Re: Apple: Don't shoot yourself in the other foot!

[irvine@lks.csi.com (Chuck Irvine)]

>>>>> ">" == Robert Futrelle <futrelle@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> writes:
In article <CLnCGt.18t@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> futrelle@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Robert Futrelle) writes:
>> An open letter to Rick Fleischman, Apple Computer:

>> A few years back, when Apple took over CCL from Coral, I
>> talked to the MCL product manager at MacWorld.  I told her
>> that they now had in their hands a marvelous product, one
>> that was of great use and interest to programmers and
>> educators alike.  I said, please advertise this product in
>> Mac Magazines, make people aware of it -- keeping it entirely
>> within APDA was hiding a light under a bushel.  I was told
>> that, "Apple doesn't advertise its software products."  I
>> said that she should go back and tell her boss that that
>> policy should not be applied to this marvelous product
>> because it would prevent it from being as widely distributed
>> as it should be.  The rest is history.  

I think a very valid example of a product that was successful because
it was successfully marketed is Smalltalk/V from Digitalk. As a matter
of fact, it's my opinion that Smalltalk/V might be in large part
responsible for the respectably wide usage that Smalltalk is now
enjoying. No, it doesn't come close to the ubiquity of C++, but you
see a heck of a lot more people looking for Smalltalk programmers than
you do for Lisp programmers. As someone that has programmed in both
Lisp and Smalltalk, I'll take Lisp any day and bet others that have
seriously used both would share my preference. If MCL had been
marketed by people like Digitalk instead of APDA, maybe things would
be different now. It's not too late.