Apple Computer Inc accompanied launch of the Macintosh IIfx yesterday with release 2.0 of A/UX Unix, which adds the Macintosh desktop user interface and full support for Macintosh as well as Unix and X Window applications. The company also added three new display boards, the most powerful using Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Up to twice as fast as the 25MHz Mac IIci, the IIfx has a 40MHz 68882 maths co-processor, 32Kb static RAM cache and a new design called latched writes, which enables data to be read from the cache concurrently with previous results being written back to main memory; it adds dedicated input-output processors and a combined SCSI and direct memory access controller; it includes an expansion slot tied directly to the processor in addition to its six NuBus slots. All Macintosh II and IIx users can upgrade to the IIfx with a processor swap-out. The features added in A/UX are the Macintosh desktop, with the menu bars and icons; the capability to run any number of Unix, X Window System and Macintosh applications under A/UX 2.0 concurrently so that A/UX 2.0 combines the full capabilities and benefits of both Macintosh and Unix environments in one system. The Macintosh Display Cards 4.8, 8.24 and 8.24 GC make up a new family of display cards for modular Macs that increases resolution to photographic quality. The Display Card 4.8 supports a wide range of monitors and graphics capabilities; the 8.24 offers 24-bit colour for all modular Macintosh users; and the Display Card 8.24 GC adds the Am29000 RISC to increase the responsiveness of Macintosh applications, especially graphics-intensive ones, up to 30-fold. The new boards are self-configuring, work with all Macintosh monitors and use the Macintosh interface for all graphics applications. The IIfx computer with 4Mb and the SuperDrive floppy that reads Mac and MS-DOS disks is $8,970 – UKP5,610 here; it’s $9,870, UKP6,290, with 80Mb hard disk, $10,970, UKP6,970, with 160Mb and is available now in the US, late next month here. The 4.8 display card is $650, UKP460 in the summer; the 8.24 is $900, UKP610, now; the 8.24 GC is $2,000, UKP1,345, in the summer. Pricing for A/UX 2.0 will be announced when it arrives in June: it will be offered on CD-ROM, 800Kb floppies, 40Mb tape cartridge, or pre-installed. There is also a new Extended Keyboard II for the Mac SE, SE/30 and all Mac II models, which adds 15 pro grammable function keys and a template for labelling each function key acti on, plus a height adjustment feature; it costs $230 and it’s available now.
