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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."
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
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).
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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
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.
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.