jes
On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 2:46:43 PM UTC-4, NEIL PRATT wrote:
[snip]
I've often wondered why PICK didn't take off as it should - I may be biased but I think it's a great system which lends itself to solving real business requirements, quickly and efficiently. It should be much more popular than it is. Perhaps you could elaborate on the ego's that got in the way. My impression was that we didn't have a Steve Jobs marketing type campaign and possibly the cost per seat might have been a bit high?
He had no interest in going public, which would have involved pesky accountability.
frosty
Steven Davies-Morris
--
SDM a 21st century schizoid man in SoCal
Systems Theory website www.systemstheory.net
"overfulnoisecascade" prog-ambient-tribal-space CD coming soon
jes
BruceH
On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:31:37 PM UTC-5, jes wrote:
Neil Pratt wrote in another thread I chose to not hijack:
On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 2:46:43 PM UTC-4, NEIL PRATT wrote:[snip]I've often wondered why PICK didn't take off as it should - I may be biased but I think it's a great system which lends itself to solving real business requirements, quickly and efficiently. It should be much more popular than it is. Perhaps you could elaborate on the ego's that got in the way. My impression was that we didn't have a Steve Jobs marketing type campaign and possibly the cost per seat might have been a bit high?It has often been stated that Dick "didn't do any marketing". This is asserted to be the cause of why the product did not do any better.On the former point, I recall that he spent a ton of money beginning with the launch of the XT/AT port in an attempt to spread the word. With campaigns revolving around his own clients, such catchy campaigns as "10 tons of corn nuts go through my system each day". Another, which may or may not have been printed, but was produced, used the tag line "Watch it swell to 10 times its normal size", referring to adding Pick to a PC. While these mostly ran in "inside" publications, like PickWorld and Computing News & Review (Thurman's rag), it brought smiles to the faces of people already in the fold and did little to add to those numbers. In the few instances where they ran outside, there was little, if any, measurable benefit.There are two fundamental issues that are rarely discussed in this attempt to lay the blame at his late feet.First, until he chose to keep the Intel port to himself and not license it to his Licensees, they (the Licensees) were the "customer base". For the years the Licensees had exclusive custody of their various ports, there was no attempt to unify on the O/S. Far from an "Intel Inside" approach, they private labeled the product, further insulating the buyer from knowing what was inside. Consider them to be the mirror opposite of a GPL. So forget "Pick" brand recognition.When he chose to market the Intel ports (PC/XT/AT) directly to the public, he was starting from scratch. As I recall, a few ads were run in Byte and PC Magazine, but they were lost in the shuffle at a time when people were subscribing to the notion that Dbase was actually a database. To add insult to injury, the Licensees were now his competitors, since he had kept the tastiest (in terms of market) processor for himself. This did not sit or bode well with them.Secondly, it was never the end-user who was Pick's target customer. It was the guys who had vertical applications. The Datatels and ADP Dealer Services, on the extremely successful end, and the little one-man-ops with a funeral parlor management system on the other end. Or something similarly vertical.
jes
Secondly, it was never the end-user who was Pick's target customer. It was the guys who had vertical applications. The Datatels and ADP Dealer Services, on the extremely successful end, and the little one-man-ops with a funeral parlor management system on the other end. Or something similarly vertical.I would have thought the latter to be horizontal rather than vertical...at least usually! *grin*
Dennis Gallagher
Tony Gravagno
Outstanding, Jon. Thanks for the time on that!
Regardless of Dick's actions or inaction, part of the problem of why "Pick" didn't take off is that VARs don't think they're motivated to market the platform, and yet the DBMS providers leave that responsibility to the channel. It's obvious that VARS are motivated simply by lack of sales, and that both the DBMS providers and application developers must share responsibility for platform evangelism.
Our industry mantra is "we don't sell databases, we sell applications". While that's entirely true, the other bloody side of that double-edged sword is that unless we profile the databases as a key part of the applications, the industry doesn't get any recognition, and well, we get what we have. Change the mantra and we'll change the perception of the industry.
While the DBMS vendors have marketing budgets, it's obvious that most of them continue spend most of those budgets simply preaching to the choir. That's the easy route to getting to the next pay check. "Marketing" is not defined as sending a Word document to the printer for new collateral. "Marketing" is about increasing the prospect base. Yeah, it's a lot tougher to get new developers to create new applications. And the more obscure the platform is (the less marketing people actually do) the tougher it gets. But that's the challenge that should be presented to MV DBMS Marketing departments - and individuals who aren't up to a challenge should seek to challenge themselves elsewhere.
In the interest of survival the DBMS vendors should seek to share the responsibility of Marketing with their trusted partners.
- Newsletters should be published and VARs should be contractually compelled to distribute the content (in branded form if they wish) to every end-user site. End-users who have been sheltered from the platform by their VARs are extremely likely to leave the platform at some point and never get another MV-based system.
- VARs should be compelled to provide their own information about the DBMS in application marketing as well as in periodic newsletters to active end-users. The word needs to be put out there and kept out there.
- DBMS providers should offer VARs co-op marketing dollars (perhaps as product discounts) with guarantees that the funds will be used to market the platform as much as the applications which build upon them.
- The DBMS vendors and VARs should collaborate to support the creation of new marketing initiatives in the form of books, magazine articles, trade show presence, and materials for educational institutions. Co-op marketing funds should be used to get people who are qualified to write material and to evangelize the platform to the uninitiated.
Sure, the word "compelled" is strong and can be met with resentment. Great - propose another solution that will work. Until another equally effective solution is proposed, this is what we've earned for decades of complacency.
The industry has got to stop waiting for "someone else" to do real marketing. It doesn't happen by itself. Too many people are comfortable with the belief that where we are is where will always be - and quite comfortable to continue getting paid to profess this belief as a fact.
Typically yours,
T
BruceH
jes
Ah, but you're being literal. I was being facetious! "Funeral" -> horizontalI know, I know...bad pun! But those who know me well know I could not pass it up!
Dawn Wolthuis
smiles. --dawn
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Dawn M. Wolthuis
Take and give some delight today
BruceH
BruceH
Wjhonson
Brian Stone
Brian Stone
There are a few nit-pick things that I would change or add to Jon's analysis.
The substantial money spend to take Pick to mainstream computer shows were primarily motivated to launch the carrier of his wife.
At one trade show he tried to get attendees to enter their information using the Update Processor. Having no knowledge of the UP control commands the attendees were simply frustrated until someone from Pick came over and entered it for them.
On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 1:31:37 PM UTC-7, jes wrote:
jes
On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 8:10:08 PM UTC-4, Brian Stone wrote:
There are a few nit-pick things that I would change or add to Jon's analysis.
The substantial money spend to take Pick to mainstream computer shows were primarily motivated to launch the carrier of his wife.
At one trade show he tried to get attendees to enter their information using the Update Processor. Having no knowledge of the UP control commands the attendees were simply frustrated until someone from Pick came over and entered it for them.
jes
Jon, just so you know I have a serious side, um, er, so to speak, I certainly appreciate your remembrances as posted here and written elsewhere. Thanks!
Ed Clark
Dennis Gallagher
I’ve read Jon’s analysis (and others) of why Pick didn’t get bigger and I enjoyed them and agreed with them, to the extent I was qualified to judge.
During those years at Pick Systems, I was deep into the technical part of the Pick OS and really had little insight into marketing and the world of vendors outside.
Below, are my memories of what it was like to be the project lead at Pick System implementing the new PC/XT/AT ports and how I perceived things from that POV.
I think we can all live through the same events and still have quite different views of what we recall as being the significant events.
Forgive me if I wander off occasionally into technical doo-doo in this piece. I resisted the urge but it was hard to to indulge myself a bit.
When I arrived at Pick Systems (about 1982), the IBM PC had only been out for a short time. I know, as I'd personally bought one of the very first ones. It had two big Floppy 5.25 drives, an 8088 processor and a maximum of 256K memory. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer).
As I came up the learning curve for 'how does Pick work and how are ports done', I began to push the idea that Pick Systems should do a port onto the XT. Now, I won't claim that I was the only one there who'd thought of this idea but, in general, the interest levels were low for the port. But I continued to suggest it and, finally, I was given permission to have a crack at it.
I remember someone in the company telling me in the midst of the project that Dick thought the idea was a bit daft because the XT was just a 'toy' computer.
I have a few specific 'snapshots' memories of that development period. Cliff Meyers acted as my mentor. And I would also pose questions to Henry Eggers when I got stumped. I was the project leader for the port and Alan Gawthrop (contractor) and Julius Hui (Pick employee) worked with me on the project as it evolved.
Our first effort was to make a three-user version of Pick to run on the XT system.
Early on, we realized that machine's ROM BIOS was not going to be able to deal with the multi-user requirements of a Pick OS and so we decided to abandon it. This meant that we had to take it apart line by line and re implement it within the Pick Monitor code. I remember drawing a flow chart of the entire BIOS on the wall that Julius later used as a coding guide. Henry came in one day and had a good look at it. I still have the original “IBM Technical Reference 6025005” manual I used for this ROM BIOS work setting on a shelf here in my library.
I recall that we embedded our names "Gallagher/Gawthrope/Hui" (without asking anyone), into some unused bytes at the end of the 512 byte (MFDBR (Master Fixed Disk Boot Record) that was written onto the hard disk's first sector to control which operating system (DOS or Pick) booted up. I like to think of it as an early Easter Egg as no one would ever see it unless they dumped the MFDBR with a hard disk sector editor.
The screens situation on the new system was odd because the first screen of three used memory mapped video to put the screen data onto the CGA monitor. The other two users connected via monitors connected thru the system's two serial ports. So, there was a bit of fiddling behind the scenes deciding how to do things according to which screen the user as talking to; memory mapped or serial.
I remember the excitement of taking a portable system running this three-user version of Pick on an 8088 CPU to a Pick user meeting to show it off. I can’t recall now what type or portable it was. But I remember people were amazed that Pick could run in multi-user mode on such a tiny system.
I recall buying a card from AST Research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AST_Research) that seemed so exotic because it allowed us to put a full 640K into the XT machine. And I remember chasing a bug for two days after we did it. A bug that only manifested when the code was allowed to address memory above a certain value (512K?).
The 8088's turned into 8086's and then IBM came out with the AT with a 80286 CPU that could do some new stuff. We adding extra serial port cards and were able to go from three to eight users. Mike Bryga of Pick Systems was working with me by this time. Then the 80386 CPU came out and it, again, added new capabilities and we began to use intelligent serial I/O cards and advanced to 12 or 16 users.
All these machines we did at Pick Systems ran in Real Mode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_mode) and were thus limited to how much memory they could address and they required a lot of fancy register shuffling behind the scenes to address memory above a certain level.
To say that folks liked these machines, I think, was an understatement. Running eight or more users Pick users on a relatively cheap and small personal computer instead of a thing as big as a refrigerator was pretty revolutionary.
As I recall those days, Dick was never very enthusiastic about the PC/XT/AT line. He had a favored project that involved Microcode that he seemed to give much of his enthusiasm to at the time. And then I think there was something about a foot pedal of some sort.
The entire thing kept ramping up but his enthusiasm never did. At some point, fairly far along into all of this and not too long before Tim Holland left to start up Concurrent Operating Systems (COST) with Rich Lauer, someone told me that Dick had actually suspended all advertising for the PC/XT/AT versions of Pick. There was no explanation as to why.
He and I never had a particularly close relationship. I don't think we were ever able to find a way to relate to each other that pleased us both. But other folks were enthusiastic About the product. Notable, Frank Petiac (sp?) who headed up Pick sales.
Things continued to get bigger and move faster. More people began to get involved in the work. One incident I recall clearly that left me angry involved pressure to get something feature they needed done more quickly. There was a suggestion that we hire a contractor to come in and help push things along. I opposed it strongly. I’d heard of this specific fellow and I wasn’t happy with the idea of letting him loose in the code base that I’d worked so hard to get right. And it came to one of those stand-offs where you say, "If you do this, I am going to leave." Eventually, I prevailed.
Tim and Rich started COST then and invited me to join them. They had plans to become a Pick licensee and to rework the Real Mode version of Pick into a new version that ran in Protected Mode and could directly and simply address 4 GB of memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_mode).
I recall Dick invited me out to lunch to see why I was leaving and, maybe, to try and talk me out of it. It was not a good occasion. I got into his face about the advertising cut off and his beliefs that the PCs were toy computers. I pointed out to him that at this point in time, the product was his biggest money maker. But Dick was Dick and he didn't, I think, like this sort of criticism and so, as I said, it was not a happy lunch.
I left and Pick System at that point and they continued to flog their Real Mode version and never mounted a full press effort to rewrite it to do Protected Mode.
I stayed in the Pick industry until '91 or '92 working for COST which was absorbed into Sequoia and then I switched to Alphamicro Systems. But by the early 90’s, I could see that the Pick pond was beginning to dry up and my interests were learning towards doing something new. Hence my switch over to Microsoft and Windows.
When I say egos kept the Pick idea from becoming the major player it should have been, I am referring to Dick's ego.
I think his marketing decisions left a lot to be desired. The entire small industry was dominated by his quirkiness. We all enjoyed the show, I suppose, but in the world of business it was fairly dysfunctional IMO. Others have posted that perhaps he didn't want any more success than he had and maybe that's so. I have really no idea of his subjective realities. But I think there was real potential for Pick that went wasted and that’s sad.
My memories are of a man who shot crows and stuffed them into his freezer and who obsessed on odd technical tangents. And he was, for me, personally hard to get along with.
Not all the lost opportunities in the industry that I’m aware of can be laid at Dick's feet though. I have to lay one, provisionally, at Rich Lauer's feet as well. I say ‘provisionally’ because maybe the idea would not have flown even if he hadn't opposed it.
It was 1990 and I was with Alphamicro Systems then. I'd just read a book discussing the new NT Operating System that David Cutler was doing for Microsoft and I thought what they were doing was brilliant.
I was also aware that ‘native’ Pick implementations were in danger of becoming a thing of the past as folks figured out how to leverage the work of others by porting Pick to run atop Unix implementations.
To me, it made inevitable sense to me that someone should port Pick to run atop the new Microsoft NT operating System. Such a move would allow the port to ride the wave of what I felt was going to be the huge success Microsoft was going to have with NT.
I wrote a detailed letter to Gabe Fusco, then president of Sequoia Systems, suggesting that Sequoia might want to do this. I also made a strong appeal in my letter that he consider having me lead the project.
If anyone is interested, I think I can resurrect the letter I wrote to Gabe on this subject. But, unknown to me, Rich Lauer, still at Sequoia, had his own plans for how to shape Sequoia's future technical directions and he felt that, with my letter, I'd really screwed up and confused things and gave me an earful about it. In the end, I don't know if Rich dissuaded Gabe from my idea or if Gabe was never interested in the first place. But, I always felt that a major opportunity was missed.
Well, that's enough wandering down memory lane for one evening.
Cheers,
Dennis Gallagher
Dawn Wolthuis
more stories from anyone, everyone.
I'm late to the party as I did not see any MultiValue systems until
the end of 1988 when I was introduced to Information on a Pr1me. I
started on Pr1me computers in 1977 but with COBOL. Then I went to big
iron writing CICS COBOL apps on IBM 3081 (and later MVS machines). I
did not see MultiValue until I was in management, so I did not write
MV BASIC until quite recently.
I started hearing stories about Pick when I left Datatel (a UniData
VAR) shortly after 911 (the "life's too short" thing) and decided to
figure out why LIST statements were so much easier for end-users to
get their information than SQL. I found a whole world out there that
was previously unknown to me, so I drafted this poster to try to
figure out a little bit about what I was hearing, specifically related
to the MV Query language(s) and MV BASIC.
http://www.tincat-group.com/mv/MVFamilyTreeColor.pdf
Cheers! --dawn
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Brian Stone
One thing I want to add, which I think is interesting, it that Pick, at my urging, did a port to Citrix, which was the the only Windows NT licensee outside of Microsoft. Citrix, was a multi-user version of NT, which Ed Yachbuchi (spelling?) had developed for Microsoft before leaving to form Citrix.
The idea was to develop a port which could run on both Citrix and NT. About the time that the port was complete Microsoft decided to abandon Windows NT and fold many its features into MS Windows. The distributor in South Africa has already sold a number of copies of AP/Citrix under contract so a limited number of copies were delivered there. I am not away of any other deliveries of the port.
Dick's lack of interest in Pick/XT was that he felt it took engineering resources away from the R84, nee Open Architecture, nee Advanced Pick, nee D3 development. The first PC/XT, PC/AT, PC/396-496 versions were R83 and limited to 640kb of RAM. Eventually they did a port of Advanced Pick to the PC which ran in protected mode.which allowed the PC to support up to 65 users!
Brian
Henry Keultjes
Brian Stone
Henry Keultjes
Anyway, Dick explained to me what he wanted and I went back to Mansfield Ohio with my own ideas of building those chairs, including clubfoots. I remember that it cost us more than 15 grand, a ridiculous amount for four chairs so I told him I would not charge if he would not charge me for his products. Since we had ported to ADDS from Microdata and since I was happy with ADDS that Pick freeby did not mean much except that I dumped must of that cache within the last few weeks.
BTW, Obsolete John still has one of those chairs.
Henry
On Thursday, May 17, 2012 9:08:07 PM UTC-4, Brian Stone wrote:
Hey. Henry. What are you up to these days?
Brian Stone
619-379-0471
On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 6:00 PM,
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Tony Gravagno
that phone numbers, email addresses, and anything else published here
is visible to the world. Just sayin... :)
Dennis Gallagher
Brian, are you sure that Pick Systems released a Protected Mode version of their s/w? I don't recall that they ever did that but it may well have been so.
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Dawn M. Wolthuis
Take and give some delight today
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Dennis Gallagher
Tony Gravagno
Responding to question from Dennis, below.
A lot of people here know this history first hand but I'll post here for posterity … and corrections.
There was AP/DOS which was the first release that could run over Windows - it crossed the border from 16bit to 32. Then there was AP/Native which installed as an OS over x86. Both of those ended their lives around 5.2.7. There was also an AT&T "microchannel" port around APv5.2.5, a honkin hardware disaster for which I believe there were only a handful of systems in the field. I think I trashed the very last one.
Then came AP/Pro (Protected mode) as v6.0 and 6.1.
The product was then renamed D3 with v6.2 over *nix, and D3/NT was introduced as v7.0. There was huge demand for a "native" install to replace AP/Pro, but D3 only ran over Windows and *nix OS's. So they/we introduced D3/ProPlus which was essentially a highly stripped-down distro of Linux, but installed and run just the native predecessors. At the time of its creation, Linux was still fairly unknown and largely shunned.
But with ProPlus, vendors knew that there was Linux inside. As they got more familiar with Linux (and D3/Linux) they started asking for tons of access to Linux functionality which wasn't available in this stripped-down environment. They still wanted that "simple" native install and run experience but with the latest DBMS updates. The situation got out of hand. If you know enough to ask for Linux features then you obviously know Linux. By this time most people were not only familiar with Linux but enamored with it, favoring D3/Linux over D3/NT. (I think it was the wide adoption of Linux that contributed to the decision to end support for HP, DG, Siemens-Nixdorf, SCO, and a couple other platforms.) Once most AP/Pro sites were gone, there was little perceived need for a native platform anymore, so the decision was made to phase out ProPlus in favor of D3/Linux. D3 is now only supported over AIX, Linux, and Windows.
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
(held various positions at Pick Systems/Raining Data 1995-2001)
From: Dennis Gallagher
Brian, are you sure that Pick Systems released a Protected Mode version of their s/w? I don't recall that they ever did that but it may well have been so.
Dennis
Brian Stone wrote:
Brian Stone
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Dawn Wolthuis
Cache' into the list of active products on the right and it is closer
to today.
I also wrote this introduction to Pick, sortof like old-fashioned
flash cards http://www.tincat-group.com/mv/trilogy.html
Keep the stories coming. --dawn
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dawn M. Wolthuis
>>
>> Take and give some delight today
>
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Brian Stone
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jes
On Thursday, May 17, 2012 7:42:09 PM UTC-4, Dennis Gallagher wrote: (and I snipped)
I remember the excitement of taking a portable system running this three-user version of Pick on an 8088 CPU to a Pick user meeting to show it off. I can’t recall now what type or portable it was. But I remember people were amazed that Pick could run in multi-user mode on such a tiny system.
As I recall those days, Dick was never very enthusiastic about the PC/XT/AT line. He had a favored project that involved Microcode that he seemed to give much of his enthusiasm to at the time. And then I think there was something about a foot pedal of some sort.
The entire thing kept ramping up but his enthusiasm never did. At some point, fairly far along into all of this and not too long before Tim Holland left to start up Concurrent Operating Systems (COST) with Rich Lauer, someone told me that Dick had actually suspended all advertising for the PC/XT/AT versions of Pick.
There was no explanation as to why.
He and I never had a particularly close relationship. I don't think we were ever able to find a way to relate to each other that pleased us both. But other folks were enthusiastic About the product. Notable, Frank Petiac (sp?) who headed up Pick sales.
When I say egos kept the Pick idea from becoming the major player it should have been, I am referring to Dick's ego.
I think his marketing decisions left a lot to be desired. The entire small industry was dominated by his quirkiness. We all enjoyed the show, I suppose, but in the world of business it was fairly dysfunctional IMO. Others have posted that perhaps he didn't want any more success than he had and maybe that's so. I have really no idea of his subjective realities. But I think there was real potential for Pick that went wasted and that’s sad.
My memories are of a man who shot crows and stuffed them into his freezer and who obsessed on odd technical tangents. And he was, for me, personally hard to get along with.
If anyone is interested, I think I can resurrect the letter I wrote to Gabe on this subject. But, unknown to me, Rich Lauer, still at Sequoia, had his own plans for how to shape Sequoia's future technical directions and he felt that, with my letter, I'd really screwed up and confused things and gave me an earful about it. In the end, I don't know if Rich dissuaded Gabe from my idea or if Gabe was never interested in the first place. But, I always felt that a major opportunity was missed.
Well, that's enough wandering down memory lane for one evening.
Dawn Wolthuis
forgotten it. Too fun! --dawn
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David Hurst
I lurk around these parts some of you will know me :)
Anyway I remember Manny Goyenechea cutting a new version of (R83 3.1m or was it AP memory was not as good as it used to be!) at one of customers in Sheffield.
They used IBM PS/2 with VISA link terminals on Digiboards, he was sent from the USA to look at a bug that only could be reproduced on our equipment. I think it was something to do with GFE's appearing in terminal workspace.
It was a Thursday evening around 1988ish I think, he fly in we worked late on a Thursday he was picked up from Manchester Airport drove to Sheffield worked until about 2 in the morning, came back the next day, fixed the bug and cut the release there and then.
Could not believe it
On 18/05/2012 16:23, jes wrote:
A fascinating bit of history, Dennis. Thank you. I have questions and notes.
How does the work that Manny Goyenechea factor in here? As I recall, he was point man on a very early attempt at the XT port.
I recall when Dick hired Adam Osbourne (yes, that one) and asked me to help get the PC version installed, I had to go to Manny, who equipped me with a multi-page, single-spaced, nearly incomprehensible set of installation instructions, that may have even involved the sacrifice of a goat. It's been a while. We worked all night Friday, all day Saturday, then got it running late Saturday night. When we got the TCL prompt, he asked me "now what?". LoL. He told me to relay a message to Dick, which I did, and Adam was fired by Sunday afternoon. But I digress.
So did you follow Manny? Were you able to use any of his work?
On Thursday, May 17, 2012 7:42:09 PM UTC-4, Dennis Gallagher wrote: (and I snipped)
�I remember the excitement of taking a portable system running this three-user version of Pick on an 8088 CPU to a Pick user meeting to show it off.� I can�t recall now what type or portable it was.�� But I remember people were amazed that Pick could run in multi-user mode on such a tiny system.
Ironically, the first luggable we used was an Osbourne.
�As I recall those days, Dick was never very enthusiastic about the PC/XT/AT line. � He had a favored project that involved Microcode that he seemed to give much of his enthusiasm to at the time. � And then I think there was something about a foot pedal of some sort.�
Are you thinking about Vulture here?�
Seems to me the foot pedal came much later. It mainly involved hacksaws and Wyse-50 keyboards. Really.
�The entire thing kept ramping up but his enthusiasm never did. � At some point, fairly far along into all of this and not too long before Tim Holland left to start up Concurrent Operating Systems (COST) with Rich Lauer, someone told me that Dick had actually suspended all advertising for the PC/XT/AT versions of Pick. ��
There was no explanation as to why.�
This was the Barbara-as-first-mate era. As I recall, she was driving the marketing effort, as well as employees and contractors away. She didn't like spending money that was not directed to her interests, like Haitian Art. Again, really.
�
He and I never had a particularly close relationship. � I don't think we were ever able to find a way to relate to each other that pleased us both. � But other folks were enthusiastic About the product. � Notable, Frank Petiac (sp?) who headed up Pick sales.�
Petyak. And he was never short of enthusiasm.
�When I say egos kept the Pick idea from becoming the major player it should have been, I am referring to Dick's ego.�
A dizzying number of Marketing VP's cycled through Skypark Circle, all of whom �were eventually felled by Dick's ego. Some, like Adam Osbourne, never even crossed the�threshold. Others, like Bill (the Mormon guy whose name escapes me. And no, not Walsh) lasted only a week. That was the only office at Skypark with a circular door.�I think his marketing decisions left a lot to be desired. �The entire small industry was dominated by his quirkiness.� We all enjoyed the show, I suppose, but in the world of business it was fairly dysfunctional IMO.� Others have posted that perhaps he didn't want any more success than he had and maybe that's so. � I have really no idea of his subjective realities. � But I think there was real potential for Pick that went wasted and that�s sad.�
Amen to that. You had to be careful when advising the�Emperor�on his wardrobe.�My memories are of a man who shot crows and stuffed them into his freezer and who obsessed on odd technical tangents. �And he was, for me, personally hard to get along with.�
He hated that crow. It ate the corn in his garden under the takeoff path of John Wayne (SNA) airport, which was a cover for his other crop. I loaned him the .22 cal he used to bag that bird, who was eventually stuffed and mounted and put on display in his office. So as not to disturb or alert his neighbors within what was later to become Newport Beach city limits, he waited until a passenger jet took off to cover the noise of the shot. As a historical footnote, that weapon originally belonged to Ken Simms.
�If anyone is interested, I think I can resurrect the letter I wrote to Gabe on this subject.� But, unknown to me, Rich Lauer, still at Sequoia, had his own plans for how to shape Sequoia's future technical directions and he felt that, with my letter, I'd really screwed up and confused things and gave me an earful about it. �In the end, I don't know if Rich dissuaded Gabe from my idea or if Gabe was never interested in the first place. � But, I always felt that a major opportunity was missed.�
I'll bet ten bucks Dawn is interested. I would suggest that it should be shared somewhere, and this is probably as good as anywhere. Who knows, it may even show up in her screenplay.
�Well, that's enough wandering down memory lane for one evening.�
And what a trip it was!
Thanks for sharing, Dennis.
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Rob Allen
On Thursday, May 17, 2012 4:42:09 PM UTC-7, Dennis Gallagher wrote:
I wrote a detailed letter to Gabe Fusco, then president of Sequoia Systems, suggesting that Sequoia might want to do this. I also made a strong appeal in my letter that he consider having me lead the project.
Dennis Gallagher
Dennis Gallagher
Dennis Gallagher
Dennis Gallagher
Brian Stone
As I recall, Barbara was a strong advocate of doing the PC port. Dick got tired of hearing about it from her and agreed do the project as long as it didn't interfere with the development of R84. This was a blessing since he didn't meddle with it which surely would have delayed its release.
Brian
To unsubscribe, email to: mvdbms+un...@googlegroups.com
jes
Wjhonson
jes
On Friday, May 18, 2012 10:55:17 PM UTC-4, Will Johnson wrote:
What;s R84 ?
Kevin Powick
On Friday, 18 May 2012 21:47:32 UTC-4, jes wrote:
Some commentary on Vulture is in the deep CDP archives as I recall, but hardly worth the search. It was basically Pick-on-a-board and Dead on Arrival. I think a lot of money, time and effort was poured into it without a working prototype ever seeing the light of day. Sort of like the Moscow Pick offices, but with far less damage and theft.
Brian Stone
R84 was designated.successor R83. 1984 was the anticipated release year.
When development dragged on and on for several years Pick changed the name to Open Architecture or OA.
When the Update Processor and other features were added it was renamed Advanced Pick. Steve Cruse was head of marketing and came from Cosmos which had developed Advanced Revolution, a Pick look alike.
Brian
jes
Dennis Gallagher
Brian Stone
Nothing usable was ever produced.
We did get one engineer to the Pick office in South Africa and I think they were eventually able to get him to Irvine. (I think his name was Alex.)
When he got to South Africa he was so excited to open his first checking account.
Brian
--
jes
In fact, it was far less than zero.
Brian Stone
The staff had a habit of going out to lunch and getting drunk, making them worthless in the afternoon.
The solution was to build a kitchen and hire cooks and offer them free lunches sans vodka.
I think most of them took the free lunch and brought their own libations.
Brian
jes
Brian Stone
There was also a Pick employee from Irvine who put his Russian girlfriend, and her family, in the apartment that Pick has leased for visiting engineers from the US to use...
Brian
Frank K
Why Pick didn't take off as it should
I was dabbling with microcomputers in 1977 trying to solve burst mode RS232 interface issues we were having with Microdata Reality systems. I remember thinking how great it was to have a real multi user computer to work on and not have to play with panel switches, audio tape storage and if you were lucky a floppy disk as your disk drive.
The essence of the Pick Operating system was the “ease of use” long before the term became popular. The database, dictionary and retrieval language made it unique. It gave the power of information to the users and not the Data Processing Department. The customized version of BASIC integrated well with the database. The combination allowed powerful applications to be rapidly built. These applications could also be built without having to get into the bit-n-bytes of computers by mere mortals who understood the business problem.
Pick was at the forefront of another kind of industrial revolution. This was the Big Bang moment for Pick. First time computer user companies, multi-user systems, packaged vertical software solutions, Value Added Resellers, no Data Processing staff and easy to use computers.
In the late 70’s Microdata Reality and MAI Basic Four we really taking off selling to first time computer user businesses with no Data Processing staff. Microcomputers were really toys at that time.
I don’t think the Pick OS ever had a shot at being a alternative to MS-DOS on the PC in 1981. It wouldn’t have performed well on the hardware of the day and wasn’t general purpose enough of an operating system. Same with the AT in 1983.
I’ve heard it said that if AT&T owned Pick you would have never heard of UNIX. I never bought into that one either. The Pick OS was again too special purpose. It did what it was designed to do quite well...provide what was needed for a Pick green screen multi-user application up to a few hundred terminals. It wasn’t general purpose enough to appeal to a audience of computer science academics. You could have given it away to every school in the country royalty free and it wouldn’t get a look.
So what happened? Where should it have gone? Pick could have been more successful. All along the way there were forks in the road that could have been better navigated.
In my opinion there were 3 big things.
1.) Pick Systems didn’t control the product development of the core product up and down the licensing chain.
2.) Pick as an application enabler and not a operating system.
3.) The number of different Pick/MV products that evolved.
I’m sure Dick made decisions about licensing and control of the product based on his business situation at that moment. I completely understand. At Ultimate we initially planned to take releases from Pick System. It didn’t take long for us to realize that this wasn’t going to work. A OS release to Dick meant grabbing a snapshot of one of his development machines. There was no control of what went into what was delivered to us and we had to troubleshoot and fix it ourselves.
Pick was supposed to get all our changes back and control the release of new functionality but never did. Someone referring to Dick management ability said you can’t hitch a thoroughbred to a plow. Whatever you want to believe controlling the releases was not a priority for him.
Dick was also feuding with Microdata over ownership of the rights that ended in Microsoft going down its own path. The Pick licensees all started with the Pick OS but immediately diverged creating vendor specific special features. Pick Systems joined in too.
Earlier acceptance that Pick should be an application enabler and not an operating system (at least as an alternative). In 1978 I had the opportunity to go to Seattle to meet with the Devcom developers (Rod Burns and Dave Drumheller) in Seattle, WA to see the product that became Prime Information. Pick filed a lawsuit against Prime Information wasn’t able to reign it back in. This opened the door for other companies to expand on Pick as a application enabler by copying Prime Information. Revelation, VMark Universe and UniData.
Anyway, it’s easier to look back 35 years then it to look ahead!
Frank Kacerek
Dawn Wolthuis
have this company on my radar. Thanks for the link. --dawn
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Brian Stone
As computers evolved we say many new devices, each with their unique I/O drivers. There was no way that Pick, as an "Operating System," could develop hardware drivers as fast as new devices were developed. This forced pick to piggyback on other "Operating Systems."
But for a long time people kept referring to Pick as an "Operating System," which confused it's image in the market.
Pick should have been marketed as a DBMS and Application Development environment.
The piece which has always been lacking in Pick is an Application Development tool. Literally thousands of such tools were developed over they years. Practically every application developer had its own in-house developed tools. I won't comment on Pick's Update Processor, but at least it keyed off the data dictionary.
Pick/Basic is powerful but Ken Sims did not link the program language to the data dictionary. One could write an application and totally ignore the dictionary. It would have been much more powerful if Pick/Basic had been fully integrated with the data dictionary.
Pick today still lacks a way to apply Access across several files. For example, if i am looking for an invoice and I don't know which year it was created I must look at each of my archive files (INVOICE_2011, INVOICE_2010, INVOICE_2009, etc.) until I locate it. It would be much easier if I could just "SELECT (INVOICE_2011, INVOICE_2010, INVOICE_2009) WITH ..." That should be east to do. But I digress..
Brian
--
jes
I'm sure the other guys who made fortunes off the concepts, if not the actual code (VMark, Unidata, et alia) have no regrets he was how he was.
Wjhonson
Remember Pick was developed starting in 1969.
From: Brian Stone <bst...@gmail.com>
To: mvdbms <mvd...@googlegroups.com>
Charlie Noah
Distributed files.
Regards,
Charlie Noah
Tony Gravagno
Brian, I think you've hit on a couple important points.
About tools, I believe a healthy industry is based on the tools provided by the industry itself rather than just from single-source providers. Spectrum shows were bigger when we had more vendors advertising more tools. Every industry we see these days has a healthy ecosystem of developer/evangelists or it simply doesn't survive. The DBMS providers have only gotten into tool development out of desperation - they create tools to use the database because they aren't selling database licenses, and they blame that on the tools and not their lack of marketing skills. Then they can't sell the tools (Java, .NET, Web Services, XML, integration with Visual Studio or Eclipse, etc) to people who aren't out there using other mainstream tools. The point here is that the platform needs to be extensible and have solid "plugs" that permit robust access, but the upline should be fostering an industry of value-add providers rather than trying to build everything into the box themselves. That brings me to your next points…
Yes, I agree that that data dictionary should have been made a more integral part of the system - for full CRUD like what the rest of the world expects. Some MV platforms have this but it's woefully under-advertised/developed/used. That said, it's easy to add this capability as an overlay to TCL but I have little faith that users would adopt it. This is a part of the self-destructive character of the industry: by insisting that everything should come from the top tier provider, the ecosystem defined above isn't nurtured and we all suffer.
To your last point about applying Access across several files, I agree 100%. More specifically, with few exceptions the database model itself has changed very little since R83. While other IT industry technologies evolve, this industry continues to put more and more lipstick on the same old … well, you know. We have part-files, dynamically sizing files, OS-level files, files with configurable modulos, and files with different hashing algorithms. We have improved security and hot fail-over/replication in some platforms. We have I-Descriptors and new IConv/OConv processor codes, triggers, and a few other nice add-ons. But the DBMS model itself really hasn't evolved. Now, again, with a TCL overlay we can do exactly what you describe, pretty easily too, but because the model internally wasn't designed for it, add-ons to make the system do these things would run like a … well, you know.
T
jes
though it seems they have made the same mistakes in terms of expectations and "taking off"
Frank K
Why Pick didn't take off as it should?
I met Richard Jowitz early in my Ultimate days by introduction from Ira Bakst of Storis. Richard was an ambitious fan of Pick OS who was pitching his applications generator. This was probably 1979 or 1980. I don’t know if Ira bought in or not but I liked Richard and Ira was a friend from my MSL days. Both of them had big accomplishment in front of them.
Richard went on to be a big Adds distributor in the UK. I knew he did a object oriented rewrite of Pick OS to mimic Adds implementation but I never really got into the details.
Over the years I heard the same comment that Jon brought up. The dealers felt that they were taking on partners in their application sales with every application enabler or application generator they used.
Frank K
Mike Preece
On Saturday, May 19, 2012 10:09:26 PM UTC+1, Tony Gravagno wrote:
Brian, I think you've hit on a couple important points.
About tools, I believe a healthy industry is based on the tools provided by the industry itself rather than just from single-source providers. Spectrum shows were bigger when we had more vendors advertising more tools. Every industry we see these days has a healthy ecosystem of developer/evangelists or it simply doesn't survive. The DBMS providers have only gotten into tool development out of desperation - they create tools to use the database because they aren't selling database licenses, and they blame that on the tools and not their lack of marketing skills. Then they can't sell the tools (Java, .NET, Web Services, XML, integration with Visual Studio or Eclipse, etc) to people who aren't out there using other mainstream tools. The point here is that the platform needs to be extensible and have solid "plugs" that permit robust access, but the upline should be fostering an industry of value-add providers rather than trying to build everything into the box themselves. That brings me to your next points…
I agree with this point about the need for Pick to be more extensible. There are some things that really ought to be done by the vendors and will always be a cludge if attempted by us out here. I'm thinking specifically of the way the locking mechanism etcetera is fundamentally tied to a port/process. It is high time they woke up to the fact that these days a port/process typically handles multiple actual processes - or "browser sessions". How hard can it be to allow the process identifier to be supplied rather than tied to a specific port?
George Land
My main experience of Pick trying to expand the market came in the late eighties when Pick Systems UK under Stanley Neiderburger (sp?) decided to exhibit at PC User. They had a big stand and I was drafted in to be on it, I was UK Technical Manager for System Builder at the time.
I said that if I was going to do it I needed something to show and the obvious thing was to show System Builder, after all showing a login and a TCL prompt wasn’t going to get us far. This didn’t go down well but since they were desperate for people and I wasn’t going to go otherwise eventually they relented. So I turned up on setup day for PC User (a big multi day event at the National Exhibition Centre) to discover a big stand, an IBM 6150 and lots of Wyse terminals. Now I’d expected PCs at PC User, foolish of me I know. I certainly hadn’t expected a pre-release of Open Architecture for which I didn’t have a System Builder port, fortunately however I was one of the few people trusted with the SB source code so proceeded to do a port there and then.
Unfortunately nothing worked and I eventually tracked it down to the fact that when you called a subroutine from a basic program it was ignoring the RETURN and just dropping to TCL, not a lot I could do about that. I then tried to explain that what they had was useless and got ‘so other than that is everything OK?’
I hung around on the stand for several days, some of the most boring of my life, nobody was remotely interested in these green screen terminals with nothing running on them and I was a great relief when it was all over.
Other encounters with Pick directly were a five day course in Glasgow when AP was shortly to be released, we learnt all about the Update processor, zooming and declutching (or whatever it was). I’d never seen anything so pointless or unusable either before or since.
Then a little while later Dick Pick himself came to show the wonders of AP to the UK Pick world, about 50 of us congregated in a small room at IBM in Warwick as he started to tell us about the wonders of this stuff. Half an hour in and he was looking visibly distressed and stopped pretty much in mid sentence and ran out of the room. Shortly afterwards he was back transformed, but somewhat spaced out. The day continued like that, the following day I didn’t bother to go back it was just too embarrassing and utterly pointless.
My final taste of Pick was in the early nineties, with a system down I needed a simple question answering but the UK office had closed, I rang Irvine to be told that I needed to pay some extortionate fee just to talk to someone, despite having a support contract and a system down. Shortly afterwards we started the process to transfer our application and our customers to UniData where we have been ever since.
jes
Brian Stone
I remember Dick going into a rant one day about how Ken Sims had not integrated Pick/BASIC with the data dictionary. AP and D3 attempted to rectify this shortcoming by adding extensions to Pick/BASIC, but few used the extensions provided as it then eliminated the option to port on other Pick-like platforms.
Brian
--
Brian Stone
I remember Dick going into a rant one day about how Ken Sims had not integrated Pick/Basic with the data dictionary. AP and D3 attempted to rectify this shortcoming, but few used the extnsions provided as it then eliminated the option to port on other Pick-like platforms.
--
George Land
BruceH
On Sunday, May 20, 2012 10:04:09 AM UTC-5, jes wrote:
but other than that everything was ok?
jes
Brian Stone
Do you mean a color blind squirrel ...
--
Tony Gravagno
I believe you're talking about the BASIC "FILE" statement. Yeah, I started writing my last response to you with the intent of mentioning that as a link with the dictionary but forgot during the writing process. The FILE statement is pretty cool.
Your last note there is another topic of its own - products can only differentiate by, uh, being different. And yet platform-specific nuances are often not used because they're not platform-independent. I've tried to get PS/RD/TL, and other companies to understand that for some years and they never quite get it. They think it's _this_ sort of differentiation which is going to compel users to remain on the client list. No, that's not going to cut it.
Major innovation is required to draw people from one platform to another, coupled with a solid business model. These companies don't do well based solely on their software:
- U2 didn't keep its user base because the databases are superior. The IBM partnership sold and preserved a number of licenses. This is an example of how being an excellent business partner is more important than having great software (though of course Universe and Unidata are arguably great products, no doubt).
- Pick Systems and Raining Data lost a lot of business due to issues in Support and instability in D3NT, but they also did not have the business "presence" to preserve the sites that were on the verge of leaving. This is an example of how Not being an excellent business partner is more important than the software.
- Caché is a superior platform (vastly evolved compared to most MV platforms) and InterSystems is an awesome business partner, but most people in this industry simply don't know it. This is an example of how great software and a great business can be completely irrelevant if the prospect audience is unaware of the offering.
Again, it's not just about features - but as an industry we do need the feature set of the overall platform to evolve like competitors. (It's amazing how the rest of the world is Still just Starting to catch onto the idea of "multi-valued" data, eagerly too, and yet no one at any of the MV DBMS companies have people in Marketing who have picked up on this or started to capitalize on it. *sigh*) Back on-topic about "why Pick didn't take off"? It's all about Marketing what we have and who we are! We'll never get more users being the "best kept secret".
And about industry-wide compatibility - it's interesting that SMA hasn't been discussed in this thread yet (unless I missed it?).
Best,
T
(Manager of the "where the heck did THAT come from" Department…)
Brian Stone
Brian
--
Dan McGrath
<snip>
> idea of "multi-valued" data, eagerly too, and yet no one at any of the MV
> DBMS companies have people in Marketing who have picked up on this or
> started to capitalize on it. *sigh*) Back on-topic about "why Pick didn't
> take off"? It's all about Marketing what we have and who we are! We'll never
> get more users being the "best kept secret".
Well, hopefully my presentation at NoSQL Matters 2012
(u2u.rocketsoftware.com/agenda.asp) does it justice. If anyone happens
to be around Germany on the 29/30th I have a speakers discount code
(50% off) if you wanted to come along in person :) At
www.nosql-matters.org/register-now use 'spkr50off'
Dan McGrath
> to be around Germany on the 29/30th I have a speakers discount code
> (50% off) if you wanted to come along in person :) At
> www.nosql-matters.org/register-now use 'spkr50off'
jes
And about industry-wide compatibility - it's interesting that SMA hasn't been discussed in this thread yet (unless I missed it?)
Frank K
Brian Stone
You mean the book that was Banned in South Africa?
Brian
--
jes
You mean the book that was Banned in South Africa?
Brian
Dawn Wolthuis
it the title? What fun! --dawn
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Dawn M. Wolthuis
Take and give some delight today
Brian Stone
Dawn:
Yes. It was.the title. The authorities thought the book contained instructions on how to commit a crime.
Brian
Dawn Wolthuis
Brian Stone
Indeed!!
jes
Indeed!
Charlie Noah
Regards,
Charlie Noah
--
Brian Stone
--
Brian Stone
Scott Ballinger
/Scott Ballinger
Wjhonson
Wjhonson
From: Brian Stone <bst...@gmail.com>
To: mvdbms <mvd...@googlegroups.com>
Gene Buckle
> At my first Pick job I had to change all the "...aborted..." messages to
> "...halted..." due to employee complaints.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!
Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a
server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck.
[Cipher in a.s.r]
Brian Stone
The next year it became "International Spectrum" and Pick Systems announced "Pickfair," which was later canceled.
Wjhonson
George Land
Brian Stone
The first two Spectrum shows were organized by the International Pick Users Group. After that Gus Giobbi, Monica Kiddie and Bill Thurman took control. Thurman split from the group shortly after that.
Wjhonson
Brian Stone
Yeah. That was the name of the user group.
Gus, Monica and Bill, through "slight of hand," took.control of it and made it a "for profit" enterprise.
Gus.and Monica got married and Bill left the group. It is unclear who jilted whom...
Brian
jes
Yeah. That was the name of the user group.
Gus, Monica and Bill, through "slight of hand," took.control of it and made it a "for profit" enterprise.
Gus.and Monica got married and Bill left the group. It is unclear who jilted whom...
Brian