From: ctm@ardi.com (Clifford T. Matthews)
Subject: Re: Spreadsheets (was Mesa vs. Appsoft)
Organization: ARDI
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 92 00:33:55 GMT

Dear Folks,

Various posts have been made concerning spreadsheets on the NeXT.
I posted a short note (as did one of our customers, without prompting)
mentioning that you can run the Macintosh version of Excel under Executor,
our Macintosh emulator for the NeXT.

Since then, two posts have appeared that deserve a responce.

David Gursky wrote:

    Clifford's response misses my point.  I know I can use Executor
    to run Excel, but  if a user can run Excel, they will not switch
    to Athena Design's Mesa, Appsoft's Solution, Lotus' Improv, or
    Informix's Wingz.  Athena Design, Appsoft, Lotus, and Informix all
    realize that backwards compatibility to competiting products is an
    effective method of winning new sales, because the user will not
    loose access to any of the information they have generated.  All
    I'm saying is that the specific set of formats supported needs to
    be expanded to include Excel (both Mac and PC versions.)

and David Pollak,
    author of Mesa, a spreadsheet that competes with Excel, wrote:

    I think that Executor is a fine product and a cool concept,
    but I do not view it as a long term solution.  It is a way of
    bridging the software gap that still exists on the NeXT.  There is
    no good word processor (I think that MS Word 4.0 is *GREAT*) on
    the NeXT.  I was holding my breath for Pages and PasteUp, but I'd
    now place even money that Appsoft Write! will be out before either
    of the other two products (I wonder if the folks at Appsoft will
    trade a copy of Write! for a copy of Mesa :-))

    Nevertheless, Executor will never offer what I bought my NeXT
    for:  NeXTSTEP applications that are cool, interoperate (i.e.,
    distributed objects), and look and feel right.  The Mac is almost
    10 year old technology and looks it.  NeXTSTEP is the leading
    technology and I want my NeXTSTEP applications.  I'm hoping to make
    Mesa so cool that people will go "how did I ever use anything as
    clunky as Excel?" like they are now saying "How did I ever use
    anything as clucky as 1-2-3?" after seeing Mesa.

    Cliff is doing a great service to the community, but if I simply
    wanted to run Mac applications, I'd go out and by a Quadra.

I don't think I missed David Gursky's point, but perhaps in my
desire to make my last post brief (anyone who reads my posts knows
what an exception that was), I didn't make *my* point clear.  If
you're in the market for a Spreadsheet, investigate *all* of the
currently, and even the soon to be expected, options.  That includes
running Excel under Executor.  Since David G's post was aimed at
Spreadsheet authors, my point could be reworded to consider the
*entire* competition; don't lightly dismiss people who run Excel
under Executor.

I'm not going to do a feature for feature comparison between Excel
under Executor and Mesa, Wings and Improv; but I do encourage
everyone to examine *all* sides before making a decision.

Executor currently offers what most people bought their NeXT for:
productivity, as well as something that many people may not have
bought their NeXT for: compatibility.  Executor is cool, by David
Pollack's own admission, does interoperate (allows RTF cut and
paste, supports Services) and, if you're coming from a Macintosh
background, most certainly "look(s) and feel(s) right".  I agree
that David P. and Athena should be concentrating on making their
product be so good as to generate spontaneous exclamations of "How
could I have used anything else?", but that is exactly what
Microsoft has been doing with Excel.  Cliff and ARDI's job is to
blur the boundaries, so *you* can make *your* choice.

If you've watched what we've done with Executor so far, you know
what you can expect in the future.  Even though I'm a person of
principle, I'm always afraid that by acting according to principle,
I'll dismiss something good without trying it.  If you're opposed to
Executor "on principle", I hope you'll check it out.  It could be
the tool that you need.

		Sincerely,


		Cliff[ord T. Matthews] ctm@ardi.com    or
		iclone!ctm@unmvax.cs.unm.edu President and Founder
		Abacus R&D, Inc.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc,comp.dcom.modems