mac week v 4 n 6

13 February 1990 Vol. 4. No.6 W Six-slot Macs get upgrade path with IIxi By Doniel Farber Cupertino, Calif — The product announcements anticipated soon from Apple will not only add a powerful new member to the Mac II family but will also provide an upgrade path for owners of II and IIx machines. The logic board of the new machine, which is currently called the Mac I1xi, will be available as an upgrade that replaces the logic boards of the Mac II and Mac IIx. The high-powered workstation was set for a March release, but new Apple Chief Operating Officer Mike Spindler has reportedly established a committee to review plans for the Ilxi and other new products. The re- View could mean a delayed release ‘The logic board of a prototype Ili seen by MacWEEK has the same connectors and can use the same power supply as its predecessors The price for the IIxi is tenta- tively set at about $10,000 for a prototype Moc Ilxi logic board shows the new performance enhancing silicon, including the 33-MHz 68030, a SCSI DMA chip and specialized controllers for peripheral 1/0. machine with 4 Mbytes of RAM and an 80-Mbyte hard disk, sources said. Pricing and availability for upgrade boards have not yet been set, according to sources. As reported previously (see MacWEEK, Jan. 30), the IIxi will use a 33-MHz 68030 chip as its central processor. Versions using a 40-MHz 68030 chip may be shipped, depending on the avail- ability of the Motorola chips New silicon components that See Mac IIxi, Page 8 Silicon Beach buyout a done deal By Corolys Soid San Francisco — Riding high on a double-crested wave, Aldus Corp. last week demonstrated a feature-laden new version of Page- Maker and announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Silicon Beach Software Inc, (see MacWEEK, Jan. 23), PageMaker 4.0, to ship in the second quarter for $795, enhances the page-layout program with more Aldus adds new PageMaker chapter than 75 new features, Seattle-based Aldus said. Features include > Word processing. A pop-up window called a Story Editor allows for quick editing and entry of text, as well as search and replace and spell checking. Text edited in the Story tor is auto- matically updated on the page. > Typography. The new PageMak- er can kern over a range of text and offers tracking options based on point size. Horizontal scaling from 5 percent to 250 percent, rotation of text in 90-degree increments, forced justification, and point size and lead- See Aldus, Page 8 ce (aa tpi Wiary pe Dents | Aldes Poge- Maker 4.0's enhanced word processing features are accessed via o Story Editor (top right), « pop-up window that displays plain text and style tags for By Daniel Farber Cupertino, Calif. — Jean-Louis Gassée, president of Apple Prod- ucts, last week told Apple CEO John Sculley that he intends to resign, according to sources within the company. The charismatic Frenchman, who joined Apple in 1981 as the | founding general manager for | Apple France and was responsible for the introduction of the Mac SE and modular Mae II line, was reportedly discussing the terms of his resignation late last week, but at press time had not yet tendered his official resignation. Gassée’s decision has been made difficult, sources added, by an out- pouring of support from Apple employees. Fliers circulating on Apple’s campus summoned employees to a “Jean-Louis Gassée Appreciation Rally” last Friday. Gassée and Sculley were un- available for comment, but an Apple spokeswoman said the two have been “in discussions” for sev- MacroMind and Farallon ready multimedia tools By Connie Guglielmo San Francisco — MacroMind Inc. and Farallon Computing Inc. are expected to announce new mul- timedia tools here later this month, according to sources close to both companies. > Farallon’s MediaTracks, an enhanced version of its Screen- Recorder program, is expected to be priced between $250 and $300 (see MacWEEK, Dee. 12, 1989). > The program lets users graphi- cally record and replay sequences, or “tapes,” of user actions and the resulting screen events to create training demos and other presenta- tions. Users can edit the tapes by cutting them into “clips” that can By Raines Cohen Santa Clara, Calif, — Using the announcement of its acquisition of database access technology as a springboard, Claris Corp. last week outlined a strategy for addressing the information management needs of corporate decision makers. In doing so, the company amplified on See MacroMind, Page 9 | previous statements about its direc- Gassée: Au revoir? Resignation would leave leadership void eral weeks concerning Gassée’s future with the company. Sources said he had been offered a position to head Apple Europe but that he declined. See Gassée, Page 8 CF — WP GO ‘Apple may have to navigate through the 1990s without the vision of Jean-Louis Gassée. Mini apps in Claris’ future tion for application development under System 7.0. Claris officials described a future of small, “task-specific” applica- tions that will perform just a few functions but offer more depth than the complex, multifunction, generalized applications sold today. Using the interapplication commu- See Claris, Page 9 LA. TE NT ERWEaG Olsson takes over as Apple Europe president Paris — Apple last week announced the appointment of Séren Olsson as president of Apple Europe. Filling the vacancy left by last month's promotion of Michael Spindler to the post of chief operating officer, Olsson will be responsible for Apple's marketing, sales and support operations throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Apple's Swedish subsidiary, which Olsson has directed since 1984, has been one of the company’s most successful European branches. In 1988 the 44-year-old executive was promoted to vice president, managing director of Sweden and general manager for Europe North, which includes Norway, Denmark, land, Iceland, Germany, Austria and the Eastern European countries, “Séren has become one of our most experienced executives and has had notable success in developing reseller channels and marketing strategies,” Spindler said. Apple continues to seek a replacement for Allan Loren, who resigned last month as president of Apple USA. CLASS SECOND NEWSPAPER alue Is More Than Skin Deep. By et beware. There are those that would have you believe that all external hard drives are essentially ~ the same. But smart consumers know that looks can be deceiving. 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Jasmine To Order, Call 1-800-347-3228 Visa, MasterCard, American Express and corporate purchase orders accepted. Pr POSE MocWEEK 13 February 1990 Quality Gi ie Hl BEBE EI Hy Andyne’s GOL 2.0, which lets users access host data from SQL hosts, supports a variety of host database and communications protocols, induding Apple's CL/1 connectivity language, Andyne’s graphical query tools promise easy SQL data access By Raines Cohen Kingston, Ontario — Andyne Computing Ltd. last week shipped GQL (Graphical Query Language) 2.0, an upgraded host-data access program. The company said it offers the power of SQL without making users write or see SQL code. Users generate queries with the end-user portion of the GQL pack- age, GQL/User, by dragging, click- ing and specifying criteria. Results are returned in a table format. Among the enhancements: > Scripts can be stored and transmitted from files, and query results can be sent directly to a file. > SQL query code generated by GQL can be edited and saved. > Support for color has been added, and the query-building dia- log has been revamped. User- defined buttons can send pre- defined queries. Andyne said GQL supports sev- eral host database and communica- tions protocols, including Apple's CL/I connectivity language, Oracle SQL*Net, Sybase DB-Library, AlisaTalk, PacerLink, Tandem 6530 and asynchronous connections. GQL/User is priced at $295, while the Design and Administra- tive modules sell for $995 and $1,995, respectively. Andyne Computing Ltd. is located at 544 Princess St., Suite 202, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 107, (613) 548-4355; (800) 548-4355. 0 C-Cube fo shrink still images San Jose, Calif. — C-Cube Microsystems Corp. is expected to announce later this month image- compression technology that it hopes to make an industry standard. Combining software and a VLSI (very large-scale integration) chip, C-Cube promises to dramatically reduce the size of still images, thereby speeding up the capture, display and transfer of files. The technology is based on a DCT (discrete cosine transforma- tion) compression scheme devel- oped by a group working under the auspices of the International Stan- dards Organization. ‘wo of the company’s key execu- tives are well-known in the Macin- tosh community: Alain Rossmann, formerly vice president of market- ing at Radius Inc., and Jim Rafferty, co-founder of Cricket Software Inc. G-Cube Microsystems Corp. is located at 399-A West Road, San Jose, Calif, 95131; (408) 944-6300. 0 OmniPage upgrade, 3 add-ons ship Los Gatos, Calif. — Caere Corp this month shipped OmniPage 2.1 and three add-ons that work with the upgraded optical character recognition package. New features include the ability to read compressed TIFF files and a Transitional Editor that allows users to edit scanned text without losing formatting. > OmniDraft is a $100 module that lets OmniPage 2.1 recognize dot-matrix output in type sizes ranging from 8 points to 72 points. > OmniSpell, a $100 spelling checker that works within Omni- Page 2.1, is designed to detect com- mon OCR errors based on letter shape, such as “m” instead of “m”. > OmniProof, a $150 stand-alone application, compares versions of a document and highlights changes. ‘The OmniPage upgrade is free to registered owners of Version 2.0 and $150 to owners of earlier versions. Caere Corp. is located at 100 Cooper Court, Los Gatos, Calif. 95030, (408) 395-7000, o 18 18 78 20 B 2B 26 30 32 34 News T/Maker’s WriteNow 2.2 gets Word compatibility IBM to put NeXT interface on AIX, PS/2 machines Two Trojan horse’ programs for Mac discovered — ProductWatch Free Disinfectant utility due for mojor upgrade Version 2.0 of LabVIEW finally ready Losergraphics releases new film recorder, cuts prices ADIC tope subsytems allow network backups Capilano to distribute Data 1/0's MacABEL 36 One man’s strategy for making networks secure 38 MIT's Media Lab prepares for broadband future StackWEEK Steve Michel fee u bt Lo tetas 45 Trends: Mac users will see clearer on-screen text and lower display prices. Opinion 45 Comparison: Software Ventures Corp.’s MicroPhone Editorials 113.0 vs. The FreeSoft Co.'s White Knight 11.04 The departure ofearlous Gossée lowes ohlein ple’sheot 46“ MaclnTouch thot wil be hard to fil, Leyout 1.9 from Mike O'Connor lets Mo users madly the way the Finder displays the Desktop without using Resédit (ro sclgy of posting te Roc 0 lero Gg lc deg ey ‘manager may tn a lability into an advantoge. 52 Reviews: LAN hub alternative Nuvotech TurboStor. | Letters 52 Reviews in Brief: Persuasion 2.0, Partner 1.0. | Soapbox Vernon Keenon 55 Help Desk Dovid Romsey | The X Window System is not a new idea — it's just on Mysteries of the Mac’s invisible Desktop file revealed. | unneeded retum to centralized computing. | Max the Knife — BusinessWatch | Organizational Mac 75 ComputerWare grows: Mac products retailer , faces challenge of managing its own success. Bullish on beta testing: Mac managers have many reasons for becoming beta testers, including 75 Apple-Honeywell hi Force contract blocked a desire to influence a product’s development. 76 Apple's Multimedia Lab shifts its focus 76 MarketWEEK Gateways Shady identities the reasons comorohios buy Macs Six companies compete in file server melee 3Com, Novell go after Mac market in different ways 59 Mail Order How net managers cope with an imperfect world 60 Ad Showcase Planning for AppleTalk Phase 2 conversion 63 Ad Index AT&T's DatakKit II offers new WAN options 64 Classified Lack of management tools stymies AppleTalk users 71 Career Opportunities ‘MocWVEEK (SSM 08928118) is pblshed week, with the exception of Jon. 2, Moy 29, uly 3, hly 17, Jy 24, hug. 78, Sept 4, Now 27, Doc. 18 end Dec. 25, by Coast! Asactes Fblhg, LP Oo Pack Are, Naw York, NY. 10016. Se copy pc incog postop: $5 subsorption mt: US. $75, Conade/Manco US. $150, letenetion U.S. $300 (cara) ods ast be pep. Dect sabscnpon inqas o Customer Service Depcrnen, Mac WEEK, PO. Box S821, Chery HN O84; (609) 4285000. Changes of tess Inquire htt oplctn be ed oct complete cod clue both new ed odors. Aw 46 weeks lo pracesing Postaste Send odes changes Mac WEEK, PO. Box S806, (Gary Hi, HJ. 08034. Seconda postoge pd ot Kew York nd etc! meng fics. MacHEK on ndependent aml, not fied wath Ala Compute Apple end Mocs ‘0 rederaks of ype Compute lc. Enve carters cope 1990 Coal Asacaes PAblshing LP Al ight eared. Hote in ths publication may cot be ered ey fam wth ot poison. Request far permis shad be decid to Chal Loelane, One Pot Ave, New Yok, WY 10016. Mec EEK 0 deme of Coase Asoccts, LP T/Maker debuts WriteNow 2.2 By Edwin Garcio Mountain View, Calif. — T/Maker Co. last week announced WriteNow 2.2, an upgrade that adds more than two dozen new features and enhancements, including a 1.4 million word thesaurus, a larger dictionary and direct compatibility with Microsoft Word WriteNow 2.2, still priced at $195, is expected to ship by the end of this month the company said. ‘One of the very best things about Now's spelling dictionary from 100,000 to 135,000 words, making it the biggest built-in spell checker available, according to T/Maker. The upgrade also adds new “format accel- erators,” including menu commands that let users copy the font, size and style of selected text and apply the formatting to another passage Other enhancements include an option to view actual fonts in the font menu, ruler guides that create a vertical line on a user's document when a tab marker or margin is clicked, and a configurable Clean Up com- mand that automatically tiles or stacks open windows. T/Maker is hoping its entry-to-midlevel word processor, which has gained popularity for its speed and ease of use, will surpass Claris Corp.'s MacWrite II in domestic sales Each program claims a stake of about 15 per cent in the U.S. Mac market, T/Maker said Microsoft Word holds about 65 percent MacWEEK 13 February 1990 It’s a good solid upgrade, and it is a nice evolutionary step for an already solid prod- uct,” said Scott Beamer, a writer and WriteNow beta tester from Berkeley, Calif. The software package comes with a revised reference manual and a new handbook of tips and techniques compiled by users and the company’s technical support staff. Users who purchased Version 2.0 after Feb. 1 can obtain a free copy; the upgrade is $39 for other registered owners, T/Maker Co. is at 1390 Villa St., View, Calif. 94041; (415) 962-0195, Mountain WriteNow 2.2 is its Microsoft Word filter. said beta-tester Steve Fair, an editor at Chris. tian Science Publishing Society in Boston a Mac IIcx System both Word 3.0 and 4.0 files. Best of all it can With Apple Peripherals open fast-saved Word 3.0 and 4.0 files. WriteNow 2.2’s thesaurus is the Word Master DA Thesaurus from Proximity Tech- Fla. It pro compared contrasted and related words; inflections: nology Inc. of Fort Lauderdale vides synonyms; antonyms and short definitions The new version increases the size of Write- Courseware entrants fill gap left by Kinko's By Elinor Craig San Diego — Two California companies are aiming to fill the void left by the departure of Kinko's Academic Software Exchange from the college courseware publishing sc Althc ing and development support is still pending. Chariot Software Group, based here, and Intellimation Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to move ahead with publishing and mar- keting of educational materials without the support from Apple that Chariot announced this month the forma- an Apple contract for co-market- inko's enjoyed tion of the Academic Courseware Division to publish low-cost Mac software developed by and for educators. Its spring catalog will offer new titles ranging from $10 to $50. We have contacted individuals and univer- said George “Our non sities about publishing titles,” Madden, Chariot preside exclusive contracts are getting a good Drexel University in Philadelphia Drexel was an response gave us a verbal agreement.” early Apple University Consortium member and is a leader in courseware development Intellimation, a division of ABC-CLIO, a Santa Barbara-based academic publisher, Most Users Won't No also is planning to provide similarly priced education software for the Mac as well as two other levels of courseware. Level 2 will con- sist of $75 to $100 programs integrated with specific instructional materials. Level 3 will consist of complete multimedia packages including laser dises, CD-ROM and other media, priced at $200 to $300. Intellimation's Level 1 project is scheduled But All Buyers hard drive for just $299, or our new two- -page monochrome monitor for only $899 inclu video card and tilt/swivel bas We can save you hundreds of dollars over a peripheral with an Apple logo on it. What’s more, you'll enjoy the added benefits of a lengthy warranty, free dire telephone support, free third-party utility software, a 30 day moneyback retum policy and even an optional, overnight loaner service program. And, if you thought you would ave to make major concessions in quality, Next time you buy peripherals for your Macintosh, make sure you look at the price tag and not just the label. You'll find big differences between Apple and Ehman. First and foremost, Apple is in the business of making com- puters. Ehman is in the business of making computer peripherals. And since 1985 we've been out front in providing Macintosh users with the best combination of price and per- formance available. Like a 20 MB to begin next month, Level 2 by the third All products will be distributed internationally. Within a month Apple will announce a | company to temporarily handle the Academ: ic Software Exchange program, according to Daryl Weiner, manager of strategic projects for higher-education marketing at Apple. A | final choice will be made by this summer. Chariot Software Group is located at 3659 India St., Suite 100CW, San Diego, Calif 92103; (619) 298-0202. Intellimation Inc. can be reached at PO, Box 1922, Santa Barbara, Calif, 93116-1922; (805) 968-2291 quarter, and Level 3 by the end of the y sh... MocWEEK 13 February 1990, Whatever happened to floptical drives? By Henry Norr San Jose, Calif. — A draft white paper released last week by the Micro Man- agers Association's Micro Standards Committee (formerly the 486 Standard- ization Committee) gives the group's blessing to the 20-Mbyte floppy format developed by Insite Peripherals Inc., but it is likely to be some time before Macintosh users ben- efit from new 3.5-inch storage technology The committee, an organization of corpo- rate microcomputer users, said the Insite flopticals” outperformed other current and proposed very high-density floppy formats in cost, specd and reliability Insite’s disks use ordinary magnetic media stamped with optical servo tracks. [omega Corp. of Roy, Utah, has licensed the patented technology; several IBM PC companies have announced versions of it; and a few Mac vendors are known to be working with prototypes. But Jim Adkisson, president of the 3-year-old Insite, based here, said last week that recent design changes, including downsizi » 1 inch in height and adding an auto-cject mechanism, mean that the drive won't be available in volume for months Even then, he said, the initial release will not be compatible with standard Mac floppy formats, although it will read and write [BM PC formats. Mac IIcx System With Ehman Peripherals ice The Difference, Certainly Will. Hard Drive Prices think again. Our monitor has a flicker-free refresh Size (MB) .. . rate higher than either Apple or Radius. And our hard drives are now significantly faster thanks to new caching software, and still come with reliability ratings up to 100,000 hours between failures. So before you pay top dollar fora premium label, give Ehman a call at 1-800-257-1666 and see about an alternative that makes a very big difference—to your pocketbook. One look and you'll know why we're now the fastest growing peripheral manufacturer in the business. 45 Removable Eman The Apple Alternative Internal . 1. $299 External . $349 . $399 $479 Call 1-800-257-1666 or 1-307-789-3830 Fax 1-307-789-4656 ‘The Enman name and igo are rademarta of Ohman Incorporated. Al oer products martonad a rasemarks oregatered vademasts oI Das respactye hcAters Prices eye lo change wou nonce, News | IBM to put NeXT interface on new AIX machines, PS/2 By Daniel Farber Armonk, N.Y NeXT Inc. received a much needed boost last week when IBM Corp. an nounced plans here to offer NextStep on h end PS/2s and a new line of workstations running AIX, the computer giant's version of Unix NextStep Is the NeXT Computer System's object-oriented user interface and develop ment environment The announcement, which had been pated since the two companies inked ing agreement in 1958, who were unsure about developing Step] off the fence president of sales at Redwox based NeXT larger pie and a broader range of NextStep will g developers for Next. said Dan Lewin, vice id City, Calif It means there will be based solutions for users and developers NeXT and programmers developing soft ware with NextStep claim that it makes i possible to construct applications in far teat time than required in traditional develop- ment environments In the three months we have been con: nix code for WordPerfect Office and erfect, we have found development WordF with NextStep to be much faster than with other systems,” said Tom Mallory, director of NeXT development at WordPerfect Corp. of Orem, Utah. “The tools are fabulous Alongside NextStep, [BM will offer the Open Software Foundation’s Motif as an alternative graphical user interface for ALX. According to Tim Bajarin, executive vice president at Creative Strategies of Santa Clara, Calif, the announcement will bring NextStep applications to market faster, but it doesn't guarantee that NeXT will dominate on AIX NextStep is clearly being offered as one of the interface options. | expect [IBM's major endorsement to go to OSF's Motif IBM will support the same application machines. programming interfaces as NextStep, which will allow developers to write applications that work on both platforms with str ward recompilation Porting pr: between NeXT and IBM hardware should take less than a week, Lewin said. Sources said the IBM machines that will run NextStep — future PS/2 models and the new RISC (reduced instruction set comput- are not likely to be avail- able until late summer NeXT is hoping that, along with IBM's endorsement, praise from key software developers will create more demand for NextStep and the NeXT computer. NeXT has so far suffered slack sales because of a lack of application software according to sources close to the company Lewin also said that IBM and NeXT are jointly developing connectivity solutions to bring the NeXT machine into IBM’s Systems Application Architecture world NeXT officials said they are not concerned about competition from IBM ma- chines running the same interface as the NeXT syst tor, but we ing) workstations largely n. “We have enabled a competi- ve a fairly agressive hardware offering and bundled software,” said Lewin Each platform will evolve some core appli- cations and have distinctive features that appeal to different kinds of customers.” News Trojan horse detected in Canada Rogue programs trash directories By Henry Norr Edmonton, Alberta — ‘Two Tro- jan horses — programs with mali- cious purposes hiding behind innocent facades — were discoy- ered here this month, but at press time no copies of the destruc- tive programs had been reported elsewhere. The discovery was made by Peter Johnston, senior analyst for university computing systems at the University of Alberta. Johnston was called in by the systems ope tor of a local bulletin board where the programs were posted in Jan- uary. But both the sysop and a patron of the Bulletin Board Sys- | tem had lost files to the Trojan. ‘The first strain is imbedded in a program called Mosaic, Johnston reported in a warning distributed at the university and posted on electronic services. When launched, the program immediate- ly destroys the directories of all available physically unlocked hard and floppy disks, including the one it resides on. Even unmounted but available SCSI hard disks are mounted and their directories destroyed by the ‘Trojan, Johnston said. The attacked disks are renamed “Gotcha The second Trojan strain was detected in an application called FontFinder. The software, appar- ently a contaminated version of a legitimate public-domain program, has a trigger date of Feb. 10. Before then, the application simply dis- played a list of the names and point sizes of fonts loaded in the System file. If the contaminated program is launched on or after the trigger date, however, the Trojan attacks disks in the same way as Mosaic does, Johnston said. Johnston said last week that he had not had time to test most avail- able anti-virus tools against the new Disinfectant upgrade ‘twice Will compete with commercial tools By Henry Norr Evanston, Ill. — John Norstad, author of Disinfectant, has announced plans for a major upgrade that could make the free and widely used anti-virus tool more than competitive with com- mercial utilities, Disinfectant 2.0 will “have twice the features and be twice Es as the current version, L6, said. The new version, which he said he hopes to complete in “sey- eral months,” will retain the pro- gram’s simple interface and add several features aimed at computer Tre » but that the advanced mode of SAM Intercept, part of the SAM package from Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., does flag the rogue programs’ attempt to bypass the standard file system and give the user a chance to block them. HJC Software Inc. of Durham, N.C., said Virex 2.5, which will pre- vent the launch of the Trojan pro- grams, was scheduled for release last weekend, Johnston also said that Version 3.0.1 or later of VirusDetective, the user-configurable virus-detection novices, in addition to a variety of new menu options for power users Planned enhancements include: > A Startup document (INIT) that blocks known viruses. > Scheduled scans, so that the program could be set, for instance, to start up at 3 a.m. and scan all AppleShare servers on a LAN. > Background scanning and pro- gram switching under MultiFinder. > A configurability feature, so that users can insert information that will enable the program to detect future viruses > Context-sensitive Help linked to an improved on-line documenta- tion file, which can be printed with a variety of formatting options. > New detection techniques, including check-summing and John Norstad designed and wrote Disinfectant, but he credits a host of colleagues and even competitors for helping him build @ program that has earned wide respect among Mac users and net- work administrators struggling to contain the virus threat. Norstad, computer analyst in the Academic Computing and Network Services group at Northwestern University in Evanston, IIL, began work on the first version of Disi fectant in November 1988, and he remains its principal designer and sole programmer. But the program has evolved, Norstad said, largely from the contributions of two groups that are in almost constant contact via on-line networks; » MacMash, a private discus- sion group that includes the authors of most other leading Mac anti-virus programs, among them Apple's Virus Rx team; Robert Woodhead, the author of HJC Software Inc.'s Virex; Paul Cozza, author of Symantec Corp.'s SAM: and two shareware programmers, Chris Johnson, author of the Gate- Keeper, and Jeff Shulman, author of VirusDetective. The group, which Norstad called “the single most effective organization in the Designer of Disinfectant says it’s a team effort ‘Computer analyst John Norstad supports Mac and TCP/IP networks at Northwestera University, in addition to anti-virus programming. ongoing war aj exchanges ideas and tech, information over the Internet, a high-speed worldwide network connecting major colleges, univer- sities, government labs and high- tech companies. >The Disinfectant Working Group, a group that overlaps with MacMash but also includes inter- ested non-programmers. The group has helped Norstad design, debug and document Disinfectant since its first release. He called the group “absolutely invaluable to me ... 1 can't even count the number of sug- gestions made by various people in the group that have ended up as part of the pro- gram, and how many lly bad. ideas I've had that fortunately did not make it in because of the group's rejection.” Norstad said he has “very | friendly rela- tions” with his commercial “competitors.” “I'ye never met Paul [Cozza], but on many days I feel like 1 know him better than the guy I share an office with.” Norstad, who said he has been a hacker for 27 of his 41 years, was one of the o1 designers and programmers of Odesta Corp.'s lubase, ope) he said, has been vous in Jetting me fectant on company ore generous in letting me give the program away for free.” — By Henry Norr desk accessory developed by Jeff Shulman, can detect the two known strains of the Trojan if set to search for the following string: Resource CODE & ID = 1 & Data 44656174685472616B. Shulman’s DA is available from on-line services and other sources s ware software. The share- re license fee, including the disk, is $40. Johnston, the author of a book called The Computer Virus Crisis (published by Van Nostrand), said the entire incident is under inten- sive investigation. Johnston said that the Trojan code has been made available to developers of the leading commer- cial anti-virus programs. 0 as nice’ mechanisms for detecting clones of eusting viruses, The current version of Disinfe tant is available from most on-line services. In addition, copies can be obtained by sending a self- addressed stamped envelope and a floppy disk to John Norstad, North- western Universi! 29 Sheridan Road, Evanston II]. 60208. 5 Digital Vision ships $450 color board By Roger Karraker Dedham, Mass. — The cost of getting color images into Mac II computers fell again this month when Digital Vision Inc. began shipping its ComputerEyes Color Digitizer, a $ board that cap- tures black-and-white, eight-bit color and 24-bit color images from standard video inputs. The digitizer, which occupies single NuBus slot in a Mac II series computer, works with color graphics boards from Apple and other ven- dors to capture color images. Unlike grabber boards manufactured y companies such as Mass Micro- systems Inc,, Data Translation Inc and Truevision Inc., the Computer- Eyes Color Digitizer does not “grab” a moving image Instead, the board digitizes a sta- ble “freez (National Television System Com- ittee) source, including videocas- sette recorders, camcorders, motion video cameras, videodises or still- video cameras. Images are captured at 640 by 480 pixels and can be saved in TIFF or PICT2 formats for export to desktop publishing, ani- mation or multimedia applications, The unit supports the separate chrominance and luminance $-Video inputs available on new high-end S-VHS and Hi-Band 8mm VCRs and camcorders, the company said Digital Vision also developed the $250 Comput board for capturing blac and eight-bit gray-scale images. Digital Vision Inc. is located at 270 Bridge St., Dedham, Mass. 02026; (617) 329-5400. Founder & Publisher Michel Tehony EDITORIAL Editor Daniel Ruby Execotive Editor Daniel Farber Managing Editor. Brenda Benner News Group Group Editor Henry Norr Senior Editor Rochelle Garner Assodite Editor Connic Guggielmo Editor at Large Dale Coleman Technical Analyst Raines Cohen Staff Reporters John Battelle, Elinor Craig Edwin Garcia, Pamela Phiffner, Carolyn Said Technology Group Grovp Editor Anita Malnig. Senior Editor/Reviews Becky Waring. Senior Technical Editor Ric Ford (Boston) Senior Writer Rick LePage (Boston) Assodete Editor Cliff Lehman Assistant Editors Stephen Howard, Janice tion Specialist Nathalie Welch Copy Editors Cate Corcoran (Copy Chief), Kandy Amold, Anne Matera, Mitzi Waltz Sue Troy Contributing Editors Clay Andres, Don Crabb, Steve Hannaford, Vernon Keenan, Dennis Klatzkin, Jonathan Littman, Steve Michel Steve Rosenthal, Ezra Shapiro, Laslo Vespremi, Joel West ART AND PRODUCTION Assodate Publisher Barri Klingaman. ‘An Director. 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Malcolin Morris Editorial and odvertising offices: 301 Iloward St. 15th Floor, San Francisco, Calif 81105; (U5) 243-3500, Boston editorial allice: 4 Caan bridge Ceuter, Third Floor, Cauibiridge, Mass. 02142, (617) 497-2600, Muc WEEK is produced using an inchowse system of Apple Magintosh SEs and Mac Us; Laser Writer, Vurityper VE-600 and VE GOW, and QMS ColorSeript 100 printers networked on Farallon PhaneNet, Lino tronic 300, Nikon LS-3500 Slide Scanner, RasterOps, E-Machines and SuperMtae monitory, aud software ineluding Quash- XPress, Adobe tlhustrator 8, Aldus Face Hand, SuperPaint, Photoshop, Microsoft Word. “F BPA Wer iteei segs pcg More Rave Reviews for the #1 SQL Database Sa PC WEEK Oracle f ) SOL/HyperCy : Mac Sol BY Susan Janus Database gi; Meat Gar Biant Oracle Corp, of Bel he of platformer rounded ‘out the Pany's relational database sao re. ra Combo Produces §; MeNt system (Dp) of Oracle for Macitnt of oe new Mac DBMS team, cas me Ss Structured Quer ceed. age And easy-to-use intenfage, Ustomizable the release Is the power opers to early co, HyperCard to © Can ink 5 Comblexty of databace * Plato et Oracle database se VS as front end 10 relational © Provides re Work Version Meese on other platforms tation and hoy, oft ai re > a ea Y Sacoeeieee oping datar imental Ma connect ee ore syste ; : tementific Rand D ONE ints “ORACLE for Macintosh is a well- jyusine OX iyigive the CORN designed product...a programmer —_) SYS. 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Dear Oracle Macintosh Direct Sales 20 Davis Drive - Belmont, California 94002 1-800-ORACLE1, ext. 7769 Please send me the Stand-alone Version of ORACLE for Macintosh for $1992 Enclosed is my O check, or 0 VISA 0) M/C 0 AmEx credit card authorization for $199.00 Please add appropriate sales tax $. Shipping and handling $_15.95 Total (Offer valid only in USA nd only until April 15, 1990) $ NAME THe COMPANY STREET ro PO bowen pinasa) ory SATE _aP 1Sund alone version icone fo developers only, Requires Macinosh toll with 2 MepabytsofRAM. 5 Meyayes far isk space, Nlopy kde andityperCan 12. cudes 30 day instal Ilonsupport ORACLE database Hyper-9QU(yperrdnierface), SQLePlus, OC andProsC(Micitosh Prograrimers Workshops required or programing vag), System Stacks and Example Sachs. ellneworhing version $999 and includes SQL fr dxabase communications) async, 3270, DECNat, TCP suppor, Alisa System 3 TSshet, DECneprovonl and drivers andKetc’s Tefen TEP prowcat and ver. Acesing alaase sh ware on lher machines require separa praca handle and aueway sofware for ie other machine Cal or addonal akrmalion Copyright ©1990 by Oracle Corporation, ORACLE ia repstered remark of Oracle The her companies mentioned vn numerous ademas, TRBA TELEPHONE CREDITCARONO, ‘CARD EXPIRATION DATE SIGNATURE TOOAFSDATE __ MACLWEEK Gassée This latest sign of chaos within Apple's headquarters here comes less than two weeks after the resig- nation of Apple USA President Allan Loren, the appointment of Michael Spindler as chief operating officer and an executive manage- ment restructuring that reduced responsibilities (see MacWEEK, Feb. 6). Apple also has been dealing with bad news on the sales front, last week learning that a major govern- ment contract may have fallen through (see related story, Page 75). In recent months, Gassée and Sculley haye been at odds over the company’s product directions, sources said. At a meeting with Apple employees earlier this month, Sculley implied that Gassée’s prod- uct development group was to blame for failing to introduce low- end machines, a weakness in the company’s product line that indus- try and financial analysts say is jeop- ardizing Apple's long-term viability in the highly competitive personal computer arena. “Jean-Louis and Apple Products are the scapegoats for impotent and fad marketing generated by other Apple executive: said Guy Kawasaki, former Apple evangelist Gassée’s pending departure marks the end of a Jongstanding relation- ship with Sculley that dates back to the ouster of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1985. In his 1987 book “Odyssey,” Sculley wrote, "Gassée represented Apple at its best — slightly irreverent, at times arrogant, but always incredibly insightful and smart. Gassée had the gift to articu- late the romance of our business as few others could, or would dare.” From Page 1 ON O/H GO Ine corporate drama that has let employees confused and demoralized, Apple CEO John Sclley remains in position, wtile Jean-Lovis Gassée and Allan Loren haven't fared as well. Filling Gassée’s role as a spiritu- al leader and product visionary within Apple would be difficult, according to observers. “In a large sense, he was one of the last bastions of the old Apple spirit,” said David Ramsey, a for- mer Apple engineer and author of MacPaint 2.0. “When I joined Apple, he was up there with [the] engineers, and you could just wan- der in and talk to him. “He was unique among the Apple executives in being a real computer nut,” Ramsey added. “John Sculley may be a nice guy, but he cer- tainly doesn’t have the support from engineering that Gassée did.” “Gassée was the one who decid- ed to put the processor direct slot in the SE and drove the decision to use NuBus on the Mac II,” said Kin Seto, vice president of the Weilynne Group of San Carlos, Calif., and former head of Apple evangelism under Gassée. “Apple needs someone with vision to come out with [the] next-generation Mac- intosh. Gassée was the person who could have provided that vision.” “Less important than who is de- parting is filling the positions,” said Peter Rogers of Robertson Stephens & Co., a San Francisco investment company. “I'm still optimistic. Apple has enormous resources and an envi- able market position.” “The issue here is not who the personalities are but what is the right product strategy,” said Gor- don Eubanks, CEO of Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal Feb. 7, Sculley will take charge of product develop- ment upon Gassée’s resignation until a successor can be found. 5 Connie Guglielmo contributed to this report, Dealers say Free Trial Run gave customers a free ride By Pomela Pfiffner San Francisco — Preliminary reports on Apple's fall promotion campaign indicate that the “Free Trial Run or Cash Back” promotion was really a free rental for consumers and a trial return for many dealers The program offered buyers rebates on Apple peripherals or gave qualified customers a chance to take a Mac home for up to three months with the option of returning it with- out charge. Dealers said Apple had told them to anticipate returns of less than 6 percent on the take-homes Apple has not yet released the actual figures from the promotion, which ran from Oct. 14 through Jan. 15, but many dealers experienced 70 per- cent to 90 percent returns, according to MacWEE terviews and an informal survey carried out by deal- ers over AppleLink. Simon Chow, president of Com- puter Selection in Sunnyvale, Calif, said that of the 60 customers who took advantage of the free trial run at his two stores, 68 percent returned the units. Another 60 interested customers did not quali- y. “Many customers had a clear ntention to rent a Mae,” he said In some cases they planned to buy it after the program was over but at a different store.” The “Free Trial Run” program was modeled on Apple's 1984 “Test Drive a Mac” campaign. “The earlier promotion worked because the trial period was only one night or at most a week,” said Steve Zee, vice presi- | Aldus ing in 0.1-point increments are now ailable. PageMaker 4.0 supports ype sizes 50 points, up from the previous 127-point limit » Color. The new release will incorporate PageMaker Color Exten- sion, previously a separate $195 module, that offers support for Pan- tone colors and the ability to import, From Page 1 display and print color images. Aldus PrePrint, a $495 color separation and enhancement product also sched- uled for second-quarter shipment, will produce four-color separations of PageMaker 4.0 documents. > Links management. A links feature lists each text and graphics file in a PageMaker document, notifies users if the original file has been changed and lets them While Aldus Gorp. fired the lat- est salvo in the fierce competition for desktop publishing market | share (see story, Page 1), its com- petitors are revving up versions they hope will erode PageMuker's 400,000-strong user base, In December Letraset of Para- mus, NJ., shipped DesignStudio, a $795 program targeted at pro- fessional users, Quark Ine. of Denver is work- ing on a major revision of QuarkXPress, reportedly sche uled for an early March introdue- tion at the Seybold Seminars Ninety Professional Publishing Conference in Boston QuarkXPress 3.0 will address | Quark keeps pressure on Aldus many user requests, according to sources who have been beta test- ing the product. The new version will let users place elements across a spread, eliminating the current required gutter. It also will offer free rotation of text and graphics and multiple selection of text and graphics boxes. Enhanced color capabilities will include the ability to specify bleeding elements without having to create an oversized page and manually adding crop marks. Matching a metaphor that both PageMaker and DesignStudio offer, XPress 3.0 also will add some form of pasteboard, sources said. — By Carolyn Said import the new version if desired. > Long documents. PageMaker 4.0 files can contain up to 999 pages, up from 128. Multiple files can be linked to create a “book” for which a common table of contents and index can be generated. > Table creation. A separate ‘Table Editor utility lets users build tables that can include text and graphics, PageMaker 3.0 users can up- grade to Version 4.0 for $150. Aldus’ announcement that it will definitely acquire Silicon Beach Software signifies both a marriag between two Macintosh pioneers and a trend toward consolidation in the industry, obseryers said. The co d companies “will represent a dominant force in the Mae software community,” Kirk Loeyner, director of the Apple Developer Group, said at an Aldus press conference here last week. Silicon Beach, said Charlie Jack- son, its president and founder, will continue “to do business as usual,” operating from its San Diego head- quarters as a wholly owned sub- sidiary of Aldus. Jackson will serve as vice president and general mai for several months and then will recruit a successor, freeing him to pursue other interests, he said. Silicon Beach's products will still be marketed under its label, at least in the short term. Personal Press, a low-end desktop publishing product that Silicon Beach plans to ship this quarter, will have links to PageMaker in its second version, Aldus said. Silicon Beach's fans need haye no fears that its laid-back Southern California style will evaporate We'll still wear Hawaiian shirts at trade shows,” Jackson promised. Mac IIxi From Page 1 give the [xi its performance boost over previous models include a SCSI direct memory access chip and peripheral controllers for faster 1/O serial, floppy disk and Apple Desktop Bus operations. In addition to six NuBus slots, the IIxi has a processor direct slot (PDS), similar to the slot in the Mac SE/30. However, SE/30 PDS boards will require some modifications to work on the new machine. Like the Hci, the [xi has a separate slot for a static RAM cache card. The new machine reportedly uses a RAM SIMM (single in-line memory mod- ule) design that resembles that of the LaserWriter IINTX rather than that of previous Macs Unlike the Hei, which has a MHz 68030 chip, the LIxi does not offer on-board video support. 0 MocWEEK 13 February 1990 dent of The Computer Store in Bryn Mawr, Pa. “It conveyed a sense of urgency, like there are other people waiting to get their hands on the Mac. This promotion said, ‘Come: and get it — we can't get rid of them.’ ” Returns at his store topped 90 percent, Zee said Even stores where the promo- tion was moderately successful reported a high rate of retums. Ron Ensminger, vice president and gen- eral manager of Visual Sound in Broomall, Pa., said in comparison with dealers he talked to who had returns of more than 80 percent, s store did well. “We had 50 per- cent. I guess that's excellent.” While Apple said it will not com- ment until its final results are in later this month, a spokeswoman said, “We do know the promotion was successful in generating store traffic and that many dealers were successful in converting people to take the rebate rather than take the free trial run.” Many dealers, anticipating headaches from the promotion’s unwieldy paperwork and potential for customer abuse, opted to partic ipate only in the rebate portion of the promotion. “If we did the free trial run here, every art department in New York would borrow a system for 90 days,” said David Pincus, president of Microcomputer Publishing Cen- ter in New York. He added the rebate offer went “very well” at his store.o For the Record The Jan, 30 issue of MacWEEK reported that Wheels for the Mind. the now-defunet Apple journal for higher education, had been pub- lished at Boston University. It was actually produced at Boston College. In the price/performance chart accompanying our Jan. 16 eompari- son of magneto-optical drives, the slower benchmark rating for Pinna- cle Micro Inc.'s REO-650 was identified as a 1,024-byte sector cartridge. The performance noted was from the drive using a 512- byte sector cartridge. The correct rating for the large sector cartridge is 10.5 seconds, In our Oct. 17, 1989, comparison of Compatible System Corp.'s Ether+ and Adaptee Inc.'s Nodem, a configuration error led us to con- clude that the Ether+ was signifi- cantly faster than the Nodem in one of the tests, This is not true. The correct results, in seconds, appear below. j Corrected SCSI Ethernet MocWEEK 13 February 1990 Claris From Page 1 nications (IAG) features of System 7.0, these applications will be able to talk to each other and exchange information, company officials predicted. As an example of that strategy, Claris said it would later this year release the Executive Query Tool technology acquired from Red Brick Systems (see MacWEEK, Feb. 6) as a stand-alone product inst of integrating it with FileMaker or other full-function appli- cations. “The goal is not to marry just the query and browsing tools but to pro- vide a whole information management tool kit,” said John Zeisler, Claris marketing vice president The briefing was the latest in a series of statements by Claris promoting its vision of IAG, including a demonstration last October of live links betwee jaris CAD and File- Maker II (see MacWEEK, Oct. 4, 1989) and its sponsorship of the D file format stan- dard (see MacWEEK, Oct. 10, 1989) “All of our work in this area is intended to amplify what Apple is doing with System 7.0 development,” said Yogen Dalal, Claris vice president of product development. “We have a vision of where to take Macintosh technol- Applications need ogy under System 7.0. to become more focused.” Dalal added that Claris is looking at Informix’s Wingz, from which it acquired key technologies (see MacWEEK, Jan. 6), not as a spreadsheet but as an analysis tool. He said that Claris views the package as three inde- pendently useful technologies: the spread- sheet engine, the data-driven graphics rou- tines and the HyperScript L guage. MacroMind be rearranged and synchronized to digi- tized sound > MacroMind will roll out three new prod- ucts, including the next generation of its $695 MacroMind Director animation pro- gram. Version 2.0 will incorporate the MacroMind Director Interactive Toolkit, an add-on module that adds a HyperTulk-like scripting language called “Lingo” to Director and that allows developers to create interac- tive presentations. An undocumented ver- sion of the Toolkit has been available to developers since June. The company is also expected to introduce 3DWorks, a high-end 3-D rendering and ani- mation program, and to announce it has acquired distribution rights to MediaMaker, a low-cost, Mac-based editing system de oped by the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Interactive Television Unit (see MacWEEK Aug. 15, 1989) 3DWorks lets users render 3-D objects using full-color lighting and shading effects and animate the 3-D sequences, which can then be exported to Director. The program will accept 3-D data from modeling programs, including Para- comp Ine.’s Swivel 3D and Silicon Beach Software Inc.’s Super3D. It also con- tains translators for importing files in DXF (Drawing Interchange Format) and IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) formats, which are supported by most CAD programs. Expected to go into beta testing later this | month, the new application will also be the first to support the 3DGF (3-D Geometry File) format developed by 3DWorks author Julian Gémez, as well as a format compatible with RenderMan, Pixar's scene descnption language. MediaMaker, a program developed by the ITU in collaboration with Apple's Multime- dia Lab, lets users assemble presentations that combine Mac-generated 24-bit color graphics, full-motion video, still images and CD and digitized sound. “Picons,” picture icons that repre- sent graphics or audio and video clips of any length or size, are displayed in scroll- able windows called “palettes.” Individual picons, which can be stored and reused, are played and edited using point-and- click tools. Presentations are assembled by dragging picons into a special window called the “track.” MediaMaker plays back the source material from disk, CD-ROM, laser dises, 8mm tape players and other media, el jat~ ing the need for huge storage device: Although MediaTracks will only record in black and white, users will be able to super- impose color graphics saved as PICT files. MacroMind Inc. is located at 410 Townsend, Suite 408, San Francisco, Calif 94107, (415) 442-0200. Farallon Computing Inc. is located at 2000 Powell St., Emeryville, Calif. 94608; (415) 596-9100. 9 From Page 1 ©Mmp, MY QU, Chane Univers 47 Senfas | IGNOT Lighir University Optima System File to find what you need. Us Eras ona sd Arena hat good are all those Fonts and Desk Accessories if using them is a hassle? Suitcase II sets you free! Suitcase Il is the award-winning software that gives you unlimited access to a// your fonts and desk accessories, all the time. Without having to use Font/DA Mover to install and deinstall them. Without cluttering up your system file. Without anything to stand between you and your creativity. Imagine being able to view an unlimited number of fonts /n their own typefaces at any moment, picking and choosing among them without breaking stride. Imagine never having to search through a cluttered Imagine never having to deal with font 1D conflicts, never having to restart your system to install a Desk Accessory you need. Imagine spending your time creating instead of juggling fonts and DAs. Imagine Suitcase Il on your Macintosh —ail FIFTH GENERATION SYSTEMS Mcmuiatracamart of | Aaala Comat. 10049 N. Reiger Road Baton Rouge, LA 70809 (504) 291-7221 News Dalal said that Claris’ decision to use | HyperScript in any of its products will depend partly on the availability and func tionality of Apple's systemwide scripting lan- guage, AppleScript. “Little but the intent has been published,” he said Claris’ recent string of technology acquisi tions is part of its strategy to develop these Buying technolo- gies gives us a fast start,” Dalal said. “The company has a good track record of putting new types of applications our stamp on products, not just the look and feel but the functionality LabVIEW 2.0 finally out the door By Rochelle Garner Austin, Texas — Well over a year after it was announced by National Instruments, Version 2.0 of the LabVIEW data-acquistion control and programming software is out the door. Free to current owners or $1,995 to new users — the same price as Version 1.2 — LabVIEW features a powerful block-diagram program- ming language that lets users cre- ate applications that control lab or factory instruments from the Mac- intosh. From the user-designed graphical program, LabVIEW gen- erates a front panel of “virtual instruments” that mimic the con- trols of the lab instruments. “Conceptually, LabVIEW 2.0 is the same [as the previous ver- sion], but with so many improve- ments it's like an entirely new pro- gram,” said beta-tester Glenn Graham, project scientist in the separations and process fundamen- tals group of Union Carbide in South Charleston, W.Va Enhancements in the new Lab- VIEW include: >A compiler that runs virtual instruments 10 to 100 times faster than the interpreter in the previous version does. “With the compiled execution, I can run programs in five minutes that used to take 30 minutes,” said Steve Conquergood, chief engineer with CXT Ltd., a manufacturer of concrete railroad ties in Edmonton, Alberta. > The bility to use extensions from any other compiled language, such as C or Pascal. This feature lets users take advantage of existing applications to create virtual instru- ments as well as to write drivers for data-acquisition or process-control hardware from other vendors. With ebVIEW 2.0, srs program dete- ccquistion and process-controlepplice- tions with block diagrams (above) to reste front panels (right) that mimic the look of lab instruments. » Color, which makes it easier for users to distinguish among dif- ferent instruments and switches incorporated on a single screen. > Improved editing features, such as the capability to cut, copy and paste programming blocks and instruments. In addition, Lab- VIEW 2.0 offers a feature National Instruments calls “wire stretching,” which lets users insert or replace blocks in an existing program without having to rewire logical connections > The ability to create a library of applications. As users program a virtual panel, they can design an icon that executes the program. These subprograms can be stored for later use or revision. “The ability to collapse one front panel down to a single icon, then reuse it within a larger instrument is probably the most powerful thing about LabVIEW,” said Conquer- good, who plans to start his own consulting company this year. “Based on what I've seen, I've decided to use it as the main por- tion of my consulting business. I'm virtually founding my business on LabVIEW 2.0.” In a separate announcement, National Instruments said it has received a patent on the tech- nology underlying its block dia- gram structures and the way those blocks link to front panels that can be condensed to a single icon, LabVIEW requires 4 Mbytes of memory and a hard disk. National Instruments is located at 12109 Technology Blvd., Austin, ‘Texas 78727, (512) 794-0100. 0 New model, price cut from Lasergraphics By Pomela Pfiffner Irvine, Calif, — Lasergraphics Inc. Jast month released a new high-end film recorder and slashed the price of its original model by $1,000. The new unit, the Lasergraphics Film Recorder Plus, features 33- bit color, providing color sweeps and shading without banding, as well as sharper details and fonts. It rasterizes images 50 percent faster than its predecessor; on average, Mac users can expect output of about 30 slides per hour, the com- pany said. The Mac-only version of the LFR Plus, priced at $13,750, ras- terizes PICT and PICT? files on the Macintosh with Lasergraphics’ proprietary MacRascol software, at a user-selectable resolution of 2,000 lines for proofing or 4,000 lines for final output. A recent upgrade, Version 1.06, makes MacRascol compatible with Adobe Systems Inc.'s Adobe Type Manag- er, Although it does not directly support PostScript, the LFR Plus can be used with Freedom of Press, a $495 PostScript-clone software interpreter from Custom Applica- tions Inc. of Billerica, Mass., to generate PostScript output. IBM PC-, PS/2- and mainframe- based versions of the LFR Plus also are available, along with configura- tions that support both Macs and either PCs or PSs. The Macintosh version of Laser- graphics’ original LFR, a 24-bit color film recorder introduced in 1988, is now priced at $8,750. An LFR configured for use with both Macs and either PCs or PS/2s costs $10,950. Both LFR models are compatible with all current Maes and require a minimum of 2 Mbytes of memory. Lasergraphics Inc, recently moved to 20 Ada, Irvine, Calif. 92718; (714) 727-2651.0 Cayman releases a QuickMail-Unix gateway Cambridge, Mass. — GatorMail- Q, a recently released gateway marketed by Cayman Systems Inc., lets users of CE Software Ine,’s QuickMail exchange electronic mail with Unix-based minicomput- ers and workstations. StarNine Technologies Inc, of Berkeley, Calif., developed the gateway, originally dubbed Mail* Link. Cayman also will mar- ket StarNine’s simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) gateway for Microsoft Mail as GatorMail-M Priced at $995 for a 10-user package, GatorMail-Q transparent- ly links QuickMail to mail systems that support SMTP, the mail proto- col used on most Unix computers and TCP/IP networks. Cayman is at University Park at Massachusetts Institute of Technolo- gy, 26 Landsdowne St., Cambridge, Mass, 02139; (617) 494-1999. o News Ban Ret leu Eber Crate Technology introduces line of portable hard disk series includes 20-, 30-, 40-, 60-, 80- and 100-Mbyte drives priced from: $1,049. The 100-Mbyte drive is based on a Toshiba mechanism; the othe Seagate dives. The design can accommodate any 3.5:inch drive, Crate so er capacities ore due in the second quarter. The four-pound units have steel cases, ond the company said it adds shock mounts to supplement those built into the drive mechanism. Crote offers a $16.95 carrying case for the drives. A 155-Mbyte TEAC backup unit in the ToteCrate case is due out later this quarter, the company ored shapes saving their screens can now watch their desktops turn info. puzzle grids or put their Macs in “autodoodle” mode. Berkeley Systems Inc. last week released Version 1.1 of After Dork, its f $39.95 screensaver package. The free upgrade adds the puzzle, the doodles ond a : new geometric line design to the 16 other choices in the program’s Control Ponel list It also promises improved performance and compatibility. Among options retoined from the original After Dark ore password protection ond modules that let users add styled, multiline messages and PICTformat logos for display when the screen is blank. Registered owners con upgrade for a $5 handling fee or by running an up- date opplication posted on electronic bulletin board systems. Berkeley Systems Inc. is located at 1700 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, Colif. 94709; (415) 540-5535. Semaphore CD-ROMs list ZIPs, Mac owners Aptos, Calif. — Semaphore Corp. is now shipping three C-ROM titles designed to help businesses do business. A disc called Z-5 provides a national datobase of U.S. addresses and five-digit 2IP codes. Extensive search and retrieval copabilities include identifying street names and house-number ranges within cities with multiple ZIP codes. The Z-5 disc is sold on 0 subscription basis for $299; after six months the dise expires and 0 replocement is sent to registered owners. M4 Semaphore also is shipping A Quarter Million Mac Users, a listing of 250 Moc owners. The $4,900 product is targeted ot direct mail services and porty vendors. Software included with the disc allows searches keyed by. ‘nome, ZIP or phone number, s well os by subgroups within ony one oft All These Videos _ Were Created Af you-can pointand XN click,you can produce ‘professional quality color _ yideos with ColorSpace Ili. ~The video card that lets ; “you overlay anything cre- > ated ona Mac II onto live - “Or recorded video. ColorSpace Il’ Ss i - advanced : genlocking : technology assures crisp, high- “quality i images by.synchro- nizing Mac graphics, titles, ‘and animations to any stan-_ dard TV video signal. You can even digitize still images from a video camera. And while ColorSpace Ili turns your Macintoa 4 professional '~ desktop in is easy to use, it lets you HS OMS Ne i Uae ‘ video | get as sophisticated as you want. Because i it works with all the most i production powerful Mac software—HyperCard”™ SuperCard,™ and Director.™ studio. All of which makes ColorSpace Ili the technology of choice for a today’s desktop video applications: animations; film and commercial storyboards; sales/promotional/instructional videos. For details, your nearest dealer, and to order our $9.95 demo tape, call 800-522-7979. And let your mouse make you a star. M 550 Del Rey Avenue, Sunnyvale, California 94086. In Canada call 604-276-2326, For international distribution call 408-522-1200. microsystems — Alll trademarks are the property of their respective owners, We put all your best To make our newest laser | printer dramatically better, we ' asked for outside help. Yours. And the suggestions we There's no fuss, no muss when you replace the single toner cartridge. received were simple, practical, even beautiful. So, we think, is the result. The NEC Silentwriter’ 2 printer. “Tt should handle dif- ft : YD ferent sizes of paper easily.” 4 Pp 7 y It does. Interchangeable cassettes let you switch from standard- and legal-size to a S = Paul Wheeler Boise, ID envelopes to labels, all in a matter of seconds. And a single supply handling ” NEC Technologies, Inc., 1414 Massachusetts Ave., Boxborough MA 01719. 1-800-NEC-INFO. In Canada, 1-800-343-4418. Copyright 1990 NEC Technologies Inc, SilentFont is a trademark and Silentwriter is a registered trademark of NEC Corp. suggestions into a box. toner cartridge that you just pop in when needed, clean and simple. And as for operating noise? Holly French San Diego, CA “Speed and memory."" Well, its name speaks for itself. “Ideally, I'd like a printer that com- bines lots of speed and memory with good resolution.” More, faster, better. Our engineers heard it time and time again. So they gave the Silentwriter2 a lightning- quick processor and lots of memory. So you can use today’s most sophisticated graphics software. For better- looking brochures, labels and = Inter- changeable cassettes let \ you switch | document sizes in | seconds. transparencies. “To have Adobe’ Post- Script built in would be key. The more fonts, the better.” We agree. So, the Silentwriter2 290 comes with a The hard part was making it this easy. built-in PostScript interpreter as well as HP” LaserJet Plus™ emulation. And we made the Silentwriter2 260 with features like LaserJet’ I Will emulation, which supports most , Scott Hainline Stamford, CT. it’s a terrific value—the best in «More fonts.” standard software. What’s more, Specifications Print Speed: Fonts: Up to 8 poges 260: 8 resident, LoserJet-compatible, perminute optional SilentFont™ cards 290: 35 resident Adobe, PostScript Longuoge: Screen fonts for Macintosh” 260; PCL and Microsoft” Windows 290: Adobe PostScript, PCL enced Memory 260: 1 MB (expandable to 5) fearon 290: 2 MB (expondable to 4) 260; Parallel, RS 232-C 290: Parallel, RS 232-C, RS 422, Apple” LocalTolk” Resolution: 300 x 300 dpi its price range. Plus, both are members of the most complete line of personal com- puters and printers available. Call 1-800-NEC-INFO today (in Canada, 1-800-343-4418), and check out the Silentwriter2 260 and 290 printers. We think you'll like what you see. After all, you NEC designed them. WE’RE MAKING THINGS BETTER FOR YOU. ‘Adobe and PostScript are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. HP and LaserJet are registered trademarks and LaserJet Plus is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard Corporation. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Apple, Macintosh and Local Talk are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc eran = News Network backup from ADIC By Henry Norr Redmond, Wash. — Advanced Digital Information Corp. last week entered the Macintosh backup market with a line of cartridge-tape subsystems that can perform unattended backups of multiple workstations and servers over AppleTalk. Co-developed with 3M Corp. of Minneapo- the MACback 60, a 60-Mbyte drive priced at $1,895, to the MACback $000, a $6,495 unit equipped with a 10-cartridge autochanger that allows it to store up to 1.2 Gbytes of data. The series also includes the MACback 128, priced at $2,295; the MACback 256, a $3,595 unit with dual drives; and the MACback 4000, a $5,995 autochanger unit that can handle up to lis, ADIC’s MACback line ranges from 600 Mbytes of data Ether+ Can Cut Your Wait Downy If it seems like it takes forever for your data to travel, your networking system could use some help. Instead of waiting around, you could be watching your info streak along at the speed of Ethernet with Ether+. In fact, your wait can be a third or > Jess of what it used to be. oe Ether+ has proven to be faster, more WS < efficient and more reliable than competing products. But don’t take our word for it — just look at what MacWEEK said about Ether+. “There is little doubt that the Ether+ unit from Compatible Systems is the better buy. The construction is superior, the performance is better, the software is more sophisticated, and the documentation is more up to Macintosh standards.” MacWEEK Magazine October 17, 1989 And Ether+ is priced at a low $495. So even though it costs less, you get superior performance, quick support, diagnostic software — everything you need to speed up your operation. You can set up Ether+ in record time. It runs along both thick- and thin-wire Ethernet and lives in one little box that sits on or beside your SCSI-equipped Mac. Ether+ works with almost any network software — including AppleShare, TOPS, Novell, 3Com and Telnet. Diagnostic software helps you get Ether+ running and verifies a good connection. Once it’s going you can just sit back and watch your documents zip and your records race. All this comes with rapid, friendly service, a 30-day money-back guarantee and a one-year warranty. We're ready with swift solutions to your office's needs right now. Just call us today, and we'll help you lose that extra wait in no time. 1-800-356-0283 Compatible Systems Corporation PO Box 17220 Boulder, Colorado 80308 (303) 444-9532 Fax (303) 444-9595 AppleLink 00921 ‘Al product names are vaderarks of thelr respective manuacturers, The MACback 60 and 4000 use 60-Mbyte DC2120 tape cartridges, while the others use the 128-Mbyte DC2165 format. The MACback software allows users or administrators to schedule unattended backups from servers or networked worksta- tions to a MACback attached to any LAN node. The utility, which also will be released later this quarter as a $99 stand-alone applica- tion, provides mirror, incremental or file- by-file backups, with filters that allow selec- tion of specific volumes, folders, files, file types and dates. ADIG said its program is unique in pro- viding complete backups of AppleShare servers, including access privilege informa- tion and the full contents of the server folder Files can be copied to an AppleTalk-capable DEC VAX or to any other volume that can be mounted on the Mac desktop. Frank Webster, vice president of engineer- ing at Scientific Technologies Inc. of Hay- ward, Calif., said that before he began beta testing MACback 128 in December, he carried an Apple Tape Backup 40SC from Mae to Mac to back up the engineer ing drawings, ads and documentation the manufacturing automation company gener- ates. “Being able to back up after hours, when there's no impact on our equipment usage, is a real convenience,” he said. “The only thing you have to worry about is the tape getting full.” Advanced Digital Information Corp. is at 14737 N.E. 87th St., RO. Box 2996, Red- mond, Wash. 98073-2996; (206) 881-8004. 0 Tecmar tape drive : stores 525 Mbytes Solon, Ohio — Teemar Inc, soon will deliv- era backup system that it calls “the industry’s fastest and highest-capacity SCSI tape drive” Due at the end of this month, the new QT-525s can store 525 Mbytes on extended- length DC6525 cartridges or 320 Mbytes on DC6320 cartridges. The $3,495 drive will feature a data transfer rate of 14 Mbytes per second, according to Tecmar. With mar's SCSI adapter, the QT-525s also can be used with IBM PC ATs, PS/2s and compatibles. Late last year Teemar released the QT 150s, a $1,895 SCSI version of a drive that was previously available to Mae users only through a special interface card. Backing up and restoring at 6.25 Mbytes per minute, according to the company, the QT-150s can store 150 Mbytes of data on a DC600XTD cartridge or 250 Mbytes on the longerlength DC6250 cartridge. he QT-525s will read, but not write, tapes from the QT-150s and Tecmar’s other quar- ter-inch tape drives. Both new drives ship with Tecmar’s QTBackup software, whieh permits background and unattended inere- mental, mirror or selective backups. Tecmar Inc. is at 6225 Cochran Road, Solon, Ohio 44139-3377; (216) 349-0600. 5 TEAC, Exabyte boost tape capacities By Henry Norr Montebello, Calif. — Cutting-edge tech- nologies such as magneto-optical dises and digital audio tape may be the future of micro- computer backup, but while users wait for prices of those systems to come down, enter- prising developers working with more-famil- iar tape formats continue to achieve increases in capacity. In addition to expanded-capacity quarter-inch minicartridge systems, the developments on the tape horizon include » TEAC America Inc., based here, will this month begin shipping samples of a new drive that can store 600 Mbytes on a single cassette at a rate of about 14 Mbytes per minute. Volume production of the 3.5-inch half-height unit is scheduled to begin in April. The drive, which TEAC calls the MT2ST/F, uses a higher-density variant of the technology incorporated in the compa- ny’s popular 60- and 160-Mbyte cassette systems. The new drives, which a TEAC resentative said are likely to be priced “well Upgraded Deltaic optical now meets ISO standard San Jose, Calif. — Deltaic Systems last month began shipping an updated model of its OptiServer 600, a $4,799 optical drive that now conforms fully to the International Standards Organization's erasable optical standard, ISO conformance permits users of the Deltaic drive to exchange data with other 1SO-compliant drives In addition, the OptiServer 600 uses a ently upgraded yersion of the Ricoh 5.25- inch rewriteable optical drive, which is about 30 percent faster than the previous Ricoh drive, Deltaic said. Delluic is at 1977 O'Toole Ave., Suite B206, San Jose, Calif, 95131; (408) 954-1055. a re under $2,000” when the company’s OEM customers bring them to the end-user market later this year, will read tapes formatted on the older cassette drives. > Volume shipments of a new yersion of the 8mm videocassette storage system manu- factured by Exabyte Corp. of Boulder, Colo, and marketed by several Mae storage ven- dors will begin this summer, Exabyte said. The new EXB-8500 drives will increase capacity from 2.2 to 5 Gbytes, and boost transfer rates to 500 Kbytes per second, according to the company. The current model, the EXB-2000, will remain on the market, and the new drive will read and write tapes in the older format. 6 MicroNet adds 320MB tape units to backup line Irvine, Calif, — MicroNet Technology Ine. last month bolstered its growing line of back= up systems with a cartridge tape unit can store either 320 or 525 Mbytes per tape. he new Micro/Tape-320, priced at $2,495, is built around a Tandberg mecha | nism. It uses DC6320 quarter-inch tapes that hold 320 Mbytes of data or a DG extended-length tape that boosts capaci 525 Mbytes. The di backup sessions on the same tape. On a Mae IL with 5 Mbytes of R Micro/Tape-320 can back up and re Mbytes per minute, according to Micr Bundled software ean perform n 1 ental backups. In recent months MicroNet also hi duced a 155-Mbyte portable drive, a 1.4-Gbyte digital audio unit and an erasable optical Micro! MocWEEK 13 Februory 1990 By Rochelle Garner Vancouver, British Columbia — Capilano Computing Systems Ltd. and Data 1/0 Corp. Jast month announced an agreement under which Capilano will become the exclu- sive source of Data I/O's MacABEL, a high- level hardware description language for modeling and compiling programmable logic devices (PLDs). Priced at $2,350 and scheduled for release at the end of this month, MacABEL will be sold Capilano Computing to distribute Data 1/0’s MacABEL PLD software by both Data 1/0 and Capilano until Mareh 31 after which it will be marketed exclusively by Capilano, During that period, Capilano will offer MacABEL with its DesignWorks schematic-capture and digital-logic simulation software for $2,995. Current users of Design- Works can get MacA BEL for $1,950. When used together, the programs give electronic engineers the ability to create ahd simulate PLD circuit schematies, deseribe the logic using high-level equations, state dia grams or truth tables, then Efe ten Window Modvie Orewing Options Libraries compile a PLD design Terevn CweuitContret Loge ade. s01 with the fewest possible = Capilano Computing 2 rere be isits'e.F] logic components In a related announce- ment, Capilano said it also will distribute Data I/O's PLDlinx, which converts a schematic diagram into a high-level ABEL descrip- tion. PLDlinx is due in the second quarter, but pric- Sereen circuit Timing Ta ox pax sees =) =H — 48 $8 Jos i Tans im oad calor za) etamar aa eesaae ming has not been set. Capilano Computing Systems Ltd, is located at 1168 Hamilton St, Suite 501, Vancouver, British 4 Columbia, Canada V6B 282; (604) 669-6343. as res, lewd Electronic engineers running MultiFinder co describe a programmable logic devic (in text window, up Gircit schematics and simulate digital logic in DesignWorks.. By Carolyn Soid Marshalltown, Iowa — Bolstering its sup- port for large software projects, Excel Soft- ware last month updated its complementary computer-aided software and engineering tools, MacAnalyst and MacDesigner. MacAnalyst 2.0, which generates data and control flow diagrams to analyze complex sys- tems, and MacDesigner 3.0, which automates the creation of a program’s structure, are priced at $795 each, or at $2,385 for a site license. The updates share similar new features, many designed to simplify work on large pr jects, according to Harold Halbleib, E: president. Among these features are: > Global renaming for diagrams and data dictionary. > An index window for diagram titles. > Scaled diagram views with full editing capabilities. > User-selectable verification checking of analysis, design or data-dictionary documents. > Editing of stylized text | >A collapse feature that levels a large | data flow diagram into a hierarchical set of | diagrams. > Shortcuts and convenience features such ‘4s autosaye, file locking and improved data- dictionary navigation In addition, MacDesigner 3.0 now offers multilevel design diagrams and inheritance diagrams for object-oriented design David King, president of software deyel- ‘| oper David King & Associates of San Diego, said the index window, which generates a tree-structure map of diagrams created, is the most useful of the new features in Mac- ‘| Analyst 2.0. MacABEL’s high-le Tight) as they create Data 1/O Corp. is locat- ed at 10525 Willows Road N.E., Redmond, Wash 98073; (206) 881-6444. c Excel Software revamps CASE tools Although he complained that existing dia- grams need to be reorganized for use with the new version and that some essential fea- tures, notably preferences and the ability to generate electronic specs of a program, are still lacking, King called MacAnalyst 2.0 “the closest CASE tool on the Mac that I've seen.” “It forces you into a particular structure and you have to define things properly,” he said. “If you don't leave loose ends, you come out with something that will work.” Upgrades to MacAnalyst 2.0 or Mac- Designer 3.0 for current users are $125 per copy or $375 fora site license. Excel Software can be reached at PO. Box 1414, Marshalltown, Iowa 50158; (515) 752-5359. Ohm FormsProgrammer now generates XCMDs Tiverton, R.l. — Qhm Software Co. last month announced that its FormsProgrammer software utility now can directly generate external commands for HyperCard FormsProgrammer includes drawinglike tools to create forms. Such forms can then be translated to PICT format, Pascal or C source code, or an XCMD. The XCMDs can read in data from a stack, perform HyperCard call- backs and print a detailed form FormsProgrammer is priced at $99; upgrades cost $10. OQhm Software Co. is located at 163 iverton, R.1. 02878; (401) 253-9354; (800) 346-9034 News Spreadware offers templates for Wingz Hayward, Calif: — Spreadware last month began bringing its line of low-cost Microsoft Excel and Works templates and applications to Wingz. Nearly 20 Spreadware products are now available for the Informix Software spreadsheet, including Plus Menu, a $7.95 add-on that puts more than 20 frequently used formatting options directly into a menu. and pro forma, a $69 set of auton d $ Managed Environment ra Free Brochure 800 359-4920 a your child from destroying spreadsheets that generate and analyze pro. jected financial statements. Other Spread ware products, including Minimum Requir ments, a $59 record-keeping and management application, will be available for Wingz later this quarter, the company said Spreadware at P.O. Box 4574, Hayward, Calif. 94540-4574 415) 794-4388, can be reached Security & Virus Protection Logs software & hardware activities Protects against illegal copying Prevents launching of unauthorized programs Multiple levels of Users with individual/group access controls Specific Desk Accessory Control Multiple encryption’ password options A.M.E. is an integrated security program. Whether your concems are managing a confidential government project, maintaining order on a Mac™ used by many people, or just preventing financial records, A.M.E has a solution for you. It tuns quietly in the back- ground and is always there to protect you. The easy-to- use interface lets you set up the Mac with just the kind of security you require. Casady & Greene, Inc. P.O. BOX 223779 * CARMEL, CA 93922 + 408 + 624 + 8716 Peso 3a News —_——————EEEE as StackWEEK STEVE MICHEL Externals now go beyond HyperCard ISSUES & TRENDS The recent release of Software Ventures Corp.'s MicroPhone 11 3.0 accents an aspect of HyperCard that has spread throughout the world of Macintosh software — the use of external commands and functions. According to industry folklore, externals, which are means of adding capabilities to programs using other programming lan- g an afterthought. Yet they have proven to be s, were added to HyperCard almost as one of HyperCard’s greatest strengths. Support for externals has been added to the feature lists of a wide variety of pro- grams, including such diverse applications as Informix Software's Wingz, Silicon Beach Software's SuperCard, Fox Software's FoxBASE+/Mac, and even Preferred Pub- lishers’ DAtabass sories. The ber and Vantage desk acces- s of the widespread use of externals are clear to anyone who has INTRODUCING NEW DISKLOGK Unbreakable password protection for the Macintosh it's sad but true. All it takes is a few minutes with your back turned, and an intruder could walk away with your most confidential data. And you'd never even know it! Unsurpassed Password Protection Now the leader in hard disk security announces the ultimate data protection system for your Macintosh. DiskLock works with any SCSI hard disk to provide foolproof password protection for individual files, folders, or your entire hard disk. You can even protect a// three levels with different passwords for absolute maximum security. DiskLock automatically locks your files when you shut down or leave your Mac unattended, and alerts you to any unauthorized access attempts. = HISKLOGK FIFTH GENERATION SYSTEMS 10049 N. Reiger Road Baton Rouge, LA 70809 (504) 291-7221 Sophisticated Data Encryption State-of-the-art data encryption adds yet another layer of security. Without the proper password, your confidential files appear to contain nothing but gobbledygook! Multiple Security Levels. DiskLock lets you give each user password access to just the files you choose (word processing files for your secretary, accounting files for your bookkeeper, etc.). The master password ives you access to all files and folders. Virus Protection, too! If DiskLock’s automatic virus checker detects an infection when you log in to a it Notifies you and stops running immediately. dealer, call 1-800-873-4384. For a complete list of features and specifications, or the name of your nearest MocWEEK 13 February 1990 used these programs and their scripting lan guages: Any developer can add new and needed features directly to the application It is unfortunate that not all software developers have allowed for transparent use of externals from HyperCard. Vantage and Database, for example, use externals that, from the appearance of the documentation, support at least some of the same features as HyperCard externals, but the two DAS externals are not object-code compatible with HyperCard’s, or, indeed, with one another's. Vantage’s external commands aré called VEMDs, while those of DAtabase are called XTRA features. Why this incompatibility? One feature of HyperCard’s externals is a set of “callbacks” A callback lets the external send a message to HyperCard to make it do some of the work for the external. Typically, callbacks are used to do such things as get text from HyperCard fields, set the values of global variables and evaluate expressions, Of course, many of these callbacks rely on HyperCard’s structure: the card/back- ground/stack metaphor and the HyperTalk language syntax. These callbacks will not work in programs that don’t support these structures. On the other hand, there are a number of externals for HyperCard that do not use callbacks. And eve cases when the | external needs some information from the HyperCard card, it is possible to write the external so that it does not require the use of a callback — any information the external needs can be passed as parameters instead The problems of incompa From the user's point of view, incor externals users are ible ited in their ability to copy externals from one pro; another. For example, the FileName XF deyeloped by Apple's HyperCard wiz Steve Maller is a very useful function that would be nice to use in a variety of situations However, it doesn't work in programs that don't support HyperCard-standard externals. From the developer's point of view HyperCard incompatibility means a lot of special-casing to support different environ- ments, Different glue, or setup, files must be delivered for traditional compilers that tell the compilers how to create the external so that it can interact with the host applica tion. The result is that smaller developers such as Heizer Software with Compilelt! and ‘Teknosys with HyperBasic (both excel- lent tools for beginning programmers) must reshape their products to support multiple external formats. am to There is a better way. Two of the programs mentioned above — MicroPhone 113.0 and FoxBASE +/Mac — point to a bet ter way of handling externals, Both of these programs are very different from Hyper= Card, but each accepts most HyperCard externals. They provide for an enhanced set of callbacks that are specific to their applica tions and both provide a mechanism that lets: their programs ignore inappropriate calle backs. We hope more developers follow thelm lead by providing for standard HyperCard externals as well as an enhanced function set in their programs. If you have any tips or other Hype related information, write to StackW c/o MacWEEK, 301 Howard St., 15th Floor, San Francisco, Calif. 94105. Electronic mail. MCI; STACKWEEK,; AppleLink: D1507, Connect: MICHELS rd Access-archivability. Access your archives quickly and easily. Why wade through stacks of floppies or miles of tape to find a single file? Platform-compatibility. Interface kits are available for Macintosh, Sun, DEC, HP, IBM-XT, AT, PS/2 and compatibles, plus advanced applications such as Unix, A/UX, Xenix and Novell NetWare. Infinite-storability. Store huge files-CAD/CAM, multi-media, pre-press, 32-bit color. Each cartridge holds up to 650 megabytes. If one isn't enough, add another. Data-securability. Carry your world wherever you go. Put your operating system, applications, and data files on a single cartridge. Keep your data safe and secure or move it from place to place. Interface kits available for MAC, SUN, DEC, HP, IBM A/T, X/T, PS/2 and compatibles from $495. ‘Optical-ability’ Pinnacle Micro is the world's leader in removable, erasable, optical storage systems. The expanding line of Pinnacle drives offers real solutions to mass storage problems and a whole new set of data handling capabilities. Removable, Erasable, Opticalabilities. Upscale-ability. Start with a single or dual-disk system for your network today. Move up to a 25 disk, 16 gigabyte system tomorrow. Your cartridges and your data will easily move up with you. Crash-avoidability. Eliminate crash anxiety, with laser technology there are no heads to crash. If your hard drive goes down your optical system will put you back on-line immediately. Mass-movability. Distribute massive amounts of data in limited quantities. CD-ROM's are great, but not if you need a reduced amount. Problem-solvability. Learn how to put these and other opticalabilities to work for you, call today for the name of your nearest authorized dealer. ©) (800) 553-7070 PINNACLE \\ICRO 15265 Alton Parkway * Irvine,CA 92718 * In CA (714) 727-3300 * FAX (714) 727-1913 THE OPTICAL STORAGE COMPANY™ Mac Soapbox VERNON KEENAN X Window — Are we going to buy it? All of the major Unix workstation and software vendors are asking the computing public to buy into a “new” idea: the X Window System. X Window, as it's more commonly known, is a graphical user interface that was developed by a consor- tium of commercial and academic developers led by the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. X Window gives net- worked Unix users a way to access graphical applications from a vari- ety of workstations and terminals. X Window is to Unix what Win- dows is to DOS: a way to doa graphical user interface that is lay- ered upon a historically character- based operating system. Can Unix challenge Mac? Well, folks, it looks like the propo- nents of X Window are using our favorite computer to seduce the CEOs of the world’s corporations into the delusion that a Unix net- work replete with X Window ter- minals is just as good as a battery of Macintosh workstations. When a big company like Digital Equip- ment Corp. wants to sell something to corporate America, it's going to target something that top managers are going to identify with. It's an impending tragedy, and we need to do something about it. It's time to say the emperor has no clothes! This won't be an easy thing to expose. After all, X Window, with its bit-mapped screen and three- button mouse, has all the essential window dressing. Also, there are plenty of nifty demo programs that make X Window look rather appealing, There are lots of unin- formed decision makers looking at advertisements and marketing pre- sentations about X Window and saying to themselves, “Gee, that looks just like a Macintosh!” I don't want to make every X Window application look bad. Some do provide a valuable func- tion, and X Window supports an important new networking stan- dard. I suppose those of us who will have to access Unix networks to get our work done should be glad that there will be a semblance of standards and that we won't have to endure an eter- nity of com- mand-line mnemonics, but we Mac- WEEK readers know another graphical user interface that already gets the job done. The horrid truth is that those nifty demo programs mask a user interface hell for those poor souls who will be relegated em a Letters But 16,777,216 colors won't fit on your screen I read the Year in Review Special Report (MacWEEK, Jan. 9) with interest. I'm glad that the Macintosh industry has finally grown secure enough to be able to poke fun at itself, Jam an avid reader of Harper's Magazine and liked the MacWEEK index feature; how- ever, I hope that Harper's does better fact-checking than you did, for I found that the Index perpetuates one of the more outrageously untrue claims in computer graphics: “Maximum number of colors that can be displayed simultaneously on a Macintosh screen using ... a 24~ bit color board: 16,777,216." For a Mac screen to display 16,777,216 colors simultaneously, the screen itself would have to be 16,777,216 pixels — which trans- lates to 4,096 by 4,096 pixels — and the frame buffer driving the display would have to be populated with 64 Mbytes of memory! Clay Gordon director of product development Belser Knowledge Services New York, N.Y. Send letters to MacWEEK, 301 Howard St., 15th Floor, San Francisco, Calif. 94105. MCI. 323-1203; fax: (415) 243-3650. We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and length. the sorry chore of using an X Win- dow terminal as their “personal computer.” X Window is a standard that specifies nothing more than how to draw bits on a screen and read mouse input and keystrokes, The truly useful functions of a graphical user interface, such as how a mouse behaves during a menu item selection, are left up to another layer of software. The problem for X Window application users is that most of their programs require dif- ferent “mouse strokes” to complete similar functions. This is signifi- cantly different from Macintosh applications in which, for example, the Print command is always found under the File menu. Centralized computing. Besides the insidious nature of bit maps flying across the network all the time, the host computer (or “client” machine) fully controls what is happening on the user’s screen. Think about that ... under X Window a request is queued to another CPU to do all your pro- cessing, You have to wait for a response, and a lot of valuable net- work bandwidth is used to do it! It is another version of time sharing, a mode of centralized computing that is generally viewed as being on the decline because of the proliferation of powerful personal computers. Since X Window sucks compute cycles off of the network, as opposed to letting the personal computer handle the user interface chores, many Unix and VMS com- pute servers are needed to meet user demands. Besides supplying centralized CPU cycles, amuch higher degree of control is intro- duced; all of a user's “personal” files are stored on a central file server. This mode of computing moves all the funding, and thus corporate power, into the hands of the central MIS group. This is the future that big computer vendors such as DEC and Sun Microsys- tems Inc. are counting on. Up with independence! I'm not buying this stuff, and I hope you aren't either. Let's try to get more cooperation between host and personal computers. I support X Window as a good standard for centralized computers to work over a network. We need good applica- tions like MacX from Apple and eXodus from White Pine Software to access those centralized clients, but let's focus development efforts ‘on how to get DOS, OS/2 and Mac- intosh applications to use big com- puters as valuable information resources, not controllers of what happens on our screens. Vernon Keenan, a longtime con- tributing editor for MacWEEK, is an industry consultant. ‘MacWEEK 13 February 1990 Editorial The Mac flame burned in Gassée This loss reolly hurts. A certain omount of purging ond self-examination is healthy, but Jean-Louis Gassée meant more to Apple than con be directly measured — or easily replaced. To 0 great degree, Gassée was Apple's soul. Since the last great purge, when the company ported woys with its charismatic found