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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."
Cassady & Greene truly marketed some of the most innovative programs on the Mac. Conflict Catcher rightly earned all of the awards (and hearts) it did over the years. And Cassady & Greene is arguably the grandmother of Apple's "digital hub" strategy: iTunes was borne of SoundJam Pro, originally marketed by C&G. (The original developers of iTunes now work for Apple.)
It's been great.
Goodnight.
justen
Crystal Quest used the mouse better than any other game until the FPSes came along. That was a fun game.
As for the rest of the stuff C&G published, well, I never needed any of it...
After OS X came out, I stopped using Conflict Catcher, too (which, yes, is still on my 6500).
Just thinking this through: Apple definitely dealt a mjor blow buying SoundJam off of C&G, but does anyone think of C&G as an OS X developer?
Oh, well. Farewell, C&G. We'll miss you.
I think as Mac OS X becomes more ubiquitous, we'll witness a renaissance of Mac development and publishing. It's already showing with products like Transmit and Hydra (to name just a couple).
I'm pretty new to the Mac world -- an OS X convert... so I've never heard of these guys. But it sounds like the timing might have followed that of the introduction of the new OS. Was their inability to keep going due to something about OS X?
I love this operating system, but I sometimes wonder how much all the goodies that come with it (X11, iTunes, iPhoto, iChat, Safari, Mail.app, Address Book.app, and iCal are all in my Dock) are hurting independent developers who innovated for the platform before Apple got around to incorporating those functions into the OS.
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.
if apple is shooting itself with the many free programs that come bundled with macos X... The whole sherlock vs. watson thing, where apple made a product VERY similar to a competing program, or their new font management system in Jaguar, which someone said "companies made a living off of", and now that business is gone, integrated into the macos. 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?
We contacted them when we were looking for a publisher.
They wanted 85%, wanted to delay payments to us for up to 180 days,
if they wanted new "features" either we had to implement them or
they would pay to have it done and -we- would have the cost deducted
from royalties. We said no thanks.
When talking to them, the SoundJam/iTunes thing happened a few months earlier
and I asked the guy about it. He said that Apple approached them,
with a fixed price. They advised them to take it, or get buried by an Apple product.
He wouldn't say how much they got, but it wasn't a huge number, plus they had
to relinquish the programmers as part of the deal. I like Apple, and I like iTunes
and what it's become, but Apple sort of rolled over them and they never recovered.
I worked for Casady & Greene one summer during college. I typed product registration info into the database, answered phones, beta tested, stuck labels on disks (OK, that should date me), whatever needed to be done. Working there was great - everyone really was like family, and the programmers' dedication to their craft was inspiring. I was always amazed that software created in a little storefront next to the pizza parlor in my neighborhood was so globally popular (my friends in college played Crystal Quest and Glider).
Some random memories of C&G:
- Seeing my first IBM computer with a full-color monitor and GUI. The PC tech support guy was amused that I thought all IBM's had green screens.
- Beta testing a paint program that simulated natural media. It was at least as good as Aldus SuperPaint, the Mac favorite at the time, but for some reason I never heard of it again.
- The intraoffice instant messaging system that one of the programmers built. Everyone spent so much time sending messages to each other, the boss shut it down after just a few days.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
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.
.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.
.Mac, and the popularity of sites like Versiontracker and MacUpdate, the necessity of a developer needing a publisher has drastically reduced.
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
They were always more a publisher than developer, so and with resources like Sourceforge and
At least most of their developers have taken their software with them.