Casady & Greene Says "Goodnight"

powderhound writes "Longtime Mac software publisher Casady & Greene have said their final 'Goodnight.' The publisher of many notable Mac titles such as SpellCatcher, InfoGenie, iData, and Glider Pro, have decided to close the doors on July 3rd. Their web site contains the details of their decision. They will be sorely missed."

Comments

open source, .mac, osx

[Kerouassady]

All these things were the downfall of Casady and Greene. We still use Spell Catcher X on our photographers' laptops because Adobe hasn't put a spell check into the File Info window and our photographers are the kind that need a spell check on their captions. There was a place they filled a gap. Spell Catcher X is really a powerful tool and far beyond just a spell checker. That is an example of how to add value to a software that's previous functionality has been subsumed by the growth of the OS.

I always waited for Conflict Catcher to do the same. There was room for it. It would have need to be completely rewritten, but the basic concept is sound (looking for conflicts). If they'd had found a way to do a Clean-Install System/User Merge under OS 10, CC would have easily regained its throne.

I don't think C&G had the reources or maybe even the dedication to make the kind of investment leap to really make their tools valuable for OS 10 users. Between the explosion of freeware apps and open source projects, and cheap hosting on .Mac or free from Sourceforge, the competition just exploded. That's why, as an independent publisher or developer, you really have to inovate if you still want to make a living off shareware.

They were always more a publisher than developer, so and with resources like Sourceforge and .Mac, and the popularity of sites like Versiontracker and MacUpdate, the necessity of a developer needing a publisher has drastically reduced.

At least most of their developers have taken their software with them.