Having implemented the 68020-based Macintosh II around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s NuBus, Apple Computer Inc is in a good position to pick up all the add-ons that have been developed for the fast bus. Highest profile of these is the microprocessor implementation of the Explorer Lisp processor developed by Texas Instruments, so it comes as no surprise that Apple is negotiating with Texas to offer the chip as a co processor for the Mac II. According to Computer Systems News, agreement is likely by the end of the first quarter 1988. Apple declined comment while Texas said only that it is negotiating co processor deals with a large number of business computer manufacturers, although an insider at the company confirmed talks with Apple. Inference Corp, Los Angeles, also said that it was considering doing an implementation of its ART Automated Reasoning Tool for the Mac – and the 68020 processor on its own is said to be insufficiently powerful on its own to run ART. The Apple Mac can be tightly integrated into an Apollo Domain Unix network following agreement between Apollo Computer Inc and Information Presentation Technologies Inc: the two will market uShare, which implements the Apple Filing Protocols in a Unix workstation environment, enabling file and resource-sharing.
