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Satellite Internet Service for Macs?
Untimely Ripp'd asks: "Satellite broadband has been available to PC users for half a decade, and still is not trivially available to Mac users. It can be done, but it's always an unsupported hack, or it requires buying expensive extra hardware and software. I cannot understand why Hughes and the other providers would refuse to spend the relatively few dollars necessary to develop a couple of device drivers and glue libraries. Time after time, the vendors have said, 'it's coming,' but it never does, and the promise eventually goes away. (Earthlink's FAQ page no longer says that Mac software is being developed, for example). I'm not gung-ho on conspiracy theories, but the only explanation I can figure is that they're either being paid or bullied. Does anyone know of any serious tech hurdle that would make it cost more than $100K or so to develop the necessary software?" this article mentions one-way Mac service coming online from OWC in a future expansion, along with nationwide service. A comment from that story does mention a simple solution, but why is it that Satellite service, even one way satellite service, depends on Windows-only software? What other solutions have Mac users resorted to when they wanted their Macs connected?
I work for a dealer and we tested DirecPC through Pegasus (Pegasus Express was the offical name). It sucked. When talking to people that had satellite Net...about four out of five hated it. (I never could figure out why that one person said theirs was working so good when the other people had nothing but trouble). In the end, we never sold it because we were afraid it would make more people mad than anything else.
By all means, though, Mac usuers should be able to get pissed off just like us PC users...
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
I wanted a conection for my home on the country-side, Embratel has this StarOne service, but when I read the contract, it actually stated as FORBIDEN the use of Linux or Mac machines!! This shows up on the same part that talks about "stolen passwords" and "unauthorized access" .
So I called the guy that manages my company's account at Embratel and he goes on explaininng that the software needed for their "accelerated access" was only available for M$. "Can I use a Proxy server and set my Linuxes and Macs behind it?", I tried, but he made it clear that this practice would break the contract and they could have me cut off from the service legally.
After all the hard work I had O/C'g my ibook, there's no way I'm going back to a PC...
~/Joe
I'm living in Osaka, Japan right now, and the biggest hurdle the technology-savvy Japanese have to face in the telecommunications field is geography: Japan is 70% mountains.
Their solution? Wireless internet. Give your user a wireless internet card, then connect the receiver to a fiber-optic network offering 100Mbps. Works with Windows as well as OS 9 and OS X.
Currently, ADSL alone in Japan offers 12Mbps, for a slightly cheaper price than in the states.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
What? Rubbish, Earthlink and the rest subcontract thier support services out to other companies that specialise in the services. These companys have Support staff for every different Platform allready anyway so it's mainly just a matter of creating training documentation for the current Mac Techs at the operations. It's actualy pretty stupid to do in house tech support as it is a big waste of resources. Most of the cost assosiated with porting the service is one time development cost.
One way to make money is to build a product that 95% of the people use. Another way to make money is to build a product that 5% of the people use. Microsoft certainly made a boatload of money, but Apple is not exactly bankrupt. In fact, I'd expect that Mac sales of Adobe Photoshop account for significantly more than 5%.
In practice, a lot of times you'll find that the reason a minority OS is not supported is not because somebody determined that it was not viable, but that nobody ever bothered to see if it was viable or not. Only the former is a good business decision.
How many times can we go over this same point? It's the same for Linux and Mac, it's just not economically viable to develop software for something used by less than 5% of the computing masses.
...
Let's phrase this another way:
How much would a company pay for ADVERTISING to get a 5% increase in sales? (And thus a MUCH greater than 5% improvement in profits, since the development is already amortized.)
Now if that same amount bought you the development of an incremental feature (i.e. a Linux or Mac driver) that enables another 5% of the market to use your product, it's the same case. (Actually, if you're currently addressing 90% of the potential market and the new segment is an incremental 5% you're adding 5%/90% or about 5.6%).
But wait, it's better
Suppose that you're currently splitting the market evenly with one other competitor. If YOU do it and HE doesn't, that 5.55% about doubles to 11.1%. With an even split among three competitors the first mover gets about a 16.7% bump in potential sales (and more in profit), and so on.
With something like networking you have a small number of competitors but MAJOR lock-in. First mover gets the prize and KEEPS it. With something (like a device) with more competitors and less lock-in you may not keep it, but you get a BIG boost until your competition wises up.
But WAIT! You don't HAVE to develop it yourself! Publish enough of the interoperability specs and - at least for Linux - SOMEONE ELSE will do it FOR you! You get the benefits and do only a tiny fraction of the work.
Your work consists mostly editing your internal documents into an externally-releasable one that will enable a developer without giving away your trade-secret farm. But don't get too paranoid: Your competitors are ALREADY reverse-engineering you. You should have your critrical IP already locked up in patent-pending, which will keep your competition at bay if you publish more than you intended. Meanwhile, better specs mean better and sooner community software to enable your sales.
Network operators might have some issues with security - but that's already been addressed elsewhere. (Bottom line is that the black hats will get you anyhow if you're already BADLY broken, regardless of whether you publish, while if you're reasonably secure (i.e. only a little flakey) the exposure will get the white hats on your side and you'll probably increase your lead in the arms race.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
> Say they have 10% penetration in the Wintel
> land, (this is very generous), and lets give
> Wintel 90% marketshare for consumer PC's (this
> might be accurate in europe and america,
> dubious worldwide), now you have 9%
> marketshare.
>
>Lets add 10% of the Mac users out there, you
> gain 1/2%.
>
>Now lets calculate the percent change in
> marketshare. Looks to be 5.5555555..%, seems
> to me they have gained prety close to the
> proposed 5% market penetration. This means for
> every 19 customers you have, you could have
> one more.
Actually, this is amazingly close to the proof of why they *don't* support alternate OSes.
Start with a realistic market penetration for satellite connectivity - probably 0.1%, which is still probably generous. I don't even think DSL or cable have 10% each.
At this point, the mathematical argument you make could conceivably hold true - add a 5% platform and get 5% more users. But numerically, that number is really small and you gain them at very high cost. You have to pay to develop a new version of software and keep developing it as the world and the platform move forward (this is a big deal in the brave new world of OS X), provide technical support to these new users (along with all the people that aren't upgrading along the way), documentation, advertising so that anybody knows it exists, etc., etc.
If all these numbers were in the millions, then you might at least try to make a go at it - the per head cost might not look great, but it's not ridiculous. But these numbers are probably in the 10s of thousands for the Windows platform, and you probably would have to battle for even a couple of thousand Mac users. With a million users, $500K for software and support infrastructure might work - for 2000 Mac users, it would just be stupid.
When you try to sell this to your boss, he'll say, "we only have 0.1% market share with our existing product and support which targets the biggest mass market. Wouldn't be be better off spending the half-mil on advertisting for the current product? Couldn't we double our market share [e.g., tens of thousands more customers]?".
And you know that he'd be right, don't you?
David Fung