Re: MCL future...

[jbk@world.std.com (Jeffrey B Kane)]

> You said several things whch have stayed 
> with me: 
>   1) many of Apple's plans for devlopment have seemingly had dead ends.
>   2) That Apple may be changing its Market direction-notto software, 
>      but to spreadshets and word processing.

Clinton,
  If you look at Apple's actions over the last two years, they have pretty much
discontinued all internal language development.

MacApp -> discontinued Bedrock -> back and forth between Symantec and Apple,
          but nothing in beta form 
MPW -> discontinued (no further development) 
C++ ->no Apple ANSI 3.0 version every announced 
Pascal -> no further Apple versions
MCL -> no further development
ETO -> no significant changes for over a year and half

In addition, assembly level cross compiling tools (680x0->PPC), although 
announced two years ago, has not (to my knowledge) been publicly shown.

It looks like Apple has hoped that third parties will develop core language 
tools for the Mac.  As can be seen with the Bedrock project, this is probably
not a good assumption.  Other third party products:

Think C++ -- ANSI 3.0 (without exceptions) good for general application
          development. Moderately friendly to outside development tools 
Metroworks -- Still under development.

Things simply don't look good on the Macintosh platform.  So many projects
within Apple have been killed over the last nine months, most with no viable
replacement technology (and many without any notice to outside developers).

Apple has stopped sending final system releases (no 7.1 Pro) to developers.  
They have separated PPC development tools from ETO. They are trying to make
themselves appear as if they are a software only company.  Of course this is
long before anyone else makes an Apple clone, or Apple stops hardware
production.  They have raised prices and unbundle products, before they improve
support.  Instead of making it simple and straight forward to develop on the
Macintosh, they make it complex, expensive, and very inconsistent.  This week
we told several companies that were interested in the PPC machines that they
should wait until a new platform is chosen and for the Lisp code could be
ported.  They are DOS and Unix workstation shops.  They will now look for DOS
or unix workstation solutions.

To be honest, I'm no longer sure who the manager's are at Apple, but I am
sure  that their bottom line is simple "market share" and demographics,
without any concept of what tools are needed to get there.  I know that for most
of my customers, Apple has failed, and will not be a good choice for them.  This
is a shame, as the PowerPC was a real chance to bring workstation power to
the desktop. Unfortunately I can't recommend turning an organization upside
down (as far are replacing computers) when the only advantage is to run
"Word" at a faster pace.  These customers need custom, mission critical
applications.  Apple no longer offers the tools to build these applications 
on the Macintosh.

           Jeffrey

P.S. I don't have any delusions that anyone in upper level management at 
Apple really cares about this.

======================================
Jeffrey Kane, MD
Kane Biomedical Systems
Boston, MA

Internet    jbk@world.std.com
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