Executor 2.0/executorv2.0.iso/pc/linux/extra/docs/maillist/text/archive.96/text1766.txt

Text File | 1996-07-25 | 7.2 KB | 149 lines

>>>>> "Kai" == Monster Smurf <[e-mail]> writes:
In article <4jc62i$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Monster Smurf) writes:


    Kai> #1 I *luuvvvv* Executor!!  However, you have to remember we
    Kai> don't know as much about what is going on as you do, so the
    Kai> questions, suggestions I ask and pose are for
    Kai> information. But, it seems like you get a bit 'miffed' in you
    Kai> responses to 'Executor doesn't do xxx' posts. Trust me, We
    Kai> are all on your side here =)

Thank you for your support.

ARDI has benefitted greatly from free advice, although to be honest
almost all of the free advice that we've benefitted from has been of
the non-business suggestions variety.  Bug reports are great,
explanations of how users have found they can configure Executor or
printing subsystems or sound cards are wonderful, too.  We've had
people run the Executor mailing list, contribute Icons and volunteer
to translate ARDI documents.  I'm sure I've left out some of the other
very worthy free contributions we've received from Executor
enthusiasts.  We appreciate this not just from a business perspective
but we're literally honored that people have taken their free time to
help us.  If I have sounded in the least bit ungrateful for the
contributions of free advice and free services, then it has been a
poor conveyance on my part.

Still, there will be times when I believe people's advice is mistaken.
I'm not even necessarily right in these cases, but due to my intimate
knowledge of ARDI and Executor, I usually have a lot more information
at hand than the person or people who make the suggestion.  Because of
news lag, it may be that one person makes a suggestion and two or
three others have said "I agree" or "me too" by the time I get to
reply.

In the past I've tried to write detailed explanations for each and
every suggestion that we have chosen not to heed *because* I
appreciate the free advice and I wanted it to be clear that I have
read and considered the suggestion before dismissing it.

When a group of posts suggested that we make Executor just emulate Mac
hardware so that ROMs could be tossed in, I departed from my previous
pattern of response and I quickly wrote a collective reply.  When I
can free up some time I'll try to explain our position better in a new
FAQ entry.

Because Executor is relatively unknown, we are going to go through a
growth phase where at any given time there will be large quantities of
people who have just heard about Executor and are asking some of the
same obvious questions that a former batch of new users have asked.
We're trying to deal with this as much as possible via the FAQ, our
WWW site, this newsgroup (many Executor users answer questions so
quickly that nobody at ARDI needs to comment), our "[e-mail]"
automated e-mail server and even by changing Executor to make it more
hospitable to non-geek users.

ARDI directly benefits from these continuing wave of new users and we
really don't want to discourage them.  So it's definitely a mistake if
I get miffed.  But really the only thing that I think has managed to
make it through my thick skin is when people who apparently appreciate
to some degree the level of difficulty of what we've done, but still
think there is a "simple" thing that we can do (often a business
suggestion) that will make things much better with relatively little
work.  In general, anyone who thinks there's a simple thing that ARDI
can do to greatly improve Executor, is mistaken.  The suggestion of
just emulating the hardware and dropping in ROMs is a case in point
because of the legal issues.  I promise not to get miffed when this
comes up again, but I hope that anyone who has bothered to read this
far has a good understanding of why there are no "simple" cures.  The
basic reason is that we're a clever group of people with thousands of
people giving us advice, so all the "simple" fixes have been examined.

    Kai> #2 7.5 on Executor this year

    Kai> OH?!?! Is this really going to be possible, or are you guys
    Kai> just pulling our lariots? Because if this is the case, you
    Kai> should say it a little louder, so we all hear it.

That was our goal from the beginning of the year.  It is definitely
doable with enough engineers; we just can't yet guage how soon after
E2 is officially selling that we'll have the money to get the other
engineers on line.  After E2 is shipping I'll reevaluate how likely we
are to reach our goal and I'll spread the word then.

    Kai> #3 Following Executor

    Kai> I've been following this software since before it was color,
    Kai> and I have to say as a Mac User that I am impressed! I can
    Kai> confirm for any of you readers out there that it *is* fast,
    Kai> faster that most of the 040 line. (My co-workers didn't
    Kai> believe me so I took a copy in to work). A fine effort, I
    Kai> just want to see it through. There have been many mac to pc
    Kai> efforts in the past that just died out, and I only wish Cliff
    Kai> and the rest of the Ardi team the best. Because, as everyone
    Kai> knows, the whole world would run some mac software sometime
    Kai> if they didn't have to run it on a damned Macintosh :)

To the best of my knowledge, there have only been three attempts to
rewrite the MacOS outside of Apple:

    NuTek -- rewrote with their own dedicated chipset in mind,
         a severe case of too little too late since their stuff
         was 68030 based and couldn't run Excel 3 back when
         Executor could.  They're history.

    Quorum -- Originally planned on writing porting tools (like ARDI
          was doing at the time), then decided to support binary
          compatibility (like ARDI started showing), but were
          much too slow and too incompatible.  Their target
          architectures were SPARC and MIPs.  They had a heck of
          a lot of funding.  They're basically history.

    ARDI -- Presumably you know a little about us.  Perhaps it's not
        known that we incorporated in Delaware as a Class C
        corporation and that we've already sunk about $2m into
        development (much less than Quorum did) and that our goal
        is to be a large (but still friendly) company.  We will
        eventually support many architectures, but right now we're
        concentrating on the 80x86 and compatible market, because
        that's where the money is.

So, if you only count Mac to PC efforts that do not require obtaining
software from Apple, we're the only one that has ever even attempted
what we're doing.  There have been a bunch of Mac emulators that
require software from Apple (AMAX, Liken, Shapeshifter, DayDream,
QUIX's PPC port), but none of them targetted PCs and even if they did,
their dependence on Apple code would severely limit the number of
units they could sell and the price at which they could sell them.

The only Mac to PC effort that I can think of other than Executor was
Hydra, a board that had a 680x0 on it that plugged into a PC.  It
required software from Apple, although I think they made so few of
them that they were able to buy ROMs from dead Macs so their end-users
wouldn't have to scrounge for ROMs themselves.

Stealing Bill Graham's phrase: we're not the best at doing what we do;
we're the only ones doing it.

    Kai> Keep it comming; my check is to you when the IRS gets off
    Kai> their butts.

Thank you.  Those checks add up.

    Kai> Kai Cherry

--Cliff
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