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Folks, here is a summary of my notes in telephone call with Alan McNichol,
Metastock product manager, this afternoon.
[1] MSWIN 6.52 will be released in September or thereabouts, and will have
some fixes in it, such as the Win98 "tool tips" thing and Y2K compliance;
the release will be free to 6.5 owners;
[2] Mr. McNichol recognizes that it seems sometimes that MSWIN users are not
listened to, but he stressed that suggestions are in fact evaluated on
merit, demand, complexity, ROI, available resources, interface probs with
third party vendors and the like. He also pointed out that many innovations
like 32 bit, Expert Advisor, Metastock File Library, saving as HTML, and
perhaps some others were the result of an enormous amount of development
effort and seem underappreciated after the novelty wears off- he didn't put
it this way but this is the sense of what he was saying. The long time
Metastock users can attest to how far the program has come in its lifetime.
He reminded me that Omega's products [TS, SuperCharts] are not yet 32 bit
apps.
[3] Because of my personal interest in the subjects, we discussed at some
length SYSTEM TESTING ACROSS MULTIPLE SECURITIES and DATA FORMAT issues. As
to multiple security system testing, Mr. McNichol said only OmniTrader and
the old program Trading Recipe truly had [or have] this feature fully
implemented. I don't really understand this subject like I should, but I
believe he said that true multiple security system testing means testing
across the whole portfolio and optimizing the entire portfolio as well as
individual securities, ands that some programs like WoW [I have no
familiarity with WoW] don't really do this- they run something more like an
exploration after optimizing on one security. Part of this process is also
the optimization of stops, and Equis wants this feature in the software then
first time around. They are working diligently on this[multiple security
system testing] and it will be implemented in the PRO version as soon as
this is practicable, The regular program may never have it because the cost
couldn't reasonably be recouped. But this is something of an open question
at this time, I think.
[4] As for DATA FORMAT, my main interest, Mr. McNichol acknowledged that the
format is "arcane" and needs a "big overhaul". The present format requires
way too much disk space, and must be spread across several directories.
This must be addressed before Equis can look at compatibility with other
specific vendors, but there is no rigid rejection of the idea of being
compatible with third party vendor data. Mr. McNichol is familiar with
Quotes Plus and was interested in the Virtual Data Directory capability in
that program. He is aware of how this works with the Metastock data export
function. I suggested to him that perhaps Equis could look at something
along these lines itself as an independent project, but I believe that would
be a diversion of resources needed in more core development efforts. Mr.
McNichol said overhauling the Metastock data format will not be completed
"soon" but he assured me the work is in progress and that it will be done.
I did not ask about why only one data vendor [Signal] for the RT version at
this time.
[5] We discussed the relative merits of OmniTrader [Nirvana] beta
development process whereby users were invited to test beta versions as part
of the development effort. I personally participated in this with OT 3.1
and concluded afterward that I might very well wish to avoid that in the
future- I went thru this with beta testing Win 95 too, and it gets old real
fast. In any event, Metastock philosophy is to beta test in-house or at
least to a tightly restricted group, and the release a first rate product
out of the box. That is the ideal anyway.
[6] As to MACROS removed from the Dos version, Mr. McNichol said that was a
tough but necessary decision, not taken lightly. To program the macros in
Windows would using Visual basic For Applications would have taken their
entire development staff an inordinate amount of time to achieve if done
properly. This investment could not have been reasonably recouped.
[7] I suggested to Mr. McNichol that a part of Equis's new website be
devoted to product news and status of upgrades, features, etc. He seemed to
accept this as a good idea. Perhaps some sort of questionnaire could be
developed, or suggestions and requests could be solicited, and the company
could report back on what were the most requested features, etc.
***************
As I said earlier, I felt Mr. McNichol was forthcoming and sincere, and
genuinely feels that he and his team are doing everything they reasonably
can to make Metastock the excellent product we all want it to be; he
acknowledged, as George has, that perhaps Equis has not been as effective in
communicating with its customer base as it should be, and I believe an
effort to address this is forthcoming. Mr. McNichol regularly reads the
Metastock List, and it was the recent discussion that prompted him to call
me and I believe a few other of you to discuss the same things he discussed
with me. he certainly succeeded in winning me over, and I will be
interested to see the reports of others he may have talked to, and to read
the posts over the next few days.
Al Stephens
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