Re: New poll for Band-in-a-Box
Bob 'Notes' Norton <norton@...>
At 07:30 AM 2/15/01 +0000, jonathanreed@lycos.com wrote:You raise some very good points. I have been a registered user for about 8 years (Atari day's).I first bough BiaB for the Atari on version 3, waaaaaaaay back in the 80s. Unfortunately, the Atari became an orphan because not enough people bought software for it, if you can't make profit on the software, nobody will write it, and the platform will die. The Amiga is another example. A fine computer that died of a small user base. [SNIP] They charged me as a MacSome software manufacturers charge more for the Mac to try to make a profit. If they are not going to provide equal customer service for theirActually, that is the surest way to keep from ever having an update for the Mac. *** I too have a Mac (and a PC), so allow me to play "THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE" here. *** The problem with the Mac platform is neither the hardware nor the OS, it is the small user base. When I started writing styles for Band-in-a-Box, Mac was 25% of my market, now it is less than 5%. Since music is one of the strongholds of the Mac user base, it stands to reason that the rest of the industry shows similar depressing numbers. BTW, I dropped Atari support when it shrunk to under 1% or my sales. Now suppose you were a software writer and you decide to spend a few thousand hours writing software. You spend those writing for PC and Mac. The PC platform returns almost $20.00 for every $1.00 that you see from the Mac platform. So you make almost 20 times the hourly wage writing for the PC. It's a no brainer which you write for first. Now it is time to invest a few thousand hours in an update. The natural thing to do is to write for the PC and upgrade it first. You will get almost 20 times the return for each hour spent. OK, you spent almost a year on that and it sold well, but you need cash flow to run this business so what are you going to do? Write another for the PC or the Mac? It is unfortunately a fact of life. If you knew investing in one stock on wall street would return 20 times the value of another, which would you invest in? To add insult to injury, I quit a Mac user's group because all they wanted to do was swap stories and pirate software. If one person bought Page Maker, they all had Page Maker. If one bought Illustrator, the all had Illustrator. I doubt if all users groups are like this, but this definitely is one way to make sure you will be using a Windows computer in a few years. Software is very time consuming to write and without a decent return on the investment, what's the use? My advice to myself and all the other Mac users out there. Buy software, and buy it often and buy a lot of it. Buy it whether you need it or not. Never ever give it away. Instead of upgrading your Mac, upgrade your software first. The only way to keep the Mac platform alive is by supporting the Mac software industry. (You can start by purchasing all of my after-market style disks and fake disks <grin>) If the people who write software cannot make a decent profit for their time by writing for the Mac, it will go the way of the Atari and the Amiga. Once again, I have no axe to grind, I like my Mac and I like my PC. I like some things about the Mac better, and I like some things about the PC better. It is comparing apples and oranges (sorry, I couldn't resist). However, if the Mac user base drops to less than 1% of my user base, I won't be able to afford to write for it anymore. At at 1%, I'll stick it out longer than most people. PG seems to be cutting back at about 5%. In summary, Mac users must show their numbers with their dollars if we don't want our Macs to be orphans. OK, I'm done playing "devil's advocate" and return you to your regularly scheduled BiaB group. - - - - - - - - - Bob "Notes" Norton owner, Norton Music norton@nortonmusic.com http://www.nortonmusic.com Norton Music is the #1 producer of BiaB after-market products in the world! Featuring Power User Styles, Fake Disks, and Arangement Disks. PLUS ... PG Music products at up to 20% off ... FREE Midi Files ... links to MIDI file search pages ... download and print sheet music directly from the web ... a few jokes to brighten your day ... and more.
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