News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 8/23/97 | |
Your take on competition is dead right on as is Seavers however In my meetings with the Valley folks at different companies it has always struck me as absurd that they don't seem to grasp or even consider the concept of batting averages. Babe Ruth struck out the most times in his career the year he hit the 60 homers. As a record producer, I have a list of flops a mile long, and as a company president a list of failed ideas ....fortunately though I've always generated enough hits to pay the bills and then some.
From: Mickapp@aol.com;
Sent at 8/27/97; 11:37:08 AM;
Re:Amelio on CompetitionI enjoy the baseball theme, here is a futher thought along the same lines.
From: bernesbyj@hotmail.com (james bernesby);
Sent at 8/26/97; 4:53:25 PM;
Baseball as Compared to AppleDoesn't seem strange that there is no one to led Apple at the present time after the firing/resigning of Gil Amelio, and that Baseball still is without a leader since Fay Vincent was fired/resigned in the early 90's.
Look at all the trouble Baseball was in for awhile.
Antitrust hearing in Congress
A Prolonged Strike
No World Series
Fans Disloyalty at the Box Office
Search For Commissioner ( Yet to be born person)Hopefully Apple can learn from Baseball's Mistakes ? One can only Hope.
I own a Powerbook 5300, with System 7.5.2. I still can't get 7.5.3 to run on my my machine.
As to the current state of Apple... doesn't it seem like they're still denying there's a problem? Their website just talks about how OS8 is the greatest thing since 1984, they've got the fastest laptop, the fastest personal computer, and they lost a lot less money than anyone expected in the last quarter...
From: seth@snet.net (Seth Dillingham);
Sent at 8/26/97; 4:02:04 PM;
Re:Amelio on CompetitionTheir problems seem to run straight to their core, the 'id' (not "I-D") of Apple! For them to even consider your ideas, to put some creative and *realistic* (how often do you see those two words referring to the same thing?) thinking behind their marketing, licensing, and dev support programs, they'll have to suffer through a complete identity crisis first, which is a lot more than just another reorg.
Maybe that's what this has been? The beginning of an identity crisis?
Hi Dave! Good morning!
From: dbakin@netobjects.com (Dave Bakin);
Sent at 8/26/97; 12:22:45 PM;
The Pettiness of the Marketing PinbrainToday's Wall Street Journal, 2nd section, last page, have a full page Ad from Sun Microsystems celebrating 800 days of Java. (It is probably in other publications too.)
From the brief ad copy: "When was the last time this many companies agreed on one thing? In just 800 days, thousands of companies (including the ones above) have embraced the Java platform and put it to work".
Now, above this copy is 5 columns of the names of companies that support Java, in 14 point type with wide line spacing, anyway, a lot of companies are listed. Lots and lots are small companies, but most of the major companies are represented: IBM, and Lotus, Apple, Asymetrix, Baan, Borland, Informix, Netscape, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Sun, Sybase, and a lot more.
Corel is listed even though they just backed away from their Office in Java and so can't be said to have "put it to work" quite yet.
But Microsoft is missing!
This is a Java ad, by the way, 100% Pure Java is never mentioned and its special logo is not shown.
Funny, I thought Microsoft provided the reference Java implementation for Win32. I thought Microsoft supported Java in Internet Explorer. I thought Microsoft even sells their own development environment for Java. But I guess they haven't "embraced the Java platform and put it to work".
Sun: Where the definition of openness is relative to their own best interest.
As I said in the subject line above: This ad is a tribute to the pettiness of the marketing pinbrain.
Just wondering. Is it just me or does it seem like Apple is a closed loop again now that Amelio is gone?
From: taylore@rtd.com (Eric Taylor);
Sent at 8/26/97; 11:40:47 AM;
Apple back in a Loop?The one thing I noticed about having Gil at the helm was that for the first time in many years, the communication that came out of Apple seemed not only fairly coherent but also on-track with what Apple's customers wanted to get from Apple.
Now that Gil is gone, it looks like Apple has decided to close itself back inside Infinite Loop again. They're doing something strange with the clone makers--but who knows what?
Actually, it doesn't really matter to us outside because Apple hasn't bothered to respond the FUD that mushroomed out of the rumors flying on the net last week, despite massive amounts of concerned e-mail from customers. Everyone inside the loop is happy and that seems to be good enough. The pre-Amelio attitude that the customers aren't really an important part of the equation seems to be back.
Or maybe its just me...
It's a great idea, but it would ruin the on-line porn industry. They all rely on opening the ad banners in a second window to get you hoplessly and endlessly lost in pursuit of all the "Cum gargling teenage cheerleaders" out there. ;-)
From: jraimondo@kpmg.com;
Sent at 8/26/97; 11:26:45 AM;
target="new"dave, you bet it would be possible! tk has turned out to be the cross-platform gui of choice for a lot of the "little languages" -- there are versions tied to perl, python, some lisp and ml dialects, and possibly some others.
From: roseman@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Mark Roseman);
Sent at 8/26/97; 10:37:12 AM;
Tk and Frontieri was chatting about it at the last tcl/tk workshop with the mac guys from the tcl group at sun, and we all thought it would be very cool. both tk and frontier are very high-level tools, so it would be a good match. frontier would get a real cross-platform gui, and tk would get exposure in the mac community and more mac people bashing on it.
I really like the Tk model for GUIs. The text and canvas widgets are very rich, so they are great for scripted presentation of data. And I appreciate that the GUI uses layout management rather than pixel placement for widgets.
From: lieske@Princeton.EDU (Jay Lieske);
Sent at 8/26/97; 11:53:12 AM;
Tk front endThere are a lot of people who want to use the Tk library and/or API for user interfaces in languages besides Tcl. Two major examples are Python (www.python.org) and Perl/Tk. It's a little difficult:
* Tk is highly dependent on the Tcl language -- it creates Tcl scripts on the fly and evals them, as well as accepting Tcl scripts from the user/programmer as callbacks. Perl/Tk solves this by rewriting the Tk source to remove all traces of Tcl. Python Tkinter pretty much just uses the distributed Tcl and Tk source, wrapping Tcl scripts around Python objects for Tk callbacks.
* Mac Tcl/Tk (at least up through 8.0beta) hasn't developed a clean Mac shared library interface. That is, it exports way too many routines, including the CodeWarrior C library, that make it impossible to link to a single library from different compilers. I urged them to clean things up, and I even put up a little web site on my own work in that area (http://www.princeton.edu/~lieske/tcl/mactcl-j8b.html).
* The usual things are missing from Tk that cross-platform GUIs seem to leave for later: printing, robust clipboard and drag-and-drop, floating windows.
* On the Tcl mail list we discussed OSA support a while ago, but none of us are OSA or Component Manager gurus to understand how to do it.
The SunLabs MacTcl people (Ray Johnson, Jim Ingham) have been very friendly in my email contacts.
I've pretty much put Tcl/Tk aside in my work now. I'm using Java for cross-platform stuff and PowerPlant for MacOS. But I do refer to Tk and some of its widget sets (like the BLT graphing tools) as I develop my software.
http://www.princeton.edu/~lieske/
Fry's is great, if you use it properly. In my opinion, anyone going there expecting help in selecting a computer system or software product is going to the wrong place. Also, anyone going there expecting rock bottom prices is going to the wrong place.
From: dbakin@netobjects.com (Dave Bakin);
Sent at 8/25/97; 1:29:20 PM;
Fry's is great!You need to have done your research before you go. And you're paying for a large selection of available merchanise IN STOCK which you can carry away with you that day. And they've got more then one on the shelf so if you go home and install it and it doesn't work you can go back and exchange it or return it the same day.
And also I highly recommend them for large purchases (computer, audio, whatever) because you can buy a relatively inexpensive service contract for 1, 2, or 3 years and in my experience, they really stand behind it. Which counts if you don't want to be out a monitor or printer or laptop while it disappears into service for 6-8 weeks. The service contract includes loaners. If they can't repair they replace. Really.
Until about June I would agree with anyone who complained about the quality and helpfullness of their employees. (See the hilarious http://www.best.com/~braith/frys.htm ). But as of about June, the Palo Alto store which I frequent has been much different. The store is cleaner, the stock is more complete, and I actually found two different employees in the computer department who KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING and had GOOD RECOMMENDATIONS. It was a remarkable change, and I was so surprised I made a point of stopping at the front and congratulating the store manager. He said he was new, all of that store management was new, and they were trying to change things.
But their cashiers and check-out procedure are still exceptionally onorous and slow.
Hope you had a great vacation!
From: filmat11@gate.net (Phil Manhard);
Sent at 8/21/97; 11:53:52 PM;
Re: Free the Mac OSI really enjoyed the Free the Mac OS column. I have recently installed Linux on my Pentium box - it's very interesting, especially its power, stability and true open environment. And nobody can revoke its license.
What if a fredlabs or Connectix created a Virtual Mac for Linux? Wow! Rhapsody would become Requiem overnight, if it isn't already.
I agree completely with your comments on the Mac ecosystem. Apple wants to block the cloners because it can't compete - who loses? The user. Bill Gates bought $150 million in Apple stock. The users bought 2 million copies of OS 8 at $100 apiece - doesn't that equal $200 million? Last time I checked, all those copies of OS 8 didn't come with stock. So who is really doing the most for the Mac OS?
It's traumatic, but I, too, find myself disconnecting from Apple. I already won't buy any peripherals that can't be used by my Pentium box as well as my 6100. Bought a Sony monitor to replace my Apple 15" - it'll work with either system. Bought an HP Deskjet to replace my Stylewriter - it works beautifully with both systems.Why didn't Apple build all peripherals to work with Wintel and Macs from the very beginning?
I agree... Free the Mac OS. I want it to be free, too. How to pay the 100 engineers? Put me on the list. I'm good for $200 towards the goal right now. How many other users would put up some cash? 2 million? I won't even ask for stock....
Doesn't Microsoft require licensees of Window's to sign an agreement that they won't sue Microsoft for patent infrigement? Doesn't this seem anti-competitive? Are you boycotting Microsoft products or writing articles about this?
From: llaks@blarg.net> (by way of Brent Simmons (llaks);
Sent at 8/24/97; 12:32:12 PM;
Re:Apple Avoids CompetitionSeems to me that Apple made poor licensing agreements that offer too low pricing and are unprofitable . That, it seems to me, is the real story here.
I've been thinking the same thing, I wonder why the Dept of Justice hasn't taken a look at Apple's practices against it's competition? i.e. Power Computing, Motorola, UMAX, etc...
From: adelator@umabnet.ab.umd.edu (Andrew N delaTorre);
Sent at 8/24/97; 10:18:23 AM;
Re:Apple Avoids CompetitionAs much as I love the Mac, I'm beginning to despise Apple and especially Steve Jobs.
How can a company with such great technology, be so out of touch with consumer needs and concerns??
Hmmm. I think there's a flaw in that reasoning.
From: dwiner@well.com (Dave Winer);
Re:Apple Avoids CompetitionBaseball and football are different sports. Some people train to become baseball players, some people train for football.
Baseball is specifically immune to anti-trust laws, so the courts must have thought at one time that their behavior was illegal.
People had a choice, they could watch or play football or basketball.
Unfortunately because there is an alternative, Windows & Intel machines, that people can move to. Anti-trust law is actually quite difficult. It places a high burden on the government to prove its case, and the -only- proof accepted is a) short term damage to customers because there are no alternatives and b) long term damage to the competitive structure of an industry.
From: markg@genthirteen.com (Mark Gonzales);
Sent at 8/23/97; 4:24:49 PM;
Re:Apple Avoids CompetitionIn neither case is Apple, with its 4% market share or so, in violation. If brought to court, ironically, Apple's strongest defense would be to point out that they have only 4% market share. Case closed.
And unfortunately because the players in the Mac space aren't willing to stand up to Steve and his lawyers. Witness Joel Kocher's departure from Power for wanting to stand up and fight for their business and their customers. So the cases can't even be brought.