doug rogers wrote:
> MetaCard is simply out of range and too, uhm, difficult, for some who
> aren't professional programmers or developers. Why shouldn't a 'hobbyist'
> or just plain Mac user have a reasonable, inexpensive, and accessible
> programming environment?
A plain Mac user is a sophisticated beast;-). Most of them could stay
with older systems and use Hypercard as they did for years, but they
want more: latest OS (those buttons), latest hardware (ah, that titanium
powerbook), latest gadgets, more features for their hobby programming
environment. Plain Mac users pay Apple top bucks for a new computer plus
a new monitor just to pay even more bucks for MacOS X of which they only
fully understand the colorful buttons. Then they go to some review to
find out why this OS is better then the old one, they get bored very
fast by the technicalities, but feel great that they have -what Apple
says - the best.
Any Mac user can install on hers/his mac linuxppc and have several
*free* development tools and languages: c++, c, java, tcl, perl, php and
the list goes on, which are also "professional".
The professionally of the user is not the issue here.
Same for motorcycles or cars: the pros (delivery guys, messengers)
spend as little as they can on their tools, but the "hobbyists" (lawyers
and doctors and rich kids) pay top bucks on good machines.
Bottom line is that MetaCard is a high quality product and it takes a
lot of effort to produce it.
Since the Mac users community (proud and arrogant as we are) was unable
to generate a group of volunteers to work on such a project and make it
freely available and support it over the years, some company has to do
it full time and at a price. And as opposed to other companies which do
similar things full time, this one does a good honest job and looks
after our needs too, not only their pocket.
Andu
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