Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!metro!ipso!runxtsa!clubmac
From: clubmac@runxtsa.runx.oz.au (Club Mac, Australia's Largest Mac Users Group)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Software Priacy
Message-ID: <1888@runxtsa.runx.oz.au>
Date: 26 Jun 90 23:53:26 GMT
References: <3205@husc6.harvard.edu> <13159@unix.SRI.COM> <1990Jun18.170058.13815@uswmrg2.UUCP>
Organization: RUNX Unix Timeshare.  Sydney, Australia.
Lines: 51

In article <1990Jun18.170058.13815@uswmrg2.UUCP> steve@uswmrg2.UUCP (Steve Martin) writes:
>It is strange to me that while hardware costs continue going  down the
>same is not happening to software prices.  I'm sure that part of the
>reason is because the principles of "software engineering" have not yet
>reached the level of efficiency of hardware engineering.  The company that
>masters the techniques of bring quality to market faster and at lower
>costs will take over the market.  (Like Casio and Sony for instance)

The industrial revolution occured a good deal earlier than the information
revolution. The assembly line was an example of recursion, mass production
was fed into the industrial revolution and out popped the assembly line, and
consumer goods are an everyday thing.

MacApp is a step in the right direction, providing a basis for all software
development on the Macintosh. However, functions such as extended math
functions that programs like Excel, Wingz & Full Impact offer will become
available globally to any application. Apple needs to step in and ensure that
developers do meet the standards for a Macintosh application and its interfacing
with other applications, rather than just providing guidelines.

What is needed is a 'toolshed' as opposed to a toolbox, that is standardised by
Apple for its developers. Developers of the future should not have to be
concerned with the 'nuts & bolts' of a program they are developing, just with
how those standardised 'nuts & bolts' fit together in their design.

From the developments I have read about, this may happen before I'm 64, given
that Windows on Xerox was around in 1977, it took seven years before the
people could experience it with the Macintosh. It looks like the next leap
will take place a further seven years down the track, because System 7 (while
being presented to developers this year) the fruit won't fall off the tree
until 1991.

I'd like to hear from everyone (not email please, I pay collect for email to
Australia and from Australia) with their ideas on what an Apple Computer of
the 90s should be like. If we get enough, I can digest them and repost to
people on other networks.



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| Jason Haines, Vice-President                                                |
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