Macworld Expo Touchy About NT Exhibits

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January 06, 1999 (12:00 AM EST)

By David Richards,

SAN FRANCISCO -- The organizers of Macworld Expo, held here, have stopped workstation manufacturer Intergraph Computer Systems from displaying Intel-based systems at its booth.

Intergraph, whose booth is located next to Apple's on the show floor, was set to demonstrate new Intel Xeon workstations running at 400-MHz and 450-MHz chips on Microsoft Windows NT-based multiprocessor workstations.

Sources said this conflicted with Apple's focus on its next-generation family of Macintosh G3 desktop systems, which are designed to compete with NT machines.

"We warned Intergraph prior to arriving that they could only run a Mac-clone environment running off an Intergraph Windows NT server," said Colin Crawford, president and CEO of Macworld Expo, a unit of IDG Expo Management Company. "What they turned up with was Windows NT workstations expecting to run them in a Mac-only environment. This was a sensitive issue: Apple didn't want it, I didn't want it, and we had to negotiate on it."

"It was unethical of them to turn up at a Mac function trying to woo Mac people to a Windows NT platform," Crawford added. "They were warned and now they have been banned. It is not our fault." IDG refused to comment.

But an IDG insider who asked not to be named said Intergraph would be compensated for having to leave because IDG feared a lawsuit. The source also said IDG enforced a clause in the contract that gave IDG the right to remove from Macworld anyone it deemed wasn't acting in the interest of the event. During his keynote Tuesday, Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs boasted about a powerful new 400-MHz G3 workstation, comparing it to an Intel-based workstation similar to what Intergraph was planning to demonstrate.

An Intergraph employee, who asked not to be identified, was skeptical about Jobs' demo.

"I would like to run the demo again on our systems, this time running ours or SGI's [Silicon Graphics Inc.] proprietary accelerator cards," the Intergraph employee said. When asked whether it was good business sense to market NT workstations to Mac users, Macworld's Crawford said, "It may be smart in their eyes, but I think it is plain dumb at a Mac function. I was under pressure from Apple, and we had to act."