Re: IP 5.0

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPOMONA.EDU>]

I was one of the beta reviewers a year ago for IP 5.0 when it was intended
to be called IP 4.0 and was being published by Knowledge Revolution which
has since been gobbled up by another company. I was told that the only
differences were

1. a minor bug fix,

2. the ability to attach rotating bitmapped pictures to objects to make
them behave visually in a more realistic fashion, and

3. scriptable buttons.

I'll be blunt: In my opinion IP 5.0 is a total ripoff cynically designed
to squeeze a few last drops of blood out of what was once potentially a
large and loyal customer base.

Here is what I wrote:

11/15/98

Report on IP4.0 beta version

John Mallinckrodt
Professor of Physics
Cal Poly Pomona

I have worked with the beta version for several hours 1) writing
some simple scenarios, 2) using it to run scenarios written
originally for IP 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0, and 3) trying out the new
rotating bitmap and scriptable button features.  I was not able to
verify improved performance with respect to the collision
detection bug fix as I do not have scenarios which demonstrate the
problem.

Some observations:

1  The rotating bitmaps are a nice addition and they work as
   advertised as far as I can tell.  They do, of course, slow down
   the computations.  I saw a factor of 2 to 3 decrease in speed
   for a fairly complicated ~60 x 60 bitmap.  A very simple bitmap
   produced a hit of perhaps 30%.

2  I linked some of the prewritten scripts supplied with IP to
   buttons to verify their operation.  However, despite my long
   experience with IP, I am highly unlikely *ever* to write a
   script myself.  I'll go out on a limb and confess that I would
   be very surprised to learn that any ordinary IP user has *ever*
   used the scripting function to write his or her own scripts.

3  All of my scenarios seem to run under 4.0 essentially
   identically to the way that they did under 3.0 (which is often
   significantly different than the way they did under 2.5 and
   earlier.)  The new version seems to run just as fast as 3.0 on
   identical scenarios as is probably to be expected since it
   appears that the underlying engine has not been altered.

I am a long time user and a *big* fan of IP.  As such, I have been
disappointed in what I consider shortsighted marketing strategies
at KR from the beginning.  IP should have quickly become far more
commonly used in physics education and (as I have mentioned before
to both Dave and Greg) I believe it *would* have been if KR had
adopted a more aggressive pricing scheme from the start.  At this
point, the features that set KR apart from its competitors are not
nearly as apparent to new prospective users as they were when
there *were no* competitors and, if KR has any interest in
continuing to milk the IP cow, it has to at least make sure that
it hangs on to old users.

I mentioned this concern to Christine on the phone last week when
I offered my opinion that the new version is clearly more of a
maintenance upgrade then a major revision.  She explained to me
that part of the motivation was to synchronize version numbers
with other products and that the final version number would
probably be 5.0 for that reason.  I can appreciate the logic, but
I pray that you won't alienate your loyal customers by charging
very much for such a minimal set of improvements.

Sincerely,

John Mallinckrodt

On Thu, 4 Nov 1999, Paolo Cavallo wrote:

> I have Interactive Physics 3.0. It seems that current version is 5.0. Can
> anyone tell me which are the most important improvements?
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
> Paolo Cavallo

John Mallinckrodt      mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona          http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm