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upgrades + pricing
Dear Len,
I forgot to answer your first question of your last letter,
but luckily the answer fits better here than there. It is possible
that you heard about V2.0, but only because we didn't finalize our
number scheme until recently. Probably what you heard about as 2.0
is really going to be in V1.2. While we are still qualifying the
"big ticket" applications, the revision numbers will increase after
the decimal point. Here's what we've released so far and what our
plans are:
V1.0 the first non-beta version Word 4.0 only
V1.1 limited printing, but basically same as V1.0
V1.1.1 diacritical character support (this was a real
mistake on our part; V1.1.1 was released two weeks
after V1.1 was released. Our european friends were
not happy that we forgot to put the support in V1.1,
so we made V1.1.1 and shipped it to our overseas
customers)
DEMO-1 While preparing V1.2 for release we found out that we
could put a demo version on a soon to be made NeXT
CD ROM. However the deadline is April 22. We took
time off and put together the demo. It has a couple
of features that aren't present in V1.1.1. When
something kills Executor, a "Death Certificate" is
printed, and the application doesn't go away until
you say so. This gives people a chance to print a
screen dump. DEMO-1 is also able to run programs
directly off of floppy disks (although since it is
extremely limited, you can't really use this)
V1.2: Is not out yet; illness and the preparation of DEMO-1
slowed us down a bit. This version will have
everything mentioned in the previous versions as well
as:
Excel 3.0a support (costs extra to enable this)
Word 5 support (doesn't cost extra money)
Quicken, MacMoney, Stuffit, Compactor Pro support
(these don't require extra money)
Complete printing support:
Circles, Arcs, underlining, etc.
Proper font metrics used so text aligns nicely
Printing works from other applications
You will be able to traverse your entire filesystem,
rather than be limited to "Volumes"
You will be able to start executor by double clicking
on applications and files
Better packaging (probably exceedingly similar to
Stone Design's packaging for Create and
DataPhile)
Better documentation to go in the packaging
Bug fixes for better interaction with GatorBoxes and
the like
Support for multiple floppy drives
(One thing that was slated to go into V1.2 but isn't
is direct support for mac formatted hard drives. We
may support them as read only volumes, but event that
looks like it may slip)
V1.3: Will take advantage of as much cool stuff in NeXTstep
3.0 as we can. We don't have an advance copy of
NS3.0, so I can't say exactly what will and won't
work. My understanding is that V1.2 will work under
NextStep 3.0 without modification.
It's speculation, but apps that we'll be working on
will include QuarkXPress, Mac Draw Pro,
Cricket Graph and SimAnt.
more 1.x releases will be made as more applications are
supported. We'll focus on the "big ticket" apps, whose
support will bring in more direct revenue, but also listen
to our customers and try to get out the important "freebies"
V2.0 will have color support. This is probably at least a
year and a half away.
The upgrade policy is simple: V1.2 will be shipped automatically,
for free to everyone who purchases V1.2 or an earlier version (so buy
now, your money will just help us grow faster). After that,
successive upgrades will be available either for the cost of the
support for additional "big ticket" apps that you want, or if you
want an upgrade, but no additional "big ticket" support, it will be
$20.
--Cliff