FOLKs, I found the following on MacNN, I thought you should give it a read.
Though I'd like to point out that their cross-platform problems don't apply
to us, as we have already said we'll have support for OSA on Macs etc.
MetaCreations Software and The Company's Restructuring
Dec. 16, 1999
I am an MetaCreations' ex software engineer, who left Meta just a few
months ago. Just want to express my feelings about what happened at
MetaCreations.
Needless to say, MetaCreations has some of the best and top talented
engineers from the world. Their imaging software are just hard not to give
it a try when seeing them. However, despite all the hard working engineers,
the top management members of the company just don't see which direction
the company can take. Bad product scheduling just make their management
even worse. The deadlines are usually around the end of the quarter, and
the product development time of any MetaCreations products are usually
under 2 quarters (6 months) from scratch to finish. Tight scheduling just
wouldn't give engineers enough time to create a bug free product even they
all stay up late at night for several days. (FYI, my record was 49 hours
straight working without sleeping. That's more than 40 hours/week. Sadly to
say, that's not the highest record. Some engineers have over 60 hours of
non-sleeping. What's worse, there is seldom over time pays or bonus for all
the hard works.) Though MetaCreations is a public company for a long time,
working there is just like working in a 2 people startup company!
Changing direction a lot is also another problem of the company. Though
they have done efforts on downsizing [a] number of products, they simply
didn't catch on the Internet wave. Remember what happened to Apple a few
years ago? Poser, Bryce, Carrara, Painter, KPT, etc. are all top of the
line software. Only few of them are tied to the internet. And none of them
are industry standard in 3D or multi-media as Adobe PhotoShop [is with]
imaging or Macromedia [is with] Flash.
MetaStream is positioned for internet 3D, which directly competes with
VRML. It was first targeted for game industry. Turned out that with all the
3D hardware accelerated cards on the market, none of the game makers would
license the technology. Just want to tell you that the company had
purchased the technology about 3 years back and it hasn't taken off in any
area. It's interesting to see how successful the technology would be in
time. It really makes me worry, however, that MetaStream is the product
that hasn't generated any revenues at all in the past few years, and the
company is betting all its future [on that] technology.
Another interesting point to point out is that most of the Meta products
are cross-platform with Mac and Windows. Despite it's cool to be that way,
it imposes a few major problems.
1. The application can only use system functions that are common to both
platforms. Which means no AppleScript on Mac, and no embedded Internet
Explorer on Windows, for example.
2. Meta has to develop its own application proprietary frame work, which is
hard and takes lots of time to do it. When developing a typical Meta
application, not only the application itself has to be developed and
debugged, but the frame work also needs efforts. And there is no
documentation for the frame work. Thus, new engineers usually have [steep]
learning curves. No documentation is apparently also Apple's problem. Which
also adds the level of difficulty when developing software.
3. Engineers have to know both platforms well. Such engineers are not
common, which is one of the reasons why Meta only had under 40 engineers.
Most of the experienced engineers came from Mac, and still prefer to do
coding on the Mac. This should explain why [the] software usually runs
better on a Mac. However, it's just a fact that Windows market is several
times larger than Mac. When there are problems on Windows, more technical
supports are needed. Hey, Mac people are not the only people who complain a
lot!
To respond to some of your readers concern about Carrara. From some inside
information, the code has just been freezed last week, and the product is
going into production. Again, the key word here is "freeze," which doesn't
necessary mean the code is complete. So I would expect Carrara is ready to
ship in a few weeks. How functional (or buggy) it would be remains to be
seen.
Finally, all is too late to save some good products from slipping away at
Meta. I am just sad to see a company with good products is fading. I,
myself, joined the company in 96 just because I thought KPT was very cool
to play around [with]. I surely put all of my heart into every products I
participated. On the other hand, I am also happy to see that the company is
selling off the products so they can be marketed better by other companies.
If the products are ever bought by other companies, that is. I surely hope
all the great products are being bought by great companies. If any of the
products aren't get bought, it's also not a bad idea to make them open
source. Now Meta really has to spend some time to clean up all the messy
codes! :)
Just my 2 cents...
Mark C.K. Yang
Former MetaCreations Software Engineer
Member of Goo, Super Goo, KPT, Power Soap, Painter 3D plug-in for 3D
Studio, Poser, and Office Advantage
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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