New Apple Products to Aid Macintosh Communications
Apple Computer Inc. on Monday announced communications products for its Macintosh that analysts said should help the company plug more of the machines into Fortune 1000 computer networks.
The new products make it easier for people to use Macintosh personal computers to get at information stored on equipment made by International Business Machines, Digital Equipment and others.
“The bottom line is that these are products that are going to be very attractive to large corporations,” said Walter Winnitzki, an analyst at Brown Bros. Harriman & Co.
Apple has to overcome a preference among some corporate computer managers for buying all their equipment, from mainframes to personal computers, from a single company, often IBM. It does that by trying to persuade the managers that Apple can plug into big IBM computers as easily as IBM itself does.
No Macintosh Clones
“This begins to put Apple into strategic planners’ eyes,” said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst for D. H. Brown Associates Inc.
Apple’s strong suit is the popularity of the Macintosh itself. The computer’s ease-of-use features are being imitated by IBM and others.
“They have lost a five-year lead, but they retain a two-year lead at least,” Eunice said.
Some big corporate customers are reluctant to rely on the Macintosh because Apple is the only company that makes it. In contrast, IBM’s original personal computer was widely copied, and IBM has been trying, with limited success, to encourage controlled cloning of its new Personal System-2 line.
But while Apple’s tight grip on the Macintosh is a hindrance in some respects, Apple sees it as an advantage, Donald Casey, the vice president of networking and communications, said in an interview.
Enhancements Announced
“We control the whole experience. We strongly believe the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” he said.
Apple announced enhancements in the AppleTalk networking system, which connects Apple computers to each other; bridges to other networks such as IBM’s Token Ring, Digital’s DecNet, TCP-IP and Open Systems Interconnect, and communications tools including CL-1, which allows Macintosh programs to get at data stored on other computers.
The products should appeal to users who want to stick with their familiar Macintosh commands and still get the power of a network of different kinds of computers, said Win Farrell, a computer consultant at Coopers & Lybrand.
“Time will tell whether the users are sufficiently impressed to adopt this,” he said.
