Despite the claims of Power Computing Corp (CI No 2,572), Japanese games manufacturer Bandai Co Ltd has become the first company to license Macintosh technology from Apple Computer Inc. Not that Apple announced it that way. Instead Apple announced that Bandai was licensing Pippin, described as a new system for multimedia players (CI No 2,563). But what is Pippin? It looks quite simply like a cut-down Power Macintosh that uses a television rather than a computer monitor, and with its mouse and keyboard replaced by a trackball and button pad. Apple says it runs an operating system derived from Mac OS and uses the PowerPC 603 processor – presumably the 603+. Most Macintosh multimedia titles will run under Pippin with only slight modifications. As we went to press, it was unclear how extensive these modifications may have to be, Apple said that one of its engineers had managed to convert 15 multimedia titles in an afternoon. The only change Apple could actually name as being required, was a tweak to take account of the television screen’s resolution. Bandai’s implementation of Pippin is expected out for next Christmas and will cost around $500. Getting rid of the keyboard and removing unnecessary support hardware such as AppleTalk interfaces, SCSI controllers, and so on will no-doubt help bring manufacturing costs right down. Although it is essentially a Power Mac, by calling it Pippin, Apple is ensuring that consumers will not get confused and try to run Quark XPress on the beast – tricky without a keyboard. Pippin also fits very neatly with Apple’s original statement of direction with regard to licensing, namely that the company would partner in sectors where it did not already have a presence. The big danger of licensing Macintosh technology was always that customers would buy Mac clones rather than the real thing, eating into Apple’s Mac revenue. But virtually no-one will be tempted to buy a Pippin instead of a Macintosh. Apple has cunningly protected its revenue by letting a clon e manufacturer build only a crippled Macintosh, but its positioning has been so good that no-one has really noticed. Not only will Pippin not eat into Mac sales, it should serve to dramatically increase the pool of multimedia software for Apple’s mainstream machine. Apple pointed out that Macintoshes are already popular as multimedia development systems; Pippin is Apple’s attempt to capitalise on that feature and actually get people running the applications on its products. It seems that Apple may be including some Copland technology in the Pippin package too – the company is saying that the thing will offer easy manipulation of three-dimensional objects on the screen – something that has been promised for the Copland release of Mac OS.
