Re: The Apple II Now and Forever (Ok, the _Last_ Post folks!)

[mattd@apple.com (Matt Deatherage)]

In article <Bz9FHq.KuF@news.iastate.edu>, hal@budapest.math.macalstr.edu
(Harold Byron Bouma) wrote:
> 
> 	Well, one more comment. Those who are quick to blame you Matt for being  
> responsible for the death of the II get informed that you do not have much  
> decision over Apple II matters, which is true. and its sad that you get a lot  
> of complaints such as that. "I just do my job" is the reponse, and since you  
> are not involved with the higher level decisions of the Apple II, its even hard  
> for you to "accurately" know what goes on inside of Apple. I mean, how often  
> did Scully stop by to tell you about his decisions regarding the Apple II? Not  
> much I bet. But you didn't have to. You got decisions that came down the chain  
> of command and those reasons are left to the guesswork or "heresay" given by  
> those other people higher up. 
> 

"I don't make the decisions" doesn't mean "I'm not involved with what goes
on."  The Apple II development world at Apple is fairly small and always
has been, compared to a world-wide employee base of several thousand (many
of whom do sell, service or support the machine in various ways).  I've
been involved with development of most Apple II products since I got here,
including all the system software, ROM 3 and some other things as well.

I've even contributed wee bits of code every now and then, like the code
in the Finder that reads FTD files (with Dave) and bug fixes and some
minor enhancements to the LaserWriter driver.

That doesn't mean I get to make the decisions or that I always get my
way, even on technical issues, but I've been involved with almost all the
Apple II decision making that's gone on here for a few years.

As for John Sculley (no one's allowed to insult someone if they can't
spell his name correctly, btw), I don't know that he personally has made
any decisions regarding the Apple II.  Sculley and Spindler try not to
micro-manage the company, but they do approve of directions and such.
I don't know that John Sculley made any decisions about the Apple II,
but he did not disapprove of the choices Apple as a company made or
Apple would not have made them.

As an aside (stupid trivia piece #4), I've only personally spoken to
John Sculley once in my life.  I was walking in the lobby of City Center
3 (the building in which I work) in Spring of 1990, as I remember, when
I ran into Randy Battat, at that time VP of worldwide product marketing
and my boss's boss's boss's boss.  We started chatting about various
things while Randy was waiting for someone, and I started complaining
that the developer fees for Apple II developers were too high given
that the machines were substantially less expensive than Macintoshes and
the development curve wasn't as high.  We were going back and forth on
this when Randy's lunch guest came up -- John Sculley.  Randy introduced
me and said we were talking about Apple II developer program prices and
how I felt they were too high.

Apparently, I kept right on going, and John Sculley asked a few questions
about shouldn't it be the same, and I expressed the opinion that they
shouldn't be and quoted a few facts, and then they had to leave for
lunch.  I say "apparently" because I was so stunned by Sculley's appearance
that I don't really remember much of it.  I got this from someone else who
worked on the same floor who watched the whole incident.

A few months later, the Apple II developer program prices were cut to the
costs they're still at today.  Because John Sculley or Randy Battat said
so?  No -- because other people saw merit in the same arguments or
independently came to the same conclusions, and those people had the power
to make it happen and did so.  Sometimes I feel the upper management
of the Apple Developer Group is more strongly committed to low program
prices for Apple II developers than I am, even.  :)

> 	And yes, unless someone else tries to carry this deadbeat thread on,  
> its my last post! (yay!)

Ah well, the best laid plans...

============================================================================
Matt Deatherage, Developer Support Center, Apple Computer, Inc.
Personal mail only -- please POST technical questions, questions about
Apple and its policies, where to find documents and related inquiries.
The opinions I express don't represent Apple, which makes us both happy.
============================================================================