September 25, 1988

SOFTER UNISOFT? Big UNIX Guy Donal O’Shea,president and chief operating officer of UniSoft Corp. in Emeryville, reportedly is leaving to operations VP at the Open Software Foundation. OSF, since its inception a few months back, has been the beast rattling its cage in the face of UNIX keeper AT&T and sidekick Sun Microsystems, trying to force them to keep access open to the industry standard operating system.

SPEAKING OF OSF: Looks as if Japanese giant Hitachi will soon apply for status as the ninth sponsor of OSF. “Nothing’s been announced just yet, but discussions are under way,” an OSF spokeswoman confirmed.

Sponsors pay a lot to be listed up there with IBM, Digital Equipment Corp. and Hewlett-Packard, three biggies who first sponsored the open-access movement as part of the now-legendary Hamilton Group in Palo Alto. Hitachi will join ranks with sponsors Apollo Computer, Groupe Bull of France, Nixdorf, Siemens and Philips.

BEN DOVER: I wonder why Apple Computer boosted its entire product line’s prices so much. Could it have anything to do with the fact that it’s now stacked up some $204 million in back orders, and has what you might call a captive audience?

I know this particular number — $204 million — because an Apple executive was talking where he shouldn’t have been, and was overheard.

Claris, among others, is apoplectic about Apple’s price increases. They’re way bigger than anyone else who’s been hit by the memory crunch (including Compaq, Dell Computer and AST Research). Apple’s software spinoff purportedly just paid $5 million for AppleWorks GS. Count that acquisition devalued in a big way because schools aren’t likely to be able to pay 15 percent more for the already overpriced IIGS.

THE NOSE KNOWS: Strange mutterings were heard Monday at the MAc IIx announcement. One question: What happens when they enhance the Mac SE? Will they call it Mac SEx? (I didn’t make this up.)

I also heard that some shady deal makers are putting new covers on old, slow 256Kbit chips. Apple’s got a secure warehouse with guards. Among other things, people use electron microscopes to scan chips to make sure they’re not in disguise.

Two separate sources at the announcement said they believe Intel is the force behind EISA (the Extended Industry Standard Architecture unleashed on IBM by clone makers). Intel, of course, would have lots to gain by keeping disenfranchised IBM PC users from moving on to Apple or any other-than-Intel architecture. It’s widely believed that clone makers are now larger Intel customers than IBM itself.

Even more fascinating were the whispers that cloners are approaching Intel’s arch-rival, Motorola, about the possibility of emulating MS-DOS and/or Intel’s PC processors inside its 88000 RISC chip. That kind of possibility has fascinated RISC-watchers for years, but Motorola representatives wouldn’t comment.

SPEAKING OF THE BIG MO: My Austin contacts tell me Cousin Fred’s ranch will be hoppin’ this weekend. It’s the fourth annual Dilley Dove Bust for those wild Texans at Motorola. A bunch of ‘em get together every year, head to Dilley and go shootin’. Now don’t get all upset, says one of them, doves have really good eyesight so it’s not like you can just sneak up behind them or anything.

Some of Motorola’s good ol’ clients will be there, too. When day is done, they throw all the doves in a pile, freeze ‘em and save ‘em for a new kind of SuperBowl Sunday hors d’oeuvres called Dove McNuggets.

IS BUNNELL LEAVING? Maverick magazine man David Bunnell, who pioneered many of the personal computing magazines on the market today (and one that is no longer), may be leaving PCW Communications, the company he founded in November 1982. Bunnell declined an interview on the subject — “I don’t have any comment on anything right now,” he says — but I hear his departure is imminent.

It’s said that Bunnell is parting ways not only with PCW, where he’s now chairman, but also with parent company International Data Group. Bunnell was founding editor of PC World, Macworld, Publish! and Macintosh Today (shut down in mid-July). He also sponsored newsletters by Tony Bove and Cheryl Rhodes (Inside Report), pioneers of the desktop publishing press, and Stewart Alsop, who publishes PC Letter under the PCW umbrella. Alsop, by the way, just hired Nanette Buckhout, John Sculley’s former executive secretary.