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The Real Story of Audion
mijkal writes "Panic's Audion music software has been retired and made freely available. The developer has a nice write up on his experiences with Audion in relation to early-MP3 days, failed AOL deals, and the could-have-been iTunes app. It's an inspiring read on the history of a shareware developer and his adventures thus far."
winrar? winzip? seriously there are loads of shareware apps out there. go to download.com, search for anything, choose "Free to try" as the license, and anything that's not a demo is probably shareware.
http://www.panic.com/audion/download.html
"Audion has been retired. It is now free of charge, but is no longer being actively developed, and is provided as-is without support. We hope you continue to enjoy Audion!"
http://www.panic.com/audion/buy.html For OSX and 8.6(+)
Your confusion is understandable; in the Windows/x86 world, shareware truly is dead. But the distribution format continues to exist (though barely) in the Mac market. Besides, Panic, there's Ambrosia Software, Freeverse, Littlewing, Spiderweb and others.
Mac users, partly due to reduced malware exposure and partly due to cultural conviction, tend to be more appreciative of shareware developers, and as such are more likely to download strange unknown software and pay their fees. I used to have a link to a developer's anecdote where he got about 3% or so pay-in from Mac downloads, but only got much less than 1% when he ported his product to Windows. The result is that Mac shareware tends to get more income than on Windows, despite (or because of?) the low market share of the platform.
That said, even the old shareware houses are starting to migrate to brick-and-mortar. Freeverse sells some of their games in Apple Stores, and even Ambrosia has made CD pressings of Escape Velocity: Nova (as well as a board game!). It's a shame, shareware was as close as the "little person" could get to a true free market of software sales, sacrificed during the current war between Corporate software and Open Source.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
Winzip would be in the nagware category.
-mkb
Maybe you're talking about using it in OS 9, but *nothing* was really stable on that system.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
It's a tiny operation, comprising four people. They were extremely dedicated to doing one thing and doing it well, and to the Macintosh platform. It made me proud to be a Mac user, since I was in such good company.
Then I read slashdot.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Just checking "whois" records (and not doing a real search) it looks like Panic.com is a few years older than Vignette.com.
If you'd read it, you'd see nowhere in there do they think they got fucked over by different companies. Apple bought their main competitor after Panic was already had a deal in progress with AOL, and then released what they see as a different (and in some ways superior) program. Apple even tried to hire them on.
Not a "fucked over" situation.
Mod point free since 2001
The Mac platform has a pretty good shareware community that is helped by sites like MacUpdate and VersionTracker. The Mac, having a smaller percentage of the market, has the benefit (for shareware developers at least) of having more holes that shareware developers can fill. So if you have a great idea and can turn it into a great app, then you have a good chance of finding success in the Mac market. Watson, Konfabulator, and NetNewsWire are a few great shareware apps on the Mac. Unfortunately Apple might decide to fill the same holes that your app might fill as was the case with Watson and now Konfabulator.
I have found a small amount of success myself with my Shareware app, HyperSpell. But its nothing I could ever quit my day job over. Mainly its something to do in my spare time and it filled a hole that I wanted filled. The biggest problem most shareware developers face is just getting people to know that their app exists (marketing).
--
Not free as in effort, but I'm willing to try it.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
The only reason why Sonique's decoder sounds 'better' is because they're breaking spec and likely doing filtering behind the user's back. I'm not so sure if the 1.9x series of Sonique players before their eventual failure to realize 2.0 were any different, but I doubt it.
As it says in the article linked above, they weren't do anything they shouldn't in regards to filtering. All things being equal, everyone's MP3 decoder following proper specs, should sound exactly the same -- the way it should be. It's not the decoder's job to filter anything, that's the job of an actual DSP chain you can tweak how you wish.
So the next time someone is making claims about a decoder sounding 'better', provided that they're both using the same output at the same volume levels... One can realize that this is either placebo or there's something going on where nothing should be. Best way to resolve this, is to use whatever available wav logging options to capture samples from each of the disputed players and then ABX them.
It's not like 10 years ago when you could pick up a $99 copy of Turbo C++ and write a decent win31 program from it.
It's funny you should bring up Turbo C++ since Borland still has inexpensive development tools that are perfect for a shareware developer. Delphi 7 Personal is under $100 and is very capable for Win32 GUI development. If C++ is more to your liking, you can pick up C++ Builder 6 Personal for around $65.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
My *personal* preference is, if you are quitting development on a piece of software, and have no plans of going back to it, that companies would GPL is.
Umm, I think the Panic guys would have a rather hard time in doing that for Audion, as the thingy has a built-in Fraunhofer-licensed MP3 encoder...
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Waaaahhhh it has a pop up asking me to purchase it. it's evil....
Your definitions of shareware are soo out of whack it is not funny.
Shareware is software you are authorized by the author to distribute but you are not allowed to charge for and either the software has a time out function or some other way the author (ie a pop up or something in the readme file) reminds you he expects to be paid.
The idea behind shareware is that the users are able to "SHARE" the software with their friends/associates/random strangers. It is way of advertising by word of mouth, and no, Shareware can and usually does require registration. What your are mistaking for shareware is freeware or donation-ware (ie. bittorrent client).
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Not quite. In my mind, the difference between nagware and shareware is simple. Nagware produces a dialog box or something similar that whines at you until you register. Often, you must wait 60 seconds before you are able to dismiss this dialog box.
Examples of nagware:
-DialogView, an extension for Mac OS Classic that made your standard Open/Save dialogs look nicer, would bother you upon startup until registration
-In Escape Velocity, Hector the Parrot orbits the outskirts of planetary systems and whines until you register. In some versions, he attacks your ship.
-WinZip makes you click "I Agree" every time you use it!
-GraphicConverter has logarithmic scale that relates the time you must wait for it to start up and the number of days you have gone without registration.
Examples of shareware:
-Senseless Violence I, a Frogger clone with babies instead of frogs, did not present a single in-game annoyance or ad. You only had a reminder to register in a readme file.
-Zipple; another Mac OS Classic add-on that could animate your Apple, Help, and Application menus; no registration necessary. The author sent you a bunch more Zipples.
-mkb
Look at the top business apps on Apple.com's own download sections...
Task Time 3.0
Redlien Account Executive
Studiometery
These are just the ones off the top of my head... and btw, if you haven't crashed Adobe Photoshop, inDesign, Apple Mail, and other "Professionally" created applications (you know, made in those real dev environments) then you're just not using your Mac enough! Bugs happen.. it just so happens that RB allows more people to get in the game.
I used to have the same complaints about iTunes. Unfortunately, if you want to play AAC-encoded music, you're pretty much stuck. So I finally gave up trying to find an alternative and now just use software such as Synergy to give me system-wide hotkeys, a little transparent info window, and a bunch of other stuff like control buttons in the menubar. It's pretty nifty all by itself, but there's no shortage of cool little shareware and freeware apps to get more bang for your buck with iTunes. Just look around MacUpdate a bit, you'll find something you like.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
I've been using Transmit another product from Panic software, for a couple years now. Its a FTP client and so much better than anything else out there that I've upgraded from the command line and bought a licence.
I don't know where you're coming from.
There are many free "development environments" for windows.
My favorite is MinGW with MSYS. If you need an IDE, you can use something like bloodshed's Dev-C++, which is a bit buggy, but completely useable. I don't use the IDE, I prefer using a text editor... I guess I'm old, slow, and tired.
Or, if you don't like that, you can get Microsoft's compiler and SDK's for free from MSDN. Again, you'll be doing without an IDE, or suing a third-party one.
Or, if you don't like Microsoft, Intel's C/C++ compiler is also free, or so I've been told. I only use gcc and it's ports so I couldn't say from direct experience.
Now, there are three FREE possibilities for game development on Windows. I bet other people can list more. Where is this high cost of entry that you refer to?
For Firefox there is a great plugin called Spellbound. You just right click in a textarea or input box and select "Check Spelling". There is also a plugin for IE called IESpell which works well for those who still use IE for some reason.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison