On Nov 08, 2006, at 3:20 PM, Daniel Stenning wrote:
To be fair though, RS, like a lot of Mac developers have had to
absorb the
huge resource costs of converting to intel. Something that didn't just
require code amendments, but a wholly different IDE = Xcode - as
opposed to
CodeWarrior. There are still many Mac software houses that have
not yet
delivered intel versions - including Adobe.
My thinking is that now the "storm" is over there will be a time of
consolidation.
Old Code in CW had to be moved sooner or later.
To take advantage of some of the features in OS X you had to move
As for new markets - Linux makes total sense.
Maybe.
Desktop installs of Linux are not common so tools for that
environment sell to a very tiny audience.
Server side makes more sense.
And there may be cultural issues selling commercial software there.
It seems that the accepted culture is that it should be free.
But, REAL know their sales there better than anyone and it would be
instructive to the community to know whether they are seeing lots of
sales of Pro in that market.
I have no customers that even ask for Linux builds.
It's all Windows, then Mac.
You mileage may vary.
RS has to after all differentiate itself as much as possible from
VB.NET and cross platform is a
big part of that.
At this point that's all that is required.
VB.Net isn't xplatform to the same platforms even under Mono
Plus I believe its going to be huge market.
It may be a big market one day.
Not only China but many other countries are increasingly adopting
linux for their publicly funded IT needs.
Sporadically so.
Munich has one of the largest migrations that has been on again off
again for years.
China is still one of MS biggest markets.
Linux on the desktop has issues which have been outlined in several
forums. (http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/index.php?p=133)
But they amount to :
- too many distros to choose from creating confusion
- KDE / GTK incompatibilities and which one you need to run to use
product X
- no Photoshop or other "must have" apps (GIMP is not a substitute
in a professional environment much as anyone tried to tell you it is)
- hardware support
The desktop market seems much too fragmented when it comes to Linux
Not so sure what the rationale was for RB SQL Server - but I am
guessing it
is part of a move to providing a comprehensive toolset for building
web apps
( ala 4D ).
I'm guessing it's the assumption that "one stop shopping" is easier
on the client. But in this case the client is a developer. Making it
so it's easy for a user of my end products to set up and use is
something I should be doing whether its REAL SQL Server or Postgres
or mySQL. Obviously I have more work to do with Postgres, but I also
get a much more capable database.
As for one stop shopping I've been there did that with PowerBuilder
and Sybase and Oracle's tools for Oracle.
With a database company you get adequate tools. Not great tools.
PowerBuilder was great before Sybase bought them. It didn't get that
much better being a part of Sybase.
Partner with a great vendor of a great database and make a great IDE
that works well with it. And attract other third parties.
As for 4D they've mostly been relegated to irrelevance in the market.
They try to be all thing to all people and don't succeed at it. Do
they even have a UB product ?
Be one thing, be great at it and partner with great third parties.
Build the "ecosystem" instead of taking things off the table.
I hate to say this but MS did this VERY VERY well with VB and look
where it landed.
Great third parties, tons of add ons and a huge market share in the
development tool market.
It was very deliberate on their part. I worked for an MS partner at
the time VB got really rolling (between version 2 and 3)
We had some good stuff we'd built and they came to see it and helped
us promote it. They helped us build a market for our stuff instead of
competing with potential third parties.
Anyways .. this has gone way off topic
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