Future Plans for MCL

["Rick Fleischman" <rick_fleischman@powertalk.apple.com>]

Dear Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL) customers--

Over the last several months there have been many questions about Apple's
future plans for MCL, in particular about our plans for a version of MCL
which runs in native mode on the upcoming Power Macintosh based on the
PowerPC microprocessor.

We hoped to have firm plans in place before discussing our future directions
for MCL.  However, it is taking longer to work out the details than we
expected.  Because we know that many of you have to make decisions now about
your development work, we want to update you on our plans rather than waiting
until they firm up further.

As long as there is a market for MCL 2.0.1, we will continue to maintain it,
support it, and make it available through APDA and our other resellers.  Our
maintenance plans for MCL 2.0.1 include bug fixes and ensuring that it runs
on future Macintosh computers, including the Power Macintosh in emulation
mode.  However, the current sales volume of MCL does not justify the
resources that would be required to continue new feature development on MCL.

We understand the desire that current MCL 2.0.1 users have to create
applications which run in native mode on Power Macintosh.  At this time, we
don't have plans to create a PowerPC native version of MCL on our own.  We
are in discussions with several potential partners about collaborating on a
native PowerPC version of MCL and in marketing MCL to the Lisp community.

There are also a number of significant in-house projects within Apple that
continue to use MCL.  This is an additional motivating factor both in our
continuing support for MCL 2.0.1, and in finding a partner to work with on a
PowerPC native version of MCL.

We appreciate your interest in and support of MCL through the years.  We're
glad that you've been able to make good use of this product to create great
applications.  It's precisely because of users like you and our confidence in
MCL as a viable, marketable product that we are working so hard to ensure a
bright future for MCL.

Best regards,

Rick Fleischman
MCL Product Manager
AppleSoft Development Products Group
Apple Computer, Inc.
e-mail: rickf@apple.com