What Happened Today, August 25th

Netscape Communications Corp. announced it had created a software company to enter an alliance with IBM, Oracle, and four Japanese electronics companies: Sony, Nintendo, Sega, and NEC. The new company, Navio Corp., is intended to compete with Microsoft Corp. in creating a new operating system. Netscape and Microsoft remain locked in a bitter battle over Microsoft's linking of its Internet Explorer World Wide Web browser with its Windows operating system, taking customers away from Netscape's Navigator browser. Netscape hoped the new company would develop a variety of computer applications, including video game systems, televisions, and network computers that would use its cheaper technology rather than Microsoft applications.

Nintendo agreed to use Silicon Graphics Inc. technology in a video game player it was developing. The move came as SGI entered a struggle that would continue to sustain its business in designing machines and software for graphics-intensive computer work. Partnerships such as the one with Nintendo didn't stop SGI's decline as it struggled with decreasing revenues and leadership changes.

Thanks to possibly the largest product launch campaign in history, Windows 95's sales exceeded all predictions. Strangely, it was two years to the day that Apple lost its look and feel copyright infringement suit against Microsoft, a suit whose main arguments centered around many features now found on Windows 95.

Netscape Communications Corp. announced it had created a software company to enter an alliance with IBM, Oracle, and four Japanese electronics companies: Sony, Nintendo, Sega, and NEC. The new company, Navio Corp., is intended to compete with Microsoft Corp. in creating a new operating system. Netscape and Microsoft remain locked in a bitter battle over Microsoft's linking of its Internet Explorer World Wide Web browser with its Windows operating system, taking customers away from Netscape's Navigator browser. Netscape hoped the new company would develop a variety of computer applications, including video game systems, televisions, and network computers that would use its cheaper technology rather than Microsoft applications.

Miss Manners confronts a new realm of etiquette in her August 26 column as she responded to a reader's concern about typing personal correspondence on a personal computer. The concerned individual said that using the computer was more convenient but that they were worried about the poor quality of her dot-matrix printer and about copying parts of one letter into another.

Miss Manners replied that computers, like typewriters, generally are inappropriate for personal correspondence. In the event a word processor is used, she warned, the recipient may confuse the letter for a sweepstakes entry. And, she noted, if any one of your friends ever sees that your letter to another contains identical ingredients, you have will no further correspondence problems.

Compaq Computer Corp. announced its Presario family of personal computers, intended to be user friendly and cheap. For $1,399, the Presario included a monitor, modem, and software to access the recently popularized online world through Prodigy and America Online.

With the release of Mac OS X 10.6, "Snow Leopard," Apple discontinued its support for the AppleTalk local area networking system. Introduced in 1985 as a quick way to connect Apple computers and peripherals to each other, AppleTalk was a low-cost, medium performance network, perfect for homes and many offices.

The basic AppleTalk hardware was built into every Mac computer so networks could be established without any prior setup or need for a centralized router or server. Apple Talk networks could also be connected to each other, forming internets, or use a variety of physical media like Ethernet, Token Ring or Apple’s own LocalTalk.

AppleTalk was ultimately displaced by TCP/IP-based systems, but for most of the 1980s and ‘90s was Apple's main networking technology.

One of the earliest laws anywhere designed to address computer fraud, the Act resulted from a long debate in the 1980s over failed prosecutions of hackers -- in one well-publicized case, two men hacked into a British Telecom computer leaving messages in the Duke of Edinburgh's private mailbox.