[comp.lang.smalltalk] Interface Builders?/Bitching

klimas@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (12/07/90)

 
> Why is the Smalltalk-80 world obsessed by big prices. I'm sure
> you would sell 100 times as many for $350.00. Unless of course
> the product is rough or difficult to  use, and requires constant
> support

	I'm not so sure of that!

	The fact of the matter that I have gotten from "walking the floor" at
	OOPSLA is that todate, nobody has been able to sell enough $100 ST 
	packages to make it worth their while, hence several companies that 
	were doing it (e.g. KSC) have pulled out of the low cost tool market.  
	I believe that it will take a bit longer before the end user market 
	will support the volume required to drop prices.

	With a $3500 price tag for its Windows3.0 version of Arrival/ST-80,
	it is clear that Parc-Place is abandoning the low cost end market to
	Digitalk and is differentiating its value added as being the cross
	platform portability of their product.  The corporate developers often
	will pay a premium for that special functionality.  (Hell I know some
	corporate users that pay 10x the price of the base product, for all
	the tools to properly support the product in a production environment!)
 

scrl@otter.hpl.hp.com (Simon Lewis) (12/18/90)

> BTW:  What do people think about Objectworks 4.0? 

Well, I've been using it for about 2 months and I think it's great.  Being
able to control the windows with your own window manager is so much easier. 
Also, being full colour, and with a little bit of adjustment to the standard
appearance, we can now produce applications that nobody would know are written
in anything other than C/Motif (except of course we produce them much more
quickly, and can modify them at will).

Simon Lewis,
HP Labs, Bristol UK.