gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor) (02/26/91)
You know, I've been getting a little weary of seeing the 34th or 35th "me, too. I want MusicProse [at the *student* rate, of course]" postings. This is largely due to the fact that I don't see that such a spate of postings would have the slightest chance of convincing the persons in power [who don't seem to have those net logins] of anything. The wise soul who passed out the CEO name is much closer to the point in terms of applying pressure in a position where it might do the most good. One problem: It's easier to his the "F" key and type "Oh yes." than to pound out that intelligent and well-reasoned letter that changes minds. It remains a point of contention that *any* current tripwire figure [mega-increase in NeXT sales over X time to markets which would almost FOR CERTAIN be interested in BUYING a copy of MP instead of banging bootlegged copies back and forth until Hades finishes icing over on the top rings] would indeed do the mind-changing, but I remain resolutely certain that the persons actually making the marketing decisions have different views of the potential size and nature of the market than those of us who are NeXT users who'd really LIKE to have CODA running on our machines. With that in mind, an interesting thought occurred to me. The last issue of NeXTworld had somebody sitting around with their net ears up doing running tallies of the arguments and so forth raging here. While I'm uncertain that such a column would continue, it *does* occur to me that the bandwidth of the "Trade Press" would be an interesting thing to harness here. So, whoever and whenever and however that person may be, listen up: How'd you like to address something in your next NETcolumn to the extent of "The news that CODA has indefinitely suspended work on the NeXT version of MusicProse was met with large scale scorn, derision and frustration. [Some comments on the company's potential lack of vision][Comments on the fac that the NeXT environment has NO players - and thus NO competitors and is thus RIPE for the picking] [The suggestion that a large user base outside of the traditional kind of "market research" music software audience is actively interested in working with whatever programs ARE available][The suggestion that the traditional user base for Macintosh programs would be inclined to make the move to NeXT's environment for the DSP stuff as an audio workstation base.....] Heck, any one of you NeXTworld weenies is perfectly free to call me or anyone else on the networld up and interview us out the kazoo. A number of us are bright, witty raconteurs who would love to have out Warholian 15 minutes [particularly if it meant that some of the industry bigwigs who're busy chasing the [urk] IBM market might be tweaked enough to listen]. Such a discussion would be much more interesting than the last account of network traffic I can imagine. Also, less likely to provoke howls of fury from the poor disenfranchised masses who have no FTP priviledges and must read of all these wonderful toys being doled out to the faithful. So, clear this with your editorial Magus and call me at 608-828-3385 during the day or 608-246-9621 in the evenings. Perhaps if this stuff appears IN PRINT in a REAL MAGAZINE, it might make a difference. Just a thought. We now return you to the circular pacing which seems to accompany that order for the 040 upgrade [Not me. If LISP goes byebye and since those are bucks for me, I'll opt for the old tried and true "deferred gratification" route] already in progress. Ours longer feeder brave us. -- I am so lonely for the twentieth century,/for the deeply felt, obscene graffiti/of armed men and the beautiful bridges/that make them so small and carry them/into the hearts of cities written like words/across nothing,/the dense void history became in my beautiful century/gtaylor/608-828-3385
waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu (02/28/91)
In article <120@heurikon.heurikon.com>, gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor) writes: [...material deleted...] > With that in mind, an interesting thought occurred to me. The last > issue of NeXTworld had somebody sitting around with their net ears > up doing running tallies of the arguments and so forth raging here. > While I'm uncertain that such a column would continue, it *does* > occur to me that the bandwidth of the "Trade Press" would be an > interesting thing to harness here. So, whoever and whenever and > however that person may be, listen up: > > How'd you like to address something in your next NETcolumn to the > extent of "The news that CODA has indefinitely suspended work on > the NeXT version of MusicProse was met with large scale scorn, > derision and frustration. [...more material deleted...] Well, I suspect there's the germ of a good idea here. If you omit the "scorn, derision" and if someone from NeXTworld simply calls the CEO, reports the level of interest and then reports his reaction, it would be of some interest. This sort of thing might pop up occasionally on all sorts of issues and NeXTworld could probably get through to interview someone where most of us netters couldn't. An interesting kind of symbiosis between the USENET and the Press...might catch on. BTW, I'll take this opportunity to mention that I was extremely favorably impressed with the first issue of NeXTworld. Hard to see how they can maintain that level...will be really impressive if they can. c.f.waltrip Internet: <waltrip@capsrv.jhuapl.edu> Opinions expressed are my own.
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (02/28/91)
Gregory Taylor writes > With that in mind, an interesting thought occurred to me. The last > issue of NeXTworld had somebody sitting around with their net ears > up doing running tallies of the arguments and so forth raging here. > While I'm uncertain that such a column would continue, it *does* > occur to me that the bandwidth of the "Trade Press" would be an > interesting thing to harness here. So, whoever and whenever and > however that person may be, listen up: > > Perhaps if this stuff appears IN PRINT in a REAL MAGAZINE, it might > make a difference. This is an interesting and good idea, I think, but even though I am greatly interested in Coda's MusicProse product, I would much rather see NeXTWORLD fight the new-keyboard battle than the MusicProse battle. Partly because I know that NeXT reads NeXTWORLD magazine, and I'm not convinced that the CEO of Coda does. And I also think that the new ANSI keyboards are typical of the weak-spined compromise that international standards always require, and there is almost nothing so important as the keyboard to a real computer user. I've mapped my vertical bar to ALT-backarrow thanks to some kind poster who wrote a little program to do it, but there's no still no place to put backslash. Just try to write a C program without using "or" (which requires two || characters) or newline (which requires \n). Whatever advances NeXT has made with its wonderful development environment have been set back forty or fifty paces simply by making a very programmer-unfriendly keyboard. Even if it were easy to remap the keys, productivity is greatly reduced by having to stop and think, having to use ALT keys, and other nonsense. Can you tell that I don't like the new keyboard very much? I thought I might be giving away my sentiments a little bit. Let's all send messages to Dan Lavin at NeXTWORLD (dlavin@nextwrld.com) voting what we think of the new keyboard, and while we're at it, voting for MusicProse, and see if that makes it into NeXTWORLD. -- Glenn Reid RightBrain Software glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us NeXT/PostScript developers ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-851-1785 (fax 851-1470)
eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (02/28/91)
In article <438@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes: >Let's all send messages to Dan Lavin at NeXTWORLD (dlavin@nextwrld.com) That's @nextworld.com (their domain name has the o, their uucp name doesn't). -=EPS=- -- Every desk in the NeXTWORLD editorial offices has a NeXT on it, and every one has an old-style keyboard.
jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (03/10/91)
>And I also think that the new ANSI keyboards are typical of the weak-spined >compromise that international standards always require, and there is almost >nothing so important as the keyboard to a real computer user. etc > etc... What I can't understand is why does practically every computer manufacturer think that he has to reinvent the keyboard everytime they design a new computer? For example, look at what happened when Sun Microsystems came out with, I think it was the Sun 4 or the SPARCstations. Remember that infamous single quote? What's wrong with the good old IBM Selectric layout that EVERYONE IS FAMILIAR WITH? I'm tired of going from computer to computer and finding that single quote has moved to where an angle bracket should be or even worse finding the square brackets or angle brackets mapped to the SAME KEY forcing me to use shift to select one of them (the DEC VT220 among others does this). Here's another example... the Symbolics 3670. Their keyboard was one of the best if not THE best I've ever used, yet their new low-profile keyboard got rid of the nice big function keys and the palm rest. The action of the keys became much softer too. Blech. What goes on inside a designer's head when he does this? "I'm going to redo the entire layout of this keyboard so that you'll have to learn how to type all over again and then you'll never be able to use our competitor's keyboards!" Arrrrgghghh... if it ain't broken DON'T FIX IT GUYS! User's aren't beating a path to your door because you decided to set a "new standard in computing"... they're beating your door down to get at your throats! Harumph! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Dark Hacker The Mythos of Dark Hacker: "Controlled by the sinister and shadowy "suits" Dark Hacker now employs the tools of computer science to free himself from the suit's will. By day he is a lackey... but at night when the city sleeps he becomes.... DARK HACKER!" =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=