July 93 - WAMADA News
WAMADA News
John MacVeigh
The April WAMADA meeting garnered a turnout of 26 people to discuss the latest news
from Apple and Microsoft, swap employment requests, get a review of New York's
Object Expo, and see a MacApp technical demonstration. The industry news continues,
for the most part, to be in the "just you wait; wonderful things are right around the
corner" vein. In the D.C. area the use of object technologies, judging by our attendees,
remains small but committed, at least on the Mac. The separation of the Mac from the
rest of the industry was highlighted by Adam Wildavsky's report on the goings on at the
Object Expo software show in New York. While there are an increasing number of
object oriented databases, CASE tools, and frameworks available in the Unix world, few
include the Mac among supported platforms. Perhaps Apple's recent announcement of a
Mac environment for Unix will help increase vendor's commitment to the Mac
platform. Microsoft's increasing dominance in operating systems may also help drive
other companies towards the Mac. To finish off the evening, Rich Gillam, of GE
Information Services, gave us a preview of his FrameWorks article on a GDevice
iterator for MacApp (see the May/June issue for the complete article).
The May meeting convened a week after the WWDC and consisted of reports from our
agents (remember: we keep up with the latest terminology) on Apple development
news. Mark Gerl and Phil Flack of McDonnell Douglas, and Yvon Perreault of Cactus
gave us the bulk of the news. We began with a review of the week's keynote speeches,
and then covered as many other items as we had time for. As a '92 attendee, but not one
in '93, I have the impression that last year's WWDC was the alpha version, this year's
was beta, and next year will be the "It Shipped" party. By then consumers may
actually be able to get their hands on things like GX and AOCE, giving developers an
audience to which to sell their own work. That is, if developers are willing to do the
work in the first place.
There are three primary ingredients to Apple's growth in Macintosh sales. The first is
competitive hardware. The arrival of the PowerPC will put a solid check mark in that
column. The second is the system software which establishes the Mac's unique identity.
Deadlines seem to have slipped, and the delivery of a bunch of semi-independent
system enhancements promises to complicate people's lives. Still, Apple has targeted
certain areas and is producing software to hit those targets. The last item needed is a
sufficient number of third party products to convince people that the preceding two
items are "real". Thus the consumer's herd instinct is appeased.
But developers, too, must feel confident that they've chosen the right machine. The
third party products they want to see are development tools. And in this area there is
some uncertainty. The total number of tools available on the Mac is actually quite
small. And the products needed to satisfy Apple's own recommendations for "doing the
right thing" are not all here yet. Bedrock has gone from late to very late, and additions
to the framework for such things as QuickTime, GX, and AOCE (not to mention
AppleScript recordability) seem even farther in the future. While the joint agreement
with Symantec is welcome news, there is some sense that it was a last minute deal
primarily done to fill the gap from yet another failure to produce a follow on to MPW.
The "L-compiler" that was to be Apple's dual platform (68K and Power) compiler for
MPW was barely mentioned (Apple can't seem to get it running in the Mac
environment). The future replacement for MPW, described with pictures last year,
also seems to have disappeared. The Symantec replacement will probably take a while
to move to the native PowerPC environment, leaving a potential gap between the
arrival of the machine and of the native applications that can help sell that machine.
Let's hope that Apple's increasing reliance on Symantec does not kill off plans by other
companies to enter the Mac development tools arena.
WAMADA Hit by Defense Cutbacks!
As a result of office changes at our host site (McDonnell Douglas, in Tyson's Corner,
Virginia) we now use a new room for WAMADA meetings. The good news is that the
room is larger and can hold more people. The bad news is that we lost the use of the
video projection system. (A few of our past guests may be wondering "What video
projector?" and the answer is "The one that wasn't working that month.") While
casting about for a way to display a computer screen to a lot of people at once, one of
our long-time members announced that they too had moved, in this case to a facility
with a training room. Advanced Laser Graphics is a local VAR, print shop, and software
training company. They have offered to host WAMADA meetings, and we have decided to
hold the June meeting at their offices. The Georgetown location may be farther for
some attendees than they presently travel, and parking sounds a bit problematic, but
we presently plan to meet there every other month. More later. (Hey! The new Apple
slogan for the '90s!.)
If you're in the D.C. area, and interested in object oriented programming, give
WAMADA a visit. We meet every third Wednesday beginning around 7:15 p.m. For
information on the next meeting (and location), send a message to JEFFRIES.L on
AppleLink, or call Leslie at (301) 340-5126 during business hours (EDT). If you
leave her an e-mail address, she can place you on her mail list for WAMADA meeting
announcements.