Apple, wake up! *You* lose!

[joswig@informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Rainer Joswig)]

Hi again,


-- Apple is not reliable

I still really can´t believe Apple is killing all their
development tools. Are they crazy? Under these prospects
I can't recommend using Dylan (if it ever will appear),
because soon it *could* be dead end. Given Apple´s
reputation this seems to be quite plausible. Someone
at Apple will decide that Dylan is no longer an important
project, costs too much, has to few users and will
kill it. For application development a tool has to be
stable over *many* years. Will we have support for
Dylan in ten years? All these (scripting) languages
from Apple (AppleScript, NewtonScript, Key, Dylan, ...),
will they have a future?
Some longtime Macintosh developers indicated me long ago
that Apple is not reliable in this respect. I didn't believed it
at that time. They were right.


-- Lisp at our University

We have a lot of Lisp-based tools and software here at our
university. We had Lisp-Machines from Siemens/Xerox,
from Symbolics, we have a site-license for 
Allegro Common Lisp with CLIM on Sparc, licenses of LispWorks,
over the years we have bought Macintosh Common Lisp,
Golden Common Lisp, Procyon Common Lisp, Lucid Common Lisp, ...
(There are sure many more fine Lisp-Systems.)
A lot of development is currently
taking place with CLIM 2.0. We hoped these
software could be ported to Macs with MCL later. And now?
A lot of our Macs are being used for text processing and office
work. But in the future we can use more and more our
workstations for this purpose. Why should we upgrade our old Macs
(which we would do) to PowerPC? A lot of our
future tools will have to be cross platform
(like FrameMaker, TeX, CLIM, ...). If PowerPC Macs
won't have these tools, we won't buy Macs anymore.
Macs are under constant pressure. There are loud
voices for UNIX-machines and for PCs.


-- Lisp marketing for Universities

We can buy a Common Lisp for Windows. A site license would
cost us DM 10.000,-. And it is not unlikely that we would
buy such a product.
***This would include the permission to give every student
a copy for homework.***
Apple should have made these aggressive moves in the
university market long ago. This is where a lot of Lisp usage
takes place. This is where a lot of innovation takes
place. This is where future trends are coming from.
Apple doesn't even have student discounts for MCL!
Can you believe this?

Lately our Music department here at Hamburg University
bought Macs as a platform for developing programs
in the area of computer music. They bought Procyon
Common Lisp! I asked them, why they were crazy not
to buy MCL? Looks like they made the right move
without knowing it.


-- Apple can't support its own new line of machines!

MCL native on a PowerPC would have made an incredible
combination. If Apple won't port its software to
PowerPC, who else will?

They are complaining that MCL has not enough users to justify
a port to the PowerPC. What has Apple done to expand
the user base? 

Nearly nothing.


-- Poor marketing at Apple

I am visiting CeBIT (the largest computer fair of the world,
which is taking place in Hannover, Germany) for years.
I always looked at the products from Apple. I never
saw a demonstration of MCL from the APDA guys. They
didn't even know what it is. This company wants to
sell products? Apple, a software company?

This year I expected to see the new PowerPC Macs at CeBIT
and to get a native MCL soon. Three weeks before the
introduction of PowerPC Macs you tell me, I won't get
it? MCL is dead now. What surprise will the introduction
of the PowerPC Mac bring us next? 


-- MCL sells expensive Macs

Next month I will start working for a small company
which is working in the publishing industry. They already
have bought a license of MCL 2.0beta years ago.
I will there have a very expensive Duo 270c with
additional hardware (Duo Dock, EtherDock, big HD,
20" color monitor, Ethernet card, memory, ...).
Most MCL users have high-end Macs just
to get their development system smoothly running.
These are hardware sales! We planned to
use MCL for some special purpose programming
projects. But now? Can I recommend using it? Most
of the customers also have UNIX workstations (as we
have, too). Guess what systems we will use? UNIX. For
UNIX we have many excellent tools from many different vendors.
This will ensure that our software will run on
next generation platforms.


-- Apple customer disappointed

I have been a loyal Apple user from Apple II days on,
but this keeps me thinking. Soon we will have
affordable high performance UNIX-laptops. This
will be a solution for me. Lately I got a mail
from a UNIX-based Lisp-vendor about their business
being healthy. Nice for them and nice for me.


-- It is not to late

Apple, wake up!


-- You lose! I don´t. I can choose.



Rainer Joswig
Email: joswig@informatik.uni-hamburg.de