 A look inside selected Japanese computer magazines Mac Fan, Wired, and CYBiZThe pickings this month, by my estimation, were rather slim. Most magazines (it seemed) were either reporting on the newest Pentium II-loaded PCs, comparing Microsoft Explorer 4.0 Preview Release 2 to Netscape Communicator in excruciating detail, giving rundowns of Mac OS 8, or offering comparisons of PDAs (personal digital assistants). The most issues-oriented news seemed to be Microsoft's investment in Apple and the future of the Mac clone market (i.e., there isn't one) wrapped up with the Mac OS licensing issue.Mac Fan is published by Mainichi Communications on the 1st and 15th of each month. The October 1 issue features a complete introduction and dissection of the new Japanese Mac OS 8, and a comparison of processing times for OS 8 vs. OS 7.6.1 for such tasks as starting up and copying files. Results were a mixed bag. The second top story covers small PCs and PDAs that can be used with Macs - Apple's Newton Message Pad, Sharp's Zaurus, US Robotic's PalmPilot, and Windows CE-loaded PDAs - and details how data transfer is accomplished between each PDA and a desktop Mac. The interview with Apple Japan's newest president, Eikoh Harada, initially seemed promising, but it rarely strays far from questions like, "What kind of Mac would you recommend for a first-time user?" (Answer: a PowerMac 9600/350 MHz). To be fair, the interview did touch on the Microsoft and Apple agreement, but Harada said only that he thought media coverage was unbalanced, focusing on the financial and anti-monopoly issues of the agreement and missing the part about software development. Mac Fan's "Viewpoint" mini-editorial in the news section laments losing the clone market whose makers were already near completion in development of Mac OS notebooks and CHRP machines, and worries that Apple buying out Power Computing will cause the Mac market to shrink (even more).
"The Way the Bits Walk - Browsing the Newspaper Kingdom" (subtitled "Will online media save journalism?") talks with Mainichi Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) about how they view the online versions of their papers. Mainichi emphasizes the interactivity and "talking" with users that is possible with webpage news, and the various forms of delivery possible. Asahi sees online services either becoming like wire services, providing "raw news" to be packaged by others, or a complete start-to-finish news service. (Asahi subscribes to the latter idea.) Nikkei has found that the demands of their niche (economic and business news) fit perfectly with the speediness of online news (providing things like real-time stock prices), and aims to position its website as a "one-stop shopping" service for economic and business news. Related stories cover issues in online journalism, and talk with three veteran Japanese journalists about how digital media has affected journalism. There is a curiosity-piquing article on famed Japanese modern novelist Ryu Murakami, who has set up a members-only, fee-based, "adult" site, tokyo DECADENCE (http://www.t-decadence.com). And a tidbit for designers is an article on "digital fonts," and how technology has changed Japanese typefaces, their creation, and the way they are "put together."
This issue also talks about how you can "revive" your 486 through hardware upgrades and careful choice of software. CYBiZ's News Top lists the top 10 stories of that month, followed by the editors' comments. The top five news stories for this issue were (1) The Apple and MS agreement; (2) The slowing down of PC sales; (3) The start of Ichitaro Office 8 sales; (4) Sony's proposal for an independent DVD-RAM standard; and (5) The increasing troubles with online shopping.
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