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Thursday, December 18, 1997
Reality News Is Updated Every Monday And Thursday

Microsoft Interested In Buying Into Rhapsody?

Quite recently, an anonymous source forwarded us a summary of a conversation he had with an Apple Road Show employee which suggests Microsoft to be scouting out Rhapsody; Apple is hiding behind the bush.

This could play out to be the reality of the situation, since this source's claims are right in line with steps Microsoft would have to take if and when the justice system comes down far enough to stop the development of Windows98 in its tracks. To pour salt on the open wound, Windows 98 is far from stable even in its mid beta stage, as previously reported by MacOSRumors. Add this to legal problems and the fact that the core technology for the upgrade is a largely unwanted step backwards, and you have a need to panic.

Rhapsody is extremely powerful and Microsoft officials realize this. Microsoft's problems extend through Windows 98 and carry into major NT 5.0 delays, an even greater reason to prove this rumor true, as Rhapsody is in the same ballpark as Windows NT.

In the event, Microsoft continues to come up empty handed with no tricks up their sleeve. Jesse Berst recently published a column entitled Why you'll hate Windows 2000, which basically sums up the fact behind my statement that Windows 2000 is not even a consideration. Though it may seem irrelevant to compare Windows 9x to Rhapsody, Microsoft is in the midst of a major problem, never the less an innovation drought. They have nothing serious planned beyond the layouts for Windows 2000 and they can't seem to roll NT 5 out the door. So basically, they need to bite down or buyout. The latter seeming to be the more logical choice in their case. Again this situation applies to the BeOS as well. Its no secret that MS executives have shown a strong interest in the Intel version of the operating system (which is way ahead of schedule).

Again, its crazy to even speculate a replacement of NT, or possibly Windows 9x with Rhapsody or use of Rhapsody's technology, however, Microsoft needs insurance, new technology, and a possibly a building block for future systems development. With this known, taking a closer look at Rhapsody would seem all the more logical.

It's important to note that the situation described above happened over a month ago when Rhapsody for Intel wasn't available to developers and hence its existence was still unconfirmed.

Mac OS 8.1 Final Candidate

We have word that MacOS 8.1beta 6 was seeded to developers yesterday afternoon. Beta 6 is said to become the final candidate for the Bride Of Buster release.

As always performance is said to be outstanding. There still remains a few extremely minor bugs with Quadra 950's and PowerMac 8600/200's, relating to aspects of system control panels and the system profiler. Its expected these bugs and any other last minute changes will be wrapped up in the up coming revision of the final candidate that will ultimately go Golden Master (few revisions may be necessary).

In any event, the development process is practically over and we should see a downloadable version of MacOS 8.1 within a week or two, though this could change.

Much more on MacOS 8.1 in Monday's Issue.

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An anonymous source who had a recent experience with a production model of the next generation PowerBook, code named Wall Street, had some very juicy bits of info to report to us.

The Case
The external design of Wall Street (and possibly Main Street) has adopted the look of an advanced eMate, very slim and sleek. To quote our source "the case SCREAMS 'sex!'". The futuristic look and feel of the PowerBook series couldn't come any sooner. Recent reviews indicate the use of the bulkier, more cumbersome, 3400 case on the Kanga (Current G3) line, to be one of the downsides of the experience.

And What Color Would You Like That PowerBook?
Yes, though highly unconfirmed, the Wall Street line of PowerBooks will run in different case colors. Though it isn't a major technological breakthrough to change the dye of the plastic, it would definitely aim to produce highly fashionable laptops (though I would still prefer black).

A Second Speed Bump Already In The Works?
It has also been reported that Apple has a planned speed bump to the Wall Street Series of PowerBooks, suspected to arrive sometime in mid-late summer. The second generation of Wall Street will apparently leap into the 433MHz range with a 83-100MHz bus!

Wow! If Apple can begin to offer products of this magnitude and combine it with a successful campaign, God knows what could happen. However, to shift focus, a lot will rely on Main Street - the slightly scaled down version of Main Street aimed at the low end market. This is where Apple hurts the most. The average person cannot afford a six thousand dollar laptop. In comes the low end Main Street, which will feature a LCD screen rather than "Thin Film Transistor (TFT) active matrix display. At 233mhz the rumored price range lies around $2399.

Below we have posted approximate estimations of the components of both Main Street and Wall Street based on reports we have received. The Wall Street configuration has been updated from our original report

January?
The exact release date remains a mystery; however, it has been confirmed that a significant number of prototypes are currently in the test labs. This without a doubt pushes towards a timely release. We'll keep you posted on these exciting products.

Rhapsody To Support Multiple Icon Sizes?

Through time, numerous developers have reported on the appearance of the Rhapsody interface and the icon set. From our gatherings, it is understood that those with 20" monitors and above tend to marvel at Rhapsody's larger, yet picture like, icons. In spite of that fact, users with 17" and smaller monitors incline to suggest cluttering, stating the icons look out of proportion.

The Goal - Multiple Icon Sizes
To address the issue, we conversed with a couple of the Rhapsody team members. It has now been confirmed, to the best of our knowledge, that one of the goals for the Rhapsody UI will be the support of Multiple Icon Sizes and possibly multiple icon sets, though the latter is highly unconfirmed. The details of this feature were not available at the time of our inquiry.

It is fair to say that the Rhapsody icon set at any size is far more attractive than that of the MacOS icon set. Below is our markup depicting the possible MacOS-sized Rhapsody icon set, where the larger dimensioned Rhapsody icons have been scaled down to average MacOS icon size as displayed at 800x600.

Presently, it isn't clear how the situation of themes in Rhapsody containing their own icon sets will fit into this picture. Will different sets need to be created for different size icon choices or will one larger set be scalable on the fly? This feature, if implemented, isn't as easy as it sounds. We'll keep you posted if we obtain any further information on the subject.

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There has much controversy as of late regarding QuickTime 3.0 and when and how it will ship. It has been rumored that the updated version was on schedule to ship with the Bride Of Buster release, MacOS 8.1. The new rumors that seem to be emerging suggest an integrated release with Allegro (MacOS 8.5 or 9). Neither of these scenarios are true, and never were. In fact, it has been confirmed and stressed that QuickTime 3.0 could never have been part of MacOS 8.1 due to simple logistics. QuickTime 3.0 must pass the qualification processes of the Quality Assurance team as its own entity. MacOS 8.1 will have to do the same.

So, regardless of whether or not QuickTime 3 will ship with Allegro, the final release will be made available as soon as it's ready to ship. Be it early February or April, it will never have an arbitrary dependency on any operating system.

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John Paff, Reality's columnist, recently published a piece entitled "Confessions of a Technoslut; I Have No Mac and I Must Scream". As with every piece of work we publish at Reality, we receive dozens, sometimes hundreds, of responses. However, one of the responses John received from this piece stuck out in a very touching way, which we would like to share with you, below.

The press has called for the demise of Apple computer and the Macintosh for the past 17 years, yet we're still here. It's something special when one realizes the better product (company) is not always the most popular and the one you work for. Our market share may shrink in the industry; however, we are moving forward as a platform and and a culture.

I'd like to thank Scott for slapping the Reality of the situation back on the table. I doubt you'll ever see an Apple employee say the opposite. I know this isn't a rumor or a piece of late breaking news, but I feel the above touches more ground than a 6 lined rumor ever can.

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A week ago, Apple shut down an important asset to the developer program, the developer seeding FTP, leaving developers empty handed till their monthly CD would arrive by mail. There was an uproar from developers, or at least the ones I've herd from. We then posted a possible solution to Apples problems.

Yesterday, an anonymous reader let us know that the developer seeding FTP was back up, but now it is protected. When trying to connect the anonymous users will get the message displayed below.

Did Apple listen to our claims? Have they provided similar protection? In any event, it's pleasing to see Apple making an effort to benefit the developers rather than turning a cold shoulder with a tough luck attitude liked it seemed.

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Well, I took another ride down to my local CompUSA in White Plains, NY,
on Sunday afternoon, accompanied by a relative of mine. The experience
was a lot better; however, I was left fuming as you'll understand if you
read on.

The visual experience was much, much better. A mini-tower PowerMac G3 had
been added, the original Desktop G3 was now running and the PowerBook
1400 had been replaced. Every Mac was powered on! Even better...70% of
them were running awesome demos. The whole section echoed of "Macintosh
is Power" as flashes of light whipped across the demo screens.

The Problem
The Apple store was PACKED, tons of people, up to 20 people in that
little section at once. But you guessed it: NO ONE TO HELP THEM! I began
to wonder how morally correct this could be...so I went looking for these
Apple employees, in their gray Think Different shirts. After 20 seconds
of looking, I found one! In the PC section! And the first words that I
heard from his mouth were "Yes, this is the best Pentium", as he
completed a sale of some Dell Tower to this middle aged woman. Boy was I
pissed. One Apple employee (there are supposed to be two) in the whole
damn store and he's selling PCs while dozens of glossy eyed customers
wandered the Mac section. I was so mortified I would not approach the
salesman and explained to my aunt, if she insists on making a purchase,
she'll have to approach him and so she did. When she questioned him as to
why he wasn't in the Apple store he responded "Well there is no one ever
there". We turned around and stared at at least 10 eager Apple customers,
then he looked as well, and then my aunt replies "Well I'm pretty
important". Boy did that salesman turn red, and he should have. He walked
with us over to the Apple Store and you could tell he was irritated, he
couldn't wait to get back to that PC section and make his commissions. He
knew very little, if you ask me, but I kept my mouth shut to see how he
dealt with customers. As soon as we got what we were looking for, he
practically flew back to the PC section. At least 10-20 people still
remained in the Apple store, and like I stated last week, were eager to
purchase products but had no assistance.

My aunt went off to the check out counters and I stuck around the Apple
store to check out the eMate. I saw a customer drag an employee over to
the scanner section to ask about a paper port for the Macintosh. Her
reply "there is no paper port for the Macintosh", I could not understand
this so I corrected this employee in front of the customer and directed
him to where he could find the paper port. For the last 10 minutes I had
there, I devoted my time to help customers and cleaning up the hideous
display of a Mac Software section, which looked like a dumping ground for
old PC Games.

In conclusion, Apple has a huge problem, especially when customers have
to play salesmen. They are getting screwed over by CompUSA and its
corrupt employees. They could have sold $50,000 worth of Apple Computers
in the time I was in that store, maybe more. Its a goddamn shame, this
platform has so much potential, so many places to grow, yet civilization
holds it back. Even the Apple Store employees are selling PCs. When
should we lose faith? And when should we just give up?

Again, direct all similar CompUSA experiences to jeff@macnn.com, I'll be forwarding them to Jobs and CompUSA.

-Jeff

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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.

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It would be fit to whip out the body bag right about now. Omega's claims of their other products seem to have proven the whole organization a hoax. A global village engineer was nice enough to send us his comments on the subject. After reading the information below, I would assume it appropriate to call all of Omega a hoax as technological fact has proven them to be no more but a bunch of dreamers.

Technical Fact

---------------- Begin Message ----------------
Date: 12/03 9:57 AM
Received: 12/03 7:20 PM
From: David Isbister, xxxxxx@globalvillage.com
To: jeffv@webspan.net

So I went to their website, which has been updated with frames, displaying
their other "products." One which made me chuckle is this: The "Hermes"
PCMCIA card. I will comment on the ridiculous claims one by one (I'm a
hardware engineer at Global Village)...

Typ: PCMCIA-Card
Dimensions : Typ III
<Type III? Isn't that for hard drives?>

Processor: A 100
<What the hell is an "A100?">

Chipset: Hermes Chipset Version 1
<perhaps - I'VE never heard of this>

FlashBIOS: 4 MByte
<the largest flash we ever use in our PC Cards is 4MBIT (not byte). Four
megabytes of FLASH would take at least 4 8MBit FLASH parts. Doubtful>

RAM: 2 MByte
<DRAM? If not (and they mean SRAM), this is REALLY excessive, power-hungry,
and expensive. If it is DRAM, I'd also be suprised, as DRAM usually isn't
fast enough for modem applications>

Hermes

Hermes, the Greek messenger of gods and travel companion who showed the
souls of the departed the way to the other world. This very old god of
Greek mythology was said to be extremely intelligent and fast.
Intelligence and speed, these are the most important features of our
product, Hermes. Incorporating a high proportion of artificial
intelligence, this product is much more than just a modem capable of
transmitting real 115,200 bit/s without resorting to compression. In
Hermes, we have combined the latest technologies into a unique
communication tool in a minimum of space. Just imagine! Modem, ISDN, Fax
and Ethernet functions in one single PCMCIA card.
<just imagine indeed>

All these features are included in the Hermes 115.2,which is available as
PCMCIA-Card, external device and as a PCI-Card. The associated software
allows you to use this multi talent on different computers (e.g. PowerMac's
and IBM-compatible). Hermes 115.2 conquers from a pool of Modem,ISDN and
Ethernet components, which representing the latest state-of the-art in the
field of transmission engineering. It allows the transmission of data at
real speeds of 115,200 bit/s (analog), 128,000 bit/s (ISDN) and up to
14,400 bit/s (faxes). If C3-DC data compression is used, transmission rates
up to 900,000 bit/s become possible.
<oh man. First of all, 115,200 analog is really a misleading statement. A
SERIAL port can do 115,200, but modems almost never get that kind of
throughput. Second of all, how would you create an external device out of
this (perhaps with multiple cables - ethernet AND serial)? Third of all,
what the hell is "C3-DC data compression?" I'm familiar with LZS and MPPC
compression for ISDN, but C3-DC?>


Hermes will cost between 685 US$ and 850 US$.
Contrary to our earlier announcement, the completion will unfortunately be
delayed. At this time there are still some aspects to be fully refined.(the
layout is too fine for existing manufacture)
<sure it is. What manufacturer creates a chip that has too fine a pitch
(pitch is the distance between pins) to even use in a product? Nobody.>

and a profitable production is not yet practicable. We will inform you as
soon as the situation is resolved.

Technical data (at first for the PCMCIA-Card)

Dialing parameter
-
Hermes dialing procedure Version 1
-
AT-instruction record


Functions
:
Modem
- V.fast Class
(28.800 Bit/s)
- ITU V. 34
(28.800 Bit/s)
- ITU V. 34+
(33.600 Bit/s)
- ITU V. 17 - Fax
(14.400 Bit/s)
- "USR x2"
(56.000 Bit/s)
- "Rockwell K56+"
(56.000 Bit/s)
<this is where I stopped skimming the "spec." If "Omega" actually licensed
x2 and K56Flex, that's pretty interesting. Currently, I don't think you can
run K56Flex without a chip from Rockwell or Lucent. x2 requires hardware
from Texas Instruments>


- Hermes K84
(84.000 Bit/s)
- Hermes K115
(115.000 Bit/s)

<and what the heck are these protocols? Has Omega created a couple of new
modem standards? I would imagine they would need special back-end equipment
to get these speeds, and even then, I don't believe a word of it>

ISDN
- Using of the channels :
Two B channels together or alone
- D-channel-log :
1TR6,E-DSS1
- B-channel-log :
X.75,ISDN LAP B,X.25
X.LEO,HDLC,V.110

Ethernet
- 10/100BaseT

<Wow. 10/100 too. This thing's got it all!>

Other
- 2-cable solid wired

Software :
- Remote Control Software
- Internet Browser
- Voice Software
- Fax Software

Service :
- Flash ROM Update from FTP Server
- Software Update from FTP Server
-------------------------------------------------------------------

So basically, we have claims of running 10/100, x2, K56Flex, and ISDN all
on the same card. Not only that, but using only custom hardware of their
own. So they would have to license code, port it to their hardware, and
then cram all this crap into a PC card.

No way. Ever.

These guys are bizzare. If only we knew their motives.

-David Isbister
HW Engineer
Global Village Communication

----------------- End Message -----------------

Omega's PR E-Mail Response
A second reader of Reality recently mailed Omega, demanding answers, explanations, and proof of COS. In response, he received the e-mail published below. As you can see for yourselves, this is far from believable, nevertheless verbally understandable.

---------------- Begin Message ----------------
Date: 12/05 2:30 PM
Received: 12/05 3:20 PM
From: xxxxxxxx@PHL.Boeing.com
To: 'jeffv@webspan.net', jeffv@webspan.net

Dear Mr. xxxxx,

I have a little question. What could be happend, that you and all the
others would believe something? I will give you the answer. The final
version.
Why?

Screenshots are no proof. How many every-thing-better-knowing people
would say, that we only made some screenshots with the photoshop?

Delivering Beta-Versions is too dangerous, because a lot of people,
named "Hacker" , would be able to learn, how to crack the comming final.
COS IS A CRYPTOSYSTEM AT FIRST!!

Sir, we also need something. We need the final to earn money. The last
years, we only have invested, but we are not Apple, which is able to
lose many million dollars.

Since last year, we had to invest over 1 million DM more, because Apple
canceled
Copland. So, we are waiting much more longer to have succes like you
must wait to a product.

Ok, the date was November 13th. Now is December. And I fear, that it
will be 1998, when we are ready. There are a lot of problems, that must
be solved now, not only technical.

COS is real, Mr. Kiernan, and you have no reason, to have doubt.
If you need to be anger to someone, send this anger to Apple or MS, they
are permanently giving new dates of their products. To remembrance: OS
8.0 should have Quicktime 3.0 and HFS+. Was it so? Did you buy it
nevertheless?

Sincerely

Manfred


PS: Sorry for my bad english.


Two atoms are walking down the street and they run in to each
other.
One says to the other, "Are you all right?"
"No, I lost an electron!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm positive!"


----------------- End of Message -----------------

And the mystery, still at large, is what are their motives? Don't these people have something better to do?

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Internet World NY '97

As mentioned earlier, I spent most of the day at the I-Net World Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center (the future home of MacWorld NY) in NYC. Apple was a registered exhibitor but obviously backed out of the expo. While I found the experience to be very energetic, it was a shame for the MacUser. With over 6 blocks of exhibits and tens of thousands of PCs, I only saw the presence of about 20-25 Macintoshes. Two at AOL, one at Sun, another at Symantec, and so on.

Adobe surprised me the most; it was all PCs, although their the free CD was hybrid. Microsoft, of course, dominated an entire section of floor space with their colossal displays, which when viewed by the public eye, proclaim: "We are Microsoft, we own the world". Close by was SUN (they gave away these cool hats) who publicly attacked and joked about Microsoft and their perception of 100% pure Java, in their hourly demonstrations. I found it rather humorous.

Oracle had more staff on hand than the 34th precinct has cops. Intel had this HUGE podium and spectator seating area with this woman who came across as the human commercial. IBM had a nice booth with a very large picture screen running their current commercials.

I consider the Internet to be in the category of "Creative Content", the web, what is wrong with Apple? It was as if they didn't exist.

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Apple Store Hits It Big

-Apple has reported that the Apple Store has taken in 12 Million dollars since its initiation a month ago.

Trouble In The Promised Land?

-MacOSRumors is reporting some turbulence at the desk of Steve Jobs, where he actually may have departed from Apple, if he was not talked out of it by Ellison.

NCs - "Aprilish"

-During Ellison's speech at Harvard University, the question of Apple NCs came up, and Ellison responded with word of an "Aprilish" release.

It's Only A Matter Of Time...

-before Windows '98 becomes Windows '99.....

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