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From: Mitch.Alland@f421.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Mitch Alland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Next Wish List
Message-ID: <2551.2750F5CA@blkcat.fidonet.org>
Date: 25 Nov 90 13:02:21 GMT
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In article <786@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry
Merriman) writes:  "Personally, I'd much rather have new software
developed from the ground up than ports/copies of existing
applications from the PC/Mac world. The reason being: the NeXT is
so ``insanely greater'' than previous    platforms, that the software
can really be ``done right'' if developers rethink things from the
ground up. Lotus Improv is one example---they free the spreadsheet
from many unnecessary, unnatural, and unholy constraints spawned
during the PC/Mac generation."
That's fine and I'm all for killer applications on the NeXT, making
full use of its special capabilities.  But in the meantime I have to
get my work done, so if I have to give a talk in Sao Paulo or Tokyo
and I need overheads or slides and handoutd of them as well as
speakernotes, I cannot use my new NeXT but have to go back to the Mac
and run Aldus Persuasion (the best of its kind) to help me prepare my
speech quickly.
Yes Improv is great, but it doesn't have macros--Lotus says a future
release will. When?  In the meantime, I run a department of 20 people
(we do project financing in South America) and keep a Lotus
spreadsheet on our Banyan LAN on which my staff enters information on
our project pipeline (projects that we are likely to do).  Every week,
I pick this up on my Mac, run an Excel macro, and withing two minutes
I have a fully formatted pipeline report based on probability
categories for the various projects.  If I use a NeXT in the office
(Ihave one at home), I'll have to go back to having my secretary do
this manually: lost time and errors creep in.  
I'm looking into buying 40 NeXTs for the department. The absence of
macros in Improv and lack of programs like More 3.0, Aldus Persuasion,
MacProject II, Caere Omnipage and Adobe TrueForm is a serious
deterrent.
For personal use I miss programs such as CheckFree, MacInTax,
MacroMind Director, CompuServe Navigator and the best flight simulator
of them all, Mustang P51 (Bullseye Software).  And how about some
improvements to the Chess program on the NeXT, like a move list
onscreen, a game replay capability, showing the square coordinate
labes on the screen?  Also, thereUs a bug that says Black wins when
White does.
In another message someone took me to task for posting messages about
software I wanted on the NeXT; he said I should offer to buy 5,000
copies of a program and I'd get it.  That's obviously absurd.  I think
it is not obvious to developers what users want.  If it were, the
author of that message would be a lot richer than he is.
Come to think of it here's another wish for some utilities on the
NeXT.  A Mac Scrapbook type utility would be useful, so would a
DiskTop-type find file program. also DiskTops's DT Launch feature
which allows you to have a menu of applications _and_ files that you
can run--this could be implemented by letting the user add lists of
files to the applications in the Dock and haing the list pop up when
the user clicks on the icon in the dock while pressing Alternate. 
This would add convenience and save time.
--Mitch


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