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May 9, 1998
News
- We’re the number one radio show in our time slot for men
25 and over!
- The hot news for this week was Apple’s surprise
announcement of their very cool-looking, low-cost iMac or Internet Mac. The computer,
which won’t be available until August and is expected to retail for $1,299, is an
all-in-one machine that incorporates a 15" monitor in a translucent blue and clear
plastic wedge-shaped case. Inside, the iMac will offer a 233 MHz G3, 512 K of L2 cache, 32
MB of RAM, a 4 GB hard drive, 24x CD-ROM, built-in surround sound stereo speakers, 33.6
modem, 10/100 Megabit Ethernet connection and, for the first time on a Mac, two USB ports.
Both the iMac’s keyboard and its light-up blue mouse will connect via these USB
ports. What’s lacking from the new computer is a floppy drive, which seems like a
pretty risky move, and any expansion slots. Software bundled with the machine will include
the renamed AppleWorks (formerly ClarisWorks), as well as Filemaker Pro database software,
Quicken for the Mac, and a few other games and entertainment titles. In related news, this
week Intuit also announced that they will continue development of Quicken for the
Macintosh, which is a big relief for Mac users everywhere.
- Lost a bit in the hoopla over the iMac was the introduction
of a whole new group of G3 Powerbooks from Apple. The new machines which, despite the
similar name feature a completely different design than the first G3 Powerbook, come in a
wide variety of prices and configurations. The most important choices are in screen size
and type, as well as the speed of the processor. The available screens include a
12.1" DSTN display capable of 800 x 600 resolution and 13.3" and 14.1"
active matrix displays capable of 1,024 x 768-pixel resolution. The processors range from
a 233 MHz G3 with no L2 cache and a 66 MHz system bus to a 292 MHz processor with 1 MB of
L2 cache that works on an 83 MHz system bus. All systems come with at least 32 MB of
memory and a 20x CD-ROM drive but a DVD-ROM drive is also available. Hard drives range
from 2 to 8 GB. The prices range from about $2,300 for a system with a 12.1" screen,
250 MHz processor and no floppy drive, up to around $6,000 for a 14.1" screen, 292
MHz processor and both a floppy and DVD-ROM drive.
- And the good Apple news doesn’t stop there. This week
Motorola also announced a new PowerPC chip technology called AltiVec that is sort of the
PowerPC answer to Intel’s MMX. AltiVec consists of a new 128-bit execution unit to be
built into upcoming versions of the G3, or PowerPC 750 processor, as well as 170 new
instructions that take advantage of this new hardware addition. As with MMX however, it
only offers real-world benefits if software is specifically written to take advantage of
it. Motorola claims that the new AltiVec technology could be used for things like
improving 3D graphics in games, as MMX can, but also things like networking, telephony and
speech recognition. Apple may apparently announce support for this new technology, which
is expected to appear later this year or early in 1999, at their annual WorldWide
Developer’s Conference, which is going to happen next week.
- Lots of Microsoft Windows 98 related news this week. Of
course Microsoft held their big pep-rally in New York this week to try and gain public
support for the company’s efforts in getting Windows 98 out the door. At the moment,
the company is supposed to finish the software this coming week and ship it to
manufacturing on Friday, May 15. Not surprisingly, however, there’s also been lots of
negative reactions and many people are expecting either the Justice Department or a group
of state’s attorney generals to file a suit trying to delay and/or block the release
of Windows 98 sometime this week. It’s definitely going to be interesting to watch.
- In more mundane, but still worthwhile Microsoft news, the
company released a public beta of their Liquid Motion animation software for Windows 95.
Designed specifically to add animations to web sites as well as business presentations,
Liquid Motion offers a bunch of wizards and other help features to make the process of
creating animations very simple. Having gotten a demo of the product a few weeks back, I
can tell you that it is pretty cool. If you’ve ever wanted to add some spice to your
web sites or presentations, you should check this out.
- Microsoft also announced that they’re planning to offer
Office 97 Service Pack 2 sometime soon. The bug fix, which requires installation of the
first Service Pack for Office 97 for Windows to function properly, fixes some problems
with PowerPoint and some recalculation functions in Excel but offers no new features.
- So, have you ever had an online session in your home cut off
because someone else picked up another phone while you were happily surfing away? Well,
then you’ll want to check out a new phone from Casio that has the ability to
automatically recognize when someone is using the line with a modem or fax machine and
keep that online connection going. My question, why didn’t somebody think of this
sooner? Casio’s CP-820, which is a $99 900 MHz cordless phone that incorporates this
modem monitoring technology, will be available in June. The company says they plan to add
the technology to all of their phones over the next few months.
- In an effort to try and stem off problems related to the Year
2000, or Y2K, or the millenium bug (depending on who you talk to), the Federal Reserve
Board is going to begin Year 2000-compliance testing with major banks this June.
Let’s hope things go well. In related news, a bill that would have severely limited
lawsuits based around the Year 2000 problem was defeated in the California state
legislature this past week. This means companies who suffer damages related to Y2K
problems will be free to sue software companies whose products may have been related to or
caused the damage. The lawyers are going to have a field day with this one.
- Well, sometimes it doesn’t pay to be on the bleeding
edge. Just ask all the customers of the RCA NC TV set top box who were surprised to find
that the service driving their device stopped working last Sunday. The reason was because
the company providing the service, NetChannel in So. San Francisco, closed its doors. As a
result, RCA sent out a recall notice to all the customers who had purchased the device
offering a full refund if they returned it. That may be good news for WebTV, but I still
think it’s a sign that TV-web integration still isn’t there yet and really
isn’t what people want.
- Digital’s AltaVista search engine is adding a service
called RealName to their popular site as of this coming week. What RealName does is let
you type in a company’s name or specific product (its "real name") instead
of a web address and the service will take you to the specific area of a company’s
web site. The service is apparently designed for people who are new to the web and
preferring using common words instead of trying to remember confusing URLs. As I’ve
said before, it’s great in theory, but until lots of companies sign up (and pay) with
the company providing the RealName service, I’m not sure how useful it will really
be. We shall see.
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