🚀 go-pugleaf

My ETO subscription has expired, and I'm trying to decide whether
to renew.  ETO 10, promised for February, should already be in the
can.  It takes some imagination to assign a high dollar value to
this and forthcoming ETO disks given the current public vagueness
of Apple software development plans.  Reviewing ETO 9, we see:

(1) MPW - UNIX(tm Novell?) for the rest of us, some of the power,
    some of the pain.  Future: ?
(2) Object Pascal - Future: Dead
(3) CFront/C - Future: Dying, replaced by Lucid C++ (on future ETO?)
(4) MacApp3 - Future: Dying, replaced by Bedrock (by Symantec, major
    supplier of legal gossip, takeover speculation, incompatible
    C++ and framework library) to be distributed (rumor 1) on ETO,
    but then again (rumor 2) may cost $10K.  (Therefore (new rumor)
	it must follow that ETO will cost ...?)
(5) Numerous support tools, (e.g., SADE, SourceBug, SourceServer, ToolServer)
	all intimately related to above software components.  Future: ?
(6) SLM - allegedly official linking system, with functionality one
    would expect in an application framework (e.g., collection classes)
    or operating system extension (e.g., yet another Apple threads package)
    in yet another Apple dynamic linker.  Future: ?
(7) System 7.1 - Apparently stable OS.  Future: around for a while, but
    will ETO get the new toys (extensions) where all the action is?
	(We won't even think about ukernels or objects or PowerOpen.)
(8) Documentation - Nice new DocViewer stuff, but wouldn't a hardcopy
    of the new IM series be easier to read?  Future: Depends on what's
    left unbundled to document.
(9) Networking tools - MacTCP, etc.  Unaccountably missing from my
    CD-ROM, perhaps misplaced on NT distribution disk.  Future: bright.
(10) QuickTime 1.5 - I like it, but I FTP'd it before I got the ETO.
    Future: Released to Windows at version 1.0, so that must be the
    standard.

So: what's so new and valuable in ETO 10-13 that I shouldn't hoard
my bucks toward a vaguely augured revolution-on-a-CD-ROM that won't
be labelled "ETO"?  ETO was a no-brainer last year, but now I'm
not even sure I can justify it to the IRS, much less my wife.

Should I trust in Clarus (who may or may not be dead) and write another
check? Wait for Component Workshop, Camelot, Dylan, all of which sound
great?  Will all be revealed at MacWorld?  MADACON?  WWDC?  In a dream?

- Craig Steele - In a wholly non-Institutional mode

Craig Steele, steele@vlsi.caltech.edu