Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!mce
From: mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Modest proposal
Message-ID: <5916@fluke.COM>
Date: 9 Nov 88 23:08:54 GMT
References: <430049@hpcea.CE.HP.COM> <430050@hpcea.CE.HP.COM> <20036@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Organization: SRS Recursive Software, Castrovalva, WA
Lines: 33

In article <20036@apple.Apple.COM> tecot@Apple.COM (Ed Tecot) writes:
> A large cash reserve is one way to ensure our existence in the future.  It
> allows us to pump even more money into research and development to produce
> Macs that do more at a lower cost.

I hope you don't take offense, but after all these years, and hundreds of
millions of dollars (?), just what has research and development accomplished?

The Mac SE?  How much R&D did it take to create a Mac+ clone?  Oh boy does it
ever "do more at a lower cost".  (Sorry, couldn't resist that!)

The Mac II?  How many of those millions of R&D dollars did it take to bring
out a 68020 box with 2 wait states and no DMA?

Evolutionary software changes?  Creating Multifinder, NFNTs, System 6.0.12,
etc., is expensive, but is it *that* expensive?

Revolutionary new software?  Color QuickDraw is a nice piece of work, but why
is the Palette Manager such a limited thing?  Is anyone paying attention to
what the R&D dollars are buying?  Take a look at the MacDTS FracApp code and
then imagine what PixelPaint must look like.

The rumored virtual memory MacOS, with multitasking and IPC?  Sounds like
reinventing MACH and then tacking on the toolbox.  Different, but not better.
It also sounds a lot like OS/2...

Now all those reorganizations, *they* must suck up some serious money!
1/2 :-)


One man's opinion,
Brian McElhinney
mce@tc.fluke.com