bills@cca.CCA.COM (Bill Stackhouse) (05/12/87)
(The following represent my personal views only and not necessarily those of my employer) Maintaining software isn't easy, especially for an operating system that is used by a million plus human users and thousands of software products. I know that it is sometimes not possible to prevent incompatibilities from creeping into the software. The thing I really dislike is when an Apple label product like MacTerminal stops working due to a new release and the only response is a new release of MacTerminal that is compatible is being worked on. That does not help those people that use MacTerminal on a daily basis. There is no reason that Apple can't distribute patches (and a mechanism for applying them) for minor incompatibilities that are distributed with the system release. For major incompatibilities, there should be a simultaneous release of compatible applications when it is necessary. I would hope that the same could apply for the "top 20" products like Word, Excel, etc. that a large number of companies and individuals use on a daily basis. The migration to HFS was bad enough and most of us want or need to keep up to date on the system software. If Apple regularly obsoletes major software products with each release, users will have no choice but to find some release that satisfies their needs and stick with it. This of course will not be possible in many instances such as in a company that chooses to use new features such as AppleShare and are forced to upgrade but then find that they also have to upgrade all of the software products they use also. This is something that in really large companies can be so monumental that it will prevent it from being done at all. Large companies are looking to the vendor of the computer system to insure that the transition from one release to the next is "painless" and if it "hurts" too often, then that vendor will fall off the list of acceptable hardware/software that can be purchased with company funds. I am sure that the development community also shares a concern with this since it will impact their product development schedule each time they have to rush out a release just to fix Apple induced incompatibilities. It also impacts their image in the eyes of the user and can jeopardize their future use by a company. If and when Apple stops producing or marketing their own applications, their responsibility to insure a smooth transition will not end, this is a major responsibility Apple will have to step up to if it hopes to survive in the business world where people don't (and won't) hack around to make a system continue to work. Either it works as is or it is broken and out the door. The Macintosh is a great product, please don't destroy it in the rush to make it even greater. -- Bill Stackhouse Cambridge, MA. bills@cca.cca.com