| Re: Mac Scoop (Addition/Correction) [message #27207 is a reply to message #27205] |
Fri, 12 October 2001 05:50   |
Joseph B. Gurman
Messages: 31
Registered: April 2000
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Member |
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In article <3BC6CC3F.185F0B29@jhuapl.edu>, "Noam R. Izenberg"
<noam.izenberg@jhuapl.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>
> On that front, I have two corrections and one addition:
>
> Correction 1) From earlier, I relayed that RSI sales were down 50% from
> 1999-2000. That was
> incorrect. _Mac_ sales at RSI have been down 50% each year for the past
> _3_ years.
>
> Correction 2) I relayed Apple gave RSI a G4 to help their Mac effort.
> That was incorrect. Apple gave
> several machines and good general hardware support. RSI, however
> needed/needs other types of support
> as well - critical things like documentation help, engineering resource
> support, etc.
>
> My additional news is on that front. RSI and Apple have been
> communicating (yesterday) with positive
> results that are now being evaluated by RSI. Look for an announcement
> maybe late next week.
>
> A new statement from Mike Scally (CEO) should be on the web sometime
> today addressing allot of this.
>
> Noam
>
I look forward to that statement. I would also like to thank Noam
for talking to the RSI management on behalf not only of himself, but the
Mac OS IDL community.
As is usual (among scientists, IDL users, and Mac users), I do have
a couple of quibbles with his statements in earlier posts, if applied to
all of us Mac IDL users.
We went heavily into G4's in anticipation of the Mac OS X version of
IDL, and the implicit understanding that it would support Unix-like
features, such as envrionemnt variables --- which would allow us to run
a large, ross-platform codebase on this best of all platforms.
Linux would not help us at all; we are at a very security-conscious
institution, and the sheer number of CERT advisories per week on Linux
variants makes it clear that serious sys admin overhead is necessary ---
it may be for OS X as well, but so far we've cleared the first sets of
scans and probes. More to the point, there are other Mac apps we need,
and the simple desk space and cost of having one machine to do serious
computing and one for all the "standard" apps that still don't exist for
Linux (sorry, Gimp fans) is no longer justifiable.
If Apple isn't able to make it worth RSI's while, I suggest forming
a non-profit consortium to but the existing OS X IDL code, get it
finished, and do that community Q & A of which RSI appears to be so
scared. We could even promise to give whatever license fees aren't spent
on the development and Q & A effort back to RSI --- what have they got
to lose? Especially since all of us diehard Mac fanatics would never buy
a Windows machine, even if it meant giving up our firstborn children, PT
Cruisers, Malibu beach houses, and private islands. Oops, let the cat
out of the bag --- if the Windows people find out that's how all Mac
users live, they might want t ojoin the party....
Thanks again,
Joe Gurman
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