Metrowerks, like Borland, were a product of their time and suffered badly when those times changed. Both made fantastic third-party compiler suites and both sa

Metrowerks, like Borland, were a product of their time and suffered badly when those times changed. Both made fantastic third-party compiler suites and both saw a tremendous amount of success because of that. Then the operating system vendors started to re-focus around building a first-class compiler environment for their developer base and it got very hard to compete. Borland got ground down by Microsoft Visual Studio while Visual Basic killed any hope of Delphi taking over. Metroerks slid largely because of Apple's Xcode. It's a shame that Borland and Metrowerks tanked like that, they did add their own flavor to the development world, but it's also a good thing. Back in the 1990s being a developer meant forking out hundreds if not thousands of dollars for good tools. The barrier to entry was awfully steep. Since that made app developers a rare breed, finding developer support was a lot harder. Today anyone with a computer has access to top-quality tools without having to spend a dime more, and they're also able to access a knowledgable developer community that's easily engaged to help solve problems, provide advice, and recommend strategies. When using Metrowerks you were on your own. If the book you had didn't solve the problem you could try your luck on USENET or a mailing list, but that would only work with the most trivial of problems.