I was not impressed with the new plan either. I own Studio, but
bought DC when they first offered it because it was an economical way
to stay up to date. I had no interest in compiling my apps. Most of
the nifty upgrades to the language are eye candy that real app
developers might appreciate, but my personal needs are more simple,
but I really appreciate the bug fixes. I bought the first SuperCard
cross grade offering of Revolution when it first came out, and have
only used it a lot in the last year. I just wanted a good XTalk
interpreter environment to make my own inventive tools, but I need
speed to crunch a lot of numbers and Rev was faster than my
SuperCard. I found DC to exactly match my needs as a personal
programming tool --no confusion at all.
I appreciated the one year extension offer (which I purchased),
because it gives me another year of upgrades, at a price I was
expecting to pay each year, in which to evaluate my changing needs
and to evaluate if Media is sufficient for me. I am sure it would
work fine for me. However, I am not so sure about this backdrop
stuff. I don't have any programs that take over my screen on my
desktop. I keep a lot of programs open at the same time on two
monitors. If it blanks them out, I will most likely keep using DC
until it won't run on my machine anymore, then decide if I want to
update Studio or go back to SuperCard, or something else. However,
by that time Rev may have a whole new plan and product slate.
My point is this, the good Rev folks gave me a reasonable option to
continue the way I was and decide later. I don't feel like I have
been trapped in a corner, and have to decide what to do now. I have
time on my side.
I do hope Media is successful in making Rev more accessible to a
larger audience. I will give it a test run after it comes out. My
personal opinion though is that having a programming UI like
Constellation makes it much easier to use Transcript. The Rev folks
might want to rethink that end of things for their entry level app.
Dennis
On Mar 4, 2006, at 6:05 PM, Charles Hartman wrote:
On Mar 4, 2006, at 3:58 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:
Dreamcard was a "crippled Rev." It straddled the lines of an
inventive user
and a professional developer but the lines were blurred and the
audiences
and messages so different that it created as much confusion as it did
anything else.
Well, I didn't feel confused at all. Dreamcard is, or was,
"crippled" only in two ways: no standalones, no Oracle-type dbs.
Not significant drawbacks for someone building open-source academic
tutorial apps. And while the (if I recall correctly) $60 academic
price, for someone with no institutional or corporate budget to
call upon, wasn't nothing -- wasn't, in other words, as attractive
as the price of something like Python + wxPython. which I use to
build other academic tutorial apps; as as Hypercard for that matter
-- it was worth it, if what you wanted to do was specifically
Hypercard-like. I had an old Hypercard tutorial I wanted to
modernize, and doing it in Python would have been perhaps more work
than it was worth.
As for attractive upgrade prices for Studio, the best I have seen
so far is $200. It does not attract me.
Whether it's a wise business move on Rev's part I suppose I can't
judge, and I really don't care. Unless I've misunderstood something
in the deal, or in Media -- and I certainly agree that the p.r. has
been confusing -- I'll be waving bye-bye to Rev toot sweet. (Or
keep using the old one? I don't think so, except for the occasional
jiffy stack. Or pay $50 for a final year of upgrades to the engine?
High price for a dead-end street.)
Get out your handkerchiefs? Of course not. The question, for Rev,
is whether users like me are as trivial a proportion, and as
trivial a segment, of their market as they *appear* to think. I'm
holding my fire until I understand better. But that's the way it
looks so far.
Charles
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