Dialogue Box

By Neil Ticktin, Editor-in-Chief

Update 7.1 Contrary View

I have to take the opposite position from that of John Conrader (and "Ed.") in the November/December Dialogue Box. I think it’s high time Apple started distributing new System software in a rational manner, rather than browbeating dealers into setting up three-ring copy circuses, or enriching CompuServe, AOL, et al (and in my case US West at $5.20 per hour, best price).

The price of $39 and whatever cents for System 7.1 (plus shipping) sounds high-ish, but not out of line. I won’t know for sure until they deliver and I see how much is included (how many disks, and how much paper).

The nice thing about ordering from Apple’s 800 number is that I end up with disks which are exactly what Apple intends me to have. I don’t have to worry about accidental or intentional changes at a dealer’s machine, communications glitches, etc.

I like the updates the new way, and I’ll be unhappy if Apple reverts to the old way. So will most dealers (only a few Tognazzini-quality dealers successfully turned the copy circus into a selling opportunity sufficient to repay the machine usage, physical setup, supervision, etc costs, I suspect).

- John Baxter

[After much thought, I’ve decided that I agree with you. If Apple is really going to put their new found resources behind development and support, then this will work out to benefit us. But there are two things that bother me. First, is Apple going to put this money elsewhere and leave users with the short end? We, in the Macintosh world, need to keep a vigilant watch on Apple. We can’t let them forget where the money is supposed to go.

Well I'm impressed!

This is just a short note to thank you for your letter of 5th November 92 regarding Canadian subscribers. I'm delighted to see a price reduction and I'm impressed with your work with the magazine. Please keep up the good work.

- Arthur R. Berrill

[Arthur is referring to the price decrease of Canadian subscriptions. This almost $20 drop took place because of a decrease in our mailing cost to Canada. All current Canadian subscribers have been automatically extended and all new subscribers get the new low price. See the mail order store for more information. - Ed.]

Some thought provoking questions

Here are some thought provoking questions to encourage other readers to write in and discuss.

Why is Developer support not available to Canadian programmers? There is no way to benefit from the US developer support apart from paying hourly (or monthly fees). I program for a non-profit educational institution which gives out free software to doctors. We can hardly afford to pay outragious hourly fees for tech support and for long-distance AppleLink support.

Also, why is MPW C sooo slow? The optimization is not great. THINK C is almost as good. Even worse, why is C++ still implemented as a front-end. In the PC world, they have no choice to make super fast compilers, otherwise they lose market share. In the Macintosh market place we have either MPW or THINK. THINK does not offer a standard C++, so we are left with Apple.

Why is SADE so much less useful than THINK debugger? If Symantec can make such a good debugger why can't Apple. Don't they have any great programmers? It kind of makes you wonder why the Apple tools are so underperfected (for lack of a better word) and would Symantec do that much better if they wrote Pink?

I moved away from THINK C because I believe that the MPW environment is more powerful. But I also think that Apple must put a little work on their tools. We can't all go out and buy the greatest Macintosh available with 64MB of RAM because they are not interested in optimizing their tools to work as fast as they could.

That's all the gripes for now.

- Steven Woolgar

[Well readers, go to it! - Ed.]