The End of Dreamcard?

Dennis Brown see3d at writeme.com
Sat Mar 4 20:00:21 EST 2006


I was not impressed with the new plan either.  I own Studio, but  
bought DC when they first offered it because it was an economical way  
to stay up to date.  I had no interest in compiling my apps.  Most of  
the nifty upgrades to the language are eye candy that real app  
developers might appreciate, but my personal needs are more simple,  
but I really appreciate the bug fixes.  I bought the first SuperCard  
cross grade offering of Revolution when it first came out, and have  
only used it a lot in the last year.   I just wanted a good XTalk  
interpreter environment to make my own inventive tools, but I need  
speed to crunch a lot of numbers and Rev was faster than my  
SuperCard.  I found DC to exactly match my needs as a personal  
programming tool --no confusion at all.

I appreciated the one year extension offer (which I purchased),  
because it gives me another year of upgrades, at a price I was  
expecting to pay each year, in which to evaluate my changing needs  
and to evaluate if Media is sufficient for me.  I am sure it would  
work fine for me.  However, I am not so sure about this backdrop  
stuff.  I don't have any programs that take over my screen on my  
desktop.  I keep a lot of programs open at the same time on two  
monitors.  If it blanks them out, I will most likely keep using DC  
until it won't run on my machine anymore, then decide if I want to  
update Studio or go back to SuperCard, or something else.  However,  
by that time Rev may have a whole new plan and product slate.

My point is this, the good Rev folks gave me a reasonable option to  
continue the way I was and decide later.  I don't feel like I have  
been trapped in a corner, and have to decide what to do now.  I have  
time on my side.

I do hope Media is successful in making Rev more accessible to a  
larger audience.  I will give it a test run after it comes out.  My  
personal opinion though is that having a programming UI like  
Constellation makes it much easier to use Transcript.  The Rev folks  
might want to rethink that end of things for their entry level app.

Dennis


On Mar 4, 2006, at 6:05 PM, Charles Hartman wrote:

>
> 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
>
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