Path: utzoo!utgpu!utorvm!ryerson!acps1072 Date: Sunday, 21 Apr 1991 16:47:43 EST From: ACPS1072@RYERSON Message-ID: <91111.164743ACPS1072@Ryerson.CA> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: We need a student developer program Distribution: usa References: <1612@babcock.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu> WARNING: To all those offended at a bit of MAC bashing, do not read this as I take out some of my frustrations about MAC companies in general. I would also like to remind the readers that these are my opinions. Yes, I would like to see a student developer's program, or better still a reduction in cost for the developer's program. Let's face it... how many students do you know that have $2000, plus tuition, plus food, plus laundry , plus rent. Plus the computer, Apple has to face the fact that not all people come from rich backrounds. To add on top of all this, there's the miscellaneous stuff like manuals and software and blank diskettes. But it's not just Apple that destroys the little guy, there are a number of software companies that do that too. For example, let's look at buying languages for the MAC, now let's compare that to companies that sells languages for the IBM. Borland sells C++ for under $250 bucks (canadian). What's wrong with these MAC people.... perhaps they sell the stuff for more money to cover the expense of buying Apple hardware. Let's face it Classics are not THAT cheap, they can barely be expanded, what use would they be to developer's except for making sure the software works on that machine (which in my opinion should be used as a door stop). I'll admit IBM does not have as nice of an interface as MAC and that memory is segmented, but at least it can do batch files. Gee, isn't that what a 3rd generation computer was supposed to do?? What is Apple doing?? Are they going backwards? For the amount of a decent IIfx set up I could buy a SUN/SPARC workstation. With that RISC chip in there, and UNIX built in, I don't see why more people don't just buy that and write software for it. I believe software that comes out should be more like the MACcheese program, lots of features, low cost. Even Adobe photoshop is great. It's fast, very good with memory, and supports gobs of formats, unlike Color Studio the slow memory pig that only works well on a IIfx, or MacroMud's director which only imports PICT, PICS, and scrapbook files. Who cares if the software has a lot of functions?? What good is it if it's so slow and crashes frequently?? Which brings up another point, if a company is going to make a new standard shouldn't it be freely available to people who want to program other applications that use that standard. I'm taking Riff as an example. Letraset charges $50 dollars for the RIFF specs. For $50 I expect those RIFF documents to come in a hard cover book with disks that have source code. It's idiot expenses like this that increase the cost of software being written that use these formats. Well that concludes my beefs for today... geez exams must be getting to me more than I first realized. Sheesh! Derek Lang<<<<< | ACPS1072@Ryerson | "Anarchy NOW!!!!! Buy a Mac CLONE!!!!!" Toronto, ON | Canada |