Apple: Making Information Mobile 12-1993

Since they first came onto the business scene more than a decade ago, personal computers have brought tremendous changes in how we work with and even how we think about information. And coupled with today's communications technologies, they've brought a world of information resources to our desktops.

But there are lots of people who don't just work behind a desk. We go where the work takes us. To be really productive, we need to take our information with us wherever we go. Our computers have evolved to travel with us, and so have the technologies for communication. And that evolution is continuing. Networks, wireless communications— it's very difficult to keep up with all the new advances, much less take full advantage of them. In this video, we're going to look at how Apple Computer is helping to take on one of today's central business challenges: making information mobile.

I started out flying from San Francisco to Mexico City.

I go to Chicago, East Coast.

Southern California, all over the place. My schedule last week, as I went from New York to London to Dubai to Abu Dhabi to Dubai to London to San Francisco.

In a typical day, I'll drive anywhere from 50 to 100 miles and try to make 3 to 5 sales calls a day. If I miss something or for some reason I have to head back down to the office, that'll kill half a day for me, and that's, that's That's 2 sales calls. So the Mac and the PowerBook allows me to stay in front of the customer and out of the office.

During this program, we're going to take a look at many ways of moving information where you want it, when you want it, from exchanging floppy disks to wireless networking. This is Richard Faulkner, and I'm Shirley Gillum. My PowerBook allows me to bring my software tools with me wherever I go. But suppose that while we're out here on this construction site, we need to get to information on a computer back in our office. There's no computer networking here. There's not even a telephone. What we do have is a special device called an Air Communicator. It merges modem and cellular phone technologies and optimizes them for wireless data communication. When I connect it to my PowerBook, I can get full remote access to our office data network Just as easily as I could make a voice call back to the office on a cellular phone, the computer can manage the connection for me. It just needs my security password. From the air communicator, the signal goes to a cellular transceiver site a few miles away. From there, it goes through the regular phone system to our office to a pool of modems attached to a Macintosh Workgroup server.

The air communicator and remote modem negotiate the best possible connection. In this case, Both modems are capable of using an advanced error correction protocol called MNP-10, which can help compensate for any interference in the cellular connection and increase its reliability at high speeds. Software called Apple Remote Access enables the PowerBook and the remote server to work together, connecting us with the full resources of our office network, all with the click of an icon.

Now I can take a report I wrote on my PowerBook this morning and put it directly onto the desktop of one of my colleagues at the office. Or I can fully synchronize my contact, calendar, and project files between my PowerBook and my desktop so that both machines reflect the most current updates from either end. I don't usually do that over the cellular phone because of the cost, but my point is that my remote access connection allows me to do anything I could do if I were sitting at my desk.

These icons represent servers on our office network, an Apple Workgroup server and a Novell server. And I can do more than use file services. Here's a graphical front end for a relational database that resides on an IBM AS/400 system on the network. I can make queries onto the system and get up-to-the-minute business data. I don't have to be tied to my desk or even to a telephone line when I want to use my business tools.

A cellular data link is just one of the technologies that are available to you. We'll take a look at other wireless technologies later in the program. Right now, let's take a step back and talk about some fundamentals. Suppose we were at a client's location and just wanted to exchange a few files. The most basic way is to put them on a floppy disk and hand them over. It doesn't have to be a Macintosh disk. A PowerBook can read and write DOS and Windows disks just as well. Richard, would you bring me a disk from the Compaq machine? The PowerBook recognizes the DOS file structures on the disk and displays them with the Macintosh conventions of icons and folders.

Thanks.

For example—

Here are some WordPerfect files and Lotus 1-2-3 worksheets. The Macintosh versions of these programs can read and write the file formats used by the DOS and Windows versions, so it's very easy to work on these documents in either environment and move the results back and forth.

Now, if you don't have both Windows and Macintosh versions of your programs, translation software can often convert your document to the right formats for the program. programs you do have. For example, using MacLink Plus, this Windows WordPerfect document can be translated into a Macintosh Microsoft Word document, and the translation retains the original formats including text styling, tables, footnotes, and so on.

And if you have a need for a specific DOS application program, you can actually run DOS within the Macintosh environment with software called SoftPC from Insignia Solutions.

Apple has put together a package called the PowerBook DOS Companion, designed for people who have a DOS or Windows computer on their desktop but want a PowerBook in their briefcase. It includes translation software, a cable and drivers to let you print to non-Apple printers, an adapter to let you connect IBM-style VGA and SVGA displays, and a cable That allows you to connect PowerBooks directly to DOS and Windows machines like this Compaq 386.

Now we can transfer files between the hard disks of these machines. With these tools, a PowerBook is very much at home in any DOS or Windows environment. In fact, systems administrators who are used to configuring DOS-based machines to communicate with each other are often very surprised at how easy it is to connect with a PowerBook. We just looked at connecting individual machines to each other. Now let's look at how mobile users can connect to the resources of a local area network, like the one here at Kinko's. Service bureaus are constantly dealing with mobile information. Dozens of customers each day bring in files on disks, or send them in by modem, or quite often bring them in on PowerBooks. In fact, some Kinko stores rent PowerBooks to customers who need them. It's very easy for me to connect my PowerBook to this local area network. I can transfer files to their file server or use their printers directly. PowerBooks share the networking simplicity and flexibility that's a core advantage of Macintosh. Many DOS and Windows networking environments require extensive software and hardware configuration by a skilled systems administrator before machines can be connected to network resources. A lot of setting DIP switches, checking jumpers, installing software modules, and specifying parameters. In contrast, the Macintosh networking protocols, called AppleTalk, are built into the Macintosh operating system, and AppleTalk is self-configuring and it's dynamic. That means that any Macintosh can be connected to the network at virtually any point, as we just did, and the network will immediately recognize it. You can add and subtract machines freely without having to reconfigure either the machines or the network. And a newly connected Macintosh will automatically find the resources that are available to it, like these printers and typesetters. In addition to being included on every Macintosh, AppleTalk protocols are supported in virtually every network environment, from Novell to Unix to DEC to IBM. AppleTalk is ideal for the kind of impromptu ad hoc network connections that characterize mobile computing. That's especially true when you add the dimension of remote network access— dial-in connections over telephone lines.

Here's my home office. I have an internal modem inside my PowerBook, so if I want to connect to resources back at our downtown office, all I need to do is hook up this cord to the telephone line. This is the same icon we used earlier to connect through the cellular phone. Now I'm going to use it through the regular telephone line. The PowerBook has the same communication software we used before, Apple Remote Access, or ARA.

This is our downtown office, and here's the modem that's handling his call. This Apple Workgroup Server 80 is acting as a multi-port remote access server. Right now, it's set up with 4 modems and phone lines. It can handle up to 16. Each remote access session connects a remote user to the network as a full independent node. This is quite different from the remote solutions offered by some other companies, which are based on remote control, the ability to operate a computer from a remote keyboard and monitor. With remote control, you take on a kind of remote presence at the office. See the information there and manipulate it, but the information stays in the office. If you want to bring information across to your remote notebook so you can take it with you, or move information from your remote location back to your office, it requires a separate and often complicated procedure. And remote control requires one host computer for each remote user. In contrast, you can group up to 16 modems around each multi-port ARA server.

With Apple Remote Access, I can really use the full resources of the network interactively as if I were locally attached. Interactive exchanges between computers are often described in terms of client-server relationships. In a client-server environment, a PowerBook is an ideal mobile client. We already looked at how the PowerBook can serve as the front end to a remote database server. Here are the file servers in our office. Our Novell server and our AppleShare file server, which is running on the same machine as our remote access server. I can also work peer-to-peer with the desktop Macintosh computers on the network. In the client-server model, most people think of their desktop system as the client to the network services. But when you're a remote user, you can also use your desktop system back in the office as a server. You can get access to your group calendar system, or people can leave messages or documents for you. A software tool called File Assistant can synchronize files between your PowerBook and your office desktop to make sure that both systems have the most up-to-date versions of important documents. And with software called AppleSearch, it's even possible to use a desktop machine as an agent to gather information for you while you're on the road, which you can then retrieve when you dial in. A PowerBook can extend client-server relationships to new dimensions.

What Apple does is give you all of these capabilities without overwhelming you with technical complexity. A good example of that is the Chooser. the small window you've seen us using to choose resources we want to work with on the network. It's simple, easy to use, and perhaps most important, it's consistent. You use the same point-and-click techniques to get to anything from printers to file servers to network gateways to mail centers. In the Chooser, it doesn't matter how the connection is made, whether it's local or remote, by Ethernet or LocalTalk or Token Ring. You point and click, and the Macintosh operating system handles the details of configuration and network connections. And once you have access to something, for example, this document on a Novell file server, if you think you might want it again, you can create a special icon for it called an alias. The alias stores all of the information needed to make the connection: the name of the server, the full network pathway, even the telephone number of the remote access modem. With aliases, I never have to set up a connection manually more than once. If I'm at the airport, a simple double-click gets me not just back to the office, but back to that specific document. Here's another popular location for PowerBook users, a hotel room. So far we've focused on getting access to information resources, moving data files and documents between computer systems. Another absolutely critical side to mobile work is sending and receiving messages. Communication between people. For many businesses, a vital communication channel is fax.

An internal fax modem lets this PowerBook treat fax machines just like remote printers connected over a telephone line. While I'm here in the hotel room, I can print documents like the— this project proposal directly to a client's fax machine. Or if I just need a quick paper copy and don't have a printer with me, I can fax one to myself at the hotel's fax center.

PowerBooks can also receive incoming faxes. Anywhere there's a phone line, someone can send me a fax, and I can view it directly on screen.

Another increasingly important way to send messages is by electronic mail. A PowerBook gives you direct access to your network mail. I'll save these messages to the PowerBook's hard disk so I can read them later. Our office mail system is only open to people on our network. For communicating outside your company, there are commercial services that anyone can subscribe to. A PowerBook with a modem is an excellent way to get to online services, which have local phone numbers all over the country. Here, for example, is America Online through their number in Denver, Colorado.

This is the Denver branch.

Now I can send a message that can be retrieved from access points throughout the world, and I'm not just restricted to America Online subscribers. The commercial services have gateways that let them communicate with each other. I'll send a message to my account on CompuServe. And here it is, accessed through CompuServe's local access point in Boston. Now I'll send it to yet another service, AppleLink. And here it is on AppleLink through our cellular phone connection in San Jose, California. AppleLink is one part of the extensive family of Apple online services.

Many of the communication gateways pass through the global network called the internet, which some people point to as the precursor to the visionary electronic data highways. We could even dial up the internet directly. Browse through the catalog computer at the Library of Congress, log on to a database in Paris, or exchange messages with a client in Rio de Janeiro. The future is arriving a lot faster than many people realize.

But the trick is knowing which parts of the future really are here today and which ones are economically worthwhile for you, which ones will actually enhance the way you do business. Next, we're going to sort out some of the emerging technologies with an emphasis on wireless communications. We'll start with analog cellular telephones. The kind of high-speed connection we're showing here has only very recently become possible over the standard analog cellular phone system. Earlier, we used a specialized air communicator. This time, we've connected through a standard cellular phone and an internal modem in the PowerBook. This adapter called Accel from Applied Engineering allows the modem to control the cell phone. Once again, the modems on both ends of the connection are using MNP-10 error correction. A mobile cellular connection is not going to be as trouble-free as a dial-up landline, but now if you can get a decent voice connection, you can get a reliable data connection. There are other wireless technologies appropriate to other kinds of applications. such as one-way messaging. And now we'd like to show you part of a conversation between Kevin Flynn of Apple Computer and Gary Oliverio of Motorola. Kevin and Gary are discussing the pros and cons of recent advances in wireless technology.

So Gary, could you talk about using the cellular system for, for data communications?

Well, as you know, cellular is used predominantly for voice traffic. Cellular users can go just about anywhere in the country And have— and be in touch. Computer users want that same level of mobility, but there's a little bit of a difference. It's not quite like plugging into your wall jack and having the same kind of communication with your wireline modem. As your cell— as your cellular phone goes through traffic or goes through an area, there's a handoff that takes place. And during that handoff, there's a period of time when the line effectively goes dead and your channel is switched. In a voice conversation, you can't tell.

Right.

But in a computer circumstance, that will be perceived and there may be a corruption of some data. There's a new class of cellular modems, modems that are capable of hooking up to cellular phones, that take that into account and can weed their way through that obstacle.

So you can go from cell to cell?

That's right.

What about things I've read about, add-ons or enhancements to the cellular system for packet data?

Actually, there's a new enhancement that's just being rolled out in a few markets right now called CDPD, Cellular Digital Packet Data. And what it's intended to do is take advantage of periods of time in the cellular network at the conclusion of a call, for example. There's a period of time when a particular frequency is not going to be used. CDPD is aware of all of the network loading and takes advantage of a particular frequency and bursts a packet of data over that over that time slot, over that channel, and it can recombine them at the modem end and pull your data in, in a very transparent way to the user.

What about other packet-switched networks available today?

There are 2 packet data networks in existence today. One is RAM, the other is ARTIS, and they're serving a great number of uses from commercial to more, more horizontal market uses. If, for example, you've ever turned in an Avis rental car, if you've ever seen that rapid return service where they have the wireless receipt generation there at the— in the parking lot, that's actually using the ARTIS network.

Now all this is 2-way communications where I'm sending data back and forth, pulling up things from a database, or sending and receiving electronic mail. What about one-way?

One-way data, when we think about that, it brings to mind paging. Paging is a prolific type of device. There are close to 20 million Americans today that use pagers. However, right now they're using primarily paging to receive 10 digits at a time. There's a new class of devices that have been out for just a couple of years now called alphanumeric pagers, which receive full text messages. And we're taking that to the next step as we see this convergence of computing and communications, where computer users can use a device such as this, where it can serve as your in-basket, where your email or any other kind of information that's available to you can be broadcast over the air to you anytime, anywhere. It doesn't have to be connected to your machine to be receiving your mail at any time, and when it's convenient for you, you can plug in and have your information. There's also a variety of other capabilities built into this that paging serves in a much more convenient way than a lot of other networks. By definition, it's a one-to-many topology so that a broadcast of a particular message can be received just as easily by one individual as it can be received by hundreds of thousands of individuals.

So it's one person at a— back at headquarters can send an email message to hundreds or dozens or thousands of people.

Exactly.

At the same time.

Exactly.

Where do you see the future of these technologies going?

Well, actually, we see a proliferation of different services in different tiers, even in the In the one-way area, we see a couple of different capabilities, whether it be email or information service. In the two-way area, whether it's session-oriented two-way database queries or a variety of independent of the individual transactions taking place just with a computer and the infrastructure.

Just as communications technologies are evolving, so are information technologies, and they're converging with each other. This year, a new class of device was introduced, the personal digital assistant, PDA for short. This Newton MessagePad, for example, combines a high-powered RISC processor, new ways of helping you work with information called Newton Intelligence, and very extensive communication capabilities. The Communications Newton MessagePad is a great example of how information and communication abilities, including fax, electronic mail, wireless data, even an infrared transceiver. And it puts that combination in a package that doesn't just fit in your briefcase, it fits in your coat pocket. A few moments ago, we showed you one-way messaging services that work with PowerBooks. Here's a message receiver that plugs into the MessagePad. And here are the messages we received while we've been out here on the street. Newton messaging service is just another part of Apple online services.

PDAs can exchange information with desktop systems and networks. Calendars and contact lists and reference documents can be synchronized with your office. Like a PowerBook, a Newton can become a mobile client to your desktop computer and the services on your office network, an extension to the information systems of your business. In fact, a Newton can act as an extension of a PowerBook, a tool you can use to gather information unobtrusively and keep at hand for reference all the time, and new ways of working that can really make a difference in the way you handle the constant stream of business information. This is a new way to capture it and carry it and communicate it.

The MessagePad is the first in a family of Newton products that are coming from Apple and other companies. There will be Newtons of other sizes and shapes and Newton technology embedded in many kinds of products. And in the few months since Newton technology was introduced, leading information and communications companies have announced their support of Newton technology, including Ameritech, ARM, BellSouth, Matsushita Electronics, Motorola, Sharp, Siemens-Rohm, US West, British Telecom, Deutsche Telekom. The list grows all the time.

Some very large companies are finding a place for message pads in their information system strategy, including companies like Coca-Cola, American Express, and Monsanto. You'll see PDAs in hospitals, offices, and schools. You'll also see them on delivery trucks, in factories, and on farms. People are just beginning to discover what these devices can do, how valuable this kind of mobile information resource can be. In the course of this program, we've looked at the wide range of ways you can use technology to communicate, to make information mobile, all the way from carrying a floppy disk across the office, what some people call sneakernet, to wireless messaging dispatched by satellite.

The notebook computers, the PDAs, the networks and modems and data links are all tools that can enable your business to make the most of the information that flows around us all the time. Information you need, information you want others to have, whether you're in the office, at your home, or on the road. Information that's mobile, anytime, anywhere.

What's happening now is this communicator that will be mobile is going to communicate with images, audio, and text the way we've always communicated. So finally, after 30 years, we're now getting computer and communications technology to the point where it works for us the way we've always worked.

Getting timely information to the sales force is, it's absolutely critical. It is the competitive edge. It is the differentiation between you and the next salesman that walks in the office. If you have that timely information and that timely response to the customer, he remembers that.

And to the degree to which which we are going to get more productivity out of our people, it's through tools like this.