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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."
It's an inspiring read on the history of a shareware developer and his adventures thus far.
Shareware developer? I know what a Spyware developer is, and I know of open source and closed source; but is there really such a thing as a shareware developer anymore? There's adware, begware and nagware (hardly any freeware left, but there is some)... but this shareware is not computing. I can't think of one product that is truly shareware; "A shareware program is accompanied by a request for payment, and often payment is required per the terms of the license past a set period of time (although some consider this requirement to cause the software to be not shareware but a demo)."
Well I guess Audion is going the way of actual freeware. Nice!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Speaking of old MP3 stuff, there was once Sonique but it went by the wayside after it was bought by lycos and the original creative team was disbanded.
Sometimes it's better for everyone if some big corporation doesn't buy an application because then the developers and creative people stay together simply for the love of the project and breakthrus can be made rather than pandering to profit margins......
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Much preferred SoundJam, mainly from an interface point of view, but also because Panic's apps aren't the most stable things in the world. It (SoundJam) still does things that I much prefer to iTunes, mainly no song database and having Finder-labeled files showing up in their proper colours in the playlist. Very useful for quickly finding all the bad files I label Brown. :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It's nice that this program is being made available, rather than becoming a footnote, lost forever, in the software history books. Kudos to the programmer for being considerate of his users.
This is kind of a breath of fresh air for me. I hardly ever read accounts of Apple developers. There are infinite stories of Linux and Windows developers, but finally having the experiences of an Apple coder published is pretty cool.
- dshaw
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(+)
A solid tale of adventure, including the Reality Distortion Field.
Well,
he's managed to avoid working in a soul-sucking job for a large corporation, where his creativity would dry up and his voice go unheeeded. He's managed to keep his sense of humour through it all (those barbed comments from Steve have to hurt), and he is actually more aware than ever that he's better off going his own way and creating the stuff *he* wants to make. I'd say it was inspiring in that he's happy, doing what he wants to do, and can make money doing it. Software companies always copy each other, that's the way it works, and I'm glad they do or we'd be stuck with a choice between several apps with orthogonal features none of which did everything we want.
Actually the comment from Steve about iPhoto made me laugh as it's really one of Apple's worst products and could easily be bested, even after a couple of revisions. Someone could do worse than come up with a better alternative and sell it as shareware; I'm sure a lot of people who take photos as a hobby wouldn't mind a decent app to organise their images.
One where you could edit comments for more than one image at once for example, or add custom tags to images, or which has flexible HTML export. Perhaps one where the internal file system wasn't so byzantine that once the files are in there your best bet for getting them out is to drag and drop to the desktop. One which had a decent search facility. I could go on, I'm thinking of something like iView, but with basic functionality free (to compete with iphoto) and then a few extras for registering.
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
Freaking pathetic. These guys passed up an opportunity to become iTunes, and why?? Because they thought AOL was going to solve all of their problems, because they couldn't hold a frickin' meeting without them?!? I know it's easy to spot in retrospect, but that's so pathetic, it should have been easy to spot at the time... I mean, you're an Apple developer and Apple wants to meet with you, so you... don't??!? What would Apple have had to do to buy these guys big frickin' houses?!?
Tell you what - if you're a small software developer being contacted by Apple, hire me as your managerial consultant. I'll make sure you meet with them, at the very least!!
The funniest thing is the referral to the /. announcement of the iPod.
:)
With my 20/20 hindsight glasses, the comments are hysterical.
CmdrTaco editorialized "Lame." Many vehemently predicted a miserable failure: "I don't see many sales in the future of iPod."
At the time, I thought "Really cool, but really expensive." Who could have known it would be so popular!
Please help find my missing daughter: FindSabrina.org
I don't quite get the sine qua non of the story, although its a nice story and I'd like to.
Let's see... They're so enamoured of Jobs that they have "brain expolosions" in his presence.
They love making their software.
Jobs courts them.
They pass.
They stop making the software.
Now they're happy ever after without Steve and without making the software??
When Frank did it his way he got to keep the money and the software.
Oh and there were women.
Still, it's nice to read a story from happy people.
Okay, I'm not a huge MP3 hoarder, and never was, but I never really got into MP3s ever because all the audio programs seemed "too cool." It was cool to make an audio player that supported visual features? Why? Back in the days before napster:
Me: Hey, are there any programs that can play these MP3s?
MP3 guru: Are there? d00d! Look at these MP3 players!! This one has awesome support for skins and its skins are cross compatible! Look at all the choices you have to make your MP3 player look cool!
Me: ummmm yea but is it easy to use and will it play my Mp3s?
MP3 guru: and this one supports alpha channeling so it's like L337 n' stuff!
Me: Hello? How does making the player transparent make it work better. Does this audio program even have audio features? And what is L337? Some kind of code to unlock the program?
----
Basically I never got why back in the day so much time was spent on how the player looked vs. how the player worked. Even these days, there are visual features of iTunes (such as that weird psychedelic screensaver thingie that changes shapes while different music is playing) which I just don't get why anyone wants them. I just want to listen to music and I want my software to make sense!
It seemed like MP3 players were designed by the niche and for the niche, until MP3s were no longer a niche.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
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
I'm writing this because I too am part of the small fraternity of Mac MP3 application developers. I was part of a three man team writing MusicMatch Jukebox for Mac OS when iTunes was released. And soon afterward I was out of a job.
I know that iTunes would have crushed all competition anway, but Steve Jobs is the guy who saw through the stupidity of skins. WinAmp had them, so every MP3 player has skins. You can read in the article about the incredible amount of wasted development effort spent on improving the skins-giving them transparent corners and whatnot.
At MusicMatch we spent a third of our time developing the skinning engine. And what did we end up with? A lot of ugly, non-intuitable windows designed by graphic artists with no concept of UI design, windows that docked in some skins but not others, and with list views that couldn't expand because of the surrounding bitmapped edges. If we'd have settled on a standard interface and just worked on getting the music database, radio streaming, and audio playback working we'd have finished much, much faster, and given the user a nicer experience to boot.
Steve saw what was valuable in a music player and told the SoundJam guys to junk everything else. Simplify. Simplify. And the result is the preeminent digital music player.
The Panic guy writing the linked article even now doesn't admit the wasted effort, and why he couldn't come up with a list of reasons why Panic 2 was better than iTunes 1.
In theory, it sounds all good to meet with Apple. I mean hey, they rock, don't they? They have a cool culture, cool products, etc. But c'mon...give these guys a break. First, they didn't know they were going to be asked to be iTunes. Hell, maybe in the back of their heads they were thinking Steve (Jobs) just wanted to shut them up. It's easy for you to say they were dumb now, but back then...they had no clue. And let's not forget...everyone laughed at the idea of mp3s being a viable money maker. It was just for college kids to steal music and play...
Let me ask you this. Do you run your own shop? I commend them for thinking about what they want in life. Like he said, they're young, not married, so why not go for it? Follow your dreams. And if the going gets tough, I'm sure Jobs would have no problem hiring them if they said "we need a job". I for one am impressed with their decision. It was tough, and they're following their dreams.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
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.
i worked for scopus, bought by siebel. millions of lines of code, all trashed
i worked for centerrun, nee raplix, bought by Sun. 40 people worked really hard to make a great product. now you can find it on sun's site, if you look carefully. advertising budget/market awareness of solution? zero
if you sell your software company, you can be confident the software will cease to exist.