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From: arie@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Arie Covrigaru)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Information Exchange
Message-ID: <1559@zipeecs.umich.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 90 15:39:38 GMT
References: <1532@zipeecs.umich.edu> <167@brazil.cambridge.apple.com>
Sender: news@zip.eecs.umich.edu
Reply-To: arie@eecs.umich.edu (Arie Covrigaru)
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor, MI
Lines: 34

In article <167@brazil.cambridge.apple.com> gz@cambridge.apple.com (Gail Zacharias) writes:
>In article <1532@zipeecs.umich.edu> arie@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Arie Covrigaru) writes:
>>I am using MACL exclusively and, like on any large Lisp
>>system, sometimes I have problems that are not mine.
>
>You can report bugs to bug-macl@cambridge.apple.com.
>
>--
>gz@cambridge.apple.com

Actually, what I am interested in is S U P P O R T.  I would like to
know about bugs from Apple when they know about them.  I don't want to
wait a few months for a tech notes release to know that my code is crashes
because of a compiler problem that I wasn't aware of (just a hypothesis,
I do have such a problem but I don't know yet if Apple knows that it
exists, I haven't gotten the new tech note yet).  I want to have support
to this product the same way other developers have from the companies they buy
their programming languages.  I want to have a phone number to call,
I want a pool of tools that are in an accessible host and I also want
a newsletter.  If AI is an important field, Lisp an important AI tool
and Apple a company that wants to sell AI workstations, I should be getting
all those things by now.  Otherwise, why did Apple buy Allegro Common Lisp
from Coral in the first place?  I used to call Coral (I had a phone 
number from the manual!) and get the answers much quicker back than.

So it is nice to have an address to report bugs to, but this should be an
overall decision to support this product in a serious manner. You have 
serious competition here with other companies' AI workstations and you should
do something about it.

=============================================================================
Arie Covrigaru                     |    Internet: arie@eecs.umich.edu
University of Michigan AI Lab      |    1101 Beal Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
=============================================================================