If You Must Know . . . by Denise Caruso c. 1990 Media Letter ACQUISITIVE IN REDMOND A great rumor in the world of multimedia is that Microsoft Corp., puffed with pride and feeling gregarious since its recent Windows 3.0 upgrade, is trying to buy MacroMind, the high-profile multimedia animation software firm in San Francisco. Company founder and chairman Marc Canter, who recently launched MacroMind out of the Mac-only arena with a Windows player for MacroMind Director, didn't deny the rumor, but wouldn't comment on except to say that Microsoft probably didn't want to pay what the company was worth. CURIOSITY SEEKERS A lot of curious people are wondering what the heck happened to Bob Brannon, general manager of DVI (Digital Video Interactive) development at Intel's New Jersey-based Princeton Operation. Brannon, certainly considered one of the linchpins in IBM's aggressive multimedia push, very suddenly disappeared from his job at Intel in early June. One rumor about his rapid departure was that Brannon's wife wanted to move back to California. But my sources claim the move was not personal: Brannon had promised to be able to deliver to IBM, by year end, a DVI board for end-users that could retail for approximately $1,000. It became clear over the past few months that it couldn't be done in time. Disappointed that he couldn't pull it off, Brannon simply split. At press time, Brannon had not yet resurfaced. The catalyst for Brannon's departure, it's said, was threefold -- timing, technical problems and a disagreement over specifications. IBM's bottom line for the $1,000 board that Brannon promised was supposed to be a paltry $250. It just couldn't be done by the December 1990 deadline. Word is that the future engineering of DVI will no longer be handled in Princeton, but will be moved back to Intel's Santa Clara headquarters. Why doesn't Intel think it needs Princeton's technical expertise anymore? Maybe it's because Intel is said to be spending between $7.5 million and $10 million per month on DVI development, while one competitor, C-Cube, which has a compression algorithm chip set that competes with DVI, spent $10 million total on development. Art Kaiman, head of the original RCA Corp. team who started the whole DVI ball rolling (and who kept his team together through three employers -- RCA, General Electric and Intel) is now acting GM of the DVI group. But I wonder what will happen to Kaiman if Intel does what it's expected to do -- which is to replace him with a sales guy, supposedly from the federal marketing group. One theory being bandied about for the shift is that hardware and software vendors Intel's been wooing with DVI are now getting their heads turned by competitors like C-Cube. "Intel feel they have to make the marketing effort to convince U.S. vendors to stick with DVI," says one source close to the company. "They're getting scared, so they want marketing people running the joint." BETTER LATE THAN NEVER Everyone who was anyone in the multimedia producer and vendor communities got a chance to thoroughly beat up Apple Computer during a top-secret meeting after the CD-ROM Expo in late February sponsored by the Cupertino-based company. Armed guards were at every door while those inside, including Apple, disclosed long-range goals and business plans for advanced electronic publishing in new media. "It was like wrestling with an ostrich," said one participant. "First we kicked them in the [hindquarters], then we bashed them in the neck. On the third day their head came out of the hole and we poked them in the eye. And I still don't know if we woke them up." Though Apple is still perceived as the leader in multimedia, many developers are worried that IBM has seized the high ground in multimedia data transmission -- considered by many to be the hottest application area -- with products like DVI which are already suited toward such applications as teleconferencing. And Apple's emphasis on the high-end Macintoshes, some say, is leaving the door wide open for companies like IBM to provide a cheap multimedia computer to the mass market. In fact, some fear that Macintosh will become IBM's multimedia development platform of choice -- a scenario that's ludicrous enough to become reality. "The further IBM goes into user interface, the more they look like the old Apple," says one long-time industry watcher. "The more Apple goes into the high end stuff, the more they look like IBM." MAC KILLER Not nearly enough has been said about the HyperCard to ToolBook converter called "Convert It!," developed by the HyperMedia Group of Emeryville, CA, and distributed by Heizer Software. HyperMedia swears its conversion technique doesn't infringe on Apple's proprietary compression algorithms, of which there are many, but lets you convert any existing HyperCard stack into an Asymetrix ToolBook "book" that runs under Windows. If I were Apple, considering the vast number of HyperCard stacks in the world and the power that they've amassed for Apple in the education market, I'd say that "Convert It!," much more than Microsoft Windows itself, is the Mac-killer. MMM. . . THEM'S GOOD READIN' A new compendium of brain food is on the bookshelves. "Learning with Interactive Multimedia," edited by Sueann Ambron and Kristina Hooper and published by Microsoft Press of Redmond, WA, hit the streets in early June. Ambron, manager of Apple Computer's New Technology in Education Division, and Hooper, director of Apple's Multimedia Lab in San Francisco, put together this in-depth look at the impact of multimedia tools on the development of educational materials. The book was compiled from presentations by some of the best minds in interactive multimedia at an October 1988 conference on HyperCard and Education. A BIG NEW BUS VME Futurebus Extended Architecture, dubbed Futurebus+, is a new 64-bit bus structure that sounds like manna from heaven for multimedia hardware developers starved for bandwidth. Though it was developed as an upgrade to the 32-bit favorite, VMEbus, Futurebus+ already has its own IEEE standards committee and support from rival bus manufacturers such as the Multibus Manufacturer Group. The VME International Trade Association (VITA) in Phoenix, AZ, hopes that Futurebus+ will eventually displace other proprietary buses like Apple's NuBus, with data widths scalable up to a whopping 256 bits and bandwidths up to several gigabytes per second.