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From: omh@nancy (Owen M. Hartnett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Possible LSC improvements
Message-ID: <20309@brunix.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Nov-87 00:10:22 EST
Article-I.D.: brunix.20309
Posted: Mon Nov  9 00:10:22 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Nov-87 04:48:04 EST
References: <6523@prls.UUCP> <9370001@hpfclp.HP.COM>
Sender: root@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: omh@nancy.UUCP (Owen M. Hartnett)
Organization: Brown University Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 76

In article <6650@apple.UUCP> lsr@apple.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein) writes:
>In article <20092@brunix.UUCP> omh@nancy.UUCP (Owen M. Hartnett) writes:
>>
>>I heartily echo David's sentiments (and predicament).  An additional problem,
>>What version of the System/Finder are you supposed to ship with?
>>
>>My software works on all versions (128K to II) of Macs.  So, I ship with
>>System2.0/Finder4.1.  This breaks (as outlined above) on every machine
>>with new Roms.
>
>There probably is no good solution to this problem.  The number of different
>ROMs means that a developer has a difficult time supporting all the
>machines.  Here are some thigns to consider.
>
>First, System 2.0 is recommended only for machines with 128K of RAM.  It
>seems foolish to configure a product for this machine, when it causes
>problems for the vast majority of users with 512K or more.  The solution
>here might be to state that your program only runs on 512K machines and
>above.  Such a statement doesn't exclude many users.
>
Exactly what problems does it cause with other systems?  Other than
messing up their hard drives because it doesn't know scsi, I haven't run into
any problems.  This is not a problem either, because if someone is using
a hard drive, they'll be booting from a hard drive, not from the system on
the shipping disk.  

I haven't got it in my heart to turn away customers because they haven't
upgraded yet.  My market consists of home users of the Macintosh and so
the number of 128Ks as a percentage of my market is around 5%.  I haven't 
seen any figures that tell exactly how many 128s are out there, but my
market figures are indicating otherwise. Of course, my market share isn't
as big as Apple's.

>The recommended configuration for all other machines is System 3.2 or later.
>(This is true even for 512K machines with old ROMs.)  LSC programs will work
>fine on this System.
>
>If you expect a user to boot off your diskette and start working, then the
>only way to can cater to every machine is to ship the latest System file.
>The latest System file has the ROM bug fixes for every machine.
>
>Note that the latest System (4.2) will work fine on 512K machines with 64K
>or 128K ROMs.  (I admit that I haven't tried this, but System 4.1 worked.)
>The size of the patches, however, reduces the amount of working RAM, so it
>is not recommended by Apple.
>

The problem with using the newest systems is their size.  You can't get
one on a 400K disk and still have room for your application.

However, MPW (and most other compilers) will generate working code on a
MacPlus using System 2.0/Finder 4.1.  The way I see it, most SE's and II's
will have a hard disk, negating the System shipped anyway, and so you should
cater to 128's, 512's, 512ke's, and Pluses in your system selection.  Besides,
SE owners and II owners have been adequately warned by Apple to use the 
correct System/Finder. Of course, this advice pertains only to people who
want to ship to the entire Macintosh line.

As Apple's goal is to sell as many computers as possible, we developers would
like to sell as many programs as possible, thus I feel it would be foolish
to eliminate any market share, no matter how small, if they can possibly be
accomodated.  I believe Think Technologies is making a mistake in not
expending some effort to overcome this, (because I really like using their
products!) but I realize they have a lot of things on their to-do list.

Well, now I'm really dreaming... but maybe Apple will come up with a 
developer's version of System/Finder which can be shipped to run on any
machine.


Owen Hartnett
Brown University Computer Science

omh@cs.brown.edu.CSNET 
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