Apple Aims Faster Macintosh at Workstation Market : Computers: The II FX is twice as speedy as any of the firm’s previous machines and has greater graphics capabilities.
Apple Computer Inc., in an effort to penetrate the lucrative market for sophisticated engineering and design workstations, on Monday introduced a high-speed Macintosh computer and a series of new graphics products.
Separately, Apple’s new chief operating officer, Michael H. Spindler, said Monday that the personal computer maker will aggressively pursue its goal of becoming a fully developed player in the global technology market, with foreign sales soon to account for more than half of its total revenue.
The new machine, dubbed the Macintosh II FX, is twice as fast as any previous Apple computer and sells for $8,969 to $10,969. Mark Orr, Apple product marketing manager, who presented the machine at the National Computer Graphics Assn. conference in Anaheim, emphasized that the II FX could perform functions “that have never been possible before in personal computing.” But analysts noted that the machine was not aimed at traditional personal computer users.
“They’re obviously trying to move into the workstation area,” said Bill Fleming, an analyst with the San Jose research firm Dataquest. The market for computer workstations--powerful machines used for computer-aided design, modeling, animation and other complex applications--is dominated by Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard subsidiary Apollo Computer. International Business Machines Corp. also recently introduced a well-received new workstation.
Fleming said the II FX represented “a dramatic improvement in the graphics processing” available on the Macintosh, but said it was too early to tell whether it would be a success. “The things they didn’t answer are what you need to know” to tell if Apple can compete with Sun and other workstation companies, Fleming said.
Demand for workstations, which sell for $10,000 to $100,000, has exploded in recent years. No longer the exclusive province of engineers, they are used widely in publishing, television production and many other industries.
The new Apple product was well received on Wall Street, with Apple stock rising $2.125 to $42.375 per share Monday, but analysts said the company still needs a new low-end product to serve the consumer market. Monday’s product introduction was the first since the announcement earlier this month that Apple product chief Jean-Louis Gassee would officially resign later this year. Gassee was blamed for the failure to get a new, cheaper Macintosh out the door.
Apple, which has suffered declining profits and only slight revenue growth during the past six months, laid off 400 people in February.
Along with the Macintosh II FX, which is based on a fast version of the Motorola 68030 microprocessor, Apple also introduced Monday a new version of an operating system that allows the Macintosh to run the industry-standard Unix operating system. The operating system is considered a critical capability in the Unix-dominated workstation arena.
In addition, Apple announced three new graphics cards that vastly improve the speed with which many models of the Macintosh can process and manipulate images.
Spindler, in his first speech to Wall Street analysts and the media since assuming Apple’s No. 2 position nearly two months ago, said Apple is increasingly melding its research, development, marketing and cash management efforts across its three key geographic regions: the United States, Europe and the Pacific.
“We will deal with the United States as a marketplace--not a point of view towards the rest of the world,” the German-born Spindler, 47, told a gathering of about 125 analysts and reporters in San Jose.
Although foreign sales of Apple products now account for about 45% of the company’s $5.2 billion in annual revenues, Spindler said the share would soon exceed half.
