Paul Stephens - IT Journalist and Editor

This article was published in PC Plus issue 124 (Feb 97, on sale 1st Jan). It's reproduced here for information purposes only.

This is the original copy which was sent to the magazine, not the subbed version which appeared on the page.

paul@paulspages.co.uk
www.paulspages.co.uk

'Old Paul's Almanac', Jan 97.

This piece ran in my one-page column slot in the front section of PC Plus. This was normally a serious industry-watching column, but I thought a little humour might brighten up the post-Christmas gloom. The readers seemed to like it, so I did 'Almanacs' at the start of 1998 and 1999 too.

Background to the piece
In early 1997, Microsoft was under fire for allegedly using undocumented Windows API calls in their applications, Windows 97 launch fever was beginning to build, and the company was starting to reinvent itself as the ultimate Internet company. Corel had recently bought the WordPerfect Office suite from Novell, and had padded out its first upgrade release with a raft of heavyweight Corel apps whose suitability for the general-purpose desktop market was questionable. Meanwhile Intel was confusing everyone with MMX and its complex pug-in chip ugrade strategy.

"I was so amused by your predictions in the Feburary issue of PC Plus that I nearly sprayed the occupants of the next table with coffee."
- John Elston, Melbourne, Australia.

[BEGINS]
A new year, and time for Old Paul’s predictions for the industry over the next 12 months. There’s a lot to get though, so I’ll get straight down to business.

1997 will see many exciting new announcements in the operating systems market, with, as always, an inverse relationship between the number of highly-respected, open-standards-evangelising vendors supporting a system and the likelihood of it ever seeing the light of day. Definitely blinking in the sunlight, on the other hand, will be the launch that really matters, Windows 97. This will be guaranteed to run on the hardware configuration you bought last year, but will be accompanied by a tranche of new applications which need the one you were hoping to put off buying until 2001 in order to run at half-decent speed. Leading these will be Office 97, released the previous day amid strong denials that Microsoft’s applications division knew anything about undocumented Win 97 API calls before reading about them in the Seattle Home PC Newsletter, to which one of its staff happens to subscribe.

Elsewhere on the OS scene, Microsoft’s other big release, ‘Cairo NT’, will be delayed while the company finishes doing a find-and-replace of ‘object-oriented filing system’ with ‘Internet-oriented filing system’ through eight million lines of source code and documentation, at the same time replacing ‘OLE’ with ‘ActiveX’ and ‘Email’ with ‘Enterprise-wide and Internet-oriented messaging system that’s just as good as Notes any day’. For the fourth year running, Apple will announce that it has, at last and after much consideration, decided to licence its Macintosh operating system to other hardware vendors, and please not to all rush at once. In an embarrassing blow, IBM will be forced to admit that the Sony Playstation not only has more users than OS/2 Warp, but more 32-bit business applications too, although Warp’s total is still more than the number of Java apps which do something other than make text display in rainbow colours and skip crazily around the screen.

The big hardware event will be the launch of 31 variants of Intel’s new Pentium MMX processor, including the low-cost (and low pronounceability ) MMXSX, which contains the new multimedia registers in special non-functional, disabled form. The MMX family will be plug-compatible with all existing PCs fitted with 227-pin green sockets or 229-pin mauve sockets, except for those with the revision 98 chipsets which were mandatory on green and mauve-socket motherboards. All other users will have to buy a new PC. RAM prices will fall by 95%, prompting direct vendors Dell and Gateway 2000 to increase the standard memory on their desktop systems from eight MB to 12. Delivery of system ROMs for the first new-generation PDAs will be delayed while Microsoft does a search-and-replace of ‘Microsoft at Work’ with ‘Internet-oriented Windows CE’ through seven million lines of source code and documentation.

It’ll be a big year for applications. Hitting back at Microsoft Office 97 will be Corel Office 98, so called because it contains 98 applications, including CorelCOOKPASTA!, CorelPIGHUSBANDRY! and Corel Nuclear Power Plant Decommissioning (Lite Edition). Denying that the company lacks focus, Corel CEO Michael Cowpland will also announce Corel Handy Notepad Suite, a lightweight text-processing package with bonus CAD, Pipe Stress Analysis and Fractal Generation applications. Microsoft, meanwhile, will release Word GPS Assistant (downloadable free from www.microsoft.com), which uses signals from 14 orbiting U.S. military satellites to tell you exactly where you are in its jumbo word processor’s menu structure. The launch of SmartSuite 97 will be delayed while Lotus does a find-and-convert-back of ‘Web Server’ to ‘Notes Server’ through 18 million lines of source code.

There’ll be major developments on the database front too, with Borland fighting to regain the initiative. In April it will announce Visual dBase 98, a powerful, Internet-ready database with interactive developer’s desktop and semi-OOP, Java-enhanceable programming language. This will be followed in June by Visual Paradox 98, a powerful, Internet-ready database with interactive end-user’s desktop and semi-OOP, Java-enhanceable programming language. Announcing Paradox 98’s inclusion in Handy Notepad Suite II, Corel CEO Michael Cowpland will say ‘I’ve never agreed with the idea that Borland lacks focus, and we’ll be sticking with Paradox until someone comes up with a ray-trace rendering package that really meets our customers’ needs’.

Internet fever will continue to grip the world, with the Young Turks of cyber-space continuing to give the old-stagers a hard time. CompuServe will announce delays in its plans to convert its entire content to Web format using Microsoft’s development tools, while the developers of the new-look MSN, the only true Internet-oriented, Web-based combined online service/ISP apart from the other ones, will strongly deny that they knew anything about undocumented Microsoft Server Extensions until they read about them at Wild Willy’s Undocumented Microsoft Server Extensions Speakeasy (http://wildwilly.com/fullmanual.htm), which one of their staff happened to stumble upon one evening while looking for the result of the Seattle Mariners game.

Still in ISP territory, BT will respond to the UK cable companies’ new £20 a month, high-speed, no call-charge Net access deals by reducing its quarterly ISDN rental to £199, with an extra 1% discount to users spending more than £400 on calls (subject to £24 annual subscription, savings will appear on the first bill after you complain that they haven’t). By autumn, technical problems with CompuServe’s switch to alphabetic user names will finally have been solved, according to CIS spokesman Marvin T 707747. Following crisis talks with the Football Association, it will be confirmed that both Scunthorpe and Arsenal will, after all, be allowed to play in the inaugural AOL Cup.

Among the things we won’t be seeing in 1997 will be: thin clients for all, end-usable databases (apart from Approach, which we’ve already seen), really integrated office suites, enough bandwidth to make Java relevant, a Windows that doesn’t thrash your hard disk to death, sensible pricing from Macromedia, lots of CD-ROMs as good as Encarta, a universally agreed standard for a high-volume, low-cost floppy disk replacement and a commitment from Microsoft never again to confuse everyone by suddenly starting to refer to an old technology by a new name. Still, you can’t have everything, and it should still be an exciting year.

[ENDS]