burrows@milton.u.washington.edu (William Burrows) (09/26/90)
Here's a simple suggestion to Apple/Claris regarding HC 2.0. Have only one version of HC 2.0 that anyone could use to access, author, modify, etc. stacks. Distribute this with all the hardware. Claris could then sell an "Advanced Scritping Toolkit". They could include XCMD, sample scripts, advanced documentation, etc. that would be helpful to the developer community. Bill Burrows burrows@milton.u.washington.edu University of Washington
jacob@latcs1.oz.au (Jacob L. Cybulski) (09/26/90)
From article <8096@milton.u.washington.edu>, by burrows@milton.u.washington.edu (William Burrows): > Have only one version of HC 2.0 that anyone could use to access, > author, modify, etc. stacks. Distribute this with all the > hardware. > > Claris could then sell an "Advanced Scritping Toolkit". They > could include XCMD, sample scripts, advanced documentation, etc. > that would be helpful to the developer community. I don't think this is legally acceptable, you'd always have ownership problems. Also I am not sure if distribution of HC with all hardware is either necessary or cost effective. I have seen 100s of Mac users who simply find no application for HC, the manuals shelved away and the software in boxes. Who do you think pays for this - all of us. If it was necessary or profitable to bundle HC with all Apple hardware, then I am sure Claris would jump on such a deal if only Apple decided to do so, but then it would cost Apple heaps. The pricing of Claris HC is another story. You would imagine that most of the developers sooner or later make some money on the result of their produce. So if the product costs $200-$400 it should not have a major impact on the developer community (e.g. compare with Think C). The fact that HC were a profitable product would allow Claris further expansions and improvements, and if you look at their record so far, it is not that bad (e.g. MacWrite and MacDraw). As $200-$400 price tag may seem to be reasonable for commercial developers, it may be quite a hike for students, I'd imagine some kind of educational discounts and volume purchase license would be available. It is also inconceivable to charge this amount to all the document readers, in such a case a cheap (or free) version of HC (run-time only?) would be a very good idea. Jacob
ch2i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Charles A. Hill) (09/26/90)
>The pricing of Claris HC is another story. You would imagine that most >of the developers sooner or later make some money on the result of their >produce. So if the product costs $200-$400 it should not have a major impact >on the developer community (e.g. compare with Think C). The fact that HC >were a profitable product would allow Claris further expansions and >improvements, and if you look at their record so far, it is not that >bad (e.g. MacWrite and MacDraw). I think you're missing the point--and I think Apple is, too. This isn't just a situation of commercial developers trying to get a free product. The whole idea behind Hypercard was that novices would be developing their own stacks. I had never written a program in my life until I got Hypercard with my Mac. Now I'm building educational stacks. I've already used stacks that I created for my PH.D. research. I'm not in the same league with most of the people on this bboard, but I am developing my own working products from scratch. That's an amazing amount of power for someone with no programming background. Here's where Apple/Claris should listen closely. If they were to offer a bundle of developer's tools that would help me go beyond the basic scripting level I'm now at, I would buy it. Now that you've got me hooked on scripting (first one's free, kid), you could easily sell me stuff to help me become better. (The people who sell the HC books already have.) But if I had never gotten HC for free, I never would have started fooling around with it--surely I never would have paid money for a product that was marketed for "commercial developers." I guess my point is that, by giving HC for free, you're creating a potential market of developers. By just letting people look at it without scripting, you're locking people out who don't already program. (I don't care how much you tell people it's easy, no one who doesn't program is going to believe the ease of scripting until they've tried it.) I think Apple should keep HC free and concentrate on marketing developer's tools rather than on trying to make a quick buck on selling scripting capability. So there.