IS IT A MACWORLD AFTER ALL? by Randy Williams Published August 16, 1996 MacWorld Expo/Boston August 7-10, 1996 World Trade Center & Bayside Expo Center	Considering the lousy year that Apple Computer has just weathered and the now-routine prediction of the Mac platform's imminent demise, it is doubtful that this year's Boston MacWorld convention would have been a festive occasion under the best of circumstances. But the Expo just couldn't seem to catch a break. On opening day, the weather was hot and humid, and the media was full of warnings about air quality. Then a downtown fire brought shuttle buses to a dead stop in traffic for the better part of an hour. When the group of folks I was among finally made it into the World Trade Center, we paid our entrance fees and were directed to a bank of computers to fill out a short survey and generate a plastic identification badge. After a 45-minute wait, the computers -- mouseless Apples running not the MacOS but AIX -- crashed just as we began filling out the survey. Several hundred attendees-to-be groaned in unison, then gave into gallows humor and grim laughter.
Brain candy does nothing to bolster Apple's claims of superiority.	Earlier that morning, Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio had received a standing ovation for announcing that new refinements would be made to the core system software in "bite-sized" increments. This seemed to mollify the crowd, but the fact remains that the full release of MacOS 8 (or Copland) -- which was originally scheduled to be ready almost a year ago -- still seems to be at least a year away. The enthusiastic reaction to Amelio's speech is a result of rank-and-file Mac users being desperate for any good news. I should know -- I've owned two home computers and both of them were Macs. I use a PowerMac at the office. I've long considered myself a supporter of Apple, but these lame pep talks and missed deadlines don't cut it any more. Worse yet, it is no longer clear that OS8 will address many of the problems in the bloated Mac system software -- such as its inefficient file system. A visit to Apple's OS8 demo booths did reveal, however, that the new system software would be rife with user-definable interface features -- you can, for instance, choose borders for your desktop windows that look like bright green metal tubing. Kind of cool, I guess. That sort of brain candy probably helps sell Macs in electronics stores, but it does little or nothing to bolster Apple's claims of superior technology.
Nothing I saw was "insanely great" enough to knock my socks off.	The exhibitions were uninspiring. There really were none of the kinds of innovative, Mac-first products of years past, products that took advantage of the Mac's 32-bit architecture and ease-of-use in a way that made you wonder why anyone in their right mind would use a Wintel machine. Of course, the playing field has been leveled somewhat. Microsoft's Windows 95 and Windows NT are 32-bit operating systems, too -- so a lot of the nifty Mac-type stuff gets developed on that side of the street these days. Mac conventions used to be good for at least a couple of new killer apps so "insanely great" they'd knock your socks off. This year, most people's socks seemed to be in no danger of experiencing even the slightest movement. In fact, the biggest software trends were towards PC-to-Mac translators and development tools for cross-platform applications and Internet plug-ins. In other words, the buzz had less to do with innovations for the Mac than with making sure that the platform is able to keep up with the various flavors of Windows and Unix. The Internet boom has created an environment where distinguishing one operating system from another is no longer a matter of which company has superior technology -- successful 'Net apps have to work on all platforms. The most advanced OS will be the one that does the best job of taking industry-standard technologies and folding them into a user-friendly interface. Apple is legendary for intuitiveness, of course -- but it also famous for promoting wild-goose, proprietary technologies that do not become standards. And the company is seriously behind in the Internet department -- to the extent that it now looks like they will throw in the towel and license Windows NT to run on their servers. So it is no real surprise that the small amount of excitement being generated at the MacWorld Expo came not from Apple but from two brash upstarts. The biggest buzz in machines running MacOS was created by the Power Computing PowerTower Pro 225 -- currently the world's fastest desktop PC, operating at 225 MHz. The company's refreshingly fun attitude was reflected in "Let's Kick Intel's Ass" and "Fighting Back for the Mac" T-shirts, in its wacky game show-style demo, and by the 150-foot bungee jumps from the "PowerTower" crane rig set up in front of the convention center. The little clone-maker that could is backing up its sense of fun with serious machines that beat Apples on all fronts -- power, performance, features, and price. The other big noise was created by Be, Inc. The company was founded in 1990 by Jean-Louis Gassée, former president of Apple's product division, and has just introduced a PowerPC-based desktop computer called the BeBox. The machine leapfrogs over existing PCs by easily integrating multiple processors, supporting a dozen input/output devices simultaneously, and executing several multimedia applications (we saw six full-motion videos running flawlessly) at once. Be is in the process of porting the OS to the PowerMac, where it will bring preemptive multitaskingto a robust multithreaded software system -- protected memory, true virtual memory, and an application architecture based on shared libraries and modular code. It already has most of the features promised for MacOS 8 -- which means that it leaves Windows 95 far, far behind in the dust.
Apple may be too bloated and top-heavy to take its ideas to the next stage.	Does that matter in the long run? Hard to say. Apple seems too busy hanging on for dear life to do much innovating at the moment. But Mac clone-maker DayStar Digital has begun marketing multiprocessor PowerPC upgrade cards, and Power Computing has announced plans to bundle the BeOS (along with the MacOS) on future versions of its PowerMac clones. It could be that we will soon see a proliferation of "Macs" running BeOS and "Apple Servers" running Windows NT. And that could make Apple as irrelevant to innovations in the computer market as IBM has often been in the last decade, too bloated and top-heavy to keep up with the young and hungry companies that take its ideas to the next stage. As I left the convention, I ran into a guy selling two styles of bootleg T-shirts on the sidewalk a few hundred yards from the front door of the expo center. One had an Apple logo over the phrase "this is your brain" and a Windows logo over the phrase "this is your brain on drugs." The other featured just an Apple logo and the phrase "I don't do Windows." "How's business?" I asked. "Okay," he replied. "Off quite a bit from last year. People used to snap these things up." A blast of hot air and bus exhaust from the street unsettled his merchandise, and he set about straightening his displays. "I don't do Windows, either," I said as I looked again at his T-shirts and made the decision not to buy one. "But I hear that Apple may start. Rumor has it they're licensing Windows NT for their servers." The sidewalk entrepreneur seemed startled. "No shit," he muttered, his arms dropping to his side. The rainbow-striped apples on his shirts continued to twist in the wind. Randy Williams is an editor and columnist for Tripod. Despite rumors to the contrary, he is not related to crooner Andy Williams. He does, however, belt out a mean rendition of "Moon River" after downing a few Black & Tans. © 1996 Randall L. Williams. All rights reserved.