Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!bu.edu!bu-cs!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!fadden
From: fadden@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Andy McFadden)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: develop, Dynamo, and life in general
Message-ID: <21844@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Feb 90 01:01:51 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: fadden@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Andy McFadden)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 73

Okay boys and girls, it's time to flame Apple again.

There's a new publication from Apple called "develop."  If you're a member
of the APDA, you'll get a Free Copy of this "Apple Technical Journal."

What's inside?

Yup, you guessed it, a whole bunch of Macintosh stuff.  No surprises there.

But wait, what's this?  An article about "Dynamo", an exciting new development
tool for the Apple II!  Hooray!

Of course, you need a Macintosh to run it.  It only works within MPW.  This
brings us to the topic of this letter.  I'm not going to flame "develop."
It delivered what it promised.

I'd prefer to flame people like the Apple relations person who, after
giving statistics about how many people said they were Mac developers,
Apple II developers, or both, made a comment to the effect that many
Apple II-only developers probably developed for both.  I guess working with
these primitive machines screws up your eye-hand coordination.

The message I keep getting is, the Apple II isn't suited for development.
Everybody who wants to develop Apple II or //gs software should do it on
a Macintosh(tm).

Sure, the closing lines of the article are "There is nothing wrong with
developing Apple II software on an Apple II.  It just takes longer."*  Which
is about as positive as Apple gets.
[ * those two sentences have been reprinted without permission of the
  author or Macintosh, Inc.  Sue me. ]

But when you see this sort of thing all the time, and you see software
developers leaving the Apple II for greener pastures, you kinda wonder if
maybe, just maybe, the two events aren't totally unrelated.

The world at large doesn't care what you do.  The world doesn't develop
software for System 5.0.  If Apple had their way, the world wouldn't even
be developing software on a //gs at all.  Developers look at the hardware, and
how Apple respects it.

I've been using the Apple II since I was in 4th grade (I'm almost 21).
The first computer my family owned was an Apple ][+ (march 1981).  The first
and only computer I've ever purchased is my Apple //gs.  I've watched Apple
slowly stifle it over the past six years.  I'm really tired of all this.

I worked with an IBM PS/2 model 70 (25 MHz '386) over the summer (at Control
Data Corp, ironically across the parking lot from Claris in Santa Clara).
It was the latest and the greatest that IBM had to offer.  And it ran
software that was written before the Macintosh was invented.

It got bigger, it got better, it got much faster.  But it never forgot where
it started from.

Introducing a new Apple // at 6.2 MHz would be the end of the line.  It
wouldn't sell any more //gs units then are already being sold (and that
number is dwindling thanks to stupid Apple marketing practices).  After
putting that much effort into a failed piece of hardware, there's no way
Mr. Pepsi would go forward with any more Apple // CPUs.

Macintosh, Inc. has two choices.  Drop the Apple //, or set the world on
fire with a new //gs.  Become an innovator like you once were, not
the idiots who produced the //c+ (a Laser 128/EX with an Apple sticker on it).

That's my wish list.

-- 
fadden@cory.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden)
...!ucbvax!cory!fadden

"Macintosh: Part of Every College Students Wildest Dreams"
		- Back of T-shirt being worn by a guy paid by Apple to
		  walk around wearing their T-shirts.