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From: dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: 48SX ROM Versions & SYSEVALs
Message-ID: <42539@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 1 Jul 90 02:07:09 GMT
References: <6236@helios.TAMU.EDU> <42507@apple.Apple.COM> <6261@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 54

In article <6261@helios.TAMU.EDU> n023el@tamunix (Robert Ellis) writes:
>In article <42507@apple.Apple.COM> dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen) writes:
>>I remember when I was a math student, and money was hard to come by.  I
>The point of concern I was addressing was the seemingly unethical practice
>of allowing design team members who are priviledged to inside information
>to profit from the sell of after market user reference guides which they
>write. 
>
>Why were their efforts not fully utilized during the time when the 48's
>accompanying reference material was undergoing preperation?
>
>You will have to admit that the reference material with which the 48SX
>comes is poorly indexed, and inundated with mistakes. One might go so
>far as to say Hewlett-Packard is unwittingly encouraging carelessness
>in this area by allowing employees to publish. 
>
>The bottom line is that the need for after market support material could
>have been completely unnecessary had Hewlett-Packard taken the time and
>care to do it right. 

I do not think it is an unethical practice to allow design team members
to sell after market anything: these are usually the finest products
because the design team tembers know more than anyone else.

The reference material could be improved, yes, perhaps, but if HP is
anything like Apple, the people who write the manuals are writers, not
engineers.  They usually only understand what the engineers tell them.
However, if the engineers are busy doing the actual engineering full
time, as you allude to above ("efforts not fully utilized"), then there
is no time to talk to and educate the publications/documentation people,
therefore poor docs come about.  It is a hard problem: should there be
more and better ROM code in the 48, or should there be less code and
sparse documentation rather than perfect docs?

Well, HP opted for rather sparse docs at first, and there is to be a
more in depth manual for programmers later this year.  (Perhaps the
engineers finally got the chance to talk to and educate the
documentation people...)

I do not have Jim Donnally's book--yet--but I am sure that I will like
it.  He probably did most of his work on the book since his stuff was
done, and I am sure he did it on his own time.

I did a similar thing here at Apple: no one wrote the book about
programming the Macintosh that I thought should be written, including
Apple's "official" publications, so I wrote my own book entitled "On
Macintosh Programming", also published by Addison-Wesley.  Many people
have said that they really have learned from this book.  If I had not
written the book, many of things in the book would never have been known
on the outside world


Dan Allen
Apple Computer