jacobson@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (05/04/89)
Here is some interesting further info from Wordperfect on what happened from
their view.
Captured from another net:
Sb: #WPCorp & Amiga products Fm: Amiga WordPerfect 72447,3427 To: ALL
Just to make sure that everyone understands...WordPerfect Corporation is
currently doing no NEW development for the Amiga. There are two programmers
assigned to continue with maintenance. This means that the promised 4.1
maintenance update WILL be done (although it might take longer). All shipping
products will be supported and updated as necessary for maintenance. I will
also, from time to time, drop in and answer questions (as my new position
permits).
The reasons for this decision are several, below I will give a general
description of some of the more important ones:
- Small market: CBM has made a lot of noise about it's reaching the 1M mark in
machines sold, but our realistic market is MUCH smaller. We estimate that
there are roughly 300,000 machines in the U.S. We have sold approximately
26,000 units in the US. This gives a market share of approximately 9%. We
estimate that this figure is approaching the saturation of our potential
market. We feel that although there are lots of Amigas out there, there are
is only a small segment of those that want/require the functionality of
WordPerfect. To help bolster those dismal number, we turned to the rest of
the world (Germany initially) CBM claims that Germany is a bigger market than
the US. We have sold roughly 2,500 copies of WP in Germany (not even enough
to cover the translation costs. We have also talked with several other
software developers, all of them indicating that they've had a dismal
experience outside the US. All told, we've sold slightly more than 30,000
units world-wide (a large amount of them at dramatically discounted prices
(the 500 bundle, etc.). Since our products are targeted heavily to the
business market, we do not think that our market share can dramically increase
until the Amiga has a much stronger hold in the business world. The market the
CBM claims may be there, but unless you're writing games, you're not going to
even come close to getting much of it. While it is true that there are only
2-2.5 million MACs in the world, there is a HUGE difference in their market,
in that there is a large share of them in the market that WordPerfect targets
its products.
- Insufficient sales: Many people would be very happy with sales of 30K units.
WordPerfect Corporation cannot be. There are huge costs in products such as
WordPerfect. Just to get it out the door cost nearly $750,000. Costs of the
manual, maintenance, toll-free support, and product enhancement have tallied
up to the point where monthly product sales cannot cover monthly costs. Our
costs were roughly $70-90K/month. During the past year we've only had two
months where sales were able to cover the costs.
- Time: Around this time last year, the Amiga WP development team was cut to
two people (for the same reasons as this time), CBM was made aware of this.
From that time the group slowly grew as we tried to broaden our product line (to make up for the insufficient WP sales). Library was attempt at this. We
had lots of positive reaction to Library when we showed it, but in the end, it
just didn't sale. In the end it lost nearly $350,000.
- 5.0/6.0 cost prohibitive: In order to satisfy our users wants/needs (and
increase our market share to a break even level) we feel it important to have
graphics capabilities and high quality printing (a la 5.0). We've done some
work in that direction and done a lot of evaluating. We estimate that the
project would require 8-10 man years. So, with 5 programmers (which we didn't
have) we could have done it in 2 years. With the current market, or even an
optimistic view of the market in 2 years we do not feel that the investment
will ever be recouperated.
- Experiment: When WPCorp started working on the Amiga we didn't know what was
going to happen. We felt that there was a chance (since the Amiga is still,
IMHO, the best micro-computer on the market for the $) that things would go
well. Things didn't go as we had hoped. It's sad. I'd rather be working on it
right now. We're not necessarily pointing fingers, but we do feel frustrated
and the comments of Stan Kalisher (Impulse) in AmigaArts/WP/DP Publishing
#15941 do reflect some of those frustrations rather well.
- Money: OK, call us greedy, call us what you want. But, frankly, over the
existence of the Amiga group we've lost nearly $800,000. No one can justify
such an existence. We kept (being loyal Amiga programmers) the axe away as
long as we could. We were optimistic for as long as we could. But when
you're losing that much money you just can't go on forever. A company that
goes on ignoring a wound like that will eventually loose all it's blood and
die. None of us programming on the Amiga liked it, but we felt it a necessary
step.
We can look at this as the best alternative under the circumstances. Since
WPCorp is doing the things it needs to in order to keep alive, it will still
be around when the Amiga finally takes it's place in the business community
(assuming CBM gets it's act together). We'll be able to re-enter the Amiga
market with all the technology we're developing on other graphics oriented
machines.
// Lynn LeBaron
\X/ Manager, Amiga Development
WordPerfect Corporation
End of Msg 64
Enter Msg to Read (1 - 68)
>
Command > doug@homxc.ATT.COM (D.SULPY) (05/05/89)
In article <45600063@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, someone writes:
...Since our products are targeted heavily to the
business market, we do not think that our market share can dramically increase
until the Amiga has a much stronger hold in the business world. The market the
CBM claims may be there, but unless you're writing games, you're not going to
even come close to getting much of it.
WPCorp is doing the things it needs to in order to keep alive, it will still
be around when the Amiga finally takes it's place in the business community
(assuming CBM gets it's act together). We'll be able to re-enter the Amiga
market with all the technology we're developing on other graphics oriented
machines.
// Lynn LeBaron
\X/ Manager, Amiga Development
WordPerfect Corporation
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wonder if it has ever entered WordPerfect's collective head that their
lack of sales isn't due to a problem with Amiga owners, but due to Amiga
owners' problems with WordPerfect. I'm not a WordPerfect owner (and never
will be), but the reviews I've seen of it here on the NET are generally
far from favorable (no WYSIWYG being the most common complaint). WP's
biased attitude that the Amiga is basically a game machine suggests that
they never took the Amiga seriously enough to consider the features that
Amiga users demand. WP portrays it's I.B.M.-Mindset by it's insinuation
that CBM will only have "it's act together" when it offers itself as
a serious competitor to I.B.M. in the business market -- God, I hope
that never happens, because it would mean that all of the things the
Amiga does best would be wasted on...uh, bar charts, and perhaps the
synthesized voice droning out per capita incomes. Yuck.
So it's a shame the Amiga has to lose WP - the prestige associated with
WP's existence for the Amiga probably helped the Amiga's reputation
in the general public - but it's probably best they're quitting now.
I'm sure some Amiga-specific company will fill the gap, without wasting
the thousands in development costs WP keeps whining about losing.
Note: In the above posting, when I say "WordPerfect" (or "WP") I'm
referring to Lynn LeBaron's posting, assuming it's representative
of WordPerfect's opinions.
Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for AT&T. They don't make word processors.
I think they make phones. raw@mcnc.org (Russell Williams) (05/06/89)
In article <6550@homxc.ATT.COM>, doug@homxc.ATT.COM (D.SULPY) writes: > > I wonder if it has ever entered WordPerfect's collective head that their > lack of sales isn't due to a problem with Amiga owners, but due to Amiga > owners' problems with WordPerfect. I'm not a WordPerfect owner (and never > will be), but the reviews I've seen of it here on the NET are generally > far from favorable (no WYSIWYG being the most common complaint). WP's I've been really busy at work, so I haven't been able to post till now, but here it comes: THE DEFENSE OF WORDPERFECT I have been reading reviews of wordperfect for the last couple of weeks. Unfavorable reviews. And I can see the reason behind them. WP is not the simplest program to use, it's not WYSIWYG. But it IS the most powerful wordprocessor I know of for the amiga. When I say this, I'm excluding TeX for the obvious reason that there is more to wordprocessing than typesetting, such I have an Amiga, and I bought it soon after it came out, because it looked far and away the best computer on the market. It had great graphics and sound, and I like games, so I got it. But I would never have bought it if I hadn't thought a good wordprocessor was going to come out. And there are decent wordprocessors, but none as good as Wordperfect for large projects. I have never found anything on the Amiga market to even compare with WordPerfect. I bought ProWrite when it first came out, and I borrowed a friend's excellence to try when it appeared. Neither of these packages run fast enough to edit anything over 20 pages with acceptable speed, excellence of course, dragging far behind. WP is FAST, blazingly fast. I can edit huge documents with little loss of speed, and after the first two revisions, it has never crashed on me. Never. ProWrite still crashes after the 2.0 version, and doesn't approach WP's power. Excellence is a joke in this department. I saw my friend using it two months ago, and it crashed twice in one hour. Admittedly, my friend was editing a large document, and was trying to do a lot look like it came out of a high quality typewriter. Maximum readability is what I want out of the output. I have a lot of friends with font based wordprocessors, and frankly, they can't write a grocery list without it looking like a ransom note. More fonts than brains seems to be pretty prevalent with This isn't to say that I think WYSIWYG is a bad idea. I like it a great deal of the time. But I pay a price in speed for it. Now, I could cut my docs into smaller pieces, but I haven't seen any WYSIWYG wordprocessor that could cut it with docs longer than twenty pages, and that's frankly ridiculous. Besides, my definition of a good wordprocessor is not something I have to work with. I want it to be invisible. WP does take some initial work. But after a couple of days of using it, I never had to look back at the manual unless I was doing something incredibly tricky. And for people who complain about a large manual, I have just one response: Let it be as large as it needs to be in order to be complete. I get really tired of writing letters and calling customer support about how to run a program. WP's manual is the finest manual for any software I have ever purchased. I have never had trouble finding the proper section, following their examples, and getting what I want after one try. Contrast this with ProWrite's first manual, which shipped with addendums and still necessitated letters and phone calls.. biased attitude that the Amiga is basically a game machine suggests that > they never took the Amiga seriously enough to consider the features that > Amiga users demand. WP portrays it's I.B.M.-Mindset by it's insinuation > that CBM will only have "it's act together" when it offers itself as > a serious competitor to I.B.M. in the business market -- God, I hope > that never happens, because it would mean that all of the things the > Amiga does best would be wasted on...uh, bar charts, and perhaps the > synthesized voice droning out per capita incomes. Yuck. It might suggest this, but nothing could be farther from the truth. WP Corp. took the Amiga seriously. WP for the Amiga is a full blown version of their program. Their Apple IIGS port was a scaled down version of WP. That's the machine they didn't take seriously, and that's a machine made by Apple! What really upsets me is that I'm starting to think that the Amiga is not purchased by most people with writing in mind. I realize that for a large percent of the population, a program that can comfortably handle twenty pages and a number of features is sufficient. And that's fine for them. The kicker is somewhat self-centered: I do write, and I write a lot. English papers on WP are a dream, and large chapters are easy as well. If WP advances significantly beyond 5.0, my computer will be inferior to an IBM for the whole thrust of my having a computer, which is writing. I don't want to have to get an IBM. I don't want to WANT to get an IBM. I love my Amiga, but I also love WP. Unfortunately, I don't think that I'm representative of the Amiga market. And when WP Corp. says that CBM will have to gain a larger share of the business market, it only stands to reason. Business people typically generate a large number of reports which utilize fairly esoteric functions of a wordprocessor. Unless CBM could somehow target the "author's market", business seems the only defined market that would generate increased sales for the kind of wordprocessor that WP represents. For that matter, it wouldn't exactly hurt to see the Amiga in business. Think of those bar charts! It can do incredible things when unleashed, and any computer being used to accomplish a given task is NOT being wasted! So it's a shame the Amiga has to lose WP - the prestige associated with > WP's existence for the Amiga probably helped the Amiga's reputation > in the general public - but it's probably best they're quitting now. > I'm sure some Amiga-specific company will fill the gap, without wasting > the thousands in development costs WP keeps whining about losing. > You think WP whines? Wait till you hear me start whining as I sit around the computer store waiting for "some Amiga-specific company" to fill the gap. It didn't happen before WP, and if they're right, and the market is not large enough to support a product like WP, then it's not going to come out. The only market I see growing is the bridgeboard market. Russell Williams
sysop@tlvx.UUCP (SysOp) (05/07/89)
In article <4389@alvin.mcnc.org>, raw@mcnc.org (Russell Williams) writes: > In article <6550@homxc.ATT.COM>, doug@homxc.ATT.COM (D.SULPY) writes: > > > > I wonder if it has ever entered WordPerfect's collective head that their > > lack of sales isn't due to a problem with Amiga owners, but due to Amiga > > owners' problems with WordPerfect. I'm not a WordPerfect owner (and never > > will be), but the reviews I've seen of it here on the NET are generally > > far from favorable (no WYSIWYG being the most common complaint). WP's .... > I have been reading reviews of wordperfect for the last couple of > weeks. Unfavorable reviews. And I can see the reason behind them. WP is not > the simplest program to use, it's not WYSIWYG. But it IS the most powerful > wordprocessor I know of for the amiga. When I say this, I'm excluding TeX for .... Word Perfect for Amiga looked very much like that for the IBM, and seemed rather nice to me, for the program that WP is meant to be. If you don't need fonts and need all the features, I can see where people would like it (even with those strange function-key choices...I know, use the template). I have no use for all those extra features, though. There are less-capable word processors that have spell-checking and other "basics" that would be enough for me to write resumes or reports. Usually, I have no use for fonts either, and therefore, no use for WYSIWYG. I can virtually get by with a text editor. Speaking of which, can the more advanced text editors such as CygnusED be configured with some word processing features (footers with page numbers, spellchecking, etc.)? I've been thinking about getting a commercial text editor, and CED sounds neat. (What's all this about a new version?) .... > look like it came out of a high quality typewriter. Maximum readability is > what I want out of the output. I have a lot of friends with font based > wordprocessors, and frankly, they can't write a grocery list without it looking > like a ransom note. More fonts than brains seems to be pretty prevalent with I would agree that it would be preferable to use the printer's internal fonts rather than do some clever scaled font. An ad for Pen Pal said that it'd use the printer's internal NLQ font along with graphics on the same line. This sounds like a great solution, and it's hard to imagine that there's only one word processor that does this. But, I haven't seen Pen Pal, so I can't review it.... On the new WP 5.0 for the IBM machines, how does WP print fonts without going to graphic mode (and having the same problems with output as all the Amiga programs that use fonts)? There was a program on the C-64 which put the Epson printer into graphic mode and made multiple passes, just like the printer does in NLQ mode. The difference was that they could support various fonts. The downside of this is that the fonts were pretty much optimized for 8-pin Epson printers. I would think this is the best solution, except there would need to be fonts for different printers, as well as different pitches and styles. PageStream uses a generic font that is "scaled". The result on my dot-matrix is not as good as the printer's font, apparently because the fonts are very generic. I would like to try to make a font for it that is "optimized" for output on my printer. (When I posted this on SoftLogik's BBS, the reply was that it wasn't the font's fault, but the fact that it gets scaled and such. I realize this, but in knowing that, I figure the font can be kluged. Now if I had a font editor for PS I would see if I'm right or wrong....) > This isn't to say that I think WYSIWYG is a bad idea. I like it a > great deal of the time. But I pay a price in speed for it. Now, I could cut I agree, a "word processor" should be very fast. [gripes about ProWrite deleted] > biased attitude that the Amiga is basically a game machine suggests that > > they never took the Amiga seriously enough to consider the features that > > Amiga users demand. WP portrays it's I.B.M.-Mindset by it's insinuation > > that CBM will only have "it's act together" when it offers itself as > > a serious competitor to I.B.M. in the business market -- God, I hope .... Noone REALLY expects anything but MS-DOS machines in most businesses, do they? And, is it a bad thing? For people who do just word processing, why not? > It might suggest this, but nothing could be farther from the truth. > WP Corp. took the Amiga seriously. WP for the Amiga is a full blown version .... > Apple! What really upsets me is that I'm starting to think that the Amiga is > not purchased by most people with writing in mind. I realize that for a large Idea! Where does WP sell most of its copies of WP? To business, I would think. I think the 9% figure that was mentioned in a previous article was a huge number for what is really a top-of-the-line word processor! It amazes me that 9% of Amiga owners are willing to pay for a word processor with all those features. Considering that most Amigas tend to be home machines (I've yet to see one in a business setting, while I've seen WP all over the place in business use), there must be some serious writing going on for a non-business use of such a program. > percent of the population, a program that can comfortably handle twenty pages > and a number of features is sufficient. And that's fine for them. The kicker > is somewhat self-centered: I do write, and I write a lot. English papers on > WP are a dream, and large chapters are easy as well. If WP advances > significantly beyond 5.0, my computer will be inferior to an IBM for the whole .... Uh, does this mean you still aren't satisfied with 4.0 (since if you were, you wouldn't be waiting for advances)? Is there any word processor that does everything you need? What will WP 6.0 or 7.0 do that will help you write your papers (beyond your version 4.0)? I'm wondering, since earlier, you speak as if WP does everything you need (and fast, etc.). > For that matter, it wouldn't exactly hurt to see the Amiga in business. > Think of those bar charts! It can do incredible things when unleashed, and > any computer being used to accomplish a given task is NOT being wasted! I think it's wishful thinking, but it seems reasonable that the Amiga could complement other computers in a business setting. Certainly, it's a great solution for many tasks, with great graphics and still NTSC compatible. [misc whining deleted ;-] It's hard for me to feel bad about the situation. Amiga owners have the choice of Word Perfect as well as any solutions before or soon-to-come. I have the feeling that this conversation might turn into "Wordprocessor Wars", but there have been a number of disappointing word processors for Amiga, for some reason, and it's worthwhile to examine solutions. Anyway, these are just my opinions (I hope they're not way off-base :-). Gary Wolfe ..!uunet!hite386!tlvx!sysop
carus@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (bryce.w.carus) (05/08/89)
From article <4389@alvin.mcnc.org>, by raw@mcnc.org (Russell Williams): > In article <6550@homxc.ATT.COM>, doug@homxc.ATT.COM (D.SULPY) writes: >> >> I wonder if it has ever entered WordPerfect's collective head that their ... stuff deleted ... > now, but here it comes: > > THE DEFENSE OF WORDPERFECT > > I have been reading reviews of wordperfect for the last couple of ... stuff deleted ... > Russell Williams Without getting into/or extending this war on WordPerfect as a program, consider what we have read on the subject so far... There have been two major articles from knowledgeable insiders *EXPLAINING* their reasons for not going farther with WP in the Amiga market. It is my observation that such open discussions by any company regarding their business motives is very rare. They went into considerable detail on both a business level and on a software level. I, for one, detected a bit of pain in their observations. They seem to have cared about the Amiga port. I think we should applaud their frankness, thank 'em for trying, lament their view of the Amiga market and wish other so-called companies would pull the plugs on their stuff as gracefully as WP has done. Bryce Carus
wade@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel) (05/15/89)
Just thought I'd put in my two cents on this thread. In 1985 I used
MicroSoft WORD on the IBM PC. It was a version that was bundled with the
Zenith Clone I was using, and was two years out of date.
As far as I'm concerned there never has been a serious wordproccessor
for the Amiga. I recently finished a 50 page document using WordPerfect
(Amiga) and have used it for about 6 months. There is no comparison between
the two at all. With WORD I can get the output I want easily, with WP I have
to carefully massage every paragraph.
Too bad we cannot convince MicroSoft to consider the Amiga!
Thanks,
Wade.
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