Following Apple’s report of their three-quarters of a billion dollars loss last quarter, the rumor and publicity mills that surround Apple –perhaps in a haze– should be earning their operators awards for the number of column inches of positive information they have garnered for Apple. Any number of articles ( 1, 2, 3, 4 ) report that Apple has hired Goldman & Sachs to fend off the potential take-over led by Larry Ellison. Infoseek (www.infoseek.com) reports that the sales of the newest model of Apple’s Newton handheld computer are very strong, with Apple booking about five times as many Newton orders as they did a year ago. Dataquest is predicting that Apple will experience a boost in sales this falls, driving the year’s sales to nearly that of Apple’s peak in 1995. MacSense reports that Apple is about a month ahead of schedule on the Rhapsody operating system. Rhapsody will be the offspring of the current MacOS and the industrial strength NeXT operating system. UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, such as NeXT’s OS, are considered superior to even MicroSoft’s OS crown jewel, Windows NT. We can hope that this time, the resulting mutation of the old Windows vs. Mac debate will not be the holy war that the last one was.
Hot on the heals of announcements that 300 MHz and 433 MHz processors are planned for release this summer for Mac OS computers, InfoSeek reports that Intel will ship 300 MHz Pentium II processors in May. Intel’s pricing should be an interesting factor: the chip will carry an initial price of $1980, while processors for Mac OS computers at 433 MHz will be priced at around $1500 and at 300 MHz under $1000. With a 300 MHz Mac OS-based computer already announced at the $3000 price point, vendors of Windows-based computers the spread between the price that has now been set for the segment and the price on Intel’s processor too thin.
Finally, another tip for our archive. In response to a call for help, we venture into slightly more rarified territory with a how-to lesson on creating AppleScripts that open password-protected FileMaker Pro databases.ff Of course, we assume you already know the password…