isbell@ucscf.UCSC.EDU (Art Isbell) (03/19/91)
I have never had any experience with Lotus products, but recent experience
indicates that NeXT's relationship with Lotus may be a VERY GOOD THING.
You may recall my posting discussing my receipt of Improv, my inability to
use floppies with my upgraded '030 Cube, and my mention of my Improv Handbook
being bound upside down relative to its cover. The general gist of my comments
was that the documentation seemed to be very good and the package in general
seemed to be very professional, but a spreadsheet was not the "killer
application" that I or NeXT desperately needed. I had a workaround for no
floppy drive and the handbook binding problem didn't affect its readability, so
I generally felt that receiving Improv *free* was a good thing.
A couple of days later, I received a phone call from Lotus (Customer
Service, I believe). The gentleman said that someone in the Improv development
group had contacted him after reading my posting on comp.sys.next and asked him
to contact me to see what could be done to solve my "problems" with Improv! He
offered to replace my Handbook and then started to ask about my problem loading
Improv with no floppy drive. I was so flabbergasted about being called by a
customer service agent actually asking to solve my problems that I just told
him that I had the loading problem solved rather than waiting to see what he
was going to suggest. I have no doubt that he would have worked with me to
make sure that I could use Improv on my floppy-less Cube.
Then yesterday, I opened my copy of "Unix Today", and there, in the exact
middle of the magazine (which is where it tends to naturally fall open) was a
2-full-page Lotus/NeXT ad! I read the usual list of Unix trade rags and I have
never seen a NeXT ad. My eye is trained to pick out "NeXT" from columns of
text (unfortunately, "NeXT" is rarely in any headlines :-( , so I almost missed
the ad because it was so big! I'll bet this ad would not have appeared without
Lotus' participation, so more evidence that NeXT's affiliation with Lotus is a
GOOD THING.
So Lotus reads comp.sys.next, seems to provide good customer service, and
participates in advertising that can only help NeXT. But what can we do with a
spreadsheet?
I now recall a Computer Science professor who had worked at the IBM Watson
Research Center for a number of years specializing in human-computer
interactions. Even though he knew a number of programming languages, he hated
to program. He was then involved in using the spreadsheet paradigm as a
high-level programming tool. Because a spreadsheet is a means of defining
relationships among an arbitrary number of entities, I plan to look at Improv
as the most advanced tool available for expressing these relationships.
Unfortunately, Improv's Applications Guide lists only business applications,
but I encourage all of you not to dismiss Improv as merely a business tool, but
to carefully consider what Improv can do and to be open about using Improv as a
tool for solving all sorts of problems and for displaying all sorts of data.
And if you haven't upgraded to '040 yet or are still holding back on making
your new NeXT purchase, I encourage you to act before 31 March so that you can
get Improv at no extra cost. I suspect that as we learn more about Improv, we
will find that it's a more valuable NeXT App than we imagined.
--
_____ ____
Art Isbell |\ | | | | \ 315 Moon Meadow Lane
NeXT Registered Developer | \ | ___ |____| | | Felton, CA
isbell@ucscf.UCSC.EDU | \ | |___| | \ | | 95018-9442
(408)438-4736(B) | \| |___ | \ |___/ (408)335-1154(H)cxjdb@dcatla.uucp (03/22/91)
I agree that improv deserves a chance in areas other than business. I think that improv was called a spreadsheet so that people whould know what kind of problems that it can solve. I think that spreadsheet may not be the best title for this application. With the exception of CAD/CAM I think that improv is the single most impressive thing that I have ever seen a computer run. I have been playing and toying with it since it arrived. I have taken a break from the application kit and objective-C just to get to know improv. Improv is good for the same kind of work that a spreadsheet is good for in the same way that a dump-truck is good for the same kind of work that a wheel-barrow is good for. Improv is fun. Neat. Incredible. -jon bennett