PORTING continued

decided that, as a preliminary sketch

for the Windows version, we’d do the

Mac version.

We thought that, because the Mac

had good documentation and quite

mature programming tools, it might

be the shortest route to a Windows

version. We assumed that 80 percent

of Mac code would port directly into

the Windows environment. So we

entered into the Mac project with the

thought that it would probably be a

kind of a throwaway, and we didn’t

really view it as having much com-

mercial impact.

So you didn’t do market research

In depth before deciding to go to the

Mac?

DF:

No it was purely a technical

decision.

At what point did you realize that

you probably had a winner on your

hands?

DF:

At Comdex last November,

1987, when we saw the really tremen-

dous excitement on the part of the

DOS developers seeing what could

be done on the Mac, and a lot of

excitement on the part of Apple

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developers at the prospect of having

a real database system on the Mac.

Did Apple assist you?

DF: We worked with at least two

or three of the Apple evangelists

along the way, and that was a very

different experience for us. We

hadn’t realized that technology could

be a secular religion.

What sort of help were you able to

get from them? What was that ex-

perience like?

DF: Simply, we got feedback that

what we were doing wasn’t Mac-ish

enough and it wasn’t in fact. I think

basically they espouse the virtues of

the Mac interface, and they were

providing inputs that they didn’t like

a programming language lying Ufl-

derneath things, and so on.

I would say that their encourage-

ment was more along the lines of en-

couraging us to get religion, or at

least their particular religion.

Have you gotten It?

DF: I think so. We are the four

original developers (We’ve since

added several people to the team.) I

think a lot of us went into this project

with the idea that the Mac was just a

grown-up version of the 128K toy that

they sold a few years ago. We didn’t

realize, first of all, the beauty of the

graphic interface, and! don’t think

we realized that the Mac!! is probab-

ly the most powerful machine avail-

able right now.

I guess! personally got religion

when! was thinking about buying one

of those hotrod 20-Mhz compact

portables to use at home. It occurred

to me that I didn’t personally care to

own another DOS machine.

What’s your perception of the

Mac marketplace now? How much

development is being done on the

Mac?

DF: I think the Mac market is one

that is changing as you look at it right

now. A lot of

people are

developing Mac

products

there’s a lot or

activity on net-,

working Macs

with DOS

m ac h i n e s

Where Hughes

Aircraft used to

buy 10 percent

Macs and 9U pcr-:

cent DOS machines, rumor has it that

the last 5,000 machines they’ve or-

dered have been half and half.

I think what’s changing the situa-

tion is the fact that the Mac II is a

perfectly good modified data

processing machine. You take an

8Mb MacIl with a 300Mb disk drive

on it, and you’ll probably have the

most powerful desktop computer ob-

tainable right now.

We see a resurgence of interest in

the corporate community. Macs

offer today the graphical interface in

a mature form that !BM is promising

somedaywith Presentation Manager.

Does the 68000 offer you a sig-

nificant advantage over the 8086 or

80286?

DF: It doesn’t offer any speed ad-

vantage, but what it does offer is

linear address space. That makes a

huge, huge difference. !t eliminates

so much of the klutziness, really, of

the existing DOS applications. On

the DOS side it’s not going to get to

that point until you’re running in the

80386 mode.

EC: One of the strengths of

FoxBASE has always been its ability

to buffer large amounts of databases

and indexes in memory. Now, with

the large address space of the 68000,

we can do more of that than ever

before. It can just haul things into

memory and that’s it. It runs very,

very quickly from that point and

that’s something that’s just not pos-

sible under DOS.

The major challenge we face in

porting this new technology back to

DOS is making it fit in 640K That’s

a huge problem. I think it’s a major

performance difficulty for DBASE

IV: it’s not really a 640K program.

How practical is the Mac as a

programming platform?

DF: We are working on our next

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