October 16, 1988

CIRCUS CIRCUS: The funniest thing about sitting through the Next introduction on Wednesday was hearing the ecstatic groans of audience members as their pet features were revealed. Louise Kohl, executive editor of MacUser, predicted, “This machine will replace sex.” Someone sitting close by said, “Not until it’s in color.” My less titillating forecast is that it’s going to be enroll-o-rama at the old universities. That’s right — sign up, line up at the bookstore, buy the Next machine, and drop out. Mark my words.

But can Steve Jobs sell it so cheap? Will Zachmann, who just quit IDG and formed his own market research firm (Canopus Research), said the Next price of $6,500 is a big N-O. “I have this crazy, abstract commitment to reality,” says Zachmann, “and I know that just the 8 megabytes of memory (standard on Next) today costs about $4,000. The idea that someone can do magic and have a quantum leap past everyone else is not the way the world works.”

Despite how anyone feels about the machine itself, there’s still something fascinating about Jobs and Next. Jobs licensed to IBM his entire NextStep software propulsion laboratory — all four components, including the application kit and the interface builder, which will be a scary bunch of software when it’s done and working well.

Jobs said Next will compete with IBM on hardware superiority. But it’s hard to argue with IBM’s sheer volume, and sources say that at Next’s pre-announcement dinner, IBM’s Bill Lowe said Next software would be adapted to run both on the Intel 80386 architecture and its own RISC PC.

That’s giving IBM an awful lot of built-in clout, and it certainly doesn’t appear to square with this Jobs quote from his Macintosh days: “Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry, the entire information age? Was George Orwell right?” Gosh, what kind of Kool-Aid did Jobs have to drink to convince himself to join the enemy?

IO, IO: In a precedented move, magazine maven David Bunnell revealed at the Next gathering that he and Next will work together to publish a campus newsletter for Next users. His new company is called Io Publishing, named for Jupiter’s moon, the most active moon in the solar system.

Bunnell mailed the first issues of Macworld magazine the day the Macintosh was announced, although he didn’t have a sample issue of the Next magazine to show at Wednesday’s hullabaloo. First issue is expected in January 1989.
WHO KNOWS: Word from near and far is that IBM is considering selling Rolm Corp. Speculation surrounding the deal is that manufacturing would be sold in its entirety to the purchaser, but that IBM would retain 50 percent of distribution. IBM/Rolm did not return calls by press time.

Although there’s been public mention that a field management meeting between IBM and Rolm was canceled “pending further announcement,” the president of U.S. subsidiary Ericsson Information Systems, Peter Thomas, laughs at the sell-out rumor and says he hasn’t heard anything about it. Ericsson and the West German firm Siemens were both mentioned as potential buyers.

“I kind of doubt that IBM would be doing that,” he says. “It hasn’t been an easy fit (between Rolm and IBM), but they work at it. And from what I know, they’ve literally merged Rolm into the IBM organization. It would be very hard to divest. I wouldn’t expect that it’s happening.”

THANKS, BOB: Paralegal Bob Bulmash, will spend Monday in Los Angeles talking to the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee about that modern-day plague, “telemarketing.” (The Assembly is considering telemarketing and yellow-pages legislation.)

Bulmash, a self-made expert who founded a Chicago company called Private Citizen Inc., believes the constitutional right to privacy should most certainly extend to phone lines, and is doing everything he can to keep telephone sellers out of our homes.

“How is that a salesman can walk into our house through a telephone, but the highest executive of the land can’t walk through our door without permission?” says Bulmash.

PCI tries to stop them. Although the Direct Marketing Association has a free telephone preference service that the marketeers must pay for, Bulmash’s company is the only private firm that polices phone solicitors. For $15 a year, PCI contacts every telephone solicitor it has on record — more than 450 to date — and informs them that they’ll have to pay you $100 every time they pester you.

Somehow this works. Bulmash says he won’t represent his customers in court or give advice, but he has personally taken telemarkeeters to court and won. During one case, he says, “the judge stood up and said, ÔLook, I was called two times last night during the football game. I’ve had it with you guys.’” He won legal costs and a small award.