Apple Mac

Hey Jon

I have purchased your products in the past and have found them very good and very useful, but is there any hope of some Mac versions?

Not unless the Mac gets a serious improvement in market share.  5% just isn't worth my time, and that 5% is dwindling fast as Apple's iOS takes over all of their devices.

Jon, from Gartner and IDC - That dip from Acer allowed Apple—posting a nearly 20 percent unit sales growth—to capture 10.5 percent of the US market and to slide right into third place in the US.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/10/apple-breaks-10-market-share-in-us-lenovo-climbs-globally.ars

Yes 10.5% is small but its growing and if you made your apps in adobe air it would work on Windows PC's, Macs, and Linux.

Allowing even more customers for you and your products.

I use all my seo/your software on my mac using VirturalBox, it's FREE PC-emulation software unlike Parallels or VM Ware Fusion.

You might be surprised that only a small portion of my customers come from the U.S., and globally Mac sits at about 5%.

Just a hunch, but I don't think those who would buy your software are evenly distributed across all machines.   I think the Mac is more common among individuals (as opposed to corporate boxes, which make up a big part of those statistics) and especially individuals who use their computers for their livelihood.  And Mac users are used to paying a premium for their software.

I personally have balked at some of your desktop tools because I didn't want to have to use them in Windows.  How about an informal poll to gauge interest?

Gosh I'm sorry - I have just purchased the spinner. However have only just discovered its not Mac friendly.. A real shame as I was really looking forward to giving it a good spin. I'm going to have to cancel my trial and subscription.

Look forward to seeing a Mac version.

Regards
J 

Gosh I'm sorry - I have just purchased the spinner. However have only just discovered its not Mac friendly.. A real shame as I was really looking forward to giving it a good spin. I'm going to have to cancel my trial and subscription.

Look forward to seeing a Mac version.

Regards
J 

Some people use it on a Mac using something called "parallels".

I run parallels all day long on my Mac.

Jon is obv not a Mac programmer and seems to be doing just dandy ignoring the market! I am partners in another piece of software and recently we decided to add a Mac version due to consistent requests for such. I am really not sure how feasible it will be, but as a growing operation we felt it legitimizes our product as well as add some immediate increase in sales. We will see how it goes.

Note: Only Dell and HP sell more PCs than Apple, so don't confuse UNITS with OSs.

The thing about Mac owners is that SO much software isn't available on OSX that, at least in my primary market, the majority already run a virtual machine app like Parallels and can run Windows software just fine.

I will say this: if Apple would ever extract the iPad from their backside and let Windows run OSX in a virtual machine like VMWare without the hacks required presently (only specific processors will work with it) and terms of use violations it causes I would be A LOT more open to porting my software to native Mac versions.

But I won't create an entirely new software development shop for the sake of adding the maybe 1% more customers who don't run a VM on their Mac.

I'm running TBS3 under Parallels on OSx 10.6. I'm getting a lot of crashes and it's nothing I can really trace back to. Makes it hard to use. Love the functionality though otherwise.

Well I use a Mac and I also use the Spinner... I really like the product, but I have to borrow my husband's laptop any time I need to spin (which is often).  It's hard because he also works online and needs his computer to do his work also. 

An idea would be to poll customers or visitors to your site about it.  You might find you'll get interest, or you might find there are only a few of us out there.  If you find that only 5 out of every 100 customers (or potential customers!) wish it was available for Mac then maybe it's not worth your time. But you may find it's much more than that, or you may see poll responses change with time up or down.

Just an idea

I think the suggestion was already somewhere up the thread, but why not create your software in a more portable programming language?
I am a frequent OS hopper (Right now I am writing on my Linux box, but I also own a MAC which is my favorite and if I have to, I also use Windows.) and I would love to be able to use the software on all the boxes I own.

Wouldn't it be possible to run the software on any OS if it was written in Java?


Mike

Yes, but Java is slow and clunky and still suffers from certain modules not being available on certain platforms etc. I have yet to see a true cross plaform development environment that does everything I need for my tools.

That is true - at least sometimes.
I am not sure but in terms of programming I guess there are not too many exotic modules and functions and if I remember rigth all you do is dotnet code, isn't it?
There is the Mono project which is available on both Mac an Linux and which could allow for compiling on both alternative platforms.
Maybe it is worth a try - if it works out of the box you will make quite a few people happy, if it doesn't, well, then let's leave everything like it is.
If you need volunteers for testing on either mac or Linux, drop me a line ;-)

Mike

Mono doesn't work. It doesn't have a web browser object at all, which is crucial to most all of my tools (tbs included).