Next Tuesday September 17th, Motorola Inc’s Computer Group is supposed trot out its Macintosh clones which have reportedly been dubbed StarMax. To spotlight the event – the first Apple Computer Inc cloner with a brand name – sources say Motorola will make it a bi-coastal affair running announcements out of both San Francisco and Atlanta where they’ll be having NetWorld + Interop. Motorola is reportedly shooting at the mid- and high-end of the Apple line, using 160MHz and 200MHz versions of bot h the 603 and 604 PowerPC in a PC form factor with about 1Gb of disk standard. The machines aren’t bundled with a screen but will take either an Apple display or an SVGA monitor. Ditto the keyboard. There’s a five- year warranty. Prices will be at or below Apple’s own price points. It’s said Motorola might realize a tidy business out of the Apple exercise because of its name. It’s also supposed to show some new Windows NT machines which it might have a harder time selling. Software is still pretty scarce and NT-on-PowerPC machines have no following. Meantime, Apple is supposed to show its first symmetric multiprocessing server this week; the two-way PowerPC 604E affair running AIX will ship early next year. Other uniprocessor workgroup servers running MacOS and AIX are supposed to be available this month.
