Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!esquire!sbb
From: sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: case conluded;  MacZap is useful (was Re: MacZap not useful)
Message-ID: <424@esquire.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jun 88 15:14:52 GMT
References: <107@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <2734@utastro.UUCP> <108@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <2738@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten)
Organization: DP&W, New York, NY
Lines: 27

In article <2738@utastro.UUCP> werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes:
>the reason why ZAP has not been improved faster, is both a reflection on the
>fact that MicroAnalyst is the tiniest of companies and that Les, when given the
>choice, works on functionality and postpones user-interface and documentation.
>And as ZAP is a one-man-project and MicroAnalyst is a one-programmer company
>.....do I need to say more?  Also, when you think who and when people buy ZAP,
>you quickly realize that there is not really a large market for ZAP
>and that people are not really buying updates unless they NEED them.

That's amazing, since MicroAnalyst actually noted my change of address letter,
sent me information about an update (to v5.0 -- a must-have for SCSI disk
owners), and quickly filled my order (over the phone, with a credit card)
when I called to order it.  Yes, they actually had my address in a
database (!), and they knew who I was and what version of the program I had.

This is a hell of a lot more than I can say about certain other software
companies (definitely not one-man operations), and I think it reflects very
well on MicroAnalyst.

I think it should also be noted that with version 5.0 they now have Disk
Doctor, which makes some attempt to get you started with the recovery
(i.e., it asks you what kind of problem you have and then tells you what
program to run and what to do in it).  I haven't found it very useful
(since I'm a programmer I can understand the manual  :-( ), but others
might.

- Steve