Hi folks,
Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
> on 1/16/00 3:14 PM, David Cramer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > Since Macromedia scuttled all Authorware development for Macintosh
> > over a year ago, except for some spasmodic support for a Mac player,
> > I have been extremely disillusioned with Macromedia's reliability
> > generally.
>
> The rumor mill slates Authorware for discontinuation sometime next year.
> Who can say? Other sources say ToolBook isn't long for this world either
> (it's taken two years for Asymetrix to go from v7.0 to v7.1). Could be just
> rumors. No one can know for sure until a vendor comes clean in a press
> release, as MetaCreations finally did with its graphics products in
> December.
>
> But for clients who question the viability of MetaCard, I simply remind them
> of the big-vendor products that have been abandoned, including Asymetrix
> IconAuthor, Sybase's Gain Momentum, Oracle Media Objects, Apple Media Tool,
> Apple's HyperCard, Apple's ScriptX, and a host of others. Big companies,
> big plans, small execution.
>
> The viability of a vendor is no guarantee that their product will be viable.
>
> In contrast, MetaCard Corp. has been profitably maintaining and enhancing
> MetaCard longer than most other products have existed. Privately held,
> MetaCard Corp. is often more forthcoming about future development plans than
> any publicly-traded company can be. And focused on a single product there
> is no question about which part of the MetaCard Corp.'s product line is
> getting development resources.
>
> If a client is really nervous and has a lot of money, it is my understanding
> that MetaCard Corp. may be willing to negotiate source code escrow as
> assurance for worst-case scenarios, something the client will not likely
> find with any other vendor. Such escrow is not cheap, but guarantees
> viability for the code base in the event of total product or vendor failure.
>
> Of course there are other considerations, most chiefly infrastructure
> (consultants, third-party components, trainers, etc.), which play a key role
> in technology selection among the majority of clients. With MC's UI taking
> a backseat to its feature set (the UI favors the only platform that doesn't
> like to pay for software <g>), the development environment has had
> difficulty garnering the market share the interpreter richly deserves.
> Catering to niche geeks like you and me, the UI has kept MetaCard from
> hitting the critical mass within the market which would compel these
> infrastructure players to join in and raise its perceived value to match its
> actual value.
>
I'm not sure it's just the Metacard development GUI. Here's an excerpt
from a post ("HyperCard 3.0 News from MacWorld!!!") on
comp.sys.mac.hypercard that I felt might be appropriate about now. As
Richard pointed out, even big vendors have dropped products which seem
to fit in the xCard/xTalk genre. My question is, "Why couldn't they make
the products profitable enough to keep alive?" I wonder if the entire
genre doesn't suffer from the same "market definition crisis" HC has?
--------- start of excerpt - about Jackie Gay's meeting w/ Mr. Schiller
-----------
Phil [Schiller, Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple
Computer] said also that one of the big problems with HyperCard is that
it cannot be defined, even by the programmers who wrote it. To be
successful in the marketplace, a product must be positioned in a way
that will appeal to the masses, and anything that suggests "programming"
is not appealing to most of Apple's customers. He made an analogy to
AppleScript, which was also on the verge of being dropped for many of
the same reasons. However, in the case of AppleScript, they were able to
focus their marketing directly to the publishing industry, which is one
of Apple's largest markets. For this market, they pushed the angle that
AppleScript allows publishers to automate most of the publishing process
by allowing interapplication communication between the applications that
publishers use the most. He said that while those who are knowledgeable
know that AppleScript does much more than this, focusing on the
publishing market was a way to sell AppleScript to a large market share,
which made it successful.
HyperCard, on the other hand, has no such focus. Because it is so hard
to define what HyperCard is, it is just as hard to find a key strategy
that will sell it to the masses. He said he reads each letter we send,
looking for a key phrase or idea that will define a market focus -- but
while each letter contains a use for HyperCard that is important to each
user's unique situation, no letter has had a focus that Apple could
adopt as a wide-spread marketing tactic. Again, "programming" or
"empowerment" is not good enough; the masses either don't care, or the
concept is too general.
---------------- end of excerpt --------------
In litigation, I've heard that the party who wins is generally the one
that most convincingly defines the issue (and one's claim in relation to
it). I think the same thing is probably true in marketing.
Thoughts?
(Also, it occurs to me that this content might best belong on the xTalk
list. For the sake of continuity, I put it here anyway. Hope that's
okay...)
> --
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World
> Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
> _____________________________________________________________________
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com
> Tel: 323-225-3717 ICQ#60248349 Fax: 323-225-0716
>
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--
Phil Davis
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