MacIvories and Mac System 7.0?

[GRoberts@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Gary Roberts)]

    Date: Thu, 30 May 1991 02:00 EDT
    From: RWK@FUJI.ILA.COM (Robert W. Kerns)

	Date: Fri, 24 May 1991 17:16-0400
	From: Dodds@yukon.scrc.symbolics.com (Douglas Dodds)
	It's not compatible.  And unfortunately, due to bad timing, even the
	MacIvory life support for Genera 8.1, which is shipping in the next few
	weeks, is not compatible with MacOS 7.0.

    This is *extremely* bad timing, bad planning, and bad customer
    relations.  Symbolics seems to assume that MacIvory users only
    run Genera, and that the customers will sit still until Symbolics
    gets its act together.  Personally, I just run Genera less often.

I'm sorry you feel that way, but we couldn't justify holding up the
release of Genera 8.1 (and the MacIvory model 3) an extra month waiting
for Apple to release the final version of MacOS 7.0 so that we could QA-
test against it. We did, in fact, track MacOS 7.0 quite carefully during
our development of Genera 8.1. However, as has been highly publicized,
Apple slipped somewhat in their delivery, and we couldn't wait any
longer.

We are not the only company that is beset by this timing problem.  One
other example is a little company called Apple Computer, which is not
supporting MacOS 7.0 with a number of important layered products until
later in the summer.  

    But not even fixing it so the meta-key works again until this fall
    is so obviously absurd I refuse to believe that Symbolics won't do
    something reasonable more quickly.  (I leave it as an excersize for
    the reader to figure out how much customer pressure will be needed
    to make that happen).

We went to a great deal of trouble to obtain enough copies of MacOS
6.0.7 from Apple to make sure that all of our software maintenance
customers will have fully working systems.
	There will be compatibility with MacOS 7.0 in Genera 8.1 ECO#1, which is
	scheduled to be shipped in the fall.

    (Which is about a year and a half after I first needed support for
    VM.  It's a ROYAL pain having to boot my Mac every time I want to run
    Genera).