Apple Rippin
The 1996 crop of home computers should deliver the most interesting harvest in years. Of course, there will be the usual upgrades of faster and more powerful PCs. But I also see evidence of a contrary trend to specialized, much less expensive machines.
Prototype of Apple Computer's Pippin
One of the most intriguing is Apple Computer's Pippin, which should sell for less than $1,000. Although Pippin has many of the attributes of a computer, the company calls it a multimedia device because it lacks such essentials as a floppy drive and hard disk.
Apple designed Pippin for people who want to play back CDs and surf the Net, but don't need heavy-duty computing capabilities. At the heart of the unit lies a 66 megahertz PowerPC 603 processor, so it should be no slouch in performance.
Pippin boots off a quad-speed CD-ROM that handles standard audio CD, CD Plus and the Photo CD format, in addition to Pippin software. Sound quality is important so there will be stereo 16-bit CD quality audio inputs and outputs.
The device uses a cut-down version of the Macintosh operating system. All Pippin CD-ROM titles can be played on a standard Macintosh.
In some ways, Pippin seems like an updated version of the Commodore 64, the most popular home computer in the early 80's. For example, to keep it more affordable you can plug your TV set into Pippin. The device comes with both NTSC and S-Video outputs. Or you can plug in a standard VGA video monitor.
Pippin comes with 6 megabytes of combined system and video RAM and another 4 megabytes of ROM, enough for cruising the Net. You'll be able to buy memory expansion cards in up to 8 megabyte increments.
If Pippin seems rather bare-bones by today's standards, you'll be able to upgrade it using what Apple calls "PCI-like" expansion. Add-ons including a floppy drive, hard disk and graphics accelerator will be available in the future.
However, if you think you'll need all these features at the outset, you'd be better off buying a regular Macintosh. Based on what I've learned, buying these options piecemeal for Pippin will cost much more than buying them built-in to a Mac.
There's not a whole lot of profit manufacturing a computer that retails for under $1,000. Furthermore, Apple's latest financial statements, dripping with red ink, show that it's not the most efficient computer maker around.
Pippin will likely be a computer that Apple designs but does not sell. Apple has already licensed Pippin technology to Bandai Co. Ltd., the Japanese entertainment company behind the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Bandai will market and distribute the machine worldwide, while it will be manufactured by consumer electronics giant Mitsubishi.
Bandai will launch Pippin in Japan this spring and expects to make it available in North America later this year. Pippin could make computing more affordable to many budget-wise consumers.
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Compaq Presario Scanner
Compaq Computer plans to introduce a couple of interesting features in new Presario home computers due late next month. Some models will include a recordable CD-ROM drive. There's also an interesting keyboard with a built-in scanner.
The black and white scanner will accept pages up to 8.5 inches wide and scans at a resolution of 400 DPI (dots per inch). You slip in the page at the back of the keyboard and the scanner automatically feeds it through. The keyboard will include both graphics and OCR (optical character recognition) software. There's even an adjustable latch that lets you scan business cards.
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More powerful IBM Aptivas
IBM Canada has already started selling some of its 1996 Aptiva home PCs. New models feature faster Pentium processors operating at 150 and 166 megahertz and a 6x CD-ROM.
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