The End of Dreamcard?

[Charles Hartman]

On Mar 4, 2006, at 3:58 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Dreamcard was a "crippled Rev." It straddled the lines of an  
> inventive user
> and a professional developer but the lines were blurred and the  
> audiences
> and messages so different that it created as much confusion as it did
> anything else.

Well, I didn't feel confused at all. Dreamcard is, or was, "crippled"  
only in two ways: no standalones, no Oracle-type dbs. Not significant  
drawbacks for someone building open-source academic tutorial apps.  
And while the (if I recall correctly) $60 academic price, for someone  
with no institutional or corporate budget to call upon, wasn't  
nothing -- wasn't, in other words, as attractive as the price of  
something like Python + wxPython. which I use to build other academic  
tutorial apps; as as Hypercard for that matter -- it was worth it, if  
what you wanted to do was specifically Hypercard-like. I had an old  
Hypercard tutorial I wanted to modernize, and doing it in Python  
would have been perhaps more work than it was worth.

As for attractive upgrade prices for Studio, the best I have seen so  
far is $200. It does not attract me.

Whether it's a wise business move on Rev's part I suppose I can't  
judge, and I really don't care. Unless I've misunderstood something  
in the deal, or in Media -- and I certainly agree that the p.r. has  
been confusing -- I'll be waving bye-bye to Rev toot sweet. (Or keep  
using the old one? I don't think so, except for the occasional jiffy  
stack. Or pay $50 for a final year of upgrades to the engine? High  
price for a dead-end street.)

Get out your handkerchiefs? Of course not. The question, for Rev, is  
whether users like me are as trivial a proportion, and as trivial a  
segment, of their market as they *appear* to think. I'm holding my  
fire until I understand better. But that's the way it looks so far.

Charles