erics@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Eric Schlegel) (10/20/89)
Results of my poll about what machines people use MPW on:
Seven people replied. (Thanks!!)
Including myself, we use MPW on 7 Pluses, 1 SE, and 3 Mac IIs.
Pluses:
3 had 2.5 Mb
2 had 2 Mb
1 had 1 Mb
1 memory size unspecified
SE: the SE had 1 Mb
IIs:
2 had 5 Mb
1 memory size unspecified
It's safe to say, I think, that although MPW's target market may be the
professional developer on a IIcx, lots of people are using it on Pluses
and SEs. Those same people are probably also on a more limited budget and
wish that MPW cost significantly less.
Also, here is an interesting reply from Dennis Cohen about MPW's disk
access bottleneck.
Eric Schlegel
eric.schlegel@dartmouth.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For your informal poll on MPW usage:
At work, I use it on a 5MB Mac II
At home, I use it on a 2MB Plus
The interesting thing about this is that I have a dual 45MB SyQuest HD (the
MassMicro Duet), with average access at 24ms. At the office, I am stuck with
Apple's slow internal 40MB drive. The end result of all of this is that
builds are almost as fast at home as they are at the office.
This implies to me that the real bottleneck in MPW performance is disk access.
To test this out, I created a 3MB RamDisk on the II and ran MPW from it
(stripped down MPW folder) and got close to a 20x performance improvement
building two applications. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
--
Dennis Cohen
Claris Corp.
****************************************************
Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed above are _MINE_!
****************************************************keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) (10/21/89)
In article <16255@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> erics@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Eric Schlegel) writes: > >It's safe to say, I think, that although MPW's target market may be the >professional developer on a IIcx, lots of people are using it on Pluses >and SEs. Those same people are probably also on a more limited budget and >wish that MPW cost significantly less. I think that the stats and summary that you posted should only apply to the people WHO USE THIS MEDIUM. Most of the people on this net are, I believe, University students, who are on limited budgets. Stats taken at the Spring Developers conference came up with vastly different figures, with most developers having Mac II's or better, multiple monitors, 5megs of RAM, mondo hard disks, etc. This shows a significant market that has the bucks to spend on MPW. I'd like to make one other comment about the price of MPW. Almost the entire price of MPW is for covering the cost of document duplication. APDA tries to do a classy job with this, and it costs them a lot of money. The large amount of documentation adds to the heavy cost. I can hear it now..."Well, I'm willing to get slightly worse documentation for a cheaper price." So...let them know. You have their address. You have their phone number. Let your voice be heard! That's what it's for!. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keith Rollin --- Apple Computer, Inc. --- Developer Technical Support INTERNET: keith@apple.com UUCP: {decwrl, hoptoad, nsc, sun, amdahl}!apple!keith "Argue for your Apple, and sure enough, it's yours" - Keith Rollin, Contusions
tom@iconsys.UUCP (Tom Kimpton) (10/26/89)
In article <35785@apple.Apple.COM> keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes: > >I'd like to make one other comment about the price of MPW. Almost the entire ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >price of MPW is for covering the cost of document duplication. APDA tries to do ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >a classy job with this, and it costs them a lot of money. The large amount of >documentation adds to the heavy cost. > Say whutt??? Not having MPW, and not knowing how much documentation it has, I did a ballpark figure (MPW C w/SADE): 1000 pages * $.05/page = $50 10 binders * $4/binder = $40 20 disks * $5/disk = $100 ----------------------------- $190 Scale up for more pages, scale down for: cheaper (and/or fewer) binders, cheaper duplication (manual & software), fewer disks. I think I remember APDA quoting $475 for this combo. Just an observation. -- Tom Kimpton UUCP: {uunet,caeco,nrc-ut}!iconsys!tom Software Engineer INTERNET: tom@iconsys.uu.net Icon International, Inc. BITNET: icon%byuadam.bitnet (multi-user acct) Orem, Utah 84058 PHONE: (801) 225-6888
time@oxtrap.oxtrap.UUCP (Tim Endres) (10/26/89)
In article <408@iconsys.UUCP> tom@iconsys.UUCP (Tom Kimpton) writes: In article <35785@apple.Apple.COM> keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes: >I'd like to make one other comment about the price of MPW. Almost the entire ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >price of MPW is for covering the cost of document duplication. APDA tries to do ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Say whutt??? Not having MPW, and not knowing how much documentation it has, I did a ballpark figure (MPW C w/SADE): 1000 pages * $.05/page = $50 10 binders * $4/binder = $40 20 disks * $5/disk = $100 ----------------------------- $190 I think I remember APDA quoting $475 for this combo. Now try including some California Labor... 1000 pages of duplication (.5hrs) $10 Shrink wrapping $10 Artist work for covers w/ heavy stock $1 Placed in 10 binders $5 Duplicate 20 disks (1 hr) $20 Package whole thing (box & labor) $10 Mail $10 Administrative overhead $20 Building/Furniture/Utilities/Phone $??? Don't you get to call on their dime too? 1 - 800 - ... And don't they mail us periodicals and price sheets? And didn't I get my MIDI stuff in two days? And weren't the operators courteous and helpful? Come on, lets get a financial statement from APDA, and just see if they show a profit. I'll bet it is extremely modest if there is one. And if there is no profit, guess what? No MPW order over the phone delivered in two days.
keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) (10/27/89)
In article <408@iconsys.UUCP> tom@iconsys.UUCP (Tom Kimpton) writes: >In article <35785@apple.Apple.COM> keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes: >> >>I'd like to make one other comment about the price of MPW. Almost the entire > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>price of MPW is for covering the cost of document duplication. APDA tries to do > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>a classy job with this, and it costs them a lot of money. The large amount of >>documentation adds to the heavy cost. >> >Say whutt??? > >Not having MPW, and not knowing how much documentation it has, >I did a ballpark figure (MPW C w/SADE): > > 1000 pages * $.05/page = $50 > 10 binders * $4/binder = $40 > 20 disks * $5/disk = $100 > ----------------------------- > $190 > >Scale up for more pages, scale down for: cheaper (and/or fewer) binders, >cheaper duplication (manual & software), fewer disks. > >I think I remember APDA quoting $475 for this combo. ^^^^ The MPW C bundle is $400. Tim Endres did a good job of taking into account overhead such as labor, build- ing leases, 800 number, APDAlog, etc. in another posting. You should also take into account the cost in developing MPW in the first place, in addition to helping subsidise future development costs. What I'd also like to do is try to come up with some better estimates than what you have above. Note that these are just *MY* estimates, and may be off by a sizeable amount. It is also for the full MPW bundle: 2300 pages * $.10/page =$230 Vol 1: 640 Vol 2: 350 Asm: 325 C: 221 Pascal: 394 SADE: 150 Other: 220 (ResEdit and Macsbug) 14 disks * $3/Disk = $42 6 Binders * $4/binder = $24 (I'll take your price estimate on this) ----- $296 My estimate of duplication costs per page comes from the fact that we try to do a pretty snazzy job of duplicating the manuals. The paper is relatively heavy, nicely white, and the print is raised, dark, and crisp, in an attempt to make everything look nice. My APDAlog has the price of the full MPW bundle at $525. So it looks like I was in partial error. The documentation doesn't take up the majority of the price of MPW. However, it does seem to be a _significant_ portion of it. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keith Rollin --- Apple Computer, Inc. --- Developer Technical Support INTERNET: keith@apple.com UUCP: {decwrl, hoptoad, nsc, sun, amdahl}!apple!keith "Argue for your Apple, and sure enough, it's yours" - Keith Rollin, Contusions
levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin) (10/27/89)
In article <35966@apple.Apple.COM> keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes: |What I'd also like to do is try to come up with some better estimates than what |you have above. Note that these are just *MY* estimates, and may be off by a |sizeable amount. It is also for the full MPW bundle: | | 2300 pages * $.10/page =$230 | Vol 1: 640 | Vol 2: 350 | Asm: 325 | C: 221 | Pascal: 394 | SADE: 150 | Other: 220 (ResEdit and Macsbug) | 14 disks * $3/Disk = $42 | 6 Binders * $4/binder = $24 (I'll take your price estimate on this) | ----- | $296 . . . |My APDAlog has the price of the full MPW bundle at $525. Except for ResEdit and MacsBug :-(, this is the content of the 2.0.2 to 3.0 UPDATE bundle. (My APDAlog is at home, so I can't quote the price.) That is much closer to the above costs. Actually, I paid more than the update cost, since I bought a 3.0BETA update bundle (just C, I didn't notice that for $50 more I could have got Pascal included :-(). For that price I got almost double the above material (no binders or fancy covers in the beta shipment, maybe one less disk; the release version was complete and no additional charge). /JBL = Nets: levin@bbn.com | or {...}!bbn!levin | POTS: (617)873-3463 |