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Status of 1.2.1 and upcoming Price Change
Dear Folks,
Here's the status of 1.2.1:
The binders and slipcases are back from the printers
The manual is at the printers
All new features have been added and debugged
A very small handful of critical bugs are still being fixed
Our ad in the upcoming NeXTWORLD has been finished and sent
Our dealers are in the process of learning what Executor's
all about
We hope to put everything together starting next week. Originally the plans
were to have the manuals back on Monday, but there was some confusion and
it's not clear the printer can make that deadline.
Here is a list of all the commercial software that we have been working with
of late. Some of this is borrowed and will have to be returned soon, but we
expect to get much more software to test, once our ad is out in NeXTWORLD
and we look real enough for ISV's to send us their software.
Has been tested, runs very well:
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego 1.0
Crystal Quest 2.20Z
Excel 3.0A
Excel 4.0
Managing Your Money 4.0
MacLinkPlus PC 6.0 (Translators only)
Word 4.0{D,E}
Word 5.0
Leprechaun 3.0 (Needs Pretend Sound)
Quicken 3.0
SimAnt 1.0
Resorcerer 1.0
Hasn't been tested much, runs pretty well:
CricketGraph 1.3.2
FileMakerPro 1.0v2
FractaSketch 1.39
Fontographer 3.5
MacInTax 1992 9.01
MacPaint 2.0 (has printing problems)
MacProjectII 2.5v1 (has printing problems)
MacWriteII 1.1v1
MacMoney V3.52
MacMoneyBeta
MandelMovie 1.88
SuperPaint 1.1MS (requires Refresh)
Resolve
TeachText 1.2 (has printing problems)
Hasn't been tested much, limps:
ClarisCad scrolling problems
HyperCard varied
MacDrawII scrolling problems
MacDrawPro scrolling problems
PageMaker varied
Quark XPress varied
Does not run at all:
GreatWorks bad trap patching
InteractivePhysicsII I don't yet know
MacGraphX makes color calls we don't have
Nisus bad trap patching
Studio1 I don't yet know
ThinkC 4.0 Not 32-bit clean (we don't have 5.0)
Here is a list of publicly redistributable (shareware, freeware, demoware)
that we've been testing on.
Has been tested, runs very well:
Amazing
Artillery
BinHex v5.0
BlackBox
Cairo ShootOut
Engel's Enigma
Globe
GunShy 1.0
Hangman 9.0
Hot Air Baloon 2.1
IAGO
KillerFrogs DEMO
MacYahtzee
Mines
Missle Game
MotorBike
Precision Cribbage
Reversi
Risk
Shanghai DEMO 2.0
Stuntcopter 1.2
Units
A-S Baseball
blackjack 2.0
Darts
LawnZapper
Lazlife 2.0c
Phraze Craze
SilverFingers DEMO
Super MANDELZOOM 1.0
Hasn't been tested much, runs pretty well:
1000 Miles (has cache problems when doing "About ...")
KaleidaGraph 2.0 DEMO
Orion V1.0
Pleiades 1.0
ResorcererDEMO 1.0
SimCity DEMO
Speedometer 3.01
TeleWar DEMO (Needs Refresh, can't use serial ports)
Biorhythm II (can't print)
Hasn't been tested much, limps:
Backgammon (has bad code; will die unexpectedly)
DiskLib 1.82
More 1.1c DEMO
MultiFlow II 1.0 DEMO
Write Idea DEMO
Does not run at all:
Monopoly V4.0
Canfield 2.0 (has cache problems)
Adventure (weird use of TextEdit)
Arkanoid (can't allocate alternate audio and sound buffers)
Dungeon of Doom (not 32-bit clean)
Galaxis 1.02 (Executes _AddDrive trap)
MacBzone 1.3.1 (SIGFPE in CopyBits)
MacMan 1.0.2 (jumps to location 0)
Polyominoes (quits)
Stuffit 1.5 (doesn't like our filesystem)
Zork (weird use of TextEdit)
We also have a couple of CD-ROMs of Publicly Distributable stuff that we
test under Executor. Once we're back in the black, we'll buy the latest
BMUG or BCS CD-ROM and start testing that stuff a little more methodically.
Executor 1.2.1 and the copy of HFS_XFer supplied with it will read Mac
formatted CD-ROMs.
Feel free to send us additions or corrections to our list. Once 1.2.1 is
out we're going to try to get a new copy of the list out to our dealers
every month.
Executor 1.3 should be out at the end of this year, or early in the new
year. It will take advantage of NeXTSTEP 3.0 better than 1.2.1 does and
should have many more applications running under it.
===========================================================================
Beginning October 1, we will be discontinue our pricing scheme that is based
on the number of "big ticket" apps you wish to run. We've had problems
explaining that pricing scheme since day one. To be honest, several people
advised us against such a scheme, but I personally thought it was worth
trying. We will Grandfather in all the people who have already purchased
Executor under that scheme, but you will not be entitled to free upgrades.
The new retail price is $360 for a copy of Executor that attempts to run
anything, but still has the compatibility problems described above.
However, that price includes a year of free upgrades, and in that time we
honestly expect to have most things running exceedingly well. The
educational price is $180; you get exactly what the non-educational people
get, but your floppy, slipcase and manual are stamped "Educational Version".
College and University students and faculty qualify for the educational
prices.
Note, the above prices are retail, it is expected that some dealers will
offer discounts. Because of this, we've changed our program for conversion
from limited copies to unrestricted copies:
If you qualify for an educational discount, then we will upgrade you to an
unrestricted version for $140 minus what you've already paid per copy. If
you've already paid more than that, we'll try to work something out (we
don't want our early supporters to feel cheated). This means that any
educational user who has paid for Word and Excel support will automatically
be converted to unrestricted support, and get free updates until October
1993. Most of these conversions will be done automatically when we ship
Executor 1.2.1 and our new binders/slipcases/manuals. However, it doesn't
hurt to send us proof of educational userness.
If you don't qualify for an educational discount, the above paragraph
applies to you, except the difference is from $280. We have definitely sold
some unrestricted versions at a higher price, and we will be contacting
those individuals to discuss the situation (if you're one of them, you can
e-mail us or call us). Again, we don't want our early customers to feel
cheated by buying early.
==========================================================================
A letter detailing the above changes will be sent with your copy of Executor
1.2.1. I hope you understand why we're changing things the way we are. I
believe we'll all profit from this change, since the added revenue will
allow us to progress to complete emulation significantly faster.
As always, your comments are appreciated. This mailing list has been
awfully quiet of late; I've had my head firmly embedded in our emulator
since I got back from my non-honeymoon (we didn't go anywhere, but I stayed
away from computers for a week).
--Cliff ctm@ardi.com