Future direction of A/UX?

[Phil Ronzone]

The following is not a flame. If there is any accidental flammable "spills"
in this posting, let me know, and crew of guys from Alaska will come over
and steam out your spool directories. I am not allowed, and can't, talk
about Apple future product directions. At Apple, you have to be at least a
VP before you can leak that stuff. :-)

John Gilmore recently posted a response to a question from Ken Mandelberg
on the "Future direction of A/UX". Reading Mr. Gilmore's reply (in my humble
and subjective personal opinion), it looks like the reply is based more on
the author's problems in selling his product and perhaps lack of as much help
as he would like get from Apple. Mr. Gilmore brings up 5 points I'd like to
respond to:

    1. That's because Apple is unlikely to provide any [UNIX only features]

    *  Well, this is simply not true. System V plus BSD features, KSH, true
       BSD signals & CSH, TCP/IP, subnets, domains, NFS & YP, autoconfig and
       autorepair, a SCSI driver that accepted many other drives than just
       the manufacturers, all that in RELASE 1.0! Release 1.1 includes
       POSIX, better Mac binary supporte, HFX, increased SCSI support,
       better drivers, AppleTalk, and more.


    2. And it accounts for why Apple is>not marketing A/UX -- 
       they don't WANT to sell copies

    *  Well, that's news to me, the A/UX engineering, product management and
       marketing groups. We've sold far more A/UX systems in our first year
       than SUN sold in their first year. We WANT to sell, we LIKE to sell, ...


    3. Any customer who runs A/UX is likely to switch to a different brand...

    *  Well, I hope not!! :-) :-)


    4. The reason to sell A/UX at all is that GSA won't let US Government
       departments buy any computers that can't be upgraded to run Unix.

    *  Or MS/DOS. Certainly a (repeat a) reason that we did A/UX was to sell
       to the government markets. Since the U.S. government now has bids
       outstanding for several BILLION dollars worth of UNIX gear, I'd say
       that it ain't such a bad reason. Of course, bidding your equipment on
       billions of $$$ woth of bids does mean you're sorta serious about what
       you're selling ...


    5. If they can get the few A/UX users locked in to the proprietary MacOS
       toolbox, they won't be able to switch to more cost-effective hardware...

    *  Awwww, come on. We just don't think like that. We didn't bust our
       buns over SVVS, POSIX, X, NFS, YP, domains, TCP/IP and other effective
       standards to let claims like that be thrown at us. After all, what
       did you expect us to use for our windowing/UI software? New Wave??? :-)


>We have gotten zilch help from the formal
>channels at Apple.  They don't WANT other display technologies or user
>interfaces to compete with the Toolbox.  Especially not ones from Sun!
>We have gotten some support from a few individuals scattered around
>within Apple, but the corporate line is solidly against us.
>...
>This entire message is my opinion, based on trying to sell third party
>software for A/UX for more than a year.  Correction or corroboration welcome.

Our evangelists are the most
overworked creatures I've ever seen. I saw first hand our direct help given
to "competing" card & display manufacturers to build products that directly
competed with us. We spun Mac* software out to Claris because third party
software vendors didn't want us giving away free software.

Are you saying the corporate line is solidly against you?? You personally?
I don't understand this point at all.

I have personally worked with several small startup software companies that
based their reason-to-exist on A/UX. Like any startup, it can be a "bet your
mortagage" situtation. When things look tough, perhaps it is easiest to
blame the Apple, BUT, is it fair????

Tell us WHAT you didn't like or that makes your selling efforts so
difficult. Don't tell us your mystical intepretation of Apple policy.

Comments like "I need X in color" or "POSIX 13" to sell so-and-so are very
helpful.

Comments like "the coporate line is against us" tell us nothing and could be
seen as "cry witch" syndrome.

TELL US WHAT YOU NEED. WE LISTEN. O.K., we don't have infinite manpower and
could do it all, but we listen.


+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Philip K. Ronzone, Apple Computer, 10440 Bubb Rd, MS 58A, Cupertino, CA 95014|
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