At 09:13 05/04/2001 -0400, Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. wrote:
>"Simon P. Lucy" wrote:
> >
> > It isn't a lame excuse. I don't hate any platform, but the Mac platform,
> > for me at any rate, isn't commercially viable as a development
> > platform. Why should I invest a couple of grand in a platfom that isn't
> > going to return me anything?
>
>Why isn't there any comercial viability.
I have one client that has Macs, they use them for catalogue layout and are
generally happy and religious about them. All of their office systems run
on a PC network, they've not even got around to networking the Macs into
the same network because there is no cross over. None of the Mac users get
involved in the office systems and none of the rest of the staff need
anything on the Macs. Sharing the printers is about all they would win and
I think they prefer not having to share them.
>There are only two (Appleworks and MicroSoft Word) Word Processing Programs.
Usable word processors on PCs are pretty light on the ground as well.
>There is only one comercial Spreadsheet program for the Masses MicroSoft
>Excel.
Lotus has pretty much lost the plot in relation to spreadsheets, so Excel
is about it on Win32.
>There is only two highend Drafting programs for Mechanical and
>Electronic Engineering.
>Pne of them had shelved the Mac version for ten years. (Article in MacWorld).
Autodesk seems to have recovered most of the ground it lost. The other PC
CAD products are for the most part marginal. There is a strong set of 3D
modelling and manipulation products, but then MS doesn't really make much
effort there.
>If I had time to sit and research I could come up products we are
>hurting for. The reason Mac Software is so expensive is that no one
>takes the Mac Platform seriously and don't reliaze they could Make Money.
The number of users looking for additional software on Macs is very very
tiny and for a developer such as myself non existent. iMac is a different
animal from a PC, its intended to be a turnkey consumer product and as such
it does fine but its not going to generate a cent of third party revenue.
There is however a huge market in vertical market applications, accounting
system, business support software of many and various kinds. Macs just
don't figure for the general user in those areas, not in Europe at least.
>With the use of a Orange Micro Card or Virtual PC you can run PC
>Programs just as well on a Mac as a PC.
>(Games maybe not).
That doesn't sound like either a technical or economic solution.
Simon
==================================
We are not the stuff that abides,
but patterns that perpetuate themselves.
Norbert Weiner
