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The OTHER Server Tax (5/24/99)
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Guess what? AppleShare IP 6.2 is out. For the uninitiated, AppleShare IP is a nifty product that serves files to any computer, whether it's a Mac, a PC, or a Unix system. It boasts a slick users-and-groups management interface, excellent performance, and (perhaps best of all) to Windows users, it just looks like another Windows fileserver, which means you can run it in Mac-hostile environments for a few months before casually mentioning to the head of finance that all those spreadsheets he's been storing and retrieving are being served from a Mac. It also includes a mail server, a web server (which is transparently tied in with the filesharing features), and other goodies.
So before Apple's press release went out, the current version of this remarkable software was 6.1; the new 6.2 is optimized for (and actually requires) Mac OS 8.6, and adds a handful of cool new features, like remote web-based Sherlock find-by-content, the ability to maintain users and groups data for multiple ASIP servers via a centralized data file, support for more email protocols, integrated firewall security, and more. With these new features, it's not all that surprising that Apple is charging for the upgrade from 6.1 to 6.2. What might surprise you, though, is the price that Apple's asking for the upgrade: $499. Considering that a 500-user license for the full product is $1499, more than a few users are finding that upgrade price just a little on the steep side. (Join the AppleShare IP mailing list if you'd like to see more, er, "colorful" descriptions of Apple's announced upgrade pricing.)
While we at AtAT are fully cognizant of Apple's need to make an honest buck, this seems to be a dangerous time to be alienating the ASIP user base with what many consider to be excessive upgrade costs. The only price break available is for people who bought ASIP 6.1 after April 19th, who can get the upgrade for $19.95; everyone else, including those who have supported AppleShare from the beginning, have to pony up the full 499 clams. We sense an approaching outcry not unlike the one that arose after Apple changed the QuickTime licensing terms last year. Whether or not that'll make any difference remains to be seen, but for fence-sitters who were considering switching to LinuxPPC, the $499 ASIP upgrade cost might be the proverbial last straw.
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SceneLink (1556)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/24/99 episode: May 24, 1999: AppleShare IP customers may think the feature set of the latest version is the cat's pyjamas, but the price tag ain't no blue light special. Meanwhile, TNT's "Pirates of Silicon Valley" makes a surprise debut in the middle of the night, a month ahead of schedule, and Sony claims that their new VAIO portables are the only laptops with dual-battery support...
Other scenes from that episode: 1557: Them Pirates Are Sneaky (5/24/99) See?! See what happens when you go to bed early instead of staying up late channel-surfing? Here we are, anxiously counting down the days until the June 20th premiere of TNT's special made-for-cable original movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," which tells the story of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in their respective rises to fortune in a decidedly soap-operatic light-- when faithful viewer Matthew Younce writes in to tell us that he saw it on TNT late last night: "I wasn't sleeping, and was flipping channels about 2:45 when I saw Noah Wyle sitting barefoot with his feet on the table... 1558: Credit Where Credit's Due (5/24/99) Sometimes the tritest of expressions fits perfectly (there's a reason they're trite, after all), so we have no particular problem with saying, "when it rains, it pours." Just yesterday we pointed out a CNET article which discusses Gateway's "innovative" new all-in-one computer system, which integrates an active-matrix LCD display into the same case as its other Wintel guts...
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