Big changes in Apple's attitude towards developers! Check out their press release, in which they reveal that they'll be shipping many of their developer tools to members of their Developer Programs in November-- for free. Even more shocking, some development tools will be made available free via the net, to anyone who wants to download them.

In AtAT's opinion, this is perhaps the most telling change in the Apple regime. Apple has long treated developers as an irritating but necessary distraction, sort of the way Basil Fawlty treated his guests-- He was always too busy running a hotel to see to the guests. Just leafing through its Developer Catalog is enough to see that Apple considered Mac developers to be customers, rather than partners; somehow they never seemed to make the connection between productive developers and more Mac software, not with more Mac software and greater Mac marketshare.

Which is why AtAT was jazzed over the (now canceled) Newton spin-off. While Newton was firmly entrenched within Apple walls, its development environment (the Newton Toolkit) carried a $400 price tag. Shortly after the spin-off announcement, what was supposed to become Newton Inc. suddenly made the Toolkit available for free, to anyone who wanted to download it. We think that's what Apple should have done all along. And now Apple's continuing this trend.

Finally, it looks like one can be an Apple developer without being treated like a second-class citizen.

The South China Morning Post ran a story that assures us that UMAX will continue its role as "Last of the Big Cloners" on AtAT for at least a little while longer. The article states that Apple has agreed to license Mac OS 8 to UMAX until at least the middle of 1998.

Interestingly, when asked why they are the last major cloner still working with Apple, Alpha Tsai (UMAX's Associate VP for Sales and Marketing) attributes their staying power to their ability to maintain a "friendly relationship" with Apple. As anyone remotely in touch with any marketing department knows, that's marketingspeak for "lap dog." Every noticed how UMAX is the only cloner that never seems to have publicly tackled Apple on renaming Tempo "Mac OS 8?" Or for refusing to certify CHRP or 750-based systems? Is this superhuman restraint and good business sense, or just plain spinelessness?

Regardless, given their seemingly endless capacity for bearing the repeated injuries inflicted by their "partner" (and keeping a smile), it looks like UMAX might be the Apple-approved token cloner for some time. (We hear they build great systems, too.)

Scripting.com had an interesting note about an Apple company picnic thrown by Steve Jobs himself, in celebration of the kickoff of the "Think Different" campaign.

At the gathering, Steve mentioned that the response to the new ad was 75% favorable (which is very similar to the 76.8% we've seen so far in our survey). The article notes more of Steve's take on why this brand-advertising campaign is the right strategy now (as opposed to head-to-head technical product comparisons, etc.) which AtAT thinks is very much worth reading. Steve also mentions that Apple would continue to spend the same amount on advertising--about $100 million a year--but that they would spend it a lot more effectively. Here's hoping.

Lastly, we'll irrelevantly mention that the article states that all the food was vegan (the dietary choice of Steve Jobs, shared by Yours Truly), and the beer "did not suck." ;-)