintosh product line extensions; the year OS/2, LAN and Presentation Manager applica- tions begin to appear and to challenge the Maz; the year Unix establishes itself as the I, Jonn ScuLtey, hereby resolve not to announce another reorganization ... at least for the next 15 minutes. e I, ALLAN Loren, hereby resolve not to pierce my ear, Read my lips: no new earrings. third desktop standard. You'll see some ¥ aggressively priced Unix personal computet “The biggest faceoff will be between 0: and Unix. Apple may be making strategic mis” takes. If I were at the top of Apple, I would be going for market ; at the expense of gins because, strategt- cally, the battle is fo share of the office d top in the '90s and the time for Apple is now, belie OS/2 is estab- lished and before) van is established.” Jonathan publisher, Seybold Pe on Desktop Publishing, Malibu, Calif “1989 will definitely see color becoming more widely available, more widely used and a c integral part of the way we view personal puters. It will also be the year at OS h live or die.” Steve Edelman ee chairman of the board and chief scientist, SuperMac, San Mateo, Calif Jonathan Seybold “The confusion and lack of unique application in the OS/2 and Presentation Manager wo will continue to provide great oppo! the Mac throughout 1989, “From a business point of view, the Nex! machine is uninteresting, but watch out | Sun Microsystems. It just might move i steal the OS/2 thunder.” Charlie Jackson bresident, Silicon Beach Software, San “Apple will get involved in an X.400