Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401280085
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY JAMES COATES CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By summer, Microsoft Corp. plans to release Chicago, the long-awaited upgrade to the popular Windows 3.1 program, which brings icons and control by a mouse pointing device to IBM-compatible machines.
Meanwhile, the Macintosh, which Apple Computer Inc. introduced in 1984 and is used by an estimated 15 percent of personal computer users, will move to an entirely different - and substantially more powerful - computer chip called PowerPC.
A leaked version of Chicago - so named because of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gate's affinity for the city - surfaced in the trade press in mid-December. It showed that the new operating system will be dramatically different from the current Windows.
Windows is a shell, a program that provides small pictures called icons that users manipulate to send commands to the machine's operating system, the core instructions that allow users to input data and process it, and to read and save it.
The Windows shell is used on roughly 30 percent of all personal computers and comes with nearly all new IBM-compatible machines.
But Fred Langa, editorial director of Windows World magazine, printed a bootlegged screen from Chicago, or Windows 4.0, in the Dec. 21 issue. It shows that the new operating system about to sweep the PC world has a look similar to today's Macintosh screen rather than the familiar Windows layout.
Windows thus will present icons of small folders to represent directories, programs and files and, for the first time, offer a Macintosh-style trash can to temporarily hold deleted material, making deletion and retrieval easier.
Langa says the key point behind Windows 4.0 is that it is an operating system in its own right rather than just sending commands to the DOS operating system, as does Windows 3.1.
"Because of the way Chicago is built, some common computer activities, such as storing or retrieving information from a disk, can proceed two, three or even four times faster than in the current version," the magazine said.
The new system, which probably will cost about $100, will incorporate many of the memory-management features of Microsoft's high-end Windows NT operating system. But it will require only 4 megabytes of random access memory, compared with the 12 megabytes needed for NT, the magazine found.
On the Macintosh side, another magazine, Macworld, offers in its February 1994 issue a similar preview of what the coming Apple line of computers will offer.
After 10 years of running Macintosh on the Motorola 68000 group of chips, the Macintoshes will be based on the new PowerPC chip made by Motorola Inc. in alliance with Apple and International Business Machines Corp.
These machines will be capable of running existing Macintosh software by emulating the older hardware, but will be capable of speeds approaching the new Intel Pentium chips when operated in PowerPC "native mode," Macworld found. Another emulation program will allow the Macintosh machines to run software written for IBM-compatible machines as well as programs from the UNIX world, the magazine reports.
While running in Macintosh mode, the machine will look very similar to today's System 7 operating system, which Macworld estimates is installed on 59 percent of Macintoshes.
"Initially, the PowerPC's sole advantage will be speed, but Apple hopes developers will use that extra speed to introduce innovative capabilities that current Macs just can't manage," wrote Lon Poole in Macworld's assessment.
Those "innovations," he suggested, will include running full-screen video in real time, providing voice mail, high-speed networking and teleconferencing and other applications that today's 68000 machines can't handle.
by CNB