> i'm in agreement with eldee here, cutting opendoc was a really bad
> move on apple's part. the staffing and cost of the team was
> _extremely_ minimal in the big picture.
Perhaps they had to destroy the village in order to save it.
How many years has OpenDoc been promising the world to us?
How many more years before they were COMPLETELY embarrassed?
You have to ask yourself, how important is OpenDoc to Apple's future?
Put yourself in their shoes. You're spread out way too tight, and the
sharks are circling. You have to cut yourself lean to have a chance of
survival. Is OpenDoc really worth staking your survival on? More
importantly, is OpenDoc AS IT EXISTS IN 1997 worth risking your life on?
I think not.
> in fact, i've been arguing
> for over a year now that apple's internal support for the project was
> far too minimal and thus the cut was something of a surprise to me
> (given the low $ of the project).
It is true that Apple's lack of support for OpenDoc for the last few
years may have been its premature death knell, but there's really no way
to turn around the past. And OpenDoc, on the path it was headed, was
not a viable technology. The raptors would have eaten it alive.
> i mean, if apple had more than a
> few dozen developers and a whole semi-division, that would be one
> thing, but to cut a handful of extremely bright, passionate, and
> hard-working folks working on technology that really might/will make a
> difference in the next 3-5 years is just plain stupid.
If it's not in line with the corporate vision, then supporting it would
be just plain stupid. Apple is a company that needs to FOCUS. That's
not just good business sense; it's good survival instinct, too. Apple
cannot afford to be many things to many people. It must be a laser beam
that hits a focused, important segment of the market if Apple wishes to
survive. Gil knows this, Steve knows this, Avie knows this... and
that's all there is to it.
OpenDoc might be compelling in and of itself, but it's no longer in line
with Apple's current vision.
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on
the order in which I joined.
-- Homer Simpson