Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!aurora!labrea!Shasta!kaufman
From: kaufman@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Marc Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: A/UX - when?
Message-ID: <2432@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 26 Jan 88 05:35:22 GMT
References: <2421@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> <39806@sun.uucp> <2429@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> <39849@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: kaufman@Shasta.stanford.edu (Marc Kaufman)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 38

In article <39849@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>>This was a BIG customer.  Even IBM leaks hints when big bux are involved.

>But not in a public forum, as you said this was. Did this company go back to
>Apple privately for a futures meeting? Were they willing to sign a
>non-disclosure?

No, it was not a public meeting.  It was a sales demo/meeting put on
specifically for the sake of this one customer.  I.e.: they were trying
to sell this customer Macs, and the customer had previously informed
Apple that UNIX and multitasking were required.

>Um, the reports I read have all said Sculley is saying there won't be a
>68030 in '88. Are you reading the same reports I am?

Well, earlier reports said '88.  The latest reports say 'sometime'.

Gee, Chuq, you sound like an Apple Thought-policeman.  You will notice that
LAST year, we were hearing that A/UX would be out in December, then January,
then February, now I hear that it will be shown at Uniforum (but I did not
hear that it would be released, then).

My reading (between the lines), based on reports in this newsgroup, is that
Apple is probably having more difficulty with Toolbox compatibility than they
expected.  It is an ambitious product, and given that A/UX diverged from the
Finder/Multifinder/Toolbox system some time ago, I can imagine the difficulty
of developing a new system that has to be compatible with a moving target.

No information has been passed to developers (us ordinary developers, that is)
to tell us how to be 'A/UX friendly', except for 'keep off the high bits'.
Unless Apple believes that all interesting applications have been seeded,
(that can't be true, MY applications development wasn't seeded :-) ), it will
take some time to bring up a non-trivial suite of user applications that would
justify ordinary customers purchasing the system.

Shall we start a pool?

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Shasta.stanford.edu)