mjohnson@Apple.COM (Mark B. Johnson) (05/04/89)
The following is a copy of Wendy Tajima's "Perspectives" article
which appears in the April APDALog. It is posted here for those
of you who have not yet received your copy.
Perspectives
by Wendy Tajima
Some of you have been wondering, "What are Apple's plans for
APDA? What's the significance of bringing APDA in-house?" A
few of you have theorized on Apple's motives, both positive
and negative, on the bulletin board systems which requires
further clarification on our part.
The Transition
Seems like old news now, but our winter here in Developer
Channels was spent planning for the transition of APDA
services from the A.P.P.L.E. Co-op (now called TechAlliance)
to Apple Computer. The transition was relatively smooth,
though we're still transferring customer information and
sales history to our internal system in an effort to find out
as much as we can about you and any outstanding issues you've
had with APDA. Some of you have updated our customer service
representatives on your particular situation and we hope
we've been able to correct any problems you've brought to our
attention.
Our "grand opening" was a great success. We've gained 2,000
new customers, added some new products, and had a wonderful
time meeting many of you in person at the January Macworld.
(We're also looking forward to meeting you Apple II and IIgs
programmers and developers at the next AppleFest in May.)
Starting with the APDA Town Meeting (which will be held at
all major trade shows) and with calls and letters coming in
to us, we're getting a good sense of your concerns and needs.
We Care What You Think . . .
Getting your direct feedback is exactly why we brought APDA
in-house. We believe that the next wave of computing is in
end-user programming and we need to hear directly from
programmers now about what we should be doing to meet their
needs in the future.
Within the roots of Apple's own company history is a strong
tradition of enthusiast programming with the Apple II. We now
see an increase in the number of Macintosh users starting to
create their own applications, often through HyperCard and
HyperTalk. We hear from novice programmers and students
interested in learning how to program almost as much as we
hear from non-Apple MIS managers who want to see what the
Macintosh has to offer them.
Specifically, we'd like your opinions on issues such as:
* what types of development products you'd like APDA to carry
* services and referral networks APDA could manage for you
* balancing cost vs. production quality
* product variety and timeliness vs. the costs of
frequent revisions.
. . . and We Will Respond (When We Can)
Your questions and ideas are important to us. Listed below
are some changes that we've made in response to your
comments.
We must qualify this, first, by saying that even though we're
now part of Apple, we do face certain constraints. Some of
these constraints include Apple's desire to run APDA as a
"break-even" business in light of:
* higher cost structures due to geography and higher
production quality standards
* streamlining the APDAlog by eliminating advertising
* continuing to grow the APDA customer base so that all
programmers and developers, including novices and
hobbyists, have equal access to APDA products and services
* maintaining an ever-expanding and frequently-revised
product line to ensure that our customers have access to
the most up-to-date tools.
This has required certain changes in our pricing and business
policies, but these are always under review to be sure we are
meeting your most critical needs.
New Products
We are happy to introduce over 30 new products to the APDA
product line in this APDAlog (see "What's New This Issue"
column in the April APDAlog for a complete list), including
some new growth areas:
* New networking and communications products, especially for
programmers in multi-vendor environments. These products
include MacWorkStation v. 3.1, MacTCP, MacAPPC, and the
Apple Communications Library, a communications-oriented
line of technical books written by Apple Computer and
published by Addison-Wesley. Also new are the APDA single-
use licenses for MWS 3.1, MacTCP, and MacAPPC to ease the
evaluation process for these products before making a site
licensing commitment.
* Macintosh Allegro Common LISP, developed by Coral Software,
which is the most popular fully symbolic LISP environment
on the Macintosh.
* Macintosh Sample Source Code, compiled by Apple's Developer
Technical Support group. This is in direct response to
customer requests for sample code. We anticipate providing
sample code disks in a subscription manner similar to our
technical notes.
* GS/OS References, Volumes 1 and 2, the first technical
documentation for the new GS/OS system software for the
Apple IIgs.
* Third-party products to expand our product offering with
BASIC and Ada compilers (see Rick Fleischman's Third-Party
Action Line column in the April APDAlog which discusses
third-party products).
New Services
We are also introducing new services to meet customer needs:
* We now honor the American Express Card. This should be
especially useful to customers who have company American
Express cards.
* We have added a toll-free phone line for Canadian
residents. The number is (800) 637-0029. Other
international customers can call (408) 562-3910.
* We now offer for U.S. deliveries your choice of UPS Ground
or 2-day Air Express. UPS Ground can take up to seven
working days, coast-to-coast, but it is approximately one-
third the cost of 2-day Air. Those wishing overnight
delivery can still pay the $10 premium charge added to the
2-day Air rate.
* We also now deliver to APO, FPO, and Post Office Box
addresses via U.S. Mail.
* We are currently working with Apple International Traffic
to develop more options for international deliveries. We
hope to have this worked out by the summer APDAlog.
New Prices
Finally, you may notice that we have reduced the prices of
certain products where we could find cost savings and great
demand from our customers. Specifically, we have lowered
prices for Apple II and Macintosh technical notes, as well as
some of the most popular third-party products. We also
reevaluate pricing with changes in products, such as the
internalization of Macintosh Allegro Common Lisp.
APDA offers technical notes on a subscription basis for the
convenience of our customers. We have streamlined our
packaging for these products in order to cut our costs and
pass the savings on to you. These technical notes are the
same notes that are sent automatically to Apple Certified
Developers (now called Apple Partners), and are available
without additional charge on many networks and bulletin
boards, including AppleLink, BIX, MacNet, and GEnie. Finally,
several large users groups get them, including those in
Boston, Atlanta, and Washington D.C.
Some of you have noticed that our third-party product line
has been priced at the vendor's suggested retail price. We
chose this approach in order to maintain a non-competitive
position vis vis third-party distributors of technical
products. We want to encourage open availability of third-
party development products, so we do not get into price
competition with other distributors such as TechAlliance or
Computerware. We offer a wide range of third-party products
for your convenience, not to raise APDA profits.
When Apple acquired Macintosh Allegro Common LISP (formerly
from Coral Software), we restructured the product to allow
for greater accessibility of this powerful object-oriented
development environment. We have bundled several Allegro
utilities such as the Foreign Function Interface and Stand-
Alone Application Generator, and cut the price to $495
(compared to Coral's list price of $600). As with our other
high-end development products, we also offer a 40 percent
volume discount on purchases of 20 units or more. We hope
this helps to compensate for the restrictions on support
since the acquisition.
APDA now offers group customer accounts. The addition of the
group account was initiated to allow corporations, schools,
and government agencies to set up a single master account
with APDA while allowing for more than one user to access the
account. Unless otherwise notified, we send the APDAlog to
the master address; needs for multiple APDAlogs at a single
or multiple addresses should be discussed with our customer
service representatives.
Price Protection
With these pricing changes, you may wonder what happens if
you'd purchased products at the higher price from APDA. For
these customers, we are offering a new price protection
policy, whereby customers who have purchased these products
from APDA since January 1989 can receive credit for the
difference in price against their future purchases. To take
advantage of this policy, please send us a copy of your
packing slip or, if you don't have this handy, write or call
us and we'll process your credit.
Future Plans
As we look into the future, we see some exciting products
ahead for APDA. We anticipate C++ for MPW coming later this
year, as well as some terrific new HyperCard development
tools. The A/UX product offering should expand with
additional third-party languages and Apple documentation. And
we'll continue to seek out new third-party products that fill
special customer needs or provide leading-edge development
technology. We are also considering services we can provide
to programmers, including providing technical sessions or
APDA Town Meetings at trade shows, and making more technical
information available.
We are always looking for ways to improve and expand APDA
services. We especially appreciate your ideas, suggestions,
and constructive criticism. APDA is definitely here for you,
the programmer and developer, and we can act as your
advocates within Apple. Let us know how we're doing!
About the Author
Wendy Tajima is APDA Marketing Manager.
Mark B. Johnson AppleLink: mjohnson
Developer Technical Support domain: mjohnson@Apple.com
Apple Computer, Inc. UUCP: {amdahl,decwrl,sun,unisoft}!apple!mjohnson
"You gave your life to become the person you are right now. Was it worth it?"
- Richard Bach, _One_thrash@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (Richie Tozier) (05/05/89)
I am curious how would you go about getting an applelink account anyway?
im interested in it...thanks..
Thrashing Rage / TVH | I'll tell you once, I don't mess around
| I'll do what I can to bring you down
UUCP: {killer!}jolnet!thrash | Your loud-mouth approach won't get you far
ARPA: bellcore@csustan | You're beyond reproach; you're among the gods