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May 15, 1999
News
- Lots of positive Apple-related news for a change. At this
past week’s World Wide Developer Conference the company introduced new PowerBooks,
announced the availability of a free MacOS update, and provided some more details about
later versions of MacOS. First of all the new PowerBooks, which are still just called the
G3 PowerBooks—the same basic name as the last two PowerBook lines, offer several
evolutionary benefits over the models they’re replacing, but nothing revolutionary.
The new machines, which won’t be available until May 20, are available with faster
333 and 400 MHz processors and, more importantly, they’re 20% thinner and weight
almost two pounds less than their predecessors. The new series machines weigh 5.9 pounds,
complete with the CD-ROM drive installed, versus about 7.8 for the previous systems. As
with the previous line, they all come with 14.1" active matrix screens, built-in CD
or DVD-ROM drives, built-in 56K modems, and SCSI and Ethernet connections. In addition,
the new PowerBooks add two USB connectors and lose their older Mac serial port. The new
machines do not have built-in FireWire support, however—you’ll have to add that
through a PC Card-based IEEE 1394 adapter, such as a new one announced by Mac peripheral
maker VST. The company is offering the new G3 PowerBooks in two basic configurations:
$2,499 buys you a machine with a 333 MHz processor, 512K of backside cache, a 4 GB drive
and a 24X CD-ROM. For $3,499 you get a 400 MHz processor 1 MB of backside cache, a 6GB
drive and a 2X DVD with built-in DVD Video decoding. Both machines come with 64 MB of RAM,
8 MB of SGRAM video memory for displaying both on the internal screen and large external
displays, and an ATI Rage 2D/3D accelerator. In addition, the batteries for the new
PowerBooks are supposed to offer 5 hours of active use.
- The other news from Apple was MacOS 8.6, which is available
now as a free update to MacOS 8.5 users. The latest MacOS upgrade includes enhancements to
the company’s Sherlock searching technology, including the ability to query up to 20
different Internet search engines at once. It’s kind of like having a customized
version of your own MetaCrawler. In addition, the new version offers improved battery life
for existing PowerBook G3 owners, improved AppleScript and ColorSync support, and a
variety of other minor user-interface enhancements. At the WWDC, Apple also talked more
about the next version of MacOS, which is code-named Sonata. The main new feature will be
the ability to set up a Mac with multiple user profiles, each of which can maintain its
own preferences, e-mail accounts, security settings and more. A few months after Sonata
comes out (later this year), Apple will introduce MacOS X in the early part of 2000.
- I’ve talked a great deal about high-speed Internet
access over the last year or so, particularly since I got a DSL connection set up in my
home around the beginning of February. And for those communities where it’s
available, I’ve also promoted the benefits of cable modem connections. One of the
things I haven’t discussed much however is the relative performance differences
between the two. The main reason for that is that there hasn’t been any quantifiable
data that compared the two. Well, now there is, and you’re going to hear about here
first. Keynote Systems, a San Mateo-based company that measures Internet performance is
releasing a press release on Monday morning—but they gave it to me first—that
shows that on average, DSL lines are faster than cable modems during peak evening hour
usage. Specifically, Keynote found that between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. a PacBell ADSL line
that offers a minimum of 384Kbps and up to 1.5 Mbps—which is the line that now costs
$40 a month—ran 11% faster than a @Home/TCI cable modem connection during the same
time period. The tests were run over the month of April and involved timing the results of
how long it took 40 different web sites to load at numerous times throughout the day.
Interestingly, the cable modem ran faster during the day, but as more people got onto the
network in the evening, cable modem rates slipped 8%. This is exactly the phenomenon that
I and many others have discussed could happen with cable modems as the network gets
saturated. Conversely, DSL rates actually improved by 17% during the evening. Another
interesting point is that though both DSL and cable modems are often compared to T1 lines,
they were both significantly slower in these real-world tests. The numbers showed 38 to
48% differences between the speedier T1 lines and the other two types. So, the bottom line
here is, if you have a choice between the two—and not many people do—it looks
like DSL is the better choice.
- If you’re looking for the fastest choice in processors,
you’ll have your desires met by the new 550 MHz Pentium III as of this Monday.
That’s the day that Intel will apparently launch the latest, greatest member of its
processor family. In addition, system vendors are expected to have PCs based around the
new model available at the same time. There’s nothing at all new about the 550 MHz,
it’s just a slight bit faster. The good news is, the prices for the 450 and 500 MHz
Pentium IIIs and systems using them are dropping as of tomorrow. In addition, so will
AMD’s chips and systems using their K6-2 and K6-3 processors. So, your best bet is to
wait a day and then get a system that has one of these processors and is a notch or two
below the top of the heap. You’ll pay less for nearly identical performance. If you
do decide you have to have the latest and greatest, many of the new 550 MHz systems will
start under $2,000.
- One other thing you may find on those new 550 MHz PIII
systems is the official shipping version of Office 2000 preinstalled on the hard drive.
Microsoft has apparently given permission to system vendors to start including it on new
PCs nearly a month before it’ll be available in boxes on retail shelves. So, if you
are buying a new system with Office pre-installed anytime soon, make sure you get Office
2000 instead of Office 97.
- Yet another thing you may see offered as an option on some of
these high-end machines are the enormous new hard drives from IBM. The company this week
unveiled a 36 GB drive that spins at 10,000 RPM. The Ultrastar 36ZX also offers access
time of under 5 milliseconds an 8 MB buffer, and giant magneto-resistive or GMR heads for
cramming a ton of data in a tiny space. Putting all this together gives you a tremendously
fast drive, but also one that will cost you nearly $2,000. The 18 GB 18LZX, which has
similar features but half the capacity, should retail for around $1,300. Both drives are
available with Ultra2 SCSI and Ultra160 SCSI connections, as well as FiberChannel and SSA.
- Finally, here’s an item that got some press this week
that shows just how far technology and artificial intelligence have come. Sony unveiled a
$2,500 robotic dog called Aibo that they plan to release into the Japanese market and then
possibly the US, later this year. The name is meant to be a combination of artificial
intelligence, or AI, and robot. Aibo apparently can interact with people and has emotion
"sensors" and programming algorithms built into him that allow him to act like a
real pet. According to Sony’s press materials, Aibo also has built in instincts for
things such as learning and growth so that his actions will change over time and according
to various stimuli he/she/it receives. Look out Star Trek, here we come.
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