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 Mac
user the same price and do not provide the same service as the PC
side.

Some software manufacturers charge more for the Mac to try to make a profit.

If they are not going to provide equal customer service for their
product all they need to do is let me know and I will take my business
elsewhere. After all that is the best way to get your message across.

Actually, 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.
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