Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Apple's APDA: G'bye Amateurs & Fans Message-ID: <76000355@p.cs.uiuc.edu> Date: 9 Feb 89 19:26:00 GMT Lines: 31 Nf-ID: #R: I find it interesting that Next is contrasted with APDA in this > regard. Next's tech docs cost $250 for the set. Admittedly, they > seem to consist of a huge amount of info, and may be worth the price. > But they are clearly out of the hands of many "amateurs". This is interesting. I recently decided to begin some serious yet amateur programming. I have tried to economize and always buy the best bargains, but I would not skimp if it meant incomplete documentation: Macintosh NeXT Inside Mac I, II, IV, V: $110 Objective C compiler $free LightspeedC 2.15 $95 Interface builder $free Mac Prog. Secrets (mistake) $25 Documentation (1000+pp) $250 Turbo Pascal Prog (tutorial) $25 Mactutor (3 issues) $12 total: $267 $250 With the NeXT box, you also end up with an interface builder. The automatic interface builders for the mac cost $100 or so, I believe. So the NeXT box is cheaper to program than the macintosh, when you think about it. Furthermore, the interface builder is a double-edged sword -- it (a) speeds up UI generation (extremely tedious work), and (b) is a great teaching/learning aid for the beginning programmer. Everyone knows the macintosh is too expensive to program. Apple is just exploiting this fact.