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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."
Does this mean the end of their CEO Charles R. Fulweiler's paranoid leftist rants on the company website?
The goatse guy for president. Win one for the gaper!
They must have gotten a pretty penny for SoundJam. C&G had to realize that, with OS X making Conflict Catcher obsolete, SoundJam was their future. Or did they really expect Glider Pro carbon to sell like hotcakes?
I've been scratching my head about C&G's business strategy and expecting this day ever since OS X was announced.
Care to be asshole buddies?
Like: Even with FfmpegX, OSEX, 42 and the MissingWhateverToolsStuff the whole DVD-ripping-DivX-VCD-area on the Mac still needs some professional software company to engage in that field. This thing is the only I envy Windows-PC users for. They have some good easy to use and fast apps.
Honestly before I saw this article I had not thought about them in years. Aside from the story of SoundJam C&G (which was really OS9) C&G have been absolutely quiet on the OSX front since its release.
OSX killed Extension Manager by way of UNIX, SoundJam by way of buyout, and Spellchecker with built in Cocoa services. All three, but _especially_ extension manager, were near necessities when we were dealing with an extension plauged, mp3 starved, clusterfuck of a system.
So to answer your question: a resounding "yes." OSX killed Cassidy & Greene along with C&G's innability to innovate and capitalize on a system change that they saw coming _years_ in advance (remember Rhapsody? they do).
Their Extension Manager was priceless in my converting to MacOS from Windows, and it is still one of the few applications I have ever paid for.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
That's a good question to ask. I think it has something to do with the market saturation that Apple has. It leaves a lot of people wondering why Apple would want to possibly alienate developers considering how small its share of the market is.
Microsoft has frequently added more and more programs to its arsenal, and has its market share dropped? Nope. Perhaps Apple thinks the same will be true of their efforts. I can only hope so. I see more and more people coming over to the Mac platform, from Windows. This can only be a Good Thing(TM) for Apple.
They seemed to put a lot of effort into iData, which was probably pretty damn innovative, but no-one seemed to want. Shame. It will soon, however, be offered for free.
:) Their attitude will probably be missed more than their final software offerings.
They had a raft of OS X utils, but not necessarily ones you'd pay for (e.g. Clone'X: there's freeware/shell commands that do the same thing). I think more importantly, they were a very "morally sound" company, almost to the extent of being complete hippies... but damn cool coding hippies
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
The monopoly status of Microsoft makes all the difference, as a matter of fact.
Not everybody has a problem with bundling, per se. I do not think it is appropriate to artificially define where an OS ends and where applications begin. Historically, there have been many operating systems far less powerful than Linux or the NT kernel, so it would be rather silly to set a hard limit on where an OS must end.
What was the problem? Their variable pricing. Since the cost of Microsoft Windows is both variable and unavoidable for OEMs, this allows Microsoft to exert extraordinary pressure on them to ban things like pre-installing Netscape. There was very few reasons otherwise for an OEM to not pre-install Netscape, which was free anyway. This is also why simply requiring Microsoft to sell Windows at the same price (as determined by Microsoft) would already greatly reduce the undue influence they have over OEMs.
Software, especially popular software, all tend to grow. If you write Photoshop filters for a living, be prepared that Adobe may one day ship a similar one by default. This isn't really a new thing. More interestingly, consider Linux. Linux may have killed any number of small operating systems for various niches, and if its advocates are to be believed, it may one day kill off Microsoft Windows. Can Microsoft assert some moral right to keep selling Windows, rather than "find a new gig"?
I bought and received great satisfaction from both Conflict Catcher and SoundJam Pro.
So it is sad to see Cassady & Greene's departure.
But I'm not going to complain about the fact that a) Conflict Catcher is no longer needed and b) Apple bought SoundJam for everyone.
Jaguar is awesome, and the software that comes with it is top notch, but when do you draw the line between building software in house, and relying on developers to write software for you?
When the developers drop the fucking ball.
Why do we have, for example, fax built in to Panther? Because third-party fax solutions sucked out loud. Why do we have FontBook? Because Suitcase sucked out loud. Why do we have iTunes? Because nobody else built anything like it. Why do we have Sherlock? Because Watson sucked... out... loud.