From: robichau@lambda.msfc.nasa.gov (Paul Robichaux)
Subject: MacTCP: letter to Woodman & MacWeek
Reply-To: robichau@lambda.msfc.nasa.gov
Organization: New Technology, Inc.
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 18:35:25 GMT

Although I am not as well-spoken as either Amanda Walker or Steve
Dorner, both of whom have made very clear and cogent arguments against
the upcoming changes to the MacTCP distribution policy, I decided to
throw my two cents in too. Below is a letter which I sent to Alastair
Woodman (woodman1@applelink.apple.com), product manager for MacTCP and
the man who has no "desire to annoy end-users." I also sent a copy to
MacWeek.

I encourage others out there to call the Apple Customer Assistance
Center and to e-mail Mr. Woodman (be polite, of course; you catch more
flies with honey and all that.) Register your opinion!

-Paul

-- forwarded text begins --
Dear Mr. Woodman:

I'm writing you to express my displeasure with Apple's recent decision
to dramatically raise the cost of MacTCP, both by raising corporate
and site license fees and, eventually, making the product available
only a la At Ease- through retail channels.

The Macintosh has always been more valuable than competing
architectures because of what it includes "out of the box." Networking
has always been built into the Mac, and we've seen the addition of
voice input, ADB, and even on-board video as Apple has tried to keep
the Mac hardware competitive.

I understand that Apple's trying to be in the software business, and
that software which requires major effort to develop must
be sold in a manner that allows Apple to _at least_ recoup the cost of
its development.

Unfortunately, the decision to include MacTCP in that class of
applications is what gores my ox. At work, I develop TCP/IP based
applications on a variety of platforms. These applications are all for
one customer, but they are developed, and run on, platforms ranging
from clone 386 PCs to multiprocessor un*x machines- including the Mac.

Of all the machines we use, only TWO have an operating system that
doesn't include a full-featured TCP/IP implementation: OS/2 and System
7. OS/2, however, offers a $150 package which includes FTP, NNTP, NFS,
and X Windows services in addition to the TCP/IP stack. And Apple?
Well, you already know the answer.

Others have addressed the impact on end-users (I'm one of those, too,
but I'm writing as a developer), and I distinctly remember you being
quoted as saying that your "desire is not to annoy the end-user." I'll
let other users talk about whether they're annoyed or not.

As a developer, though, it will be awfully hard for me to justify
developing products on, or for, a hardware platform whose software
doesn't include some basic features that we need. Since Sun, HP, DEC,
and Silicon Graphics all offer low-cost, (fairly) high-performance
machines which include the development tools we need, it's already
hard to push for more Macs. 

I'd be happy to pay for MacTCP if it includes some functionality that
I don't already have in other platforms. This same reasoning explains
why I don't mind paying for Appletalk Remote Access- it gives me a
valuable capacity that I feel is worth extra. TCP/IP, however, is a
_basic_ _part_ of other competing OS packages. If you want to go IBM's
route and include tools, great! Sell me a $200 package with MacTCP,
ftp clients and servers, and maybe SMTP and SLIP support and I'll buy
it- and recommend it. $59 for TCP/IP alone, however, isn't worth it.
We'll buy something from Intercon or Novell instead- you can bet that
they'll include tools with their stacks.

Sorry to rant on. I have been a Mac user since 1984, and an off-and-on
Mac developer since 1989. The superior aspects of the Mac aren't
enough to sell it against machines which are both cheaper _and_ more
functional. Making MacTCP less available doesn't make it any easier.

To sum up, Steve Dorner said it best: "Why does Apple want to stop the
development of cheap MacTCP applications?"

Regards,
-Paul Robichaux
 not speaking for New Technology, Inc. or NASA

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