The Things You Haven’t Heard About the Power Mac

The Senior Vice President of Apple, at the PowerPC Intro Event March 14, referred to the two different styles of computers as “two flavors of Macintosh.𔄂 Bot the New Power Macintosh is a lot more than a stylized version of an LC.

The Power Macintosh. People have been anticipating it, people have been talking about it - all without seeing it, or knowing exactly what it is. In a nutshell, here’s the scoop:

Apple, Inc., has been working on a RISC chip (which works a heck of a lot faster than the CISC chips they currently use, which make up the 680X0 line of Macintoshes) for a new line of Macs. These will work up to six times faster than the fastest Quadra and Centris lines out now - when software companies like Aldus and Adobe create programs that utilize the capabilities of this new chip (in other words, they have to re-write their programs in the “Native Language” of this new chip, and then your programs will run really fast). You can still use old files and old programs with the new Power Macs (there may be about two little programs in all the world that exist for Macs that don’t work on the Mac - that’s a pretty decent number).

And here’s another cool thing about the new Power Macs - they’ve designed it so that for the most part, you can work in DOS and windows applications on it, too. You can open PC applications and PC files, then go back and open QuarkXpress in Mac format. It’s really an amazing thing. It’s bridging the gap between all of the different kinds of computers out there.

And the lowest priced model, out now, retails for about $2,000 (check for street prices). That’s the other amazing part, considering Apple’s track record with horrendous prices.

At the grand introduction of the Power Mac, a lot of things were said that you can’t read in magazine articles about what this new Mac does. And more good points - as well as bad ones - will only be discovered as times wears on and users actually buy some and discover new things.

So here, in a simple format, are a few of the things I found important - as well as interesting.

Compatibility/Speed

* Photoshop is creating a free plug-in module for people to upgrade it to Power Mac format.

* Free upgrades will be available for Illustrator, Premiere and Dimensions.

* Aldus checked; additions work (are compatible with the Power Mac) for both PageMaker and Freehand.

* The average language translator can run up to ten or eleven times faster on the Power Mac. * OmniPage (the most common text-scanning program), can run three to four times faster on a Power Mac.

Drag and Drop, OpenDoc

* Power Mac is trying to work with programs to make functions more user-friendly again. For rendering programs, for example, you can now take a background design from a toolbox and drop it on a surface in a picture, and it will place the texture on the surface - with perspective and lighting in perspective.

* With the mouse in that same program, you can move around different parts of the room - and the Power Mac instantly displays your perspective from that part of the room.

* Power Mac is also making a pretty good attempt at making the computer user-friendly instead of application-friendly. Many programs are offering upgrades that currently make them memory-hogs for unused and cumbersome features. With a new concept called OpenDoc, a user can be working in Microsoft Word and want to make a chart. Instead of having to use Word’s charting capabilities, it will be possible to open up the menus for Excel, make the chart - all right on the Word page. In essence - importing and exporting will not be needed - you can work in one document and have the best features of all the programs you have - all at once.

Cool Features, Availability

* Windows can run on the Mac with as low as 8mb, but 16 is recommended (they described SoftWindows at the opening: “It’s a pretty studly application.”)

* They’ve updated the standard calculator to handle equations, and do more complex math work, such as sines, etc. It can even graphically depict your math work.

* 150,000 were ready to ship as of 3/15 (which was more than all Pentium systems shipped in 1993).

Has Apple really done it? Have they become compatible, have they become faster, have they become cheaper - all in one fell swoop? Well, it may not be perfect yet (one person I know found out the hard way that monitor cards may have to be either given more memory or upgraded altogether), but Apple is definitely on the right track in the minds of Mac users. But the new question is: Do windows users feel the same way?