jk3t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jonathan King) (07/09/90)
I'm sorry, but I believe that the initial premise of this thread (that the development cost of Hypercard is making Macs unaffordable) is pretty far off. Even if the Hypercard team had 100 people, and the cost of supporting each one of them were $250,000 a year, the (putative) $25,000,000 cost of Hypercard development would add just $25.00 to the cost of a Mac if Apple sells a million Macs a year. This isn't an enormous cost, I don't think, and since it is likely (certain?) that the Hypercard team is only half this big, Apple's support a little less generous, and Apple's sales somewhat better than a million Macs a year, the cost of Hypercard would seem to be a non-issue, taken by itself. Whether or not Hypercard is worth developing at all is a slightly different question. I would have to say it is, given my personal experiences and the general improvements announced for the new version. But for some people, it may not be worth the disk space it takes up. In any case, it is providing a number of users with substantial benefits for a price that doesn't seem to be enormous. jking