August 24th, 1999

[1:45 PM]
Jean Belanger Of Metrowerks Publicly Responds To Mac Worries
We received the following letter from Observer Dave Trevas who drew our attention to an important post on the Metrowerks message boards. Dave asked what value the Mac market held for Metrowerks, and Metrowerks' CEO, Jean Belanger, answered. You can find the full Metrowerks message board at Yahoo's site. According to Dave:

After reading your story for an anonymous Motorola engineer (found via a link to the Yahoo! Apple message board), I posed some questions on the Metrowerks message board (MTWK) for any clarification (I go by the handle, macFanDave) I could get. Look at the response I got (I cut-and-pasted the following from the Yahoo! Metrowerks message board)!

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A lot of people on the nets have been indicating that we would not be interested in or even abandoning the Mac market after being acquired by Motorola SPS. Let me set the record straight. Every time there has been an important event in the history of Metrowerks, the boo birds come out of the woodwork and proclaim that we will give up the Mac. On every such occasion in the past we kept right on investing in the Mac business and CodeWarrior for Mac is still here. Pro 5 was probably our most important upgrade since we launched our Mac tools in Jan./1994. CodeWarrior for Mac is NOT at risk. The senior management of Motorola SPS have made it very clear to us that our Mac tools are a VERY important component of Metrowerks and they absolutely want the Mac tools to move forward as they have in the past. Any commentary you read on the nets to the contrary is totally false and incorrect.

Jean Belanger
Chairman & CEO

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I hope this eases some fears or at least stirs the discussion somewhat.

Dave Trevas

Nice work Dave!

The Mac Observer Spin: As some of the "Boo Birds" named by Mr. Belanger who have publicly worried about the effect of the Motorola buyout (for whom we have great respect) [Editor's Note: This marks the first time that we know of where The Mac Observer has been given the illustrious title of "Boo Birds"], we will point out that the difference between now and then is that Metrowerks will not be in charge of its own destiny. However, we hope that Mr. Belanger is correct! In any event, it is good to see Mr. Belanger so positive about the situation.

And for any nay-sayers out there, it is certainly possible that this was not actually Mr. Belanger who responded to this message. However, we consider it very likely that this message is legitimate.

Metrowerks - Motorola