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Thursday, January 8, 1997
Reality News Is Updated Every Monday And Thursday

eMate 3000/bMate Rumors

Rumors are floating in from various anonymous sources which suggest a new version of the eMate to be announced quite soon. Supposedly, the new model will either be called the eMate 3000 or the bMate, standing for business mate. Unlike the educational model, the bMate is rumored to be a cross between the old eMate and the Newton 2100. The casing to this amazing product is said to resemble that of the Newton book, or possibly a cross between the old case and the case of Newton book. An image of this casing is shown below.

Currently, only speculative features are known. Among other things, the bMate or eMate 3000 is said to feature an inlaid keyboard, as displayed in this image of the Newton book.

If rumors are accurate, the new model should contain 4 MB of DRAM. This should prove to be an awesome product for the businessman. When and if we see this product is still undetermined. I guess we'll have to wait and see, though, if announced, it will be a sure bet that anyone can pick this product up from the Apple Store. Apple plans to make the Apple Store a main means of product distribution, and well they should.

Apple's Market Share Up?

According to a recent PCData report, Apple's market share jumped a full point at the end of last year from 4.9 to 5.9% of the market. If true, this is great news. With the shipment of over 133,000 G3 machines, future percentages could possibly be all the better.

The Apple online store may be doing wonders for Apple. With a current revenue of well over $150,000,000 since its launch back on November 10th.

More news to be posted later today, hopefully.

MacWorld San Francisco: Big Secret?

According to a reliable source who shall remain anonymous, there's a big secret waiting to be revealed at tomorrow's opening keynote at MacWorld San Francisco. It has been strongly hinted that there will be another major announcement made involving Apple and the Microsoft Corporation. One similar to that of the one made during this summer's MacWorld Boston Expo, which drove Apple's stock price through the roof.

Currently that is all we can tell you as our sources are hush, hush on this matter. And as we have learned from past situations such as the November 10th announcement, nothing is final until it happens or we read it in a press release. We aim to prevent another media disaster by printing this rumor only 24 hours in advance.

Personally, I'm hoping the announcement contains some form of Microsoft support for Rhapsody and nothing more. It's great to see two arch enemies become buddies, but I've always felt innovation takes off when you have a motive or in this case, opposition.

"Surprises every 90 days"

-Steve Jobs, August 97

Another set of 90 days will expire during MacWorld....Hold your breath people.

MacWorld Update: Microsoft announced the release of MS Office 98 for the Macintosh to arrive within a month. Far ahead of the PC version, which wont be available for some time. This is an amazing advancement between Apple & Microsoft. One which surprisingly benefits Apple to the highest extent. For more information on this announcement, see the Apple press release.

"We are excited to be working closely with Microsoft to bring these great products to our customers," said Steve Jobs, Interim CEO of Apple. "The fact that Microsoft is launching Office 98 on the Macintosh with new technologies not yet available in its version for Windows speaks volumes about its commitment to the Macintosh platform."

Though this is far from what we expected, the magnitude of the decision weighs just as heavily as anything else. The most popular business suite developed by Microsoft, available first for the Macintosh, months before any PC version will appear.

PalmTop & RainLine Updates!

The PalmTop
Shortly after we printed our original story on the PalmTop, several readers wrote in to inform us that they had seen the images once before. Apparently, the PalmTop images appeared as the "Ammonite Apple Newton" in an annual design review issue of ID magazine.

According to the article, Apple commissioned Ross Lovegrove of Lovegrove Studio X in London to create an organic sensual form for the Newton and so we have the PalmTop. Currently there is no information on whether the concept will be used or not.

RainLine Update
Several days after our story on RainLine, the new all-in-one case designed to accompany a zip drive, an artist rendition of the casing appeared on the net, as shown below.

With the appearance of this image also comes the rumor that this casing may be fair game for the Artemis project. However, this is strongly unconfirmed by our sources.

G3's Running Low, Revisions To The Current G3

G3 Shortage?
It's been said that during MacWorld, Newer Technology will announce upgrade cards for the 6100, 7100 and 8100 models. However, an employee passed a note on to the Reality staff that Apple is scooping up the majority of the G3's to meet the current demand, which is without a doubt very strong.

Revisions To The G3, Before The G4
Another insider recently passed a hint that IBM is hard at work in its labs sizing down the G3 chip into a new version which is also said to bump the speed of the G3 processors line.

More details to come, if they become available. If you have any information on the new G3 chips let us know.

MacWorld Update: Apple announced the 275 mhz G3.

Amazing 3D Technology To Be Demoed At MW

A developer passed some information on an amazing new 3D modeling environment that is currently in development and will be revealed at MacWorld. The 3D package is called "Reality Studio".

Statistics include...

-9 billion polygons through SOFTWARE-ONLY (no RAVE acceleration)
-A 3d user interface experience
-intelligent agents as part of the "help" system
-and lots more...

We have 3 preliminary images to show you of the entire work space environment from different angles and perspectives.

Allegro Internal Development Seeding Report

Current Development State
As of this moment, Allegro remains on an internal release basis. As far as we can understand, Allegro has not been seeded outside of the 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino headquarters. At least...not formally. A build recently obtained by one of our sources is said to lack such aspects as chooser, TCP, and application support. Given this, it would be unreasonable to start outside seeding as of yet. We have a time estimate in the range of two weeks, maybe more, before the Allegro team puts all the pieces together for a seedable upgrade. Below we have put together a list of currently known features in Allegro.

Speed
Speed is one of the first words which came to mind when we questioned our source. The overall speed is said to be an even bigger leap than ever expected. Our sources trace this to advanced, rewritten, and additional PowerPC code throughout the system. When completed, it's suggested that with such speed combined with the new and improved user experience, it will make for a beautiful, smooth running OS.

Appearance
As we stated in last week's Allegro Update, the theme manager rumors have been confirmed as we showed you that the new Appearance Manager will have support for a wide range of system GUI enhancements to go along with the addition of system-wide "themes". Even icons have been lifted to the next level with animation and transparent text (both at the user's request).

To go along with the many appearance features, many of which are still to be disclosed, it's been hinted that chunks of Finder code responsible for the system interface have also been reworked to provide for a better, smoother, more consistent visual experience.

Presently, much is yet to be discovered in the field of Allegro's user experience, however, it has already proven to be a dramatically elegant upgrade to anyone who appreciates the beauty and ease of the MacOS as much as we do.

V-Twin Find
Also, as previously reported, Allegro will finally contain the long-awaited V-Twin find technology, which, according to developers, has been renamed AIAT or Apple Information Access Toolkit. V-Twin is amazingly fast for the features it offers, with searches of large disks completing in just seconds.

V-Twin contains find options which include...

Find Most Anything
Find Applications
Find Documents
Find Folders

with each search option having further options to fine tune searching.

A "More Terms" option will allow for the specification of...

Text
Name
Size
Date
Label
Kind
Locked
Type
and
Creator

Search results are displayed promptly in a view very similar to that of the Mac OS 8.0 "List" view, with both the item and its location icon being displayed. Below is an example of V-Twin displaying the results of a "Folder" search for the word "Apple".

Note: the above picture is a bottom cut-off and not the entire V-Twin window.

The entire V-Twin search window is a lot larger than that of the current, outdated Find application. But, it will only need that one and only window to function. Very different from the separate search results window we have come to know.

We'll dive into the details of V-Twin in a later edition of Reality.

Comments
We're aiming to stay with the bare facts and not speculate further. There is continued work throughout many of the MacOS components, and possibly even new features yet to be discovered. When information has been received and confirmed, we will surely let you know. Currently, Allegro is slated for a mid-1998 Release. Apple will most likely aim the release towards mid-July, as they did with OS8, however, expect to wait at least a week into August before the product actually hits retail stores in bulk. Look for weekly updates on the Allegro release as time progresses.

If you have any information on Allegro, please let us know.

CompUSA -Apple Is Listening - Now We Need YOUR Help

As many of you know, we've been addressing the national CompUSA situation for the past two weeks. Well, it seems our work has begun to pay off. I'd like to thank Steve Jobs for personally addressing our situation and claims. We've been place in contact with the the executives whom we have been seeking and are forwarding them all our findings. However, we need your continued help in the form of reports on local CompUSA's, specifically CompUSA's converted with the Apple Store within a Store format.

So if there's a CompUSA close by which contains an Apple Store within a Store, get out there and check out the situation. Let us know if all the machines are on, and set up properly, if the software section is properly stocked and the Apple areas properly staffed(this has been the biggest problem). We've received hundreds of reports so far, keep them coming. Each and every one of them makes a difference.

Please send all CompUSA experiences to jeff@macnn.com and please try to put "CompUSA" somewhere in the subject of your messages, it helps our organization and the process of getting your mails to the proper executives at Apple.

The sooner you Let us know about problems at CompUSA's, the sooner we may be able to fix them.

Thanks,

-Jeff

Go Back To Reality's Main Page

Yes, we have finally posted a formal Contact Page which lists the appropriate e-mail addresses for users to send news, rumors, confidential info, suggestions, and so on.

Here at Reality, we encourage viewers to interact with us. We read each and every e-mail and respond when appropriate and if time permits. We welcome all viewer mail, but from now on, please direct e-mails to the appropriate addresses listed on the contact page.

Go Back To Reality's Main Page

He Can Fly

-Apparently, Jobs's request for a helipad was accepted. Currently he's looking to acquire a chopper, and then off he goes.

Mac Expo TV

-Mac Expo TV will be covering the live events at MacWorld SF.

New G3 Mini Tower

-A New G3 Mini Tower is in the works with a 275mhz 750, 64 RAM, a 4 GIG HD, and will cost around $2999.

No More AV Monitors

-Apple has made a decision to remove the AV option on all of its monitors in order to save some production costs.

Bill Gates New Year's Eve Resolution

-To purchase the US government if they stand in the way of the Windows 98 release.

Go Back To Reality's Main Page