t-jacobs@utah-cs.UUCP (10/31/87)
I found this on a local BB. Apple you are going to make a REAL BIG MISTAKE in this case if you don't court these folks carefully. You are interested in the desktop CAD market if I read the newspapers right. THE RIDDLE -The following is a LimeLight (Lincoln Informed Macintosh Enthusiasts' newsletter) exclusive folks. You won't see it on HBO or Cinemax, so pay attention because it won't be repeated and it will not be available through normal retail outlets. The only other way you will see this story repeated is when somebody with brains and gonads puts it on AppleLink and/or CompuServe. Are we all sitting up straight in our chairs, boys and girls? Today's lesson is "WHAT MUST BE SWALLOWED* TO BE NUMBER ONE". -I was recently traveling on business in the southwestern United States and found myself trying to convince some business associates why Macintosh II is a perfect tool for their architectural design work. The problem I ran up against is that while Macintosh II may be the finest cannon ever cast, the folks at Apple have not done all that they could to encourage and cooperate with the very finest among the munitions creators, namely top flight program designers & writers. CAD/CAM software for the Mac II is just NOT head and shoulders above similar software for IBM computers; which is a crying shame in view of the fact that Mac II is such a clearly superior machine in its POTENTIAL and character. While talking to local Apple dealers and reps in the area during my trip concerning the availability of demo software for the handful of CAD/CAM programs that are presently for sale for use with the MacJII, a name came up that aroused my curiosity. My associates have been using AutoCAD (one of the more popular CAD/CAM programs for IBM's) for several years but are now frustrated by the slowness. It was their initial opinion that using the latest version on a brand new IBM would rid them of most of their frustration. This blind confidence in AutoCAD & IBM led me to investigate further once I heard that the guy who WROTE AutoCAD was working on a CAD/CAM application for Mac II, and that he was living and working in the very city where I found myself located! I called him at his business phone and was very politely and efficiently transferred to him by a very nice and extraordinarily intelligent girl named Elena Bullard, who mans (womans?) the offices of Evolution Computing in Tempe, Arizona. If I.Q.'s were Fahrenheit temperatures you would surely have to strip naked to bear the heat upon entering the realms of this desert brain trust. -Mike Riddle is without any doubt in my mind one of the most brilliant people with which I have ever had the pleasure to speak. We spoke for 45 minutes, after which I was totally intellectually exhausted. This guy has been programming since the time I left grade school; I am now 32 years old. He programs in PURE Assembly language which we all know produces the fastest and most profoundly elegant programs around (e.g: Andy Hertzfeld's masterpieces of programming). "How fast?" you may well ask. Well, go ahead and ask. OK I'll give you an example: A world map occupying 768K in AutoCAD format takes over a minute to redraw itself. The same world map in FastCAD format takes up only 262K of space and redraws in 2 seconds. To redraw a doubled map of approximately 1.5Meg in AutoCAD takes enough time to allow you to clean your mouse, install that internal fan you've been thinking about, catalog you're entire disc collection, answer all your junk mail and heat up a quick snack in the microwave. A quadrupled world map of approximately 1.1Meg with FastCAD takes 8 seconds to redraw. Large complex files in AutoCAD take forever to redraw; just ask anyone who uses it, especially with older hardware. Mike Riddle wrote the original core package of AutoCAD for which the company AutoDESK paid him. He used the money to start Evolution Computing and promptly wrote the program FastCAD (for IBM's). FastCAD is the fastest CAD/CAM program available for IBM users, period. It has task-specific & dynamic menus (my terms) and of course supports color and is THE most impressive program I have ever seen running on a machine I consider to be inferior to Mac II: the IBM, et al; but this is only where the story starts to get interesting. -After founding Evolution Computing Mike Riddle originally set out to write FastCAD for the Mac. He and his company had invested $150,000.00 U.S. Dollars in blood, sweat, tears & discs creating a major part of the final Mac program, when along comes our favorite computer company (and I say that with total sincerity) with an article in the information source for developers named "Outside Apple", the October 1986 issue, on page one entitled "Who Can Use the Macintosh Interface?". On page 2 near the middle of the article it reads: "But can't you incorporate that particular ease-of-use (speaking of the interface, [parenthetical comment mine]) on products for other machines? Not unless Apple gives you permission, according to the copywrite laws." It goes on later to say: "Apple owns all rights to the interface as designed, as well as the rights to all derivatives of the interface." Still further on comes the crux of the issue: "Developers who are considering modifying the interface should follow this rule of thumb: In general, you don't want the users to do something they're familiar with and have it produce an unexpected effect. But you can have the users learn to do something new. When you do this, however, remember that the 'something new' is usually a derivative of Apple's interface and, by copywrite law, also belongs to Apple"; and finally the coup de grace (except, as you will soon see, they shot themselves in the foot with this one): "When you want to port a product to a non-Apple system, you should first discuss it with Apple. Apple will review the proposed interface and suggest ways it should be changed to avoid violating Apple's copywrite". The moment Mike read this article he called Apple's legal eagles and asked for a written declaration of exactly what all this meant. They told him not to worry about it, but NEVER gave him anything in writing, even after months of repeated phone calls to every level of authority at Apple that would pick up a phone. He subsequently froze the Mac project at near completion and went on to write FastCAD instead for the IBMers. -This guy really wants to write the best damn CAD/CAM program ever and he wants to do it for the Mac. "We have 17 Macs that we use at the business and only a handful of IBM's. All I want from Apple is a letter stating a clear definition of what is proprietary in their system (call-wise, code-wise, or idea-wise); a statement declaring that what is created by Apple belongs to Apple and that what is created by a programmer belongs to the programmer. Three months to the day after I receive that letter FastCAD for the Mac II will be defrosted and ready for sale." I for one (a Macintosh devotee, proselytizer and ardent business user for over three years) am keenly anxious to see this man's creative genius unleashed for the benefit of the Mac community and for Apple. I think he asks very little. -One last perspective: Mike "hates" working with Intel chips (the CPU's used in IBM's). My guess is that he "hates" them in much the same way Michael Angelo probably grew to "hate" scaffolding; both being a necessary pain in the neck for the production of their respective works. For those of you that think you know better, please tell me: Who is better qualified to evaluate the innate qualities of a thing like an Indy 500 race car; the maker of the car, or the veteran professional driver that directly interacts with the thing, creatively extracting technical and artful performance from it? Nobody gets more intimate with a CPU than an assembly language programmer. It is also Mike's opinion that the Motorola Math Chip (68881) is far better than its counterpart in the opposing camp. -Evolution Computing may be contacted by mail at 437 South 48th Street, Suite 106, Tempe, Arizona 85281 -- Tony Jacobs * Center for Engineering Design * U of U * t-jacobs@ced.utah.edu
gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner) (11/02/87)
In article <5094@utah-cs.UUCP> t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu.UUCP (Tony Jacobs) writes: >Still further on comes the crux of the issue: "Developers >who are considering modifying the interface should follow this rule of >thumb: In general, you don't want the users to do something they're >familiar with and have it produce an unexpected effect. But you can have >the users learn to do something new. When you do this, however, remember >that the 'something new' is usually a derivative of Apple's interface and, >by copywrite law, also belongs to Apple"; and finally the coup de grace >(except, as you will soon see, they shot themselves in the foot with this >one): "When you want to port a product to a non-Apple system, you should >first discuss it with Apple. Apple will review the proposed interface and >suggest ways it should be changed to avoid violating Apple's copywrite". I also find this intolerably ridiculous. I would be very interested to hear from those with legal experience. Can Apple get away with this? Many companies seem to be ignoring this (Aldus, MicroSoft, for instance). It seems ridiculous that Apple can claim credit for the creative work of the developers. This posting is in the hopes that there is strength in numbers. What Apple needs to realize is that this attitude will stop developers from using the Mac for their original programming with the intent of later porting. Instead, they will develop for the PC first, then port to the Mac (if at all). Apple certainly can't claim to be the "technology leader" under these circumstances. I'm sure Apple is concerned about keeping hold of their user interface work and doesn't want to see the MS-DOS world benefiting from work that Apple did, so it's a sticky issue. Still, the "derivative" statement sure seems bogus. Apple seems to be taking credit for everything anyone does on the Mac. Robert Gardner