Macworld Conference & Expo/New York - July 18-21
- Jacob K. Javits
Convention Center,
Report by David Kerwood, The Naval Undersea Warfare Center
kerwooddr@npt.nuwc.navy.mil
On 19 July 2000, I was privileged to attend the Macworld
Conference & Expo at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York
City, representing the Naval Undersea Warfare Center http://www.nuwc.navy.mil/ with press credentials supplied by
the National Partnership for Reinventing Government http://www.npr.gov/. Getting to the I. M. Pei-designed
Javits Center http://www.javitscenter.com/ in mid-town Manhattan was no problem
from my home base in Rhode Island - AMTRAK's new Acela Regional
train got my wife and I to Pennsylvania Station in just a little
over three hours. The train beats driving through traffic any
day, particularly since Penn Station is directly beneath Madison
Square Garden and was just one block away from my hotel, which in
turn was only a few more blocks away from the Javits Convention
Center. Very convenient.
Speaking of the hotel, my local SATO representative had arranged
for me to stay at the New Yorker http://www.nyhotel.com/, a classic 30's era hotel located at
8th Avenue and 34th Street. The building itself had been in
serious decline during the latter half of the 1900s, but was
rebuilt and reborn as a "vertical village" in 1994.
Kudos to the SATO staff and the hotel for covering the NYC per
diem rate - though I still couldn't get them to honor my federal
tax-exemption certificate (I've heard from other federal Macworld
attendees that their hotels had no problem with this). The
standard dataport modem connections were available in the room,
though high-speed connectivity was not available. This service is
becoming more and more common at major hotels in metropolitan
areas in the US, with one of the more
common providers being CAIS DSL service that just requires an
ethernet port or wireless networking built into the traveler's
laptop http://www.cais.com/hotel/.
The morning of the 19th was opening day for Macworld, and I
hurried to the convention center to present my press credentials
and receive my media badge. Some confusion at that early hour
with those handling the crush of early arrivals relegated me to
standing in a long line for a few minutes, and I was worried that
I was going to be late for the Keynote Address by Steve Jobs,
scheduled to start at 9:00 AM. Luckily an Expo rep came through
the line asking for those who had already been pre-registered, a
select group in which I was a member, thanks to the diligent
efforts of Lee Wexel at OPM and Pat Wood at NPR. In short order I
had my press credentials verified and media badge installed
around my neck, and set off for the queue tent outside the
convention center.
The media were out in force for this event, and our area under
the tent was packed with representatives from every information
venue available - magazine, freelance, web, radio, TV, print and
more, from every corner of the planet. Everyone was checking out
everyone else's badge - who you represented was prominently
displayed front and center, and I was soon engaged in
conversation with others milling about in line as we waited to be
escorted into the main hall where the keynote address was going
to be given. One individual in particular was extremely
interested in what I thought was happening with the federal
government and privacy issues, particularly in light of the
recent revelations with the FBI's "Carnivore" device http://www.fbi.gov/programs/carnivore/carnivore.htm). Carnivore is a Windows 2000
computer that uses custom software to eavesdrop on people who are
the target of an investigation. Other than the fact that I didn't
know any more about Carnivore than what anyone else would have
read in the mainstream media, I did give my personal opinion that
the federal government probably shouldn't be the biggest worry
for those concerned with privacy issues. The real assaults on
privacy would more likely be from the private sector arena, in my
view. He seemed genuinely surprised to hear that view from a
government employee such as myself, and I have no doubt he was
subconsciously saying a dubious "yeah right" to my
assertion.
The wait in the tent wasn't long, and soon after that our
"handler" began shooing us in the direction of the main
hall of the convention center. Kudos again to the Javits Center
staff for maintaining excellent crowd control over the press
horde - most regard the media as unruly at best at events like
these, but plenty of staffers with big paddles that they were
waving like traffic cops kept everyone in line, for the most
part.
Overall the news from Apple heading into the conference was good
- on the previous day Apple had just posted a $200 million profit
for its third quarter 2000, with revenues of over $1.8 billion.
It was the eleventh consecutive profitable quarter, with net
profits up 43 percent. During the quarter, Apple sold 1,016,000
machines, including over 450,000 iMacs and 350,000 Power Mac G4
systems. The ingredients for further expansion – lots of
cash flow and increasing market share - were certainly there. So
there was a strong sense of expectation in the audience as we
took our seats – the buzz was palpable from all within
earshot (which is saying something since I don't hear too well to
start with). Something big was afoot.
After packing the main hall with at least several thousand people
(by my estimation), the keynote got under way with Apple / Pixar
"iCEO" Steve Jobs on stage. Jobs immediately launched
into his acknowledgment that, for the past two years, everyone
has hated the round Apple mouse and the smallish keyboard that
come standard with every Macintosh. To fix that, he introduced
their replacements - an optical mouse with almost no moving parts
that was housed in an elliptical transparent shell, and a wider
keyboard with real page navigation keys. These were nice, but
hardly the stuff of a keynote address, and Jobs soon began
talking about the latest generation G4 machines, which were being
introduced that day. These were big news, as two of the three
versions of the G4s came with dual G4 PowerPC processors as
standard equipment, and effectively redefine the edge of the
envelope for high performance computing for the entire industry,
regardless of platform or processor. According to Jobs,
"Apple is the first to make dual processors a standard
feature in high-performance personal computers." To
illustrate the power of the new machines, Jobs and Apple Vice
President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller ran a
Photoshop rendering operation of an Inspector Gadget movie
poster. This would typically be a processor-intensive task that
would normally prompt the user to go out for a cup of coffee
while the operation ran its course. Side by side with the new
dual-processor G4 was a top of the line 1000 MHz Pentium III
machine, running the identical Photoshop operation. Both machines
started concurrently, with the G4 finishing at 61 seconds while
the PIII finished at 124 seconds. The difference was astounding
to the graphic arts professionals in the audience (a core market
for the Mac) and drew wild applause.
One thing that Jobs and Apple did not do was to come up with a
strategy to effectively answer the years-old conundrum of
marketing megahertz (MHz). This has been an issue that has been a
thorn in the side of Macintosh resellers for years - trying to
equate the processing power of the PowerPC chip in relation to
the Pentium chip and its clones. It has always been an apples and
oranges (excuse the pun) type of comparison - the IBM PowerPC
processor that powers every Macintosh sold today is totally
unlike the Intel-developed Pentium family of processors (RISC
architecture vs. CISC architecture...more on that at the end of
this article). Direct comparisons of the two kinds of processors
aren't easily achieved in neat quantitative numbers that most
consumers understand, like megahertz. It's like trying to equate
the power output of a stick of dynamite vs. a gasoline engine in
an automobile. Both can be expressed in quantitative terms like
watts, joules, horsepower or fractions of kilotons, but the
comparisons can be meaningless alongside each other since the way
each item produces energy is so dissimilar. The same difficulty
(though perhaps not as extreme as this example) can be seen when
comparing the PowerPC vs. the Pentium - the two types of
processors are too dissimilar to where a valid comparison can be
made, at least in terms of simple megahertz.
In terms of a demonstrable effect such as the Photoshop rendering
demonstration performed during the keynote, Jobs did note that
the 500 MHz dual-processor G4 computer was about as powerful as a
2000 MHz (2 gigahertz - GHz) Pentium III, if such a machine
existed (you can't buy a 2 GHz machine for any price in mid-2000
- there aren't any). This inability to do a direct comparison -
megahertz to megahertz - has been a marketing bugaboo for Apple
since the mid-eighties, and Jobs didn't have any answer for this
dilemma.
Steve Jobs made a few more announcements, most notably that the
new G4 machines have no price increase, even though they all come
with gigabit (1000Base-T) ethernet and dual processors on the top
two models as standard equipment. Jobs also gave a quick status
report on OS X, the next generation of the Mac OS, announcing
that it'll be released as a public beta in September 2000, and a
public release in early 2001. A quick demo of OS X in action was
greeted with plenty of oohs and aahs from the audience - it is
visually stunning and full of tweaks and gadgets that will
delight many.
The concentration of effort
on the user interface was evident - an operating system that
specifically designed to be as intuitive and unintimidating is it
could possibly be while still able to get real work done. Nothing
new there from a Macintosh point of view, but certainly a
dramatic statement to anyone who has to wrestle with the Windows
interface.
Bruce Chizen, the president of Adobe http://www.adobe.com/ came on stage to declare Adobe's
fierce commitment to the Mac, pointing to the aforementioned
Photoshop shootout as an example of how close Adobe is working
with Apple. Next came Kevin Browne from Microsoft, and his
appearance probably had the most significance to those in the
audience from the federal government - the announcement that
Microsoft will be shipping Microsoft Office 2001 for the
Macintosh in October 2000. While Office 2001 for Macintosh had
been an open secret for some time before Macworld, Browne's
demonstrations of the new tools and cleaner interface of the
Office family of products was the first look at the new release
for the vast majority in the hall. Browne stepped through the
different modules of Office 2001, noting that Outlook Express is
being replaced with a new telecommunications application called
"Entourage." The major headline for Entourage was that
it provided what Browne called "out of the box Palm
support" - important news for the many Palm handheld
computer users in the audience (from my seat I saw dozens of
Palms being used for notetaking during the keynote). Microsoft
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were all being updated with new
creation and usability tools, many of them Mac-specific. Kevin
Browne made that point a running gag throughout his presentation
- encouraging the audience to chant "...only for the
Mac" with each new wizard, gallery, palette, etc. This is
the stuff that you can only get through market share, and that
market is doing very well, as Jobs was to point out later.
Federal users of Microsoft Office include many that would qualify
for the title of "PowerPoint Ranger" - endemic in the
Department of Defense, where people think nothing of firing up
PowerPoint just to make a simple slide consisting of nothing but
text. PowerPoint Rangers would then rejoice at the next bit of
news from Browne - this new PowerPoint would include the ability
to save a PPT presentation as QuickTime. We (DoD users, including
myself) have been doing this for quite some time now, and it's a
technique that's especially handy when web-enabling a PowerPoint
presentation with a minimum of work. It's been a manual
operation, however, with more than a fair share of tedium during
the creation process and the announcement of a "save as
QuickTime" capability was wildly cheered.
One unanswered question remained - cross-platform capability.
While Kevin Browne stressed the compatibility issues between the
Windows version of Office and the Mac version, all the new tools
and gadgets in Office:Mac 2001 made me wonder about the
compatibility and portability of Mac-created documents to the
Windows platform. I would find it hard to believe that Microsoft
would allow any serious incompatibilities between the Win and Mac
versions, particularly if the Mac version were providing a
functionality that the Windows version did not. Still, it's an
item that I'll be looking hard at when I get my copy of
Office:Mac 2001.
Ed Fries, vice president of games for Microsoft, and Bungie
Software founder and CEO Alexander Seropian then came on stage to
quell fears that Bungie would disappear from the Mac gaming
universe, since Bungie Software's acquisition by Microsoft just a
few weeks earlier. Both Fries and Seropian announced a
Microsoft/Bungie "alliance" that was committed to
bringing all of Bungie's games to the Mac, including the highly
anticipated and too radical for words Halo http://halo.bungie.com/. A demo video of the Halo game
screen was then shown, and it was a sight to behold. With the
Macintosh's built-in graphic display capabilities that far
outstrip nearly any standard Windows PC, Halo for the Mac should
prove to be the sine qua non for all computer games, regardless
of platform.
Steve Jobs then regained control of the keynote for the second
hour. Announcing the second birthday of the iMac, Jobs noted that
3.7 million of the units have been sold since their introduction
at Macworld in summer of '98. He did the math - 1 iMac sold
somewhere in the world every 18 seconds. Market share was the
driver for all new Mac developments that were being seen during
Macworld, and Jobs noted that over 44% of new iMac buyers were
either new to computers, or crossovers from the Windows side. In
essence, nearly half of all the iMacs being sold were going to
people new to the Mac - no small achievement there. Increasing
that market share drove the next announcement - Apple was
returning to Circuit City as a major reseller for the iMac,
iBook, and AirPort products, in nearly 600 retail stores
throughout the U.S. Jobs then trotted out the new iMacs - four
new models, new colors (important for the iMac market), and a new
entry level iMac that was being billed as the perfect
"internet appliance." The big news for the entry level
iMac was the price - $799, for a machine that differed little in
its functionality from the highest iMac available, the iMac DV
Special Edition. What makes the price difference real for the
higher-end iMacs was DV...digital video. The iMac has emerged as
the single easiest way for anyone to get into the digital video
arena, with the Apple Store and other resellers bundling the iMac
DV with the Sony Elura DV camera for an "out of the
box" digital video solution. What makes that all possible is
the built-in FireWire (aka IEEE-1394) ports on every iMac DV,
allowing for the camera to be plugged directly into and then
controlled by the computer. Jobs announced that the software that
makes this all possible - the free iMovie application included
with every iMac DV - had also received a substantial upgrade, now
tagged as "iMovie 2." iMovie and iMovie 2 are much more
than basic cut and paste frame manipulation applications - tools
for titling, effects, transitions, audio mixing and dubbing, and
much more are included. While iMovie continues to be freely
available, iMovie 2 will be a $49 upgrade.
In a dramatic display of real world use of thin-client
(web-driven) applications, Jobs then demonstrated the ease of
transforming digital video into video clips that could be
displayed on a web page. Using the iTools HomePage http://itools.mac.com/itoolsmain.html) suite of web building applications
that are free to all Mac users, Jobs demonstrated how anyone with
an internet connection and Mac OS running on their machine could
build and field a very attractive web site, including text,
images, and QuickTime video. This demonstration illuminated one
particular track of the technology curve that begs further
comment, however.
The iTools HomePage demonstrations took advantage of new software
and capabilities that Apple maintains on their hardware. The
client side (the user sitting at their machine at home or work)
doesn't actually have any of this software on their own machine,
aside from the basic iTools plug-ins for the web browser and OS.
The fact that all the actual work of building the web page and
assembling all the components of a web site is being accomplished
without the use of any specialized software applications for the
client is notable in its own right. Here is a good example of how
thin-client architecture (DoD people like to call this
network-centric computing) is slowly but surely wending its way
into the lowest common denominator of computing nowadays - the
household internet appliance.
The point here is that the only thing the desktop computer is
being used for, once all the creative bits are done, is to
provide and maintain an Internet connection for the client. It is
essentially a dumb terminal when used in this fashion - think
back to the days of DEC terminals, mainframes from Digital or
IBM, and the use of the VAX operating environment. Twenty years
ago there were three elements that were essential to government
computing - the workstation, the mainframe, and the network that
connected the two pieces together. Obviously in twenty years time
all three elements have changed dramatically - the workstation is
now more powerful than the mainframe was, the mainframe can now
exist on a tabletop instead of needing its own building, and the
network can support high speed throughput many
orders of magnitude more than dreamt of in the late seventies and
eighties. The evolution of these three elements into what we see
being used today means one thing to me - the death of standalone
desktop machines as an end solution to government computing
needs, and the resurgence and rebirth of network computing. The
Navy has taken a big step in investigating the possibilities of
network computing and thin client architecture for shipboard
applications - that being the fielding of a fully networked thin
client architecture on the USS Coronado (AGF 11), a command ship
of U.S. 3rd Fleet. In that instance the Navy installed
a central server computer with workstations distributed
throughout the ship - just like what one would expect to see on
Star Trek...a true "ship's computer." The full story
can be found on the Navy Wire Service, at this url: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/news/navywire/nws00/nws000530.txt
It is my personal prediction that while the 90s was a decade
where we saw the explosive growth in speed, power, and capacity
of the standalone desktop personal computer, this decade will
witness the equally explosive growth of network computing - where
most of the processing power and actually computing
"work" takes place in a central server, not on the
individual desktop machine. This is the direction I think
enterprise level computing will gravitate to, for a variety of
reasons but chiefly because of the cost factor. Centralize the
computing power and you centralize much of the maintenance and
manpower needed to keep enterprise level computing up and
running. Maintaining thousands of standalone desktop computers
has become stupifyingly expensive for all federal government
activities, and replacing standalone desktop machines with highly
capable workstations that need relatively little on-site
maintenance is one way of containing those costs. Today every
administrator in the public sector is searching for ways to
reduce their IT support costs. A few years ago I heard Rich
Kellet from GSA cite a statistic stating that greater than 50% of
the federal infrastructure budget was for IT, with the inferred
conclusion that this is an unsustainable number. An astounding
statistic, from anyone's perspective. Containing cost is a major
driver in the push towards exploiting the possibilities offered
by thin client computing for the enterprise, and this is where
the future will be taking the federal government, in my view.
Speaking of the future (and getting back on track with this
article) the big news during Steve Jobs' keynote address was
still to come. Jobs noted that the there was a hole in the
desktop product line - the low end being filled by the iMac
machines, with the high end amply taken care of with the smokin'
G4 tower machines. But there was no mid-range computer in this
lineup - something to put on the average user's desktop. Jobs
then trotted out an entirely new product - the Power Macintosh G4
Cube. The Cube turned out to be a remarkably compact 8-inch
crystal box, and packed a 450 or 500 MHz G4 processor, at least
64 MB of RAM, a minimum of a 20 GB hard disk, with FireWire,
10/100BaseT ethernet, USB, and a 56 Kbps modem. The Cube is
preconfigured for wireless networking with a built-in Airport
slot, and also sported a nifty slot-loading DVD drive on the top
of the case, popping out a CD just like a toaster. One notable
feature is that the Cube has no fan (like the iMac) so it's dead
silent once the internal hard disk spins down. One thing the Cube
doesn't offer are any expansion slots - unsurprising for a
machine that is intended to fill the mid-range of Apple's desktop
machines. The price was the next showstopper - the G4 Cube, now
available from every Apple reseller, was pegged at $1800.
The price for the Cube doesn't include a monitor, though you can
hook up any standard VGA unit to its video port. Jobs did take
that opportunity to introduce three new monitors to the Apple
lineup; all with built-in power, video, and USB in a single
cable, reducing the cable clutter that accompanies every computer
except the all-in-one iMac machine. The least expensive model was
the $500 17-inch CRT Apple Studio Display, followed by the
all-digital $1,000 15-inch flat-panel LCD Apple Studio Display.
This is a miniature version of the giant-killer 22-inch LCD Apple
Cinema Display, the largest flat screen monitor commercially
available. This wide-screen display was also updated with the new
all-in-one cable that incorporates USB, power, and video in one
tidy cable.
By now it was nearly eleven o'clock, two hours into the keynote,
and people were starting to mutter about missing sessions that
were scheduled to begin elsewhere. A few actually got up and
left, which turned out to be a huge mistake. Jobs proceeded to
wrap up his presentation where he had started - with the new
Apple optical mouse. He said that in appreciation of everyone who
had managed to make it into the hall to hear him speak, he would
give him or her a gift - the new mouse. All one had to do was to
present a coupon to the Apple representatives at the back of the
conference hall when they were leaving and they would get their
boxed version of the new mouse, specially packaged for Macworld.
A collective groan went through the audience, as everyone
immediately realized that they didn't have the coupon and all
thought (as did I) that they had somehow missed the giveaway in
the crush to get into the keynote. Jobs enjoyed the moment, then
said that if one didn't have the coupon (as nobody did) then they
would find one taped under their seat. Immediately everyone in
the hall dived under their chairs and ripped out the coupon, and
then the fast thinkers in the room dashed towards the few empty
seats and ripped those coupons out as well, ensuring that they
would get more than one mouse. That ended the keynote, and the
mass of humanity in the conference hall streamed to the exits to
claim their new optical mouse.
In conversation with those around me as we filed to the exits,
everyone agreed that this was one of the best keynote addresses
ever at Macworld, both for the content and pure showmanship as
well as the free mouse. The stream of product announcements, both
from Apple and from Microsoft, spoke volumes as to the health of
the company as well as to the robust retail channel. Again,
market share and cash flow set the tone for the address -
research, development, testing and engineering of new products
and new technologies all depend upon ensuring that the bottom
line stays healthy for both the near and far term. It was also
painfully obvious that no announcements were made regarding any
of the portable Macs - the iBook and the PowerBook, which also
have a hole in the mid-range just as the desktop machines did. I
would expect that hole is going to be filled by the next
Macworld, which is on the West Coast in January 2001. The
direction of R&D seemed clear enough - more power, smaller
packaging, high-speed connectivity, and a keen eye towards
improving the user interface and maintaining the Apple mandate of
excellent industrial design were in abundance.
My own personal mandate now was lunch, and I met my wife for a
quiet sit-down at a nearby Italian restaurant. One thing we
noticed right away during the short walk through town was that
people had been busy filling advertising billboards with ads for
the new G4 cube - Apple wasn't wasting any time on trying to
capture and capitalize on the buzz over the new machine. After
going over everything that had happened during the keynote, her
interest was piqued enough for her to join me in my cruise
through the exhibition spaces for the rest of the afternoon. Upon
returning to the Javits Center we headed straight for the Apple
exhibit area, which occupied a large portion of the available
floor space.
All the new machines were on display, and then some. Rows of
monitors and flat screens, iMacs and G4 cubes, filled booths and
perched on pedestals that were all surrounded by the crowd. It
was readily obvious that the machines that were rolled out during
the keynote were not mockups or prototypes - this was real
hardware, and Apple reps were busily answering questions and
taking orders. Of particular interest were two long booths with
about twenty iMacs in each booth, and each iMac then hooked into
a digital video camera mounted above it. It was clear that Apple
was pushing the iMac as the digital video editing solution for
the consumer market, and the crowds playing with the setups were
thoroughly engaged in selecting clips and assembling videos,
experimenting with transitions, fades and effects, all without
reading manuals or getting bogged down in the interface.
Time was of the essence, however - I needed to see as much as I
could before heading back home at the end of the day. A quick
perusal of the floor layout was illustrative of how
"busy" this Macworld seemed to be - all the available
exhibition space in the main halls of the Javits Center seemed to
be filled - there certainly was no lack of representation from
the aftermarket, resellers, peripheral suppliers, and vendors of
everything else in between. It wasn't just an Apple song and
dance parade - I was pleasantly surprised to see a large exhibit
area from Cobalt Networks http://www.cobalt.com/, the makers of a highly-regarded
line of UNIX/Linux servers that include the RaQ 4 and the Cobalt
Qube (which looked a lot like the Apple G4 Cube in its form
factor). Bravos for them for showing up at an Apple show - they
looked like they were drawing a fair crowd themselves.
A rapid visit to as many booths and exhibits as I could manage in
the time remaining forced me to skip many vendors which were of
passing interest, but I did stop to ask some questions of the NEC
rep, where they were displaying their full line of big screen CRT
and flat screen LCD monitors. I wanted to hear the NEC spin on
why their flat screen monitors (and everyone else's) are so
expensive at the high end, with some approaching $8-9K for
screens larger than twenty inches. Apple sells the biggest LCD
screen, the aforementioned $3999 Apple Cinema Display. The NEC
rep (whose business card didn't even have the NEC web site - http://www.nec.com/ - printed on it...an epic gaffe in
this day and age) went on about how difficult it was to
manufacture large thin-film transistor screens, and their quality
control was demanding that they dispose of 90% of their screens
during the manufacturing process. NEC did have an excellent
warranty of three years against any pixel burning out on their
monitors - a fact of life with all liquid crystal flat panel
displays. But did that justify such a huge price differential
between the Apple products and theirs? I couldn't see it.
The Microsoft Exhibit area was mobbed - the news about the
upcoming release of Office:Mac 2001 bore testament to that. There
was one additional item of great importance to Federal users that
was not discussed during the keynote. In the Microsoft display
area was a hands-on exhibit of a major upgrade that's in the
works for the Macintosh Outlook client for Exchange (the current
version is v8.22). Discreetly positioned behind the Entourage
presentation area, this version of Outlook (codenamed
"Watson") is being driven to have near-total parity and
compatibility with the Windows Outlook 2000 client, including all
the calendering functions. This is big, big news for federal Mac
users on Exchange email servers.
One important stop I needed to make was at the 4D booth. 4D (aka
4th Dimension - http://www.4d.com/ makes highly capable and
cross-platform database software development tools for enterprise
level application environments, and the company had recently
acquired the company that makes the web server software that I
use at the warfare center, WebSTAR from StarNine Technologies,
Inc. http://www.starnine.com/. The two companies were dissimilar
enough to where the acquisition made people nervous - 4D was
deeply committed to database applications, while StarNINE was
just as deeply committed to their web server software product.
What had emerged in the few months after the acquisition was that
4D could prove to be a formidable competitor to Filemaker, Inc. http://www.filemaker.com/ in the web database market. Many
WebSTAR servers also run databases, which are served by
Filemaker, and this has been a successful solution for some years
now. Filemaker's new pricing structure was putting that future
into question, however - the entry fee for fielding databases on
the web had received a substantial jump when Filemaker v5.0 was
rolled out in late 1999. The higher price for Filemaker now made
the originally more-expensive 4D a viable competitor to this
market, and when seen in that light the synergy between the 4D
database market and the WebSTAR web server market started to make
more sense.
Federal technology watchers will recognize the name WebSTAR. It
was exactly one year earlier when the US Army decided that it had
enough with their Windows NT/Cold Fusion web serving solution,
which had been repeatedly been broken into by web site crackers
from the outside. Army web managers had
gotten to the point to where the Army web site http://www.army.mil/ was turning into the online version
of a sailboat - a hole that you just pour money into without
getting anywhere. In September 1999 the story broke that the Army
had moved their web serving operation to Macintosh G3 machines
running WebSTAR, and to the best of my knowledge the web site
cracking and break-ins that they had been dealing with for so
long suddenly stopped cold, and continues with that enviable
record to this day.
WebSTAR is the solution we use at the Naval Undersea Warfare
Center as well, though this is limited to our own internal web
where security is an even higher concern. We have been very
pleased with the performance and flexibility of WebSTAR and the
Macintosh operating system for web serving, and our security has
never been compromised during the entire time that it has been in
place. StarNine is now gearing up the next generation of WebSTAR
to work with OS X, the next generation of the Mac operating
system, and I had some conversation about that effort with Jay
Gonzales, the business development manager for 4D. Jay had been
with StarNine for some time, and we had corresponded via email
several times in the past, but this was the first time I had ever
had the occasion to meet him face to face. As far as the OS X
effort was concerned, Jay reported that development of WebSTAR 5
was moving right along, and they were looking forward to the
public beta release of OS X so they could expand their R&D to
the WebSTAR beta test team. As before, web security remains one
of the highest priorities in that effort,
with security being the one critical area that sets Macintosh web
servers so far apart from their UNIX and WinNT competition.
One observation - there were relatively few presenters using
projection units to demonstrate their wares. Nearly every
presenter was using some form of flat panel display
unit...typically these are gas plasma displays that cost anywhere
between $8 to 20K. The presenter at the IBM booth that was
demonstrating IBM's ViaVoice speech control software was typical
of the scene - the flat panel display was a 48-inch wide unit
that offered good resolution and visibility, even from a sharp
angle to the screen. This is yet another indicator of where
technology is going that will be of particular interest to those
who have to give or prepare presentations in a conference room
environment. The gas plasma display offers one dramatic
variation that isn't possible with a standard LCD projection unit
- a wide screen format. PowerPoint will take advantage of the
extra real estate if you tell it to do so, and this format can
make for a dramatic visual
statement if used to its fullest effect.
Another item of interest occurred while walking through the
exhibition halls - I noticed a vendor demonstrating a Palm V with
a wireless modem to a small crowd that had gathered. I needed to
see this one in action, and soon had the Palm handheld computer
in my, um, palms. If you've never used a handheld computer, then
this is an experience - the Palm computer http://www.palm.com/ is about the size of a large deck of
playing cards, and features a relatively large screen that
accepts written characters using the machine's stylus. Apple used
to have their own line of handhelds, the late and lamented Apple
Newton which still commands a dedicated following of users. One
hears a lot of talk today about web-enabled cellular phones,
which are very popular in Japan and the Pacific Rim but which
have not had
much of an impact in the United States. The chief drawback to
web-enabled cell phones has to do with their screen size (very
tiny) and the fact they are limited to basic text displays.
Handhelds like the Palm, on the other hand, have a relatively
large screen and can display graphic images as well, on standard
web pages.
On-the-go connectivity with handhelds has been something of a
nuisance until recently, however, requiring the use of bulky
modems and cables to connect the handheld to a wireless network,
where coverage (or lack of coverage) has historically been a
problem. Palm recently introduced a fully wireless Palm with a
built-in modem, the Palm VII, which then connects to the Internet
via the wireless modem and built-in antenna using the Palm.Net
service. This new unit lists for about $450, however, and there
is a huge installed base of standalone Palm machines that could
be used for wireless connectivity with
email and web access, if they only had a modem which didn't act
like a boat anchor when it was installed. That modem was the
thing that caught my eye in the exhibition hall - the OmniSky
Wireless Modem http://www.omnisky.com/ fit neatly into the back of a Palm V
and connected to the OmniSky wireless network in Manhattan at
about 19 Kbps - not terrifically fast, but passable for email and
standard web pages. I tried the unit out and was connected to my
web site http://www.nuwc.navy.mil/ in seconds, and I was pleasantly
surprised and impressed to see true graphic images appear on the
Palm screen. One unanswered question remained which the rep on
the floor wasn't prepared for - how well the OmniSky network
worked with 128-bit encryption and Microsoft Outlook for
Exchange. That'll take some further research, and I have
subsequently learned that OmniSky requires POP3 email accounts,
which have to be specially enabled for MS Exchange email servers.
My first experience with the OmniSky wireless modem for the Palm
handheld computer was good enough for me to be optimistic about
the future of handheld wireless communications, though I still
take a dim view of receiving email on a cell phone (an awful
thing to behold).
The end of the day came all too quickly for my investigative
side, and not quickly enough for my feet. By the time we had to
go, we were loaded down with lots of literature and plenty of
freebies and trinkets that vendors practically threw at you when
you approached. I did make one concession to comfort - that being
a spot purchase of a four-wheeled computer bag from Tutto http://www.tutto.com/ that proved to be a lifesaver at the
end of the day. This was a great little unit that beats the pants
off of any other wheeled bag that I've ever used - if you have to
travel with a laptop then this "office on wheels" is
highly recommended. The wheels held up well in the walk back to
Penn Station - which also proved to be interesting where one
quickly formed an impression of the state of the art regarding
ADA compliance for New York streets and curb cuts. While there
were many curb cuts at busy intersections, there were also many
curbs that didn't have them. If I were in a wheelchair there were
quite a few curbs that would have been a challenge to negotiate.
A short wait for the Amtrak Northeast Direct train (which turned
out to be twenty minutes late getting into the station) and we
were soon back home. In going through my notes and in research
after returning to Rhode Island, several data points and
takeaways loom large:
* This Macworld ranked as the second most attended IT Event in
New York, setting a new all-time attendance record for an East
Coast Macworld by attracting 61,250 attendees from around the
world.
* More than 7,000 people physically attended the keynote, with
more than 4,000 packed into the main hall at the Javits Center.
Thousands more watched the keynote via webcasting on the
Internet.
* The educational conference program drew more than 4,000
attendees to the more than 110 sessions.
* Nearly 400 exhibitors filled more than 294,000 gross square
feet of exhibit space. Major vendor categories included Hardware
and Peripherals, Music & Audio, Assistive Technology,
Quicktime and Multimedia, Education, Scientific Research and
Development, Internet, and Application Development.
* A reflection of the burgeoning Mac market is evident, yielding
an increase of more than 33% over last year's New York total of
45,000 attendees. The all-time attendance record is the Macworld
Conference & Expo/San Francisco, which set a new all-time
attendance record of 85,000 attendees in January 2000. The
next semi-annual Macworld Conference & Expo will be held at
San Francisco's Moscone Center, January 9-12, 2001.
* Apple is flush with cash, and their financial position is
solid. The company has not let up on the fielding of new machines
and technologies that represent the leading edge in information
systems hardware and software. Apple is looking ahead on two
fronts - deploying an enormous amount of sheer horsepower in the
G4 Macintosh, and positioning these machines to work on either
end of the thin-client architecture scheme - both as high-speed
servers as well as powerful clients, connected via high-bandwidth
networks. Having gigabit ethernet connectivity as standard
equipment on all the new G4 machines illustrates the importance
of high-speed network applications for enterprise-level computing
to Apple. No other PC manufacturer offers this on their base
systems.
* The continuing expansion of processing power as evidenced by
the new G4 machines recalls the old debate of RISC vs. CISC
architecture. RISC - the Reduced Instruction Set Computing
architecture that is the basis for the IBM-developed PowerPC
processor used in the Macintosh - continues to leap forward in
capability due to the benefits derived from efficiency, power
usage, and flexibility in design. CISC - the Complex Instruction
Set Computing architecture that defines the design of the
808x/Pentium family of processors - is showing its age as a
legacy system, where the laws of physics are getting in the way
of continued development of the Pentium processor.
* Perhaps the easiest way of visualizing the differences in
efficiency between the PowerPC and the Pentium can be found by
simply looking at the heat sinks for each processor - the heat
sink (a finned aluminum casting that dissipates heat from the
CPU) for the iMac CPU is about the size of a book of matches. The
heat sink for a Pentium-family CPU is typically about the size
and heft of a cell phone at a minimum – the Pentium family
of processors put out a lot of heat. The next generation of
processors from Intel will likely abandon much of the current
architecture and design in the present-day Pentium - the physical
limits of the chip are stifling future expansion. Both
architectures (RISC and CISC) are moving toward a more common
ground in design and manufacturing, but in many respects the
PowerPC is already there, while the successor to the Pentium is
starting late out of the gate.
This year's Macworld Expo and Conference proved to be exceedingly
valuable for me, where one of my responsibilities at the Warfare
Center is to keep a finger on the virtual pulse of information
technologies of all types. These technologies were deployed and
displayed in abundance at Macworld in New York, and I left the
conference with an even greater appreciation of how fast the
technological advances of Information Systems are coming - it
will be an interesting time for any federal IT manager as they
try to keep pace with this accelerating curve.
To discuss further information about this report, please contact David Kerwood, The Naval Undersea Warfare Center http://www.nuwc.navy.mil/
The full text and images
for this story can be found on the web at this url:
http://www.nuwc.navy.mil/hq/webmaster/reports/macworld/macworld2000.html