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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
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!
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.)
"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.