Apple Computer Inc, as reported briefly and bittily, since news of these these playing away launches tends to come in in dribs and drabs, used the Cebit computer fair in Hannover as the occasion to launch three new Apple Workgroup Servers, along with AppleSearch, its new information access and retrieval service for Mac workgroups. The new servers are the 20MHz 68040-based Apple Workgroup Server 60, designed as an entry-level file and print server; the 25MHz 68040-based Apple Workgroup Server 80, a mid-range machine; and the 33MHz 68040-based Apple Workgroup Server 95, optimised for either high performance file and print services or relational database management system services; the first is derived from the Centris 600, the other two from Quadras. The Server 95 uses a new server version of A/UX 3.0.1, Apple’s version of Unix, optimised to support network services such as file and print or database services. The company is working with Oracle Systems Corp to support Oracle7 on the new machine. The Apple Workgroup Server 95 costs from UKP7,700, according to configuration, and will be available by the end of April. Upgrade kits for Quadra 900 and 950s will also be available, at from UKP1,925. The Server 60 and Server 80 are expected to ship this summer, when UK pricing will be announced. AppleSearch is a workgroup-based product designed to give easy access to large document libraries residing on file servers. It supports natural language queries on text-based information, and it uses a relevance ranking algorithm to pick the information of most value to the user. The results can be presented to the user in a variety of formats. The documents are stored in their native format and translated into searchable text by Apple’s XTND technology, which enables users to view the text of documents without having the application that created them – the company claims that XTND translators are available for most major word processing packages. AppleSearch will ship in the third quarter, but the company will not announce a UK price until then. Apple also added two new versions of its AppleShare file and print services, AppleShare 4.0 and AppleShare Pro, which it says offer increased performance and a wider range of file and print options.
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