home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!agate!apple!mumbo.apple.com!gallant.apple.com!city-lights.apple.com!user
- From: mattd@apple.com (Matt Deatherage)
- Subject: Re: The Apple II Now and Forever (Ok, the _Last_ Post folks!)
- Sender: news@gallant.apple.com
- Message-ID: <mattd-161292190512@city-lights.apple.com>
- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 03:17:43 GMT
- References: <mattd-111292174450@city-lights.apple.com> <Bz9FHq.KuF@news.iastate.edu>
- Organization: Developer Support Center, Apple Computer, Inc.
- Followup-To: comp.sys.apple2
- Lines: 77
-
- In article <Bz9FHq.KuF@news.iastate.edu>, hal@budapest.math.macalstr.edu
- (Harold Byron Bouma) wrote:
- >
- > Well, one more comment. Those who are quick to blame you Matt for being
- > responsible for the death of the II get informed that you do not have much
- > decision over Apple II matters, which is true. and its sad that you get a lot
- > of complaints such as that. "I just do my job" is the reponse, and since you
- > are not involved with the higher level decisions of the Apple II, its even hard
- > for you to "accurately" know what goes on inside of Apple. I mean, how often
- > did Scully stop by to tell you about his decisions regarding the Apple II? Not
- > much I bet. But you didn't have to. You got decisions that came down the chain
- > of command and those reasons are left to the guesswork or "heresay" given by
- > those other people higher up.
- >
-
- "I don't make the decisions" doesn't mean "I'm not involved with what goes
- on." The Apple II development world at Apple is fairly small and always
- has been, compared to a world-wide employee base of several thousand (many
- of whom do sell, service or support the machine in various ways). I've
- been involved with development of most Apple II products since I got here,
- including all the system software, ROM 3 and some other things as well.
-
- I've even contributed wee bits of code every now and then, like the code
- in the Finder that reads FTD files (with Dave) and bug fixes and some
- minor enhancements to the LaserWriter driver.
-
- That doesn't mean I get to make the decisions or that I always get my
- way, even on technical issues, but I've been involved with almost all the
- Apple II decision making that's gone on here for a few years.
-
- As for John Sculley (no one's allowed to insult someone if they can't
- spell his name correctly, btw), I don't know that he personally has made
- any decisions regarding the Apple II. Sculley and Spindler try not to
- micro-manage the company, but they do approve of directions and such.
- I don't know that John Sculley made any decisions about the Apple II,
- but he did not disapprove of the choices Apple as a company made or
- Apple would not have made them.
-
- As an aside (stupid trivia piece #4), I've only personally spoken to
- John Sculley once in my life. I was walking in the lobby of City Center
- 3 (the building in which I work) in Spring of 1990, as I remember, when
- I ran into Randy Battat, at that time VP of worldwide product marketing
- and my boss's boss's boss's boss. We started chatting about various
- things while Randy was waiting for someone, and I started complaining
- that the developer fees for Apple II developers were too high given
- that the machines were substantially less expensive than Macintoshes and
- the development curve wasn't as high. We were going back and forth on
- this when Randy's lunch guest came up -- John Sculley. Randy introduced
- me and said we were talking about Apple II developer program prices and
- how I felt they were too high.
-
- Apparently, I kept right on going, and John Sculley asked a few questions
- about shouldn't it be the same, and I expressed the opinion that they
- shouldn't be and quoted a few facts, and then they had to leave for
- lunch. I say "apparently" because I was so stunned by Sculley's appearance
- that I don't really remember much of it. I got this from someone else who
- worked on the same floor who watched the whole incident.
-
- A few months later, the Apple II developer program prices were cut to the
- costs they're still at today. Because John Sculley or Randy Battat said
- so? No -- because other people saw merit in the same arguments or
- independently came to the same conclusions, and those people had the power
- to make it happen and did so. Sometimes I feel the upper management
- of the Apple Developer Group is more strongly committed to low program
- prices for Apple II developers than I am, even. :)
-
- > And yes, unless someone else tries to carry this deadbeat thread on,
- > its my last post! (yay!)
-
- Ah well, the best laid plans...
-
- ============================================================================
- Matt Deatherage, Developer Support Center, Apple Computer, Inc.
- Personal mail only -- please POST technical questions, questions about
- Apple and its policies, where to find documents and related inquiries.
- The opinions I express don't represent Apple, which makes us both happy.
- ============================================================================
-