Second POWER PC story for Technologic publication March 23, 1994

Is Apple's new Power Macintosh a mere work horse or miracle maker? Jason Romney reports.

It is increasingly clear that the future of computing lies in areas such as voice recognition, sophisticated multimedia and full-motion video because these things are no mere gee-whiz factor for showroom floors.

They make computers easier to use and thus more attractive to consumers without existing computer skills. And they lighten the load for heavy computer users, requiring fewer key strokes for tired fingers.

But such computerised miracles require extremely muscular computers. That's why chip makers are working out hard in the silicon gym.

Now sporting the biggest computing muscle is the PowerPC chip in Apple's award-winning Power Macintosh line of computers - yet, as was seen in last week's Technologic, PowerPC prices are modest compared with Intel's Pentium.

The two clear attractions of the Power Macintosh are its ability to run both 95% of existing Macintosh programs as well as Windows programs, and its speed.

But note that the really blazing speed advantage (two to four times as fast as today's Motorola 68040 or Intel's 80486 systems) is only obtained with software written expressly for the PowerPC chip.

Such software (called PowerPC ``native" applications) should be coming on the market quickly, but there are no guarantees.

Some immediately available ``native" applications include ProFiles (from software distributor Conexus - enquiries: 899 9255), an impressive-sounding new file management application, and Retrospect (the backup program).

Aldus have announced plans for ``native" versions of PageMaker, FreeHand and Persuasion (enquiries: 02 418 8488).

The list of other software makers to have announced support for Power Macintosh is long, but notable names include: Adobe Systems (eg Photoshop, Illustrator), Central Point (eg Mactools), Claris, Macromedia (Authorware), Nisus, Quark, Radius, RasterOps and WordPerfect.

Besides the availability of ``native" PowerPC applications, the other big issue is upgrades for existing Macintosh users.

Apple will offer upgrades to the PowerPC chip for most of its mid-range (Centris 610, 660AV and 650) and high-end (Quadra 610, 660AV, 650, 700, 800, 840AV, 900 and 950) Macintosh computers and new buyers of the Quadra 610 and Quadra 650 computers will be offered a free upgrade to PowerPC.

Such upgrades will be of two sorts. For around $1500 you will be able to upgrade in such a way as to retain an existing 68040 processor (known as a PDS card upgrade).

For around $2400 you will be able to purchase a complete logic board upgrade (which includes an ability to support the AV feature set). The logic board upgrade will be available for computers such as the Macintosh LC475, LC520, LC575, IIvx and IIvi.

In short, Technologic recommends careful consideration of the Power Macintosh's advantages by anyone dissatisfied with their existing computer. But understand clearly that your existing software for either Macintosh or Windows will need to be upgraded to its PowerPC ``native" equivalent to harness the PowerPC's sizzling speed.