RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
The same people complaining about this, will most likely get dinner using Uber eats tonight. Corey Cook From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of k...@axistech.net Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 12:09 PM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Hi Richard, I saw that after I wrote my message but I stick by what I said. Some people have no idea what it takes to develop and maintain an app. And, because of this small market it often costs more than an app for the general market. And I wonder how many of the folks complaining about what boils down to $5 per month spend that much on a cup of coffee or a burger. Karl Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:46 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Rl, I have nothing to do with the company. I am just a long time supporter and previously a beta tester for Winston back in the early days. Richard, USA "It's no great honor to be blind, but it's more than a nuisance and less than a disaster. Either you're going to fight like hell when your sight fails or you're going to stand on the sidelines for the rest of your life." -- Dr. Margaret Rockwell Phanstiehl Founder of Audio Description (1932-2009) My web site: <https://www.turner42.com> https://www.turner42.com From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 8:18 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com <mailto:karl.axist...@gmail.com> Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new message
Re: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
I agree. It helps me a lot in my teaching. - Original Message - From: k...@axistech.net To: viphone@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:18 AM Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more importantly, it reinforced for me how much people actually rely on Voice Dream. For many, it’s not just a handy app that makes some things easier but an essential part of life. So in addition to my three initial goals, I gave myself a fourth goal: make sure Voice Dream can operate without me, and survive me. In other words, make Voice Dream sustainable. How do I do that? Voice Dream needs more people in addition to me and Sandra, who does customer support. It needs programmers. It needs a CEO who can manage the overall business and products. It needs marketing. It needs a board of directors. This is the minimum staffing level to make the company operate sustainably. But today, Voice Dream doesn’t generate nearly enough revenue to pay for even a skeletal crew. Why not? It comes down to simple economics. An initial, one-time fee, even $20, is not enough to fund maintenance for a productivity app that users expect to work indefinitely. Software is not like a hammer or a printed book — it functions in a complex and ever-changing environment of hardware, software, and external services. And over the past 10 years, that environment has become more complex and brittle, and it’s changing more frequently. Last year, I spent more than 50% of my time just to maintain the status-quo, without adding new features: dealing with OS and framework changes, new hardware devices, new App Store requirements, fixing newly discovered bugs, and working around bugs outside of my code. $20 is not enough to fund maintenance forever, let alone adding new features. Another problem with the one-time-fee business model is that revenue is unpredictable because it comes entirely from new
RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
Hi Richard, I saw that after I wrote my message but I stick by what I said. Some people have no idea what it takes to develop and maintain an app. And, because of this small market it often costs more than an app for the general market. And I wonder how many of the folks complaining about what boils down to $5 per month spend that much on a cup of coffee or a burger. Karl Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:46 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Rl, I have nothing to do with the company. I am just a long time supporter and previously a beta tester for Winston back in the early days. Richard, USA "It's no great honor to be blind, but it's more than a nuisance and less than a disaster. Either you're going to fight like hell when your sight fails or you're going to stand on the sidelines for the rest of your life." -- Dr. Margaret Rockwell Phanstiehl Founder of Audio Description (1932-2009) My web site: <https://www.turner42.com> https://www.turner42.com From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 8:18 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com <mailto:karl.axist...@gmail.com> Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more important
RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
Oops, I meant Karl. Fingers going ahead of my brain again, . Richard, USA "It's no great honor to be blind, but it's more than a nuisance and less than a disaster. Either you're going to fight like hell when your sight fails or you're going to stand on the sidelines for the rest of your life." -- Dr. Margaret Rockwell Phanstiehl Founder of Audio Description (1932-2009) My web site: <https://www.turner42.com> https://www.turner42.com From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 8:46 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Rl, I have nothing to do with the company. I am just a long time supporter and previously a beta tester for Winston back in the early days. Richard, USA "It's no great honor to be blind, but it's more than a nuisance and less than a disaster. Either you're going to fight like hell when your sight fails or you're going to stand on the sidelines for the rest of your life." -- Dr. Margaret Rockwell Phanstiehl Founder of Audio Description (1932-2009) My web site: <https://www.turner42.com> https://www.turner42.com From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 8:18 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com <mailto:karl.axist...@gmail.com> Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more importantly, it reinforced for me how much people actually rely on Voice Dream. For many, it’s not just a handy app that makes some things easier but an essential part of life. So in a
RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
supp...@voicedream.com <mailto:supp...@voicedream.com> Richard, USA "It's no great honor to be blind, but it's more than a nuisance and less than a disaster. Either you're going to fight like hell when your sight fails or you're going to stand on the sidelines for the rest of your life." -- Dr. Margaret Rockwell Phanstiehl Founder of Audio Description (1932-2009) My web site: <https://www.turner42.com> https://www.turner42.com From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of regina alvarado Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 8:23 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... I get where Winston is coming from, but it is just the fact that subscriptions are taking over the world. By the time you get all the subscriptions and pay for them your whole check is gone. I just can’t afford it. So, I will find another reader, which probably will not be anywhere near as good. By the way, what is the address for Support for voice stream again please thank you. I am so grateful to Winston for a wonderful app. I definitely used it. On Mar 26, 2024, at 11:18 AM, k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> wrote: Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com <mailto:karl.axist...@gmail.com> Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more importantly, it reinforced for me how much people actually rely on Voice Dream. For many, it’s not just a handy app that makes some things easier but an essential part of life. So in addition to my three initial goals, I gave myself a fourth goal: make sure Voice Dream can operate without me, and survive me. In other words, make Voice Dream sustainable. How do I do that? Voice Dream needs more people in addition to me and Sandra, who does customer support. It needs programmers. It needs a CEO who can manage the overall business and products. It needs mark
RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
Rl, I have nothing to do with the company. I am just a long time supporter and previously a beta tester for Winston back in the early days. Richard, USA "It's no great honor to be blind, but it's more than a nuisance and less than a disaster. Either you're going to fight like hell when your sight fails or you're going to stand on the sidelines for the rest of your life." -- Dr. Margaret Rockwell Phanstiehl Founder of Audio Description (1932-2009) My web site: <https://www.turner42.com> https://www.turner42.com From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of k...@axistech.net Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 8:18 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net <mailto:k...@axistech.net> Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com <mailto:karl.axist...@gmail.com> Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com <mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com> > On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more importantly, it reinforced for me how much people actually rely on Voice Dream. For many, it’s not just a handy app that makes some things easier but an essential part of life. So in addition to my three initial goals, I gave myself a fourth goal: make sure Voice Dream can operate without me, and survive me. In other words, make Voice Dream sustainable. How do I do that? Voice Dream needs more people in addition to me and Sandra, who does customer support. It needs programmers. It needs a CEO who can manage the overall business and products. It needs marketing. It needs a board of directors. This is the minimum staffing level to make the company operate sustainably. But today, Voice Dream doesn’t generate nearly enough revenue to pay for even a skeletal crew. Why not? It comes down to simple economics. An initial, one-time fee, even $20, is not enough to fund maintenance for a productivity app that users expect to work indefinitely. Software is not like a hammer or a printed book — it functions in a complex and ever-changing environment of h
Re: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
I get where Winston is coming from, but it is just the fact that subscriptions are taking over the world. By the time you get all the subscriptions and pay for them your whole check is gone. I just can’t afford it. So, I will find another reader, which probably will not be anywhere near as good. By the way, what is the address for Support for voice stream again please thank you. I am so grateful to Winston for a wonderful app. I definitely used it.On Mar 26, 2024, at 11:18 AM, k...@axistech.net wrote:Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology ConsultantAxis4304 South El Camino St.Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285E-mail: k...@axistech.netAlternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Richard TurnerSent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AMTo: viphone@googlegroups.comSubject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more importantly, it reinforced for me how much people actually rely on Voice Dream. For many, it’s not just a handy app that makes some things easier but an essential part of life. So in addition to my three initial goals, I gave myself a fourth goal: make sure Voice Dream can operate without me, and survive me. In other words, make Voice Dream sustainable. How do I do that? Voice Dream needs more people in addition to me and Sandra, who does customer support. It needs programmers. It needs a CEO who can manage the overall business and products. It needs marketing. It needs a board of directors. This is the minimum staffing level to make the company operate sustainably. But today, Voice Dream doesn’t generate nearly enough revenue to pay for even a skeletal crew. Why not? It comes down to simple economics. An initial, one-time fee, even $20, is not enough to fund maintenance for a productivity app that users expect to work indefinitely. Software is not like a hammer or a printed book — it functions in a complex and ever-changing environment of hardware, software, and external services. And over the past 10 years, that environment has become more complex and brittle, and it’s changing more frequently. Last year, I spent more than 50% of my time just to maintain the status-quo, without adding new features: dealing with OS and framework changes, new hardware devices, new App Store requirements, fixing newly discovered bugs, and working around bugs outside of my code. $20 is not enough to fund maintenance forever, let alone adding new features. Another problem with the one-time-fee business
RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
Hello Richard, This message is very much appreciated and completely understandable. Unfortunately in the free or low cost app world we often forget what it takes to keep them going. Clearly your company is small and hasn’t large amounts of resources to keep basically giving away such a valuable program. Thank you for your straight forward honesty. Karl __ Karl Smith, Access Technology Consultant Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84129 Phone: 801-652-5285 E-mail: k...@axistech.net Alternate E-mail: karl.axist...@gmail.com Twitter http://twitter.com/axistech From: viphone@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Richard Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 9:08 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ... This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more importantly, it reinforced for me how much people actually rely on Voice Dream. For many, it’s not just a handy app that makes some things easier but an essential part of life. So in addition to my three initial goals, I gave myself a fourth goal: make sure Voice Dream can operate without me, and survive me. In other words, make Voice Dream sustainable. How do I do that? Voice Dream needs more people in addition to me and Sandra, who does customer support. It needs programmers. It needs a CEO who can manage the overall business and products. It needs marketing. It needs a board of directors. This is the minimum staffing level to make the company operate sustainably. But today, Voice Dream doesn’t generate nearly enough revenue to pay for even a skeletal crew. Why not? It comes down to simple economics. An initial, one-time fee, even $20, is not enough to fund maintenance for a productivity app that users expect to work indefinitely. Software is not like a hammer or a printed book — it functions in a complex and ever-changing environment of hardware, software, and external services. And over the past 10 years, that environment has become more complex and brittle, and it’s changing more frequently. Last year, I spent more than 50% of my time just to maintain the status-quo, without adding new features: dealing with OS and framework changes, new hardware devices, new App Store requirements, fixing newly discovered bugs, and working around bugs outside of my code. $20 is not enough to fund maintenance forever, let alone adding new features. Another problem with the one-time-fee business model is that revenue is unpredictable because it comes entirely from new customers. There are big spikes and troughs. So in addition to being insufficient, the unpredictability makes it very risky to hire people, which is a fixed expense. Then there is the looming issue of what happens if new customers dwindle because the market is saturated. Then how would
RE: Making everyone pay for voice dream, a blog post from Winston Chen ...
This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it. So, why go with the subscription model? The short answer is, Voice Dream as a company is not sustainable right now, and subscriptions are the only way for Voice Dream to become sustainable. When I started Voice Dream 10 years ago, I set out to accomplish three goals: 1) do something good for the world; 2) have autonomy and freedom; and 3) earn enough money to live comfortably. With some hard work (and quite a bit of luck), I succeeded. Voice Dream helps people with visual impairments and dyslexia read and has won many awards, so I think my work has made a positive impact; I did not take any outside investment, so I only have to answer to myself; and my total income from Voice Dream is about what I would make if I joined Google or Facebook as a software engineer. By any reasonable standard, it provides my family with a comfortable living. So why change anything? When COVID started, my wife and I finally wrote our wills. And contemplating a premature death made me realize that Voice Dream – in its present form – would not survive for long if I become incapacitated or worse. It would wither away: one day something will break, and then another and another, and at some point it will stop working altogether. Why? Because it’s my personal passion project. I wrote all the code and no one else in the world knows it. I vividly remember an incident several years ago. It was a weekend and I was away from home without my laptop. When I checked email on my phone, there were hundreds of new messages, with new emails coming in every few seconds. PDF files had stopped loading – for everyone. Many students wrote that they had exams or assignments, and without Voice Dream they couldn’t study. I caught the next flight home. Through that abjectly horrifying experience, I learned to never be apart from my laptop. But more importantly, it reinforced for me how much people actually rely on Voice Dream. For many, it’s not just a handy app that makes some things easier but an essential part of life. So in addition to my three initial goals, I gave myself a fourth goal: make sure Voice Dream can operate without me, and survive me. In other words, make Voice Dream sustainable. How do I do that? Voice Dream needs more people in addition to me and Sandra, who does customer support. It needs programmers. It needs a CEO who can manage the overall business and products. It needs marketing. It needs a board of directors. This is the minimum staffing level to make the company operate sustainably. But today, Voice Dream doesn’t generate nearly enough revenue to pay for even a skeletal crew. Why not? It comes down to simple economics. An initial, one-time fee, even $20, is not enough to fund maintenance for a productivity app that users expect to work indefinitely. Software is not like a hammer or a printed book — it functions in a complex and ever-changing environment of hardware, software, and external services. And over the past 10 years, that environment has become more complex and brittle, and it’s changing more frequently. Last year, I spent more than 50% of my time just to maintain the status-quo, without adding new features: dealing with OS and framework changes, new hardware devices, new App Store requirements, fixing newly discovered bugs, and working around bugs outside of my code. $20 is not enough to fund maintenance forever, let alone adding new features. Another problem with the one-time-fee business model is that revenue is unpredictable because it comes entirely from new customers. There are big spikes and troughs. So in addition to being insufficient, the unpredictability makes it very risky to hire people, which is a fixed expense. Then there is the looming issue of what happens if new customers dwindle because the market is saturated. Then how would maintenance be funded? Moreover, the subscription model is actually more fair. Reader for iOS became available in the Apple App Store 10 years ago and sold for $2. Functionally, it did very little. But the people who paid $2 in 2012 now have a powerful and feature-rich app that is best in – an app that is now worth far more than the $2 we originally charged. On the flip-side, someone could buy the app today for $20 and never use it. With subscriptions, only people who use it pay for it, and you can cancel if you don’t want to use it anymore. The number of paying customers is likely to be lower, but revenue will be higher overall and more predictable. That would allow Voice Dream to hire people. With additional programmers, product quality will improve and new features will arrive faster. And, most importantly, it’ll turn
