Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!chaph.usc.edu!nunki.usc.edu!wilber From: wilber@nunki.usc.edu (John Wilber) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps Subject: Re: Norton Utilities Summary: The straight dope on Norton Message-ID: <11119@chaph.usc.edu> Date: 30 Jul 90 19:42:40 GMT References: <5510@mnetor.UUCP> <1990Jul16.234631.29803@terminator.cc.umich.edu> Sender: news@chaph.usc.edu Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA Lines: 49 Nntp-Posting-Host: nunki.usc.edu In article rk39+@andrew.cmu.edu (Robert Joseph Kuszewski) writes: I really should set the record straight here. Now that all of the products have been released, I can spill the beans. I work for Peter Norton, so this is really the straight story. >According to this week's issue of InfoWorld, Norton Utilities for the >Macintosh will NEVER be released. This is COMPLETELY untrue. I don't know where IW got this, but there's not a shred of truth to it. NUM has been out on the streets for about a week already. At some future time there may be some sort of mingling of SUM and NUM, but that's a long way off. For the foreeable future, NUM will be an independent product, and I hear it selling like hot cakes. >It was scheduled for release this >summer, but will never find it's way to shelves because SYMANTEC bought >out Norton Utilities corp. Symantec had nothing to do with it. We were just squashing those last few pesky bugs. We wanted to make sure this was a totally solid product before we shipped it. That was the reason for the delay, not the Symantec merger. >The article went on to say that the "best >features" of Norton Utils for the Mac will be integrated into the next >release of SUM. As I said, some kind of product merger might happen someday, but it's not in the cards for the short term. It is possible (likely?) that just the opposite will happen and SUM will be absorbed into NUM. Or maybe they will stay out there as high-end/low-end products. Those decisions have not been made yet. >PS: It might amuse you to know that the new version of Norton Utilities >for the PC has been delayed because SYMANTEC marketing didn't like the >way the package looked. This is also completely untrue. The fact is that Symantec DID change the package design we had originally planned (though only a little bit), but this had no effect on the release of the DOS utilities whatsoever. In fact 5.0 went out the door like clockwork, just as we had planned. No big delays, no problems. It's pretty unusual for a major software project huh? > ... And people wonder why I don't like >SYMANTEC... Actually, the software development side of PNCI has been virtually untouched by the merger (by design). They don't want to mess up a good team with ways of getting things done that work. Around here we like them just fine.