chin@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us (Albert Chin) (08/08/90)
Are there any apple developers out there who got the recent 'discy business' cd-rom disk and have been able to convert all the II and IIgs stuff on there to a 3.5. I have the cd-rom but no cd-rom drive. Can anyone help, i.e. i send you some disks and you copy them for me? \bye albert chin ... mthvax!mamia!albert
bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) (08/09/90)
In <CHIN.90Aug8020732@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us> chin@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us (Albert Chin) writes: >Are there any apple developers out there who got the recent 'discy business' >cd-rom disk and have been able to convert all the II and IIgs stuff on there >to a 3.5. I have the cd-rom but no cd-rom drive. Can anyone help, i.e. i send >you some disks and you copy them for me? I think if enough developers send a complaint to DTS that these cd-roms are useless to the GS developer community they will get the hint and make the stuff available to us on a media that we can use. After all, the intended purpose of the programs they release is to get them used, and if all we can use the cd-rom for is a small frisbee, then the software is not getting out for use.. They even sent a cd rom to Apple ][ users groups this month, but they require a mac to access them. I have spoken with 5 or 6 users group presidents about the cd-roms, and they all without exception said they were completely useless to their groups, and they all have Apple II machines, and they couple of members that did also have a mac certainly did not have the cd-rom drive.. In fact my wife has found a wonderful use for the cd-rom disks.. They work very well to scrape up dried bird droppings... (sure beats throwing them away, right???) -- bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu | bsherman@pro-exchange | MCI MAIL:BSHERMAN
mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) (08/09/90)
In article <1990Aug9.005540.5558@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) writes: >In <CHIN.90Aug8020732@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us> chin@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us (Albert Chin) writes: > >I think if enough developers send a complaint to DTS that these cd-roms >are useless to the GS developer community they will get the hint and make >the stuff available to us on a media that we can use. "Dear DTS: Please stop sending me several hundred megabytes of useful information per quarter. I absolutely positively don't want to buy a CD-ROM drive, even as a very useful development tool, and getting the information makes me think every now and then that I might be mistaken, which of course can't be the case." OK, so maybe this is too reactionary, but not much. CD-ROM is an effective, efficient and practical method to send tons of information to the developer community. It's not "CD-ROM vs. Floppy" - if it wasn't on the CD-ROM, the cost of distributing it via floppy would make it not free. I personally believe that the contents of the Developer CD would cost the average developer around $300 if it wasn't on the CD. The Developer CD is like sending a hard disk full of great stuff to each developer every quarter. We have no intention of stopping that or of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to turn it into a few hundred floppies. We want the cost of this stuff to be *lower*, remember? That's why every Apple Partner gets to buy one CD-ROM drive at a very low price. >After all, the >intended purpose of the programs they release is to get them used, and if >all we can use the cd-rom for is a small frisbee, then the software is not >getting out for use. So we should always release everything on 5.25" disks for the people who don't have the 3.5" disks? After all, those people aren't getting the information either... >They even sent a cd rom to Apple ][ users groups >this month, but they require a mac to access them. I have spoken with >5 or 6 users group presidents about the cd-roms, and they all without >exception said they were completely useless to their groups, and they >all have Apple II machines, and they couple of members that did also have >a mac certainly did not have the cd-rom drive.. > I don't know anything about this, but I imagine that the User Group Connection is open to suggestion about the presence and content of ProDOS partitions. >In fact my wife has found a wonderful use for the cd-rom disks.. They work >very well to scrape up dried bird droppings... (sure beats throwing them >away, right???) > >-- > bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu | bsherman@pro-exchange | MCI MAIL:BSHERMAN I dunno. You should see what I do with the printouts of some newsgroup messages. -- ============================================================================ Matt Deatherage, Apple Computer, Inc. | "The opinions represented here are Developer Technical Support, Apple II | not necessarily those of Apple Group. Personal mail only, please. | Computer, Inc. Remember that." ============================================================================
bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) (08/09/90)
In <43785@apple.Apple.COM> mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) writes: >In article <1990Aug9.005540.5558@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) writes: >>In <CHIN.90Aug8020732@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us> chin@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us (Albert Chin) writes: >> >>I think if enough developers send a complaint to DTS that these cd-roms >>are useless to the GS developer community they will get the hint and make >>the stuff available to us on a media that we can use. >"Dear DTS: Please stop sending me several hundred megabytes of useful >information per quarter. I absolutely positively don't want to buy a CD-ROM >drive, even as a very useful development tool, and getting the information >makes me think every now and then that I might be mistaken, which of course >can't be the case." >OK, so maybe this is too reactionary, but not much. CD-ROM is an effective, >efficient and practical method to send tons of information to the developer >community. It's not "CD-ROM vs. Floppy" - if it wasn't on the CD-ROM, the >cost of distributing it via floppy would make it not free. I personally >believe that the contents of the Developer CD would cost the average developer >around $300 if it wasn't on the CD. >The Developer CD is like sending a hard disk full of great stuff to each >developer every quarter. We have no intention of stopping that or of spending >hundreds of thousands of dollars to turn it into a few hundred floppies. We >want the cost of this stuff to be *lower*, remember? That's why every >Apple Partner gets to buy one CD-ROM drive at a very low price. [stuff deleted] Matt, I take your message along with the intended humor that it contains, however to be serious for a moment, what small percentage of this $300 worth of information is really Apple II related. You seem to forget that Apple II developers do not need/cannot use the mac info for the most part.. When broken down, the Apple II section would not require many disks to distribute.. The developer deal on the CD-ROM drive was a very good one, UNTIL the retail price of the drive was dropped, then it became a deal, but not a great one.. -- bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu | bsherman@pro-exchange | MCI MAIL:BSHERMAN
bkahn@archive.rtp.dg.com (Bruce Kahn) (08/09/90)
In article <1990Aug9.005540.5558@mthvax.cs.miami.edu>, bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) writes: |> In <CHIN.90Aug8020732@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us> chin@ankh.ankh.ftl.fl.us (Albert Chin) writes: |> |> >Are there any apple developers out there who got the recent 'discy business' |> >cd-rom disk and have been able to convert all the II and IIgs stuff on there |> >to a 3.5. I have the cd-rom but no cd-rom drive. Can anyone help, i.e. i send |> >you some disks and you copy them for me? |> If you take the 'Discy Business: The Real One' to almost any Apple dealer or some User groups then you should be able to at least get the files onto Mac 3.5 and from there to the Apple... |> I think if enough developers send a complaint to DTS that these cd-roms |> are useless to the GS developer community they will get the hint and make |> the stuff available to us on a media that we can use. After all, the |> intended purpose of the programs they release is to get them used, and if |> all we can use the cd-rom for is a small frisbee, then the software is not |> getting out for use.. They even sent a cd rom to Apple ][ users groups |> this month, but they require a mac to access them. I have spoken with |> 5 or 6 users group presidents about the cd-roms, and they all without |> exception said they were completely useless to their groups, and they |> all have Apple II machines, and they couple of members that did also have |> a mac certainly did not have the cd-rom drive.. |> [...] Havent you ever read the stuff that comes in the mailings??? Ever heard of the ProDOS partition that is pressed into the CD-ROM for developers who use ProDOS? Guess no one in your user group has either... I dont know about the rest of the devlopers who are on the net but I can say that I definitely enjoy having the CD-ROM; it beats having a case of floppys arrive every now and then... Guess its just too bad that Apple Associates (Mac that is) cant enjoy the same hardware purchase benefits as the Apple Partners but then again ALL Apple II Developers now can (and for half the price...) Bruce (bkahn@archive.rtp.dg.com)
gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) (08/09/90)
In article <1990Aug9.005540.5558@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) writes: >I think if enough developers send a complaint to DTS that these cd-roms >are useless to the GS developer community they will get the hint and make >the stuff available to us on a media that we can use. You can use the developer CDs on a IIGS, if you get a CD-ROM drive for it. Officially recognized developers were even given large discounts on CD-ROM drives. The real problem is that the typical Apple IIGS owner can't justify spending the $$ for a CD-ROM drive when there are only something like 5 CDs usable with the IIGS. Note that most Apple CD stuff is not in ISO/High Sierra format but rather Mac HFS. So much for standards.
mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) (08/10/90)
In article <1990Aug9.080546.9135@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) writes: >Matt, I take your message along with the intended humor that it contains, >however to be serious for a moment, what small percentage of this $300 >worth of information is really Apple II related. You seem to forget >that Apple II developers do not need/cannot use the mac info for the >most part.. When broken down, the Apple II section would not require >many disks to distribute.. The developer deal on the CD-ROM drive was >a very good one, UNTIL the retail price of the drive was dropped, then >it became a deal, but not a great one.. >-- > bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu | bsherman@pro-exchange | MCI MAIL:BSHERMAN I was only talking about the Apple II content, although there is Apple II content on the Macintosh side (not only MPW IIgs stuff, but the entire Apple II partition is included as a folder for server use since AppleShare servers can't use local ProDOS volumes). $300 is too low -- the separate Apple II stuff on the disk if distributed individually would cost you way, way more than $300 to buy it all, but I guess any individual developer would have to pay about $300 for the stuff he's interested in. I'm at home and can't verify this instantly, but I believe the ProDOS partition of the Developer CD is somewhere around 24 MB. -- ============================================================================ Matt Deatherage, Apple Computer, Inc. | "The opinions represented here are Developer Technical Support, Apple II | not necessarily those of Apple Group. Personal mail only, please. | Computer, Inc. Remember that." ============================================================================
bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) (08/10/90)
In <43805@apple.Apple.COM> mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) writes: [stuff deleted] >$300 is too low -- the separate Apple II stuff on the disk if distributed >individually would cost you way, way more than $300 to buy it all, but I guess >any individual developer would have to pay about $300 for the stuff he's >interested in. >I'm at home and can't verify this instantly, but I believe the ProDOS >partition of the Developer CD is somewhere around 24 MB. Ok, for sake of discussion let's assume that the partition is 24 MB. If my math is on the ball that equates to less than 29 3.5 disks, and with bulk disks running .50 or less each we are looking at a media cost of $15 or less per developer to put the data out in a format more widely acceptable than on cd-rom.. Subtract from the $15 cost, the cost of the cd-rom, its case, pressing etc. and what is left?? Really not too much.. and lots more people could access the information. I am not knocking the idea of cd-rom in general, I am however trying to say that it is not an accepted medium in the Apple II world by users or developers, and not all Apple II people have a Mac sitting on the next table with a cd-rom attached either. -- bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu | bsherman@pro-exchange | MCI MAIL:BSHERMAN
wack@cis.udel.edu (Andrew Wack) (08/10/90)
In article <1990Aug10.052034.22067@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> bsherman@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (Bob Sherman) writes: >In <43805@apple.Apple.COM> mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) writes: >[stuff deleted] > > >>I'm at home and can't verify this instantly, but I believe the ProDOS >>partition of the Developer CD is somewhere around 24 MB. > >Ok, for sake of discussion let's assume that the partition is 24 MB. If my >math is on the ball that equates to less than 29 3.5 disks, and with >bulk disks running .50 or less each we are looking at a media cost of >$15 or less per developer to put the data out in a format more widely >acceptable than on cd-rom.. Subtract from the $15 cost, the cost of the >cd-rom, its case, pressing etc. and what is left?? Really not too much.. >and lots more people could access the information. > While I am in agreement in this debate that cd-roms are inconvenient for Apple II developers (especially since I'm considering becoming one), the difference in cost between distributing on cd-rom and 3.5 disks IS substansial. I quote I have for 1000 discs from Phillips Dupont optical (and this quote is 2 years old) is a one time charge of $1000 for mastering, then $.94 for each disc, including pressing, lableing of the disc, and placing it in a jewel box. (now don't you feel ripped off when you pay $1.00 for just a jewel box?). Thus even if you only make 1000 discs, your cost is only $2.00 each. Quite a difference from $15. Not to mention postage is cheaper for one cd than 15 3.5 disks. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Wack Gravitation cannot be held responsible Internet : wack@udel.edu for people falling in love -- Albert Einstein
bchurch@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Bob Church) (08/11/90)
RE: distributing Apple // information on CD-ROMs. It would be a good idea to make the stuff available in both formats but I'd hate to see them drop the CDs, even when mailing to Apple // groups. I remember getting "worthless" 3.5 disks for quite some time. If I hadn't built up a collection of them eventually I may never have broken down and bought my 3.5 unidisk. Introducing a new medium nearly always involves an awkward time of having one without the other. ******************************************************************** * * * bob church bchurch@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu * * * * If economics isn't an "exact" science why do computers crash * * so much more often than the stock market? * * bc * ********************************************************************