Mathcad at Macworld Expo


For the first time since 1993, Mathsoft had a presence at the San Francisco Macworld Expo on January 7-10 1997. Expo attendees may not have seen the Mathsoft booth, since it was not in the main exhibit halls but tucked away in the Education Pavilion in the South Hall of Moscone Center.

Mathsoft was promoting their contest, where you answer a question on their web site and get a chance to win a PowerMac 7200. Since I was already dreaming about 200 MHz 604e Macs, I instead spent a few minutes talking with product manager Christine Hong. She got to know what kinds of tools I use at work and was quite helpful and enthusiastic about Mathcad. She also readily admitted some of the more serious bugs I mentioned. When I showed her the QuickSheets bug, she said "But you're an expert, you don't need this". Yes, but that is the wrong answer, since if you want new users, they are certainly going to be using the QuickSheets and Handbooks when first using the software. When I beta tested the product, I not only asked how it would benefit me, but how it would help novice users. The Mathcad workbook and built-in functions is useful to a lot of scientists and engineers who use the Mac.

The next day, Mathsoft held a technical presentation in the MacSciTech room. A grand total of four people showed up, hopefully due to a lack of publicity rather than a lack of interest, since the meeting announcement was for StudyWorks instead of Mathcad. I had a long discussion with Ed Adams, another Mathsoft product manager. I learned a few things about development of the Mac version:
  • They had initially wanted to do a PowerPC-only product, but decided to release a 68K version, to better support the education market. I said that was fine, since it probably does not make business sense to devote too many resources developing a 68K version now. The fact that Mathcad needs over 12 megs to run well already disqualifies a lot of 68K Macs. People would be better off buying a PowerPC and loading it with the necessary memory to run Mathcad.
  • I explained where I was coming from. I had to go into some discussion about the Mac user interface and how people worked on a Mac, which is not exactly the same way people work under Windows. In addition, I mentioned that since they have fewer titles on the Mac, it is incumbent upon them to work as well as possible with other applications, and not expect the typical Mac user to use Mathcad to the exclusion of other applications. It was then I realized why the current version is the way it is......
  • Their entire Mac development team consists of one person, who had additional duties in addition to developing the Mac version. That's a lot less than the number who showed up to see the demo! That's no way for Mathsoft to show their commitment to the Macintosh. Hopefully, this situation will be rectified for the next version/bug fix.
  • Mr. Adams was attentive and at least listened to my opinion that their development method using Microsoft Foundation Classes leaves much to be desired. I said that the MFC does not support the latest MacOS technologies, and that their implementation of QuickTime is buggy as heck. I asked him to visit Developer Central and look for better ways to implement a cross-platform product.
  • He admitted that the Mac version could have been made better, and they are looking to release an update. However, he dit not promise an approximate date to fix the interface and performance problems. We can't wait three years between versions!
  • On the good side, sales of the Mac version have been better than expected. I'm not sure if this was because of lots of people upgrading from version 3.1 or that Mathsoft had set their sights really low. However, this may indicate a willingness to fix the problems sooner than later.

At this time, the discussion shifted to the Mathcad demo. Since I was already familiar with the product, I figured this was a good time to leave for lunch.