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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
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.
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!
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
Just being picky, but what about web-based email clients? Aren't Google, Yahoo, Hotmail and others accessed through a browser?
And... I hate saying this, but... Access can do a lot of simple spreadsheet things. It's not good, and definitely not pretty, but you can do it. After a few years as a spreadsheet, database and general data gimp, I know this (but wish I didn't).
They use IE to access web-mail.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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.
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
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.
On the other hand, a spreadsheet is not something you couldn't do with a pencil, some lined paper and a calculator, at its most basic.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
"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.
Not for games. Not for high end games, anyway. Why? DirectX. Once you've done the work to support OpenGL as well as DirectX, you've done most of the work for a Mac port anyway... and you can probably toss off an SDL version for Linux as well...
Companies that publish (and sell) Mac games:
Additional Mac Game Resources:
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.