Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!efi!tim
From: tim@efi.com (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: System 7.0 and MacDTS policies
Message-ID: <1990Jun28.182240.17652@efi.com>
Date: 28 Jun 90 18:22:40 GMT
References: <1990Jun21.215639.16938@efi.com> <8842@goofy.Apple.COM> <1990Jun25.223451.2864@efi.com> <42340@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Jun26.192623.7121@efi.com> <26883CF9.2BCB@intercon.com>
Organization: Electronics For Imaging, Inc.
Lines: 56

In article <1990Jun26.192623.7121@efi.com>, tim@efi.com (Tim Maroney) writes:
>> maybe you could let the screeners know that if, say, Rich
>> Siegel, Amanda Walker, Gary Fitts, Joel West, Tim Maroney, etc., ask a
>> question, it should almost surely be passed along.  Obviously, this has
>> problems too, and you might also want to extend it in the other
>> directions if a lot of someone's questions are RTFMs, but it's better
>> than nothing.

In article <26883CF9.2BCB@intercon.com> amanda@mermaid.intercon.com
(Amanda Walker) writes:
>Tech Support Triage like this might be effective, but I can't see much of
>a way to make it practical, not to mention palatable to the people who aren't
>on the "good list".

Just keep a database on questioners, supplemented by reports from the
networks and technical article publications....  And yes, it *is*
annoying that William Gibson is more certain to get through to Ellen
Datlow than I am, but I accept it as a fact of life.  (And I still get
better responses from Ellen than from DTS!  And she gets hundreds of
manuscripts a month!)

>Of course, some of this happens already on an informal level.  For example,
>I have a small collection of Apple business cards and email addresses that
>enable me to call up an engineer and bypass MACDTS altogether.  Since I know
>enough not to do so except as a last resort, they know that if I'm calling
>with a problem, it's (a) really a problem with their stuff, (b) serious,
>and (c) reproducible.  I know enough not to waste their time, just as they
>know enough not to waste mine in similar circumstances.  If I were to start
>abusing this privilege, my phone calls would start getting lost in Apple's
>Voicemail system... :-).

I use e-mail.  I have such contacts in several areas, but they hardly
cover the entire Mac OS.  I send about one question a year to MacDTS,
in areas that my personal contacts don't cover.  Last year, it was a
question on figuring out what list was being clicked in a clikLoop
routine (no answer); this year, it was on a couple of announced
features of System 7.0 whose fate was in dispute (no answer).  So why
bother with the MacDTS line at all?  Does anyone have any good
experiences to report with it?

I did have a question answered in 1987, I'll admit.  It concerned the
error return from the ReadPacket routines in socket listeners and
protocol handlers, and was followed by a new Tech Note disambiguating
the issue generally.  I believe that was the only time anyone there has
been any use in an official MacDTS capability.  The DTS engineers here
in public are often quite helpful when they don't get overly defensive,
though.

>On a slightly less informal level, people and companies that have proven
>themselves end up working with evangelists, which is still a cut above the
>average Apple Partner who sits on AppleLink and goes through the standard
>queue.  The biggest barrier seems to be getting a real live good product
>out the door.  After that, Apple takes you more seriously.

Well, I only have five real live good products out, so I guess I'll have
to wait a bit longer....