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Getting Rich Writing Mac Software
Udo Schmitz writes "Look at this as kind of a followup to an article from yesterday, which was weak and boring although the author had a point. Enter Wil Shipley of Omni Group and Delicious Monster fame. At WWDC 2005 he gave a talk (PDF) about why he develops software for the Mac, when "all the other kids" are programming for Windows. Choice quote: "Windows users only ever use three apps: Word, IE (for e-mail), and iTunes"."
We all know Windows users make heavy use of Gator, Internet Search Bar, Precision Time, SQL Slammer, Code Red, Nimda, and a lot of other cool programs they may not even know they have!
I just wish Windows users would stop sharing all this great software with the rest of us!
courtesy of Google Cache
Wrong story, bucko.
Go easy on him mods -- I'm sure the front page refreshed and he didn't realize a new story came up.
In any event, there seems to be a much tighter community amongst Mac (and free software) users that makes marketting easier. The best apps spread by word of mouth much more quickly than in the windows world. If I felt like trolling, I might suggest that this is due to software elitism helping form a sense of community. Oh, what the hell. I'm a Mac user, so I'll say it anyway.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Google Cache of the PDF in HTML..
: wilshipley.com/blog/WWDC_Student_Talk.pdf
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:D7mbdKHrgJEJ
Anyone who can't figure out that you should seek advice from an accountant and lawyer to protect against getting audited or sued probably shouldn't be running a company.
Anyone who can't figure out that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel when coding, or that you should get rid of those pesky O(N^2) algorithms probably shouldn't be overseeing a software development venture.
The rest of the talk seems to present like a substitute for the sort of things I would imagine should be taught in business schools, but probably isn't.
-JMP
Games.
AOL Instant messenger (which is getting tobe the most effective virus distribution mechanism after Outlook Express).
Windows Media Player.
Games.
Nero (because Microsoft doesn't have a media burning framework).
Games.
DVD Express (because Microsoft doesn't have a DVD player).
Did I mention games?
NASA World Wind and Google Earth are cool right now (except that they're really games).
Oh yeh, games.
Basically, you have programs that ship with Mac OS X anyway but Windows needs them to patch the OS, and games. There's some of that on the Mac, too... Shapeshifter, Codetek Virtual Desktop, and so on. But those don't port to Windows real well.
Games? A year from now, we'll be seeing Windows games getting ported to the Mac.
Yeh, I can see his point. I don't think I'm entirely convinced, but I get it.
So your point is "Windows: great if you develop games, but if you develop anything else, go with Mac", right? :-)
I'm a 21 year Mac user, I buy all of my software to support the developers who code for our platform.
It was hard during the "dark years" while baboons ran Apple, but now it's getting so much better so fast it's not even silly.
You may say "games", I have bought 20 games this year alone at $50 or more a pop for my DP PowerMac G5
Why do you say? Why not a cheap PC instead?
Well first of all I'm older, my reflexes are not as good anymore to take on these kids online. I need a machine to do my work in peace and security and enjoying my mid-life crises with a occasional diversion into 3D games is a pleasant diversion.
Heck gaming is all going to X-Boxes and Playstations, they are cheaper and appeal to a mass audience.
Mac software has to be GOOD software, because well we are not as numerous as the common windows, so it really has to fill a need and a want well for a large percentage of us to buy.
Crappie office store programs need not apply.
The decision to shift to Intel processors is opening a lot of eyes, for us Mac users and developers of Wintel software to tap our rather lucrative pursestrings, with Apple giving away WebObjects (a $50,000) program that makes Java applications and runs Apple and Dells webstores etc. is a tremendous incentive.
All I can say is Steve Jobs has had many years to figure out what he could have done if he remained at Apple, now the has his second chance and who knows what to expect.
We need a revolution, change is good, innovation is good and the new Apple is gearing up to change the world once again.
Hello again!
... because I have too. Isn't targeting OSs becoming a bit tired? For the most part, the OS should be transparent to the developer as should the hardware. The only time this shouldn't be true is when the program requires to talk to the hardware or OS directly - which for most apps is never.
The other problem is GUI - different OS, different ideology, different GUI. If Qt have proven nothing else, they have proven that this can be a problem of the past.
What I would love to see is XCode and Cocoa compiling for Linux, Wintel and Sun. They don't even have to release XCode for different platforms, just open up the API so that you can write once compile anywhere. This will fill a huge gap in the market - high performance, cross platform desktop software development. Is it possible? Well yes. I'm not sure how easy core data et al. would be to port, but GNUStep seems to have the rest covered.
Will this mean that less apps are built for Mac? No. Surely it would mean that more apps are writen for Mac, as developers don't have to worry about missing out on the Wintel market, just because they targeted Mac.
Will Apple loose market share? Unlikely. Sure there is a chance that people will see less of a need to switch. But the three major OSs all have different strengths. Linux provides the best-of-the-best in terms of customization. Its not for me, but I can understand the appeal - it just needs pro apps. Macs offer a good spectrum of usability, but suck at server stuff, and some people just don't like Aqua. Windows is what everybody is comfortable with - and thats worth more than a lot of us will ever understand.
Apple might think that keeping technologies like Core* and Aqua proprietary gives them the edge but I don't see how. Mac end users are interested in getting there work done, and unless they're developers, they don't care how. Mac users notice expose, the dock, dashboard and spotlight. Thats how they differentiate between platforms. Getting more developers on to XCode can only be a good thing as it means more apps, and less switchers saying - I hate Mac because it doesn't have app X. It could also be good for Linux, closed source might be the anti-christ, but its difficult to fight the good fight with 2% market share - and there is nothing stopping you from realsing your spanking Cocoa app under the BSD or even GPL.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
He thinks people use ie for email? Does he think people use Access as a spreadsheet too? Silly me, I've been assuming all along that people used IE to surf the web.
As a founder of a Mac OS (and Windows) shareware company for a couple years now (trying to live the self-employed dream), I definitely agree strongly with most of what this guy says... Where I think he shoots himself in the foot is how he talks about his money/car a little too often (it's a little uncouth to make a remark about your money or success more than once, even if its in jest--that's just leadership 101).
Anyway, my other comment was that he doesn't hit on the fact that being a successful startup takes a good chunk of luck as well. You have to be in the right place, at the right time, and usually know the right person(s). He does a lot of hardworking and visionary entrepreneurs that haven't been as successful a disservice when he acts/assumes that luck isn't a major factor. If you look at the infancy stages of most major success stories, there were usually at least a couple "lucky" events that happened in a row.
Just my two cents...
andy
G-Force music visualization
Not wanting to veer too far OT, but having read another story on /. I was inspired to reply to your point in pictorial form. I just found this picture of a bunch of open source developers - they seem quite happy to me, certainly not starving ;^)
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Is that the Windows market is oversaturated. I'm going to suggest that the number of commercial software developers a platform can support is related logrithmically to its user base. Given how massive the Wintel platform's market share is, there is just no room for a small shareware developer looking to break into the market.
Just do a Tucows or Download.com search for _anything_. You'll find about 30 other apps, many of them freeware. And frequently a couple of them will be huge well-established behemoths. Omni would have been insane to make OmniGraffle a Windows-only program with Visio already there. Go do the same searches on the Apple secion of VersionTracker, and you won't find nearly as much stuff, and frequently a bunch of it will have only half the features you want.
And the games market for Macs is so tiny that you can write almost anything and bet that you will get at least some following. There's a Mac-only MMORPG that, technology-wise, is far far behind anything else on the market, but it still manages to keep a loyal community even in the face of games like World of Warcraft.
(Of course, that's probably because there also seem to be a lot of cheapskate, half-assed Mac gamers like me who were unsure about paying $50 for the game PLUS $10-15/mo subscription (My Sirius radio cost less than that!) when we know there's a good chance we would get bored and quit 3 or 4 months into it when that price including startup costs still works out to $30 or so a month. And when we saw that the minimum specs were way above what we had sitting on our desks, that was the nail in the coffin. The shaky, half-assed attempt to get back on topic moral: If you write Mac games, make sure they will run on well-mildewed hardware. On average, Mac users let their computers age much longer than PC users do (I've heard twice as long quoted a few times), and there are not many among them who are the kind to buy a new computer just to be able to play the latest game. If we really cared about games anywhere near that much, we never would have ditched Windows in the first place.)
[snip]
You may say "games", I have bought 20 games this year alone at $50 or more a pop for my DP PowerMac G5
[snip]
I need a machine to do my work in peace and security and enjoying my mid-life crises with a occasional diversion into 3D games is a pleasant diversion.
I did a doubletake here...I read your first sentence as "I'm a 21 year OLD Mac user".
First I was pissed you could afford a dual processor G5 and spend $1k a year on games ("damn kids these days, mummy&daddy buy them everything"), but then I realized you weren't going live past 40, and couldn't decide between feeling sorry for you, or saying "ha-ha!" like that bulley on the Simpsons. Then "he thinks 21 is mid-life?" popped into my head, and finally, "Oh. 21 year user of Macintoshes. Mid life crisis. Ah."
I need to read Slashdot more often, after just waking up. It makes reading it far more interesting and entertaining.
Please help metamoderate.
The accompanying audio (.M4A) I forgot to link to in the blurb.
It was hard during the "dark years" while baboons ran Apple...You're 21 now, so you must have been, what, 11? 12? 13?
I am part owner/developer of www.xheadsoftware.com and we've had some success, but need to spread the word more. Will makes it sounds easy, but you don't make 54k in one day w/ zero advertising, he had to get the word out some way. We do press releases and are all over Google and the download sites and do some banner ads too, but I would like to know what other Mac related sites people use to get the word out. Which ways to spread the word are most effective in the Mac community? -Jeff
www.xheadsoftware.com
Games? A year from now, we'll be seeing Windows games getting ported to the Mac.
Actually there is less incentive for porting games to x86 Macs than PowerPC Macs. Basically x86 Mac shares the same problem as Linux, emulation is viable. With PowerPC emulation was not a viable alternative, you had to emulate the API and the CPU. Emulating the CPU is a monstrous performance killer. With an x86 Mac CPU emulation is not necessary, VirtualPC and presumably Wine may run a Windows game at near native speed.
If gamers can emulate the Win32 version of a game then doing a port to Linux or x86 Mac is much harder to justify financially. You can not just look at the number of potential sales because the Linux/Mac version is canabalizing Win32 sales. If a Linux/Mac sale replaces a Win32 sale then you actually lost money. The potential market is the segmnent that refuses to emulate, and in the Linux case those who refuse to dual boot as well.
More power to the author of the talk, definitely, however, personally I think most of the shareware scene on macs is completely out of control. Most shareware authors expect people to pay something like $40 for a thin wrapper over some fundamental system tweak, like a firewall wrapper, some way to tweak the kernel priorities and whatnot.
In the case of the author, he expect people to pay the same $40 for something that will index their personal library (books, videos, etc). Sure it is very cool with an impressive GUI, barcode support using a video camera, and all that, but it is not something you couldn't do with a spreadsheet, at its most basic.
And evidently people pay. He says he's making a small fortune with this. Well great, excellent for him (nice car BTW).
People may say his software is innovative, sure. To me however if he stopped making his delicious library for some reason I wouldn't care, whereas if the people who are writing Scribus, Sodipodi and the Gimp (for example !) stopped tomorrow that would be terribly sad.
Anyway this might explain why the Mac isn't really my platform (event though I do own an iBook and use it every day) and I like Linux better. Perhaps the people who work tring to make Linux better aren't so much interested in making up fluff that will sell.
I started reading Inside Macintosh in '83 and programming the Mac in '84 as well. I have also worked extensively on the dark side. Two things about this shift to x86:
It changes almost nothing for developers or users. The reasons to target or use Macs were the same before the x86 announcement and after. For users: They rarely even know what kind of CPU is in the box let alone care. For developers: assembly language is rarely used, byte swapping is only a minor annoyance, the real problem is technological like portions of the DirectX API and that is unchanged.
The switch to x86 was not part of some brilliant plan. It was a business contingency forced upon Apple. It was wise for Apple to build Mac OS X for x86 all these years but it was a quite natural thing to do given that NextStep was portable and already ran on x86. Running code on multiple platforms is a great way to shake out bugs and to ensure that your code is portable. It was also a prudent "plan B" sort of thing, it would be rediculously unwise to set yourself up for a "sole source" problem. Motorola and IBM do not have the desktop as their primary focus, Apple was screwed. They were not getting the type of CPUs that they needed, especially on the critial laptop side, and they were forced to execute their Intel contingency plan. Intel is focused on the desktop, they are a better partner for Apple. That said the switch will hurt Apple in the short term, it hurts sales, distracts internal developers, makes external developers revisit the notion of whether they want to continue to support Mac or not and thereby requires Apple to re-evangilze again, it destroys a major component of their existing marketing campaigns, etc. I agree the switch is a good business descision, but it was not a long term goal, it was forced upon Apple.
Available here.
I don't want to read
"Perhaps the people who work tring to make Linux better aren't so much interested in making up fluff that will sell."
First off, use Monster's library, and see what it does when you scan a barcode or type in a title, see how well the search engine works, check out the loaning panel, integrated with Address Book.
You can't do all that with a spreadsheet. It's a wonderful program, integrating extremely cool features in the simplest way possible.
And even if you could do it with a spreadsheet, (you might with some hard work even get there, what do I know) using Monster's library is fun and fast.
What you say could easily apply to iPhoto. But to my own amazement, I actually use that program to the limit, while all this cataloguing and stuff really isn't my thing (chaos is my middle name). Why do I use it? It's fun, and it makes you do things with your photo's, like sharing them with parents and friends. Cheesy, I admit, but hey, why not?
I really love a good GUI on a good idea. I recommend the Google photo app to all my PC using friends, but wouldn't switch myself for the world. The best GUI's (imnsho) are still to be found on the mac, even if for every single mac program you find ten windows or linux variants.
Fluff indeed. It is the combination if idea and GUI that makes it dynamite, I hate fluffiness and useless shiny things.
Cheers
I think, therefore I am...I think.
It was hard during the "dark years" while baboons ran Apple...You're 21 now, so you must have been, what, 11? 12? 13?
The grandparent didn't say s/he was 21 s/he said s/he was a 21 year Mac user. I too have been a 20+ year Mac user, which is half my life.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I don't know that there's an app for WinTel that doesn't have an equivalent app for Macs, maybe not the same software from the same company, but from someone else then.
Mac end users are interested in getting there work done, and unless they're developers, they don't care how.
If they are Mac users today it's either because they want to be or because their job requires it, ie their shop uses Macs. You bring up a good point about Macs though, they simply work! Though I've use almost exclusively Windoze the last several years starting in '84-85 through '96 I used Macs mostly, and within several months I hope to be using mostly Macs again. My biggest mistake was when I bought Windoze instead of a Mac.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Given how massive the Wintel platform's market share is, there is just no room for a small shareware developer looking to break into the market.
Personally I prefer to have choices. As for breaking into the market, I think it is possible to break into the WinTel market but it takes more than just programming ability. Find a "need" or want that isn't being satisfied or offer a low price then get the word out. That's the hard part, getting the word out. For instance something I've been thinking about for a long tyme is that I wish there were a photography program like Photoshop but without the price tag. Though I'd like to break into it and get paid, for now I am just an amateur photographer and I'd find it hard to justify paying $600 for it. I know there's gimp, I've used it myself, but it doesn't have all the capabilities PH has. If someone were to come out with software comparable to PH at half the price I bet a lot of people would jump on it. If I were a decent programmer I might of taken gimp and extended it. I knew some photographers or students working on their degree in photography, as a student myself I also took photography though it's not my major, and am sure they'd try it out as well
FalconShould there be a Law?
He doesn't want to be your leader, and he's not going to be. So he doesn't care if he flashes money around, because he doesn't care about you as a follower. He also does mention that most businesses fail.
Playing pornographics games during the day is evil! Play at night!
Amen brother- I'm 20 and when I see a 12-16 year old play I'm thinking they are high on crack. What ever happened to weed?
Companies that publish (and sell) Mac games:
Additional Mac Game Resources:
I did say "...that are worth buying..."
also, the OP said that he spent at least $50 per. Which probably doesn't include shareware (except maybe ambrosia is charging that much now? I think EV was 35$, maybe.)...
but yeah.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I did say "...that are worth buying..."
Worthiness is relative. Ten years ago I spent a small fortune on games with no regrets. That was money well spent to me, very worthwhile, I loved most new games and I loved the variety. Today I have a very different gaming tastes and won't spend more than $10 on any game, it's just not worth it to me in my present state.
I know many people who will spend $50 - $60 on brand new games. I also know many people who refuse to spend that much and will instead wait until those same games are on the $10 - $20 bargain rack.
Allow me to clarify.
/. If you want intelligent discussion, go to Ars Technica or another such site. If not, stop complaining about the moderating system that's at times equally stupid for all posts (except mine...)
Moderation is not fact based, it's highly biased. Also, if you find an article in the Linux section, chances are, the bias is wildly in favor of Linux, with the occasional whine from Mac or Win users. Surprising? Not at all. Of course, the same mechanisms are in play with topics you find in the mac section...
Now, some points on the offending post, mine, which of course is insightful without any bias whatsoever. Ahem. Cough.
First: this comment was a personal opinion, answering another personal opinion. It's about likes of a nice program with a gui against dislikes for the same. As such it doesn't need fact. Either you agree or disagree or don't care at all, based on your own totally personal likes and dislikes. Regardless, the world keeps on turning. Don't try to quantify this. Before you know it, you'll be quantifying your preference for the color blue...
Second: we all know Linux/Windows/BeOS users are Data clones, only prone to thoughtfull introspection, good with a violin and dedicated to facts facts facts. The same goes of course for other OS users, except for those pesky mac users, who're "just like little christian soldiers".
No, I'm not out to insult anybody. In real life, all overly fanatic people are a pain, regardless of their obsession. We adults sigh and try to laugh with it all, right?
Third: this is
Fourth: I don't go out trying to be insightful, please don't be offended by others people's moderation of a simple, spontaneous uttering of a personal opinion on preference. Amso, I'm not defending any position. Who cares what I like. You? I hope not. You think I'm cataloguing all the "Linux is the best" posts and looking for facts to back that up?
Fifth: I can't help noticing that both the parent and your post add insulting generalizations about mac users. That doesn't really add anything to your plea for factual moderation. In fact, if I were to reason as you do, I would have to decide that non-mac users are totally prejudiced and as touchy as hell. Wait a minute, don't they say that about mac users? See, if you ask for intelligent, factual stuff, don't add any of that crap, it really doesn't help.
Anyway, I hope your day will get better. Cheers.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Well, it does give insight into how the people who buy these "fluffy" programs think and why they are willing to pay $40 for them. The GP couldn't understand why people like them, so isn't that just the kind of insight it was asking for?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Yea, I got PSP 7 several years ago and I liked it. Back then Jasc put it out, but now Corel does. I don't know if Corel bought Jasc or just PSP. I've also thought of trying out Corel Painter, to find out how well it works with photos, I may see if they have trialware for the new version.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
besides not being able to see the ride, you miss the hilarity of the
"Work for The Man, or for yourself
You gots to decide"
slide.
I laughed my ass off. That was the best.
Seriously, though, it's a pretty inspirational story, and the "form an LLC" and "you will get sued" points sound like really, really good advice, and the analysis of the over-saturation of the Windows market seems pretty insightful as well.
I'm always amused by the companies and individuals who seem to think of the OS X market as "too small". How many millions of OS X users are there ??? If I make $10 each off of 5% of them I'll have how much money ?? Hmmm...
Where I think he shoots himself in the foot is how he talks about his money/car a little too often (it's a little uncouth to make a remark about your money or success more than once, even if its in jest--that's just leadership 101).
Dude, I watched Wil give this talk at the WWDC student session, and I can tell you that it went over very well indeed.
He does a lot of hardworking and visionary entrepreneurs that haven't been as successful a disservice when he acts/assumes that luck isn't a major factor.
Luck doesn't win you a case full of Apple Design Awards.
Here's a little tip: go and check out Delicious Library, and then check out the apps that Wil was involved with at Omni, and see if you still think he was just lucky.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I just released my first shareware application for Mac OS X, with the hope and belief that an increased market-base, programs like GarageBand (with which it interoperates), an increased interest in home-made music, and a vast broadband internet would help drive sales to amazing heights. When I first marketed the Mac OS 7/8/9 version of the same title the internet was far smaller and far slower and MIDI equipment was a bit more expensive. Whereas the previous version was released as honor-ware, I released this one with save disabled.
(Stairways Shareware did a study that demonstrated that crippled shareware outsells "honor-ware" by a margin of 5 to 1, so I decided to limit the software this time.)
However my experience so far has not proved to me that I can make a living off this particular piece of software. In fact, as I peruse sites like VersionTracker, Softpedia, and MacUpdate I see that the kinds of things people download are surprisingly different than I would expect, or maybe there are more technically-oriented people browsing whose sites than your average Mac user. If you peek through the MacUpdate list, where you can see right up front what's being downloaded, the most popular downloads by far are utilities and internet clients. Most games don't get downloaded as often as you'd think, and programs like mine - ostensibly for music composition and to help guitarists find fingerings and chord names and scale relationships - get even fewer.
I think the key to my program's success is going to be to publicize it in places where Mac users who dabble in GarageBand and software synthesizers hang out. Also, I think it will gain a lot more attention once I get it localized for France, Germany, and Japan. Beyond buying ads in the appropriate places, I think shareware like mine depends on word-of-mouth to gain momentum. So although the sales have so far been disappointing, they could theoretically increase exponentially.
To put some numbers on it, I sold only around 70 or 80 copies of the previous Classic Mac OS version in the three years when I was still updating it. The current version, by contrast, sold 6 copies in the first three days of its initial beta release, but has sold none since then, even though I did one more beta release. According to my previous experiences, each time I release a new version it *should* a little attention and *should* generate a few sales. But again, other strategies might yield better results. Sooner or later it'll be on the MacAddict Disc and other shareware collections, and I'm crossing my fingers that people will then try it out more.
To break even on my effort - or at least to get my rent paid so I can keep making shareware all the time - I need to sell at least 20 copies a month, and so far I don't get the impression that it's going to happen. However, this is only one title and admittedly it's a bit of a niche player.
I've also written an open source (GPL) Wacom Tablet driver (TabletMagic) to support the tablet models that Wacom abandoned on Mac OS X. Ironically, although I don't charge for this software I've actually made more money from donations through SourceForge than my music software has made in shareware fees. For the next major update I think I might move to a shareware model, because all sorts of people appreciate being able to use their Wacoms again, so it's not just niche.
Meanwhile I'm also partnering with a game designer to make a couple of space shoot-em-ups with strategic elements using SDL. These at least will be built for Mac, Windows, and Linux, so they will have a far wider audience. But again, games really depend on publicity. Games certainly have a wider appeal than either music software or obscure drivers, but again they are nothing compared to utilities, and if they have any depth, they take far longer to program and test than almost any other type of software.
Heh, so maybe the lesson is, I should switch to utilities...?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Oops, it's Softpedia that kindly displays number of downloads on the front page, not MacUpdate as I stated.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Painter isn't really for photos at all. It's more for painting.
Lots of fancy brush and canvas settings. You can make it draw like watercolors or inks or markers or pencil, but it isn't really designed for photo-editing.
Exactly. Mac users are hated because they enjoy what they do. This offends the people who are having a miserable time. Like many "Christian soldiers," some people just can't stand seeing someone else have a good time.
Isn't that one of the major problems of the human universe? Losers who start wars over "morality," because they don't like how someone else enjoys their life?
It's actually Microsoft which has more in common with religion. They say "ours is the one true way, if you do not do what we say, you are evil, and an enemy of freedom and capitalism." meanwhile, Apple says "Hey, here's a neat product. Want to buy it? Have fun doing stuff!"
... and then they built the supercollider.
Well, it looks like someone's karma ran over your dogma.
I have shown this app to two of my upstairs neighbors who are muscians and they said they'd check it out, so here's hoping that helps you.
On another note (so to speak): did you write the app in cocoa with objective-c? I ask because I'm trying to get into writing mac apps (don't worry...I won't compete against you in any way unless you're into pipe/valve simulators) and need to do some graphics-intensive work for it, and wanted merely to know what you used to be inspired.
Good luck!