Salutations,
OK, here we go.
>
> Well, let me start again here, and I'll try to be brief.
>
> Personally I feel the P*lm is an inferior device, but it has superior
> software on the PC side (when I say PC I mean Mac and Wintel boxes).
Why do you keep spelling Palm 'P*lm'? Is this some sort of 'I'm a cool
hacker dude who spells it different because all of the old linux people used
to spell Unix 'Un*x''? Afraid of the lawsuits? Geez.
>
> There are various conduits available to sync various different PC-based
> programs with the basic apps built into the handheld. They are all
> controlled by the basic HotSync program. Sure, there are some third-part
> sync apps like Intelli-Sync, but even that interfaces with HotSync and
> expands it's functionality to different hand-held devices.
>
> What we have, is each PC based app needs it's own Sync program, some, as
> in the case of Outlook, need more than one program and we still don't
> get ALL of our data across.
Sure, I understand that. See below.
>
> I understand development time, I understand costs, I've been in this
> business a long time. I'm just trying to plant a seed. If someone has
> had a Hot-Newt idea and started working on a project, share it. If they
> ran out of time, pass it on. It's not a marathon that needs to be run by
> one person, make it a relay race. A lot of people have had great ideas
> for products and gone very far with them. I just want some of them to
> get together. I don't want to see someone give up because they had other
> commitments or simply had to follow the money in order to keep food on
> the table. You can fault people for that. It's a fact that no one is
> going to buy a new house writing programs for the Newton, why not have a
> group of people give a bit of their time for the love of the Newt and
> modest Shareware fees ;-)
You apparently don't understand development time. It all boils down to
MONEY. There are two types of developers, those that want to make money for
their work and those that don't. They ones that are coding for free will
code in their spare time. The ones that want to get paid will make time.
And if a developer spends hundreds of hours or more to make a shareware app,
he certainly isn't gonna give it away. Of course a few who get out of the
business entirely may, but then they aren't looking at making money with
that program anymore.
If YOU want all of these developers to get together than YOU have to do
it. Otherwise you are just wishing. And you have to find all of the
developers that want to this, that are willing to contribute code, that are
willing to work on a part of a program while others work on the rest. Most
won't because once you figure out the datastores and the protocols the rest
is easy. And you need to hope that they will do this for free or were you
planning on paying them until the shareware fees roll in?
And give up the pipe dream about 'modest shareware fees'. I'm willing to
drop $100 for such an application, maybe more. You need to look at the
market size vs. the development time. It isn't as if this application would
reach two hundred thousand people and all are willing to buy it. I have no
idea how may would spend the money. That is why I kept trying to see if
people would sign a petition to gauge response.
>
> I understand your example of Now-up-to-date, but you're missing MY point
> and being to specific. Think of the "big picture". I'm assuming you've
> used a P*lm and understand exactly what I mean when I explain HotSync
> and the difference between HotSync and the P*lm desktop.
I know exactly what you want. You someone to write high level APIs that
others can use in any program they want. No one is going to do that.
Getting the API's is the the hardest part. Writing a calendar/contact
manager/notes application around them is trivial. Why would any develop the
API's and then sell them to another developer? And even if the API
programmer made a royalty off of each program, they are still splitting
money they don't need to split. The application is where the real money is
made.
>
> I know that we are both missing each other's points, but I hope that
> this helps us see things a bit better. (Especially since you said you
> have 3 Newtons and I still only have one :-(... show off)
>
> I think we're close when you mention the plumbing, but a commercial app
> like that will NEVER drop into one of our programmers laps so he can rip
> it apart. My dream is of one program to do the work, various plug-ins
> that tell it what to do. Write it in C and it can be ported.
Why does the application have to fall in one of our programmer's laps?
Who cares about ripping it apart? If enough people buy it, and upgrade it
BECAUSE of Newton support, then the Newton support will always be there.
I don't care who writes it. A 14 year old pimply faced geek, a 60 year old
assembly coder, a russian halfway around the world, are a damn elbonian. It
doesn't matter to me.
All I want, and I assume most of the others, is the end product. I don't
care if it is open sourced or not. Hell, microsoft could even write it and
I would buy it as long as it is not trash and is Mac OS X native.
The bottom line as always is money. All of us Newton users have to make
it worth someone's valuable time. Personally, I think it is easier to show
PowerOn Software that they have thousands of sales if they would re-enable
the Newton code that is ALREADY in the product. The base price of the
application is $130. Does anyone not here think that if we collected a
thousand pledges to purchase the product and showed them $130,000 they may
put the Newton code back in and made it work? What if 2,000 people said
they would buy it? They would could show them a quarter of a million
dollars. Any company would listen to that.
And 'C' portability? That's a fallacy I don't want to get started on
that.
>
> Darn...I said I would be brief...
Yeah, I know the feeling.
Cheers,
David
>
> Fred
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SlashDevNull [mailto:slashdevnull_at_mac.com]=20
> Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 5:36 PM
> To: newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net
> Subject: Re: [NTLK] Be-all End-all sync app...
>
>
>
> Salutations,
>
> I think you missed all of my points.
>
> ---snip---
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