The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 11

Thursday January 7 1988 11 AM Winning at In-din John Haber reports from the US on Steve Jobs' new firm rumoured operating software, ARC), for the Archimedes, it will be able to compete in the workstation market So will Atari with its forthcoming Abaq, using the even more powerful Inmos Transputer, initially as an ST add-on. At the moment the workstation market is dominated by Sun, Apollo and Hewlett Packard, all with systems based on the Motorola 68020 processor, and by DEC, using its own proprietary processor. Apple now wants a slice of the action with its Macintosh II, which again uses the 68020, as does Jobs's NeXT, with a 68030. IBM can also be expected to pitch the 80386-based PS which machine it's running on, and does appropriate things to the video chips according to some simple rules we programmed," an Argonaut programmer claimed on Micronet 800. Argonaut Software's development is called ADLS, the Argonaut Disc Loader System.

It wants other games software houses to use the system too. Both the ST and the Amiga have Motorola 68000 processors and at least 512K of memory, so it is certainly possible to write a new operating system to encompass both. More interestingly, Argonaut plans to extend the idea to IBM PC compatibles (with 3.5in discs) too workstations: bought by the TSB for expert systems developments Apolio Gift fl 1988 should be an interesting year in computing. Look for lots of cheap micros based on the Intel 80386 chip, and a battle royal between micros and workstations. Parallel processing systems should start to make an impact in the business market.

DEC and Hewlett Packard will continue to boom while IBM gets into even deeper trouble. In the software stakes, the Atari ST will take over the quality games market, while budget games dominate the 8-bit market. The ST and Apple's Macintosh line will continue to attract the most interesting serious software. The desperately dull PC market will get even duller in the absence of worthwhile applications programs for IBM's new OS2. Best-selling products will include 24-pin dot-matrix printers, cheap fax machines (probably one from Amstrad) and small, dirt-cheap 1200 baud modems.

Laser printers will take over from daisy-wheel printers, but everyone will become bored with desktop publishing. (Well, a lot of people are bored with it already.) The business micro market should show the most interesting changes over the next year or two, as IBM tries to wipe out the old PC "standard" with its new PS2 (Personal System2) and OS2 (Operating System2). The PS2 hardware (different discs, different graphics, different monitors, different expansion cards) was launched last April, and the OS2 software arrives this month. But it will be some time before worthwhile applications programs appear which need OS2 and when they do, they won't run under PCMS DOS. OS2 is useful to IBM because it obliges you to own at least a PC AT (with an 80286 chip), so users with 8088 or 8086-based IBM PCs, Amstrad and other compatibles will be required to upgrade.

Even AT 'owners will find they need bigger memories probably two or three megabytes and expensive new software. But there could be a flaw. Users who notice there is actually little or no advantage SS stokes Jack Schofield on the likely computer market developments in the coming year LI I 11131-14 THE Entertainment Software Trade Awards were presented at the games companies annual dinner over the festive break. Paperboy, from Elite, was voted Game of the Year in the full-price section while Codemasters' BMX Simulator won the budget category. Other awards went to Arkanoid (best arcade game), Stationfall (adventure), Helicopter Gunship (strategysimulation), Defender of the Crown (16-bit game) and Trivial Pursuit (licence).

Guild of Thieves took the scroll for the best graphics, and Wizball for the best sound. Although nominated in several categories, Gauntlet ended up not winning anything. US Gold may not mind too much, however, as according to Gallup this was the year's best-selling full-price game. OSI-less IN spite of expensive Government promotion, including an exhibition at the NEC, Birmingham (Computer, December 11, 1986), and the proselytising of the CCTA (part of HM Treasury), 26 per cent of data processing managers in private companies say they know nothing about Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) standards, which include MAP and TOP. Further, 66 per cent remain oblivious to the Department of Trade and Industry scheme which pays firms 50 per cent of their consultancy costs and 25 per cent of the implementation costs of doing an OSI demonstrator.

Part of the problem, revealed in a survey of 82 dp managers by Commslogic, is colour blindness: they can't see, anything that isn't blue. "I'm stuck with IBM" and "We're committed to IBM and SNA, so OSI is not relevant," some say. In the public sector, however, 55 per cent of managers know about OSI and only 10 per cent have not heard of it. Undaunted, the DTI will keep promoting OSI this year, and seven UK suppliers will participate in a cell in the Enterprise Network Event in Baltimore with 800,000 of government backing. The UK still leads Europe in MAPTOP networking, which is backed in the US by General Motors and Boeing.

Inboard 386 USERS of old, slow IBM PCs and similar 8-bit 4.77MHz micros can now Upgrade them with Intel's Inboard 386PC card. This includes a 32-bit 16MHz Intel 80386 processor, which can pretend to be an 8088 for the purpose of running IBM PC software, only faster. And at only 799 plus VAT from First Software (call 0256 463344), it's a great deal cheaper than buying a new 386-based system. The board works via a cable which plugs into the 8088 socket of your PC. It therefore won't fit 16-bit micros like the Amstrad and Olivetti models which use an 8086.

ST Amiga? STARGLIDER II will be the first game to be launched which will run on both the Atari ST and the Amiga. That is, exactly the same disc will run on both computers. "In real time, our program decides Chips up ACCORDING to Dataquest, the Top Ten semiconductor companies in 1978, by sales revenue in billions of US dollars, were as follows: 1 NEC 3.2; 2 Toshiba 2.9; 3 Hitachi 2.8; 4 Motorola 2.5; 5 Texas Instruments 2.1; 6 Fujitsu 1.9; 7 Phil-ips-Signetics 1.6; 8 Intel 1.5; 9 Mitsubishi 1.5; 10 Matsushita 1.5. Intel grew by 51.4 per cent and climbed into the chart from 11th place last year. This now includes six Japanese companies, three US ones, and the Philips-Signetics combine from Europe: The Japanese have 48 per cent, the Americans 39 per cent, and the Europeans 11 per cent of a $36.6 billion market.

MacNews A BIG slice of Wendy Woods's Newsbytes, on-line from California, is this week devoted to Apple, which is no surprise with MacWorld due for January 15-17 in San Francisco. This month Apple is releasing its Annual Report on a HyperCard disc as well as on paper, and appointing Shuttle astronaut Sally Ride to a seat on the board. Apple may also open a telephone hot-line to support its version of Unix for the Macintosh II, when released. This normally-gross operating system will, it is rumoured, come on 70 discs. K-Min? TRANSPUTERS are getting cheaper, and this is reflected in the price of Kuma's K-Max, which adds a T-414 and 256K of memory to an Atari ST.

It first appeared around 16 months ago costing 1,450 plus VAT, and is now down to 695 plus VAX This is 100 per mips (millions of instructions per second) of performance roughly one thousandth of the cost of mainframe mips. MESU THE Government-funded Microelectronics Education Support Unit at the University of Warwick, Coventry, has produced a new prospectus to publicise its on-going work Projects range from turtle graphics to earth satellites. Next month MESU will also publish a directory of "special needs" educational software and devices for the RML Nimbus and IBM PC-compatible micros. Call 0203 416694 for details, or email 203416694 on Prestel, on Telecom Gold. Computer Guardian is edited by Jack Schofield 2 Model 80 in there, running its AIX version of Unix (the IBM PC RT or 6150 with AIX has signally failed to set this market alight).

There should thus be a three-way battle between the entrenched 68020-based systems, the would-be 386-based models which offer less power but IBM PC compatibility, and new ones using BISC (reduced instruction set computer) chips such as the Acorn ARM, the Transputer, Sun's new SPARC chip, and similar processors from Mips, Fairchild and others. The current models from Sun, Apollo, Hewlett Packard and DEC are, of course, rather more expensive than their promising rivals so listen for the sound of salesmen tearing up price lists. If it works, the Abaq is the one to watch. The key advantage is that the Transputer is designed for parallel processing. You get 10 mips (millions of instructions per second) of processing power to start with.

If that isn't enough, you just plug in more Transputers. Multiplying the power of cheap microprocessors should also work in the mini and mainframe areas, at least in theory. Apricot will be putting it to the test ihis year by selling versions of Sequent's new parallel processing minis, which use multiple Intel 80386 chips. Motorola-based rivals include the Arete, the BBN Butterfly, and the NCR Tower 32800. The idea could catch on.

dealer's desk. The information is in a video picture format, rather than giving a string of data which could be displayed or input directly into a program. If a dealer wants two screens of prices, he or she has to have two separate display screens. And to feed information into a computer adviser, the dealer currently has to read the numbers off the screen and type them in by hand. Systems are beginning to come into use, which handle the information as digital data.

These so-called "digital feeds" can be plugged directly into a computer, and used in advisory programs. But they are best used with a high-powered workstation, where the high resolution display and fast windowing system can show more than one page of prices at once, track the progress of a program, and maintain links to other systems. Although there is high demand for digital feeds, they are coming in only slowly. The City has a heavy investment in video feed technology which, in the London Stock Exchange, has been in place for only just over a year. TAB Peter Judge looks at the City desktops, latest target of the workstation manufacturers WM ounakes On(ty sDocCteir? will want to buy 80286386-based micros which can run OS2 or Unix or Xenix, if required, rather than 80868-based ones which can't ever run OS2 and are underpowered for Unix.

This will therefore be the next area for the clone makers to invade. Look for cheap 386-based micros from the likes of Commodore, Atari and Amstrad, among others. IBM's self-proclaimed rival in the micro market is, of course, Apple with its Macintosh range. It is true that the Mac offers today things that IBM hopes to offer-some time. In like vein, using the slogan "DEC has it DEC has made IBM look flat-footed in the mid-range.

Whether "Apple has it now" can be converted into similar success remains to be seen. Apple will try. Alas, this means ences, and the institutions didn't have time to evaluate our products," says Thompson. "The Big Bang prepared the way for us," says Vanderslice. "There are some swap-outs from the PC world," says Thompson, "But workstations will not be a wholesale replacement for PCs.

There will always be a place for the PC." The machines from Sun and Apollo do have major advantages over the PC. Communications are vital to financial applications; information must be got to where it is needed. Thompson proclaims the superiority of workstations, which were designed for networking, over PCs, which weren't. Indeed, both companies regard networking as their strength. Sun's NFS, and Apollo's NCS both allow equipment from other manufacturers to work with the workstation.

Sun has a contract with Quotron, by which Quotron's supermini based trading system, popular in the US, has been linked up to a network of Sun workstations. The Quotron system acts as a digital switch, which processes real-time information sources such as REMEMBER the Big Bang? It changed the City; and one of the biggest changes was the horde of new computers brought in to take information directly to dealers' desks. Since then we have had the Big Crash, but firms are still planning to put in yet another bunch of new computers. No one claims that computers caused the crash, though some people blame the violence ot recent market movements on program trading. This is the name given to the use ot a computer to advise on deals, according to particular prices; when a graph changes direction, or a price reaches a threshold, large numbers of stocks can be bought or sold.

This kind of system is just not sophisticated enough, say its detractors. It is like those heat- ing systems which alternately freeze or fry you. More sophisticated systems, which take longer-term trends into account, would respond to tne market better. More important, there is the competition factor; a more sophisticated system will work out the best deals quicker than anyone else's. This means that Christina Erskine toon STEVE JOBS is at it again, and in spite of the poor track record of entrepreneurs trying to get it right a second time, the computer industry is taking him very senousiy.

NeXT Inc is the name of the company Jobs founded after being squeezed out oi trie day-to-day running of Apple and his subseauent resignation from that organisation's board of directors two years ago. The release of NeXT's long-awaited machine, a low-cost, high-powered workstation designed specifically for higher education, is scheduled for some time next year. The NeXT computer has been designed to exceed the old standard workstation 3M's: one million pixel screen resolution, a megabyte of main memory, and processing power of one million instructions per second. Unlike other high end stand-alones developed by Sun and Apollo, NeXTs machine has been designed from the ground up as a "learning not an "unfriendly, big, hot, noisy engineering workstation," as Mr Jobs describes it in one of NeXT's few pieces of promotional literature. "While the personal computer has influenced campus life since its proliferation in the last few years," continues Jobs, "it lacks the architectural horsepower, advanced and communications abilities to fulfil the needs of higher education in the late 1980s and early 1990s." With educational demands like the ability to recreate different environments (ancient civilisations or extraterrestrial terrains), the NeXT computer has been designed with an emphasis on sound and graphics.

From what little is known about the product, its audio features (given a boost by eight inch speakers) and graphics (developed with the help of the Lucas film company, Pixar, now owned by Jobs) are first rate. Other bits of intelligence have leaked out: the machine will be built around the Motorola 68030 chip running with a co-processor and various custom chips. A single processing chip will produce the high quality sound. While Motorola was the processor of choice for a machine emphasising graphics and sound, Jobs is also said to have "cut quite a deal" with that company in appreciation for his pairing up of Motorola and the Macintosh. Other rumoured specifics: four megabytes of memory, a 17in black and white monitor, the UNIX operating system for multi-tasking, and screen control via a version of Adobe's Postscript page description language.

Finally, and most importantly, Jobs has departed from the tyranny of tan and off-white. The machine's box will be jet black. NeXT is playing its cards close to the vest before launching; few developers have even seen the machine. This may in part be to increase speculation (already fueled by several delays) but also because of a court motion which allows Apple to see the machine before its release to make sure Jobs has not been using proprietary technology from his old company. In the meantime we have to be satisfied with NeXT's $100,000 logo, and promotional literature hailing the NeXT team.

This includes Bud Tribble, software engineer for the Macintosh, former Apple Fellow Rich Page, and a number of other people from the original Mac team. Few insiders feel Jobs' will be satisfied with producing an educational computer. At lectures and seminars around the country, Jobs talks about "the next generation of computers following the Apple II, PC and the With the market potential of a low cost workstation for non-engineering environments and markets, he could be banking on his device setting price and performance standards for that coming generation. What about Jobs' well-known "strong In this business, technology changes rapidly while people rapidly stay the same. Jobs is reported to still be a headstrong, critical perfectionist.

However, he is said to take other people's ideas into, consideration a bit more regularly these days, particularly potential customers. Can Jobs win again? Odds are not in his favour. While the Apple II expanded into a vacuum, the Mac struggled against the PC, and the NeXT workstation will be competing with both low cost systems from Sun and DEC and high-end microcomputers from IBM and Apple. AH of them are working in this same direction, and have the resources to ingratiate themselves with the university market But no-one underestimates Jobs' vision, his energy, or his ability to inspire others, A man with the will to bring the Macintosh to market after the failures of the Apple HI and Lisa is still a force to be reckoned with. ODD Macs still won't sell at prices UK end users are sensible to afford.

With both Apple and IBM pricing their systems too high for ordinary users, who will get the serious home market? Amstrad and others will try to reposition the 80886-based micros that are going out of favour in the business world. But the performance is inferior to that of the Atari ST, for both business programs and arcade games, so the success of the ST looks set to continue. The main challenge should come from the Amiga, but it won't, unless Commodore cuts the price again. Indeed, the Amiga could itself come under pressure from the Acorn Archimedes, when (if) software arrives for this superfast machine. And when Acorn launches Unix (and perhaps its own stock quotations and world news, and delivers them to the workstations.

Unix, the workstation operating system, "is already widely used in the commercial world," says Thompson. "Most organisations now realise that by pursuing solutions based proprietary systems they will eventually find themselves in a computational cul-de-sac, which is both painful and very expensive to reverse out of." Could the workstation be another of these culs-de-sac? Both companies point to the range of power available in their systems. "We now have the ability to grow from 1.5 to 10 mips," says Thompson. Though workstations can start from as little as 4,000, they are still costing considerably more than PCs, but the large transactions in the financial marketplace can justify them. While organisations are looking at improving the machines on their desktops, another change is happening: a basic change in communications technology.

At the moment, prices are most commonly sent to a separate video screen on the Feel, and atm.osphere has saved the computer version of Knightmare, the successful role-playing series from Anglia. The programming team, Focus, had a particularly tough' task, considering that the television show depends on Supernova computer graphics, which are about a million miles from anything possible on a Spectrum or an Atari ST, for that matter. Sensibly, Focus decided to keep the home micro graphics at the "good and competent" level and go all out for gameplay, But perhaps the game works because the television series was based on a recognised computer game genre, the role-playing adventure, in the first place. Quiz shows and Knightmare are fairly obvious subjects for micro conversion, but what about Yes, Prime Minister? Mosaic's recent tie-in smacks rather of the tide of near-hysteria from the BBC and TV critics when the new series was announced. Mosaic's solution was to repeat the "passive adventure" format it used for Adrian Mole and its not-very-well-received Archers (Ambridge, not Mary and Jeffrey) games.

The game tells the story, the player makes choices from a "multiple choice" style selection as to how the plot should develop, and the script evolves accordingly. Yes, Prime Minister the game certainly has something of the feel of the original, but it inevitably becomes repetitive. At least when you settle down to watch the television series, you know the storyline will be different each time! Television tie-ins may be enjoying a mini-vogue, but the standard of home computer graphics and game design have a long way to go before playing micro version becomes preferable to watching the show. to be gained by making the upgrade and for many, there won't be much, if any may stick with PCMS DOS. Those with 8D868 micros can always use GEM, and those with 80286 and 80386 models can use Windows 2 or Windows386 with extended memory bodges instead.

Widespread disinclination to adopt OS2 would mean harder times for IBM in the micro market. And remember, IBM is already suffering from the DEC attack in the mini market, and from booming Amdahl sales in mainframes. Worse, these are incidental to IBM's fundamental structural problem, which is that it makes most money from selling big computers, whereas users get the best value from buying small ones. In any event, most companies the City's IBM PCs and PC ATs, put in only a year ago, are ripe for replacement by more up-to-date machines. This is one reason why both Sun and Apollo are aiming to sell their 32-bit workstations in the financial sector.

"A struggle for speed and competitive edge is creating a mips war," says Maurice Thompson, Sun Microsystems' City of London sales manager, who recently took chargej of the company's new office in the city. At the moment there are only a few hundred workstations in financial applications, says Apollo's chief executive, Tom Vanderslice: "Every investment house has a few workstations in the back room, working on war games." But he believes the market for 32-bit workstations in financial applications will grow at much more than 100 per cent per year, from its present level of around 10 million. This compares with a growth of 30 to 50 per cent in the overall workstation market. Does this mean that last year's Big Bang systems were based on the wrong hardware? "At the beginning of the Big Bang, we didn't have the refer on computer game safe and appealing area for publishers to venture into. Indeed, there has been a good sprinkling of games based on television programmes over the past few years, though with the television producers tying themselves up just as much with other media, there is frequently confusion over what the micro game is trying to portray.

The Star Trek game, for instance, is allegedly based on the feature film, Star Trek IV, not the television series, the books or the pop record. Using television programmes as a basis for computer games is currently being taken rather seriously. Vet justifying the games isn't so easy. A program based on a comic strip character or toy can add another dimension to a young player's fantasy of being Judge Dredd, or controlling Transformers, but you can get your fix of a television programme every time the show is broadcast. Worse, in television programmes, the personalities of characterspresenters are just as important as the plot, and computer games have never been very strong at portraying personality.

You have to go way way back to Automata's PiMan or Mikrogen's Wally Week to find any at all. Doroark is one. company placing a considerable number of bets on the television tie-in with its TV Games label. It has also bought up the rights to the now defunct Macsen range of games, which included Blockbusters. (It didn't buy the best-forgotten EastEnders.) Blockbusters has been despatched to programming team ODE for a complete rewrite, which is no bad thing.

ODE knows a thing or two about presenting quizzes on computers, having programmed highly successful micro versions of Trivial Pursuit The new game features all the elements which characterise the television show the hexagonal screen versions of television programmes DID tawe a (B (p0ease9 Utolb I 0HOUK ILm. HT IQI BARCLAYS I from which to choose questions, the Gold Run but of course not the incessantly genial Bob Holness. Domark's Mark Strachan says TV Games's list includes Countdown, Bullseye and Treasure Hunt, and it intends to concentrate for the moment on quiz shows. He cites Every Second Counts as another the company has lined up for the future. But television quiz shows are heavily influenced by the personalities who compere them (otherwise they're virtually indistinguishable from one anBther).

It's the fact that Every Second Counts is the one with Paul Daniels, Play Your Cards Right is Bruce Forsyth, 3-2-1 has Dusty Bin etc that makes hem popular. And of these, Dusty Bin is probably the only one who could be realistically portrayed on a home computer. Strachan says that this is certainly the hard part of computerising quiz shows and. that Domark's TV Games range will work very hard to create the feel and atmosphere of the original. Indeed, many tie-ins have already lived or died on their "feel and Ghostbusters had it, on the strength of its soundtrack.

LICENSING deals have been big business in the computer games market for several years now turns, cartoon charac ters, children's toys, you name it, they ve all starred in games based closely, loosely or, some times, barely recognisably on the original. Buying up product or charac ter rights makes things a lot easier for the software publish er. Along with the licence comes a ready made scenario which, with a bit of adapting to recognised computer game genres, provides an instant storyboard. No need for those "revolutionary new concepts" so beloved of PR executives the big name licence does all the hype for you. Obviouslv the nonulantv ot the original licence is a valu able sales aid.

Ghostbusters the monster movie became Ghostbusters the monster computer program, in spite of its intrin sic failings as a game. Big Trouble in Little China, the film flop well, whatever did happen to the computer game? One lippnQino nrao vuhora the risk is largely taken out of the neea 10 predict tne original's nonularitv is that nf tolouicinn tie-ins. Reliable ratings figures, lung-ierm popularity, a weu-established children's genre it would seem a particularly 100s OF JOBS FOR HI-TECH GRADUATES. If you are a final year student, a graduate, or a PhD from a technology, science, applied science, engineering, computing, or mathematics discipline, visit the Technology Graduate Recruitment Fair on 8-9 January at Novotel, Hammersmith, London. At the Fair you will meet 30 of the country's leading employers and have the opportunity to hold face-to-face discussions about the career opportunities they are offering.

The Fair also incorporates a Video Theatre showing a continuous programme of videos describing employer organisations and career opportunities. Opening hours: 1030-1830 Friday 8 January; 1000-1700 Saturday 9 January Location: Novotel, 1 Shortlands, Hammersmith, London W8 (next to the Hammersmith flyover, 2 minutes walk from Hammersmith tube station). Sponsored by THCHNOIOGV GRADUATE Organised by INTRO UK, telephone 0491 681010. TechMofogif 6mdmPe 84 JANUARY 1988 Novotel, Hammersmith, London.