Fun with Dick and Jane

[Amanda Walker]

Hmm, the temperature seems to be rising in here :-).  I think everyone has
some valid points, but we all have aggressively different points of view.

Historically, Apple has not been prepared to bring a product like A/UX
to market, and I am still a little skeptical of their ability to do so.
Now, I think that there are a lot of people within Apple that are doing
their darnedest to improve this situation.  People like Ron Flax and the
Federal Systems Group, Kirsten Nelson, and so on.  Likewise, the engineering
team has done some incredible things.  I think we can all agree that A/UX
1.1 is a significant improvement over 1.0.  There are, however, two major
problems that may end up making A/UX a footnote in Apple's history (which
I think would be a great shame):

 - Design goals.

   Apple does not build "workstations."  Period.  You can use a Mac II
   running A/UX as a "workstation," but it will be very annoying to do so.
   Whether or not Apple "should" make a workstation beside the point, in my
   opinion.  Apple has steadfastly held to the idea that a computer is a
   strictly *personal* resource, local disks and all, which is both good and
   bad.  It makes it fairly nice to put on a professional's desk.  It also
   makes it a pretty poor academic workstation.  Personally, I think that any
   attempts to convince Apple management to make a traditional workstation are
   a waste of time.  To be blunt, since it doesn't fit into the Apple way of
   thinking about how computers are used, Apple simply doesn't care about
   it, however big the market may be (no offense, Ron...).

   I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, partially because I think
   that the Age Of The Workstation is drawing to a close, but that is another
   story...

 - Politics.

   I am afraid that internal Apple politics will kill A/UX long before
   external market pressure.  They seem to be off to a depressingly good
   start at both the engineering and marketing levels.

   If anyone at Apple has evidence to the contrary, I for one would love
   to hear it.

--
Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation
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