Silicon Graphics Inc., the maker of high-end computer graphics workstations for the scientific/engineering and entertainment communities, has taken a giant step in its march toward the low end with the recent introduction of its Indy computer.

Indy, a smaller sibling to SGI’s well-received Indigo, takes aim at the PC market, especially the “digital media” computers recently announced by Apple (see p. 15) — even to the extent of sending out a “Perspective on Apple Announcements” to the press the week before Apple unveiled the new AV computers.

MAKING PROGRESS

However, SGI has made phenomenal progress toward making its Unix-based workstations more accessible to mortals (i.e., non-programmers). First, the price tag is less than $5,000 (this doesn’t include a mass storage device, but does include the monitor), an impressive price for the sophistication of the technology upon which it is based — SGI’s MIPS R4000 RISC chip and a box packed with technology designed to aid the creation and manipulation of digital media.

Second, it has come up with a user interface, called Indigo Magic, which is still a bit more opaque than the Macintosh or Windows, but appears quite easy and fun to use in demonstrations (we haven’t actually used it ourselves yet), and is designed to be customized to each individual user’s preferences.

Video camera standard. Third, SGI is the only company shipping a video camera with the system (under heavy David Letterman influence, SGI has named it the IndyCam), codeveloped by Teleview Research of Palo Alto, CA. Indy can bring video into the system at a full 30 frames per second from any video source, not just from the IndyCam, but the camera in combination with Indy’s standard Media Mail application is likely to increase the creative use of video in business applications. Digital sound editing is also supported.

Indy can read/write Macintosh or PC disks or coexist on Novell and LocalTalk networks, and is Photo CD compatible. In addition, even though the system is much less powerful than SGI’s high-end computer graphics machines, a powerful suite of tools is immediately available to the Indy owner. It is compatible with SGI’s entire product line, including Onyx supercomputers and Challenge network servers. Thus it can take advantage of SGI’s formidable software libraries, which are used by some of the world’s greatest researchers and special-effects creators.

Not a PC, alas. Despite its lower cost, sophisticated media capabilities and friendlier interface, Indy is still aimed primarily at SGI’s traditional user base — i.e., computer-aided design firms, software developers, media authors and researchers. The new machine will doubtless push Macs and PCs out the door in these particular industries.

However, Apple and Microsoft have nothing to fear from SGI for broader markets, at least not in the computer market. (Digital TV settop boxes, of course, remain an open question.) Most noticeably, Indy is not shipped with a CD-ROM drive, which is becoming de rigueur in the home/office market. Beyond that, it remains tethered to that most befuddling of network systems, Ethernet, which has not been made easy to use. One of Macintosh’s best-loved and best-selling features (and one that the PC industry is increasingly trying to provide) is its “plug-and-playability,” a critical feature as the more “personal” personal computers move down the customer food chain to the technophobic.

Denise Caruso