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Here's to the Little Guy (5/2/98)
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Still more rumors about the alleged entry-level Mac are emanating from the high priest of osfuscation, Mac the Knife. Reportedly, the ADB bus and the serial ports are being left out on the upcoming low-cost motherboard, while the Universal Serial Bus (USB) replaces both of them. That could be a risky move, given the relative newness of USB and the dearth of USB peripherals, but it also might pay off by putting Apple ahead of the curve.
Most of you are probably aware that the now-legendary Windows 98 crash at Comdex occurred when Bill Gates tried to add a USB scanner to the demo PC. That indicates that Microsoft's USB support probably needs a bit of work; Apple could conceivably get in on the USB ground floor if they do things right. If we can assume that peripheral availability wouldn't be a problem, USB could solve the age-old "I don't have enough serial ports" conundrum, since USB is daisy-chainable like ADB. Still, if Apple is serious about completely replacing both ADB and serial ports with USB, folks like us with a significant investment in ADB and serial peripherals (Connectix Quickcams, CH Flightstick, Wacom ArtPad, LocalTalk adapters, etc.) may get screwed. Mind you, if Apple somehow comes up with a way to use existing ADB and serial devices via USB ports, the point is moot, but we're not convinced of the feasibility of such a move.
As for the chip in the new consumer machines, the Knife now claims that Apple will use the PPC 740, a cacheless variant of the 750 used in existing Powermac G3's. While the performance hit of using the 740 could be severe, it's worth noting that the upcoming low-end Main Street Powerbook uses a cacheless 233 MHz G3 processor, and still MacBenches over 400; in fact, it's almost as fast as our PowerTower Pro, which runs a 200 MHz 604e with 1 MB of L2 cache. If Apple can really produce a machine of at least that speed and keep the cost to consumers in the $500-$700 range (as has been reported), there may just be a market share revolution brewing.
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SceneLink (668)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/2/98 episode: May 2, 1998: Why are the Clintons staying at Steve Jobs' estate this weekend? Meanwhile, more rumors fly about Apple's upcoming consumer-level machine, and Rhapsody continues to improve, as it prepares for its next release at the upcoming WWDC...
Other scenes from that episode: 667: Slow News Day (5/2/98) Faithful viewer David Kingsbury pointed out the fact that President Clinton is spending this weekend at Steve Jobs' estate in Woodside, California, as mentioned in this UPI article. Now, most reasonable people would see nothing particularly noteworthy about President Clinton staying at Jobs' place for the weekend, as he winds his way down the fundraising trail... 669: Looking Forward To 1999 (5/2/98) It seems that we get a lot of mail from viewers wondering what's up with Rhapsody, Apple's next-generation operating system for servers and power users. Well, we're not following it as closely as we probably should be, primarily because none of us is a registered Apple developer, so we don't have access to the first developer release, which has been out for about six months now...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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