I don't know how the actual UI currently looks like, but even if it still looks like Windows XP, the IDE and Common Lisp compiler are still quite ahead compared with what Emacs + SLIME are capable of, specially in GUI related Lisp development workflows.

Maybe they could improve their marketing message, but I doubt most wannabe Common Lisp developers are willing to pay for comercial tools, with enterprise prices, even if they had the best marketing of all times.

Also, unless you are heavily invested in CL, most people actually can't afford to pay $600 on a compiler license per year.

Lispworks has a free "Personal Edition". It's good enough to get through something like Practical Common Lisp and get a feeling for writing lisp, however since it uses an old version of ASDF, it's a bit difficult to use the "modern" quicklisp ecosystem.

The LispWorks prices are not per year.

Their pricing pages are also a disaster. I had to drill down a few pages deep to find these epic tables: http://www.lispworks.com/buy/prices-1c.html which presumably could be distilled into 32-bit/64-bit categories plus a maintenance add-on.

> The IDE screenshots for Windows show off Windows XP.

The IDE is based on their native GUI backend. Thus it picks up much of the looks of the current OS automatically (windows, buttons, dialogs, ...).

The point being made is that they apparently haven't updated their screenshots in over 10 years, making their product seem dated- a pretty big marketing fail.

LispWorks has been developed from 1987 onwards since 30 years. They can't update their marketing material every year just because someone changed the GUI look. ;-)

Though I'll propose it to them for the next LispWorks release...

A major Windows release is kind of a big thing in the desktop world.

Missing 5 Windows releases is just sloppy: Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10.

I'm not saying it's a bad product, just that first impressions matter. There's a reason this site is full of discussions about conversions and funnels.

As a side note, Windows is also 30+ years old. Hardly new tech these days ;)

> A major Windows release is kind of a big thing in the desktop world.

I can bet that LispWorks' customers (big companies and experienced lisp users) are largely away from the mainstream desktop world, and wouldn't care too much on how the current Windows UI looks like.

Software age is a non-sequitur- there are plenty of active multi-decade projects that can update their marketing material once in ten years. Nobody suggested they do so every year, even though it takes what like an hour? For a product costing $thousands there is not really an excuse.