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From: evans@mhuxt.UUCP (Sukie Crandall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: cheap non PS and pseudo PS LWs. A LW-?
Message-ID: <1793@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Jun-87 06:59:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.1793
Posted: Wed Jun 24 06:59:07 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jun-87 00:39:38 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
Lines: 28
Keywords: Postscript, clone


Brian Diehm writes:
>Rumors continue unabated in the press about Apple bringing out a low-cost
LaserWriter without PostScript. Target price appears to be <$2000. It would
have a built-in QuickDraw RIP.
<
...<
I agree that a LW- without postscript would be a loose. One thing that may
happen which would put real pressure on Apple to not come out with something
totally braindamaged is the advent of Postscript clones. Apparently a half
dozen or so companies are frantically working on postscript clones to get in
on the PS market which is completely held by Adobe (with their $1000+ per
printer license!). The differences will be in the way bitmaps are handled
with some of the clone makers hinting that they can make their clones much faste
r than conventional PS. It will be interesting to watch. With IBM and others
endorsing the PS standard along with the advent of clones, we should see
add-on hardware kits for generic PC laserprinters, new laserprinters
bundled with the PS clones, and (the neatest rumor I've heard) "software"
solutions that would run the PS clone stuff on the Mac itself. They would be
slow, but if you didn't have much work to do a $1500 lp and a few hundred
buck piece of software may be the ticket (esp when Macs get multitasking!).

Any of the above will put pressure on Apple and Adobe. The high end of the
market won't be affected, but the rest of us with a < $2k threshold for a
laserprinter may actually see progress in the next year.

Steve Crandall
ihnp4!research!polya!evans