A bit of fun

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

  Date: Fri, 16 Jul 93 00:05:59 EDT
  Subject: Moving Right Along...

  At a joint news conference yesterday, IBM, Apple, Borland, Wordperfect,
  Lotus, Sunsoft, Symantec, PKWare, OsoSoft, Infinite Technologies, Intel,
  Quarterdeck, Ben and Jerry's, and the American Society for the prevention of
  Cruelty to Programmers announced a new data access, communications, and 
  role-playing technology standard to be called ABM. (or "Anybody But
  Microsoft")

  The ABM Committee experts programs that make use of the new technology to
  become commercially available sometime in the fourth quarter-- although they
  refuse to speculate of which year.

  "The goal of the ABM technology" , says IBM President of the Month Frank B.
  Frankby, "is to make personal computer technology truly accessible to those
  using personal computers. ABM will prove to be the greatest leap forward in
  computer technology since the release of the PS/2."

  Borland Vice President in Charge of Objects and Rhythm Guitar Rob Robotty
  explained how the database component of ABM will work. "Our intention is to
  allow any front end in the world to talk with any back end, via a special
  gateway we're calling the 'middle'. The way it will work is really very
  simple : at the top you have the user interface objects, and at the bottom
  are the actual data objects.

  Objects in the middle, called middle objects, handle security, integrity, and
  affability. In between are the pipe objects that do the work of pipes. All
  this would be impossible, of course, without full object objectivity."

  According to Robotty, ABM users won't even have to know what computer the
  data is residing on. "An ABM compliant front end will be able to access data
  on its own hard disk, another user's hard disk, the network, the company
  mainframe, or any Air Force missile guidance system."

  Communications is another area where ABM is expected to change the computing
  experience. "The problem with communications software today, " says Apple
  Evangelist, Mahatma, and Ayatollah John Seed. "is that people who are
  designing communications systems aren't talking to one another. If you're on
  a AppleTalk network and want to share a file with someone on a Novell
  network, you have to go through a complex gateway maintained by someone whose
  salary you'd rather not pay. However, in future systems, where one person is
  hooked up to an ABM network, and the other to the same ABM network, that
  problem will simply not apply."

  ABM is also expected to encourage inter-application communication on the
  desktop and across desktops. An ABM-compliant spreadsheet, for instance, will
  be able to accept scores directly from any ABM-compliant game.  Users, in
  fact, will have no need to worry about which ABM-compliant application they
  are in, as they will all be identical in features and performance.

  The ABM user interface is one of the new standard's most exciting
  innovations. Lotus representative Tom Piperson predicted that " within ninety
  days, this totally revolutionary user interface will be on the drawing board.
  We may even have the design committee picked out by then." Piperson was
  particularly proud of Lotus' role in developing the user interface. " I feel
  confident that by the time ABM-compliant applications are ready for market,
  Lotus will completely own the standard's look and feel."

  The issue, of course, is how many ABM-compliant applications will appear, and
  when. Company representatives at the conference, however, were unanimous in
  their support for the new standard . "We'll ship ABM applications." one
  Quarterdeck rep. assured us, "shortly after every one else does."

  ABM technology was intended from the first to be cross-platform, although
  exactly which platforms it will cross remain to be seen. "We're not here to
  blindly throw our support behind Microsoft Windows," said Olaf O'hara,
  Wordperfect  VP in Charge of Other Things, "but we're not blindly throwing
  our support behind OS/2 or the Macintosh, either. Nor, for that matter, do we
  want to suggest that we're supporting Unix. We're not anti-Unix, mind you---
  we're really not anti-anyone.

  Well , maybe we're anti-Microsoft , but we don't have anything personal
  against Bill Gates. Not much, anyway. But we will definitely support Windows
  and Windows NT, as well as all the other platforms that we're not ready to
  commit to."

  The new Anybody But Microsoft technology promises to change the way 
  people use computers. By producing a level playing field that no one can rise
  above, it will allow hardware and software vendors to compete with one
  another solely on the quality of their marketing. But will it be successful ?
  " That depends on a number of factors," admits IBM's Frankby, "namely the
  quality of our work, the timeliness of the release , and the horizontal
  spread of the application base. It will also help tremendously." he admitted,
  " if we can get Microsoft behind us."