If the Compact Disk Read Only Memory – the data storage variant of the familar music Compact Disk – is ever to find its feet as a serious and widely-used computing product, it is likely to be as a result of Apple Computer Inc’s offering of a drive that can play music as well as read data, plus its promotion of its potentially powerful HyperCard program, which facilitates creating mixed-media presentations for display on a computer. The question mark over CD-ROM is highlighted by the fact that as of last summer, only an estimated 100,000 CD-ROM drives had been sold since 1985. Apple chief executive John Sculley is sanguine, saying that It took more than 1,000 years for paper to be used by the Western world after it was invented by the Chinese. If you consider how long it took for paper to become popular, we’re not doing so bad. But one of the problems faced by CD-ROM is the imminent arrival on the scene of erasable optical drives: since these will equally well be able to read pre-recorded material, purchase of a read-only drive is less easy for users to justify, and many may well decide to wait until the direction and fiability of erasable drives become clear before taking the plunge.
CD-ROM prices Moreover, with CD-ROM prices still hovering around the $1,000 mark, the attractions even in the professional, let alone the mass, market are doubtful, and observers suggest that a price of nearer $300 will be needed to attract volume sales. The fact that the music industry agreed to limit the capacity of audio Compact Disks to about 70 minutes where it would have been as easy to set a standard that could contain an entire opera is an irritation to music lovers – but there’s no similar drawback to the computer version – one CD-ROM disk can store as much as 550Mb, which should be enough for most users and publishers of information. The Apple drive, which costs $1,200, can be used with the Apple IIe and IIGS as well as shared on a network connected to the AppleShare File Server. So what exactly is there available – in the US at least – for the drive? Newsbytes compiled a list last year. Aries Systems Inc in North Andover, Massachusetts, is offering the Medline database of citations to biomedical literature maintained by the US government and the National Library of Medicine, with references from over 3,000 medical journals. Bowker Electronic Publishing, New York, offers Books in Print Plus, which contains over 770,000 titles that can be accessed by any one of 17 categories, including author, title, subject, key word, language. It also offers Books in Print with Book Reviews Plus, the latter updated quarterly and costing $1,010 for a one-year subscription.
HyperCard As for HyperCard, Grolier Electronic Publishing in Danbury, Connecticut, has developed a HyperCard American history application for CD-ROM. The initial offering in The Americana Series covers the period from 1800 to 1850, which means it should just about get to the Pony Express – which operated for just 10 months before the telegraph rendered it redundant – wonder if Michael Caine knows that. It enables pupils to search through maps, historical documents, period illustrations, and songs that’s the idea: if the thing can play music, don’t be mean, include some – to explore American history. More prosaically, Grolier has The Electronic Encyclopedia, which crams 30,000 items – over 10m words – on one disk. It too makes some use of HyperCard facilities, including hypertext functions so that users can skip through articles quickly and return to where they started using a bookmark icon. Highlighted Data Inc in Washington, DC, has the Electronic Map Cabinet, a 600Mb database of geographical information for generating custom maps for the entire United States, with detail able to go down to city street level for near 300 of the biggest metropolitan areas. The disk costs $200, and the company has also brought out a CD-ROM version of the Merriam-Webster Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, which imaginatively adds to the printed version recorded pronunciations of all t
he words in the dictionary. So long as it retains those baffling symbols that are used to suggest in print how a word should be pronounced, perhaps we’ll learn how the symbols should sound. Once again, it comes in at $200. The spoken pronunciation certainly enhances the dictionary’s utility – but the difference in price between the familiar printed version and the electronic one is likely to occur to – and deter – many potential buyers.
Peoria Multi-Ad Services Inc, based in – where else? – Peoria, Illinois has compiled a library of pictures for graphic artists on compact disk with the dreadful name of Kwikee Inhouse Pal. Categories include Animal Kingdom, Around the House, Careers, Education, Food, Hearts & Flowers, Holidays, Leisure Time, Personal Style, Religion, Sports, and Vacation. The pictures can be used in any program that can handle EPSF or PICT format graphics – but the pictures aren’t cheap: each category is $150. Optical Media International Inc in Los Gatos, California offers two compact disks of sound effects: Volume I of the Sound Designer Universe series has sound effects and percussion and volume II has musical instrument, synthesiser and percussion samples – don’t leave the damn thing lying around the House in Chicago. Each disk contains some 1,500 individual sound files and they are offered at $600 apiece.
And Facts On File Inc, New York has been going around snapping up unconsidered trifles in the shape of programs for the Apple II that are in the public domain, and has crammed nearly 200 of them on its disk, which it calls Public Domain Software on File. It may be public domain, but it don’t come free – but Facts On File wasn’t revealing the price for it. The list was compiled several months ago, and by the time the Microsoft CD-ROM conference comes around for the fourth time this spring, the number and range of titles available on compact disk should be substantially greater.
