Apple Gets Stronger

[Captain Krunch]

Roger wrote,
"But even as a Mac user I frankly was embarrased by the harrassment my colleagues gave WB developers."

IMHO this is something peculiar to Apple Computer and it's customers.  Steve Jobs has developed a brand loyalty so strong that in many cases it turns into blind, religious extremism.  AH will take a lot of crap for not going Mac by a very small but vocal group of users.  HOWEVER, if they include a Mac version this group will give them a whole lot MORE grief over the long haul.  

[Captain Krunch]

Horn,
if AH isn't going to be Mac compatible I'm sure HITECH has done plenty of research to back up that decision.  The 124,000 sites that Statmarket uses are broad enough to get an accurate picture of the online market.  Hightech Creations, like any business is all about getting return on investment.  You seem to be taking their lack of MAC support as some sort of personal attack.  It's not.  Spending time on a Macintosh version probably isn't as viable an investment for such a focused product like AH.

As for the chips...

Are you sure that Apple sold 2.57 billion worth of cpu's last year?  Do you have a link I can check that out at?  Near as I can tell, and I could be wrong, Apple has about 6 billion a year in revenue.  Are you saying that nearly 50% of their total revenue comes from CPU's?

[Tigger]

>Sure, pal, knock yerself out.

To be sure I do,

>But if you want to make money at it, it >becomes an elephant of an entirely different >hue...

>If HTC can meet all of it's corporate goals >solely on the Windows side, terrific. I >would think, tho, in the normal flow of >economics, deliberately excluding 2 million >new customers a year would give me          >sumpin to think about...

So based on your opinion if I as a developer want to make any money with my programs I HAVE to program for a small percentage of the computer world. Get real.

Since you are so fond of quoting numbers mind telling me where the stats for the 2 million new users came from? For it to be fair to it should come from an disinterested 3rd party.

I don't trust MS and their claim to a user base, nor would I trust Apple to quote me an accurate number.

I guess my point to all this is HiTech and Co  made a decision and stated upfront that they would not be developing for the mac.

Why is it then that the mac users get up in arms and are basically trying to badger them into developing their game for it anyway.

[This message has been edited by Tigger (edited 08-24-1999).]

[Bombjack]

It was obvious from the first post where this thread would go. Do us all a favour and lock it now, eh?

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-bmjk-
617 Squadron RAF

[Horn]

Hey Krunch/Tigger:

Go here: www.freeedgar.com/
Shows all data relevant to sales (it is part of the annual Apple 10-K filing) of Apple for I think 8 qtrs. Makes for interesting reading--the gross margin on sales was 27%!!!! PC vendors would kill fer such a margin.

And no, website response is not valid in determining a market. As an example, what if we decided to monitor for OS the Apple site? Or for that matter the IBM site? Would the conclusions be without suspicion? Nyet.

The 2 million new users was derived from sales of JUST iMacs (just in 3 qtrs). They only sold 850,000 G3/PowerMacs. Why am I concerned so much w/ numbers? Well, that's how companies make decisions on their products and directions--determining the customer base. HiTech says the number is "unknown"--I'm just tryin to help. By the question I'm assuming you would use innuendo and stuff you heard from "people".

just sayin<tm>
(sigh)

dh

Is it just me, or did these messages all 'o the sudden get reely wide?

[This message has been edited by Horn (edited 08-24-1999).]

PS. Sorry Ronnie. Didn't know. "Ignorance is bliss"


[This message has been edited by Horn (edited 08-29-1999).]

[Horn]

Oh, and btw, I am not up in arms about
any of this-- I'm just dissappointed that I
won't be able to fly with you guys--even if you are a buncha elitist WB pukes.

It is entertaining, however, to straighten out certain, uh, "misconceptions" rampant over in the "Darkside"  

dh

[Captain Krunch]

Horn, I can't get that URL to work.  Could you check it out again?

As for the URL's... they didn't get those off the IBM or Mac site.  Those are from 124 thousand scattered, and independent sites.  That's a pretty broad sample.  I wouldn't trust those figures to tell me what the exact ratio of PC to Mac sales are.  HOWEVER, they sound pretty rock solid as far as web usage.  124 thousand web sites is a massive base to get info from.  The last site I built www.rapfoto.com  in connected to a tracking program on the server it's stored on.  After thousands and thousands of hits Mac users came in at 5% of the total.  That's higher than the numbers given by statmarket but it's not far off.

[Horn]

Sorry Krunch--I couldn't get it to work either--try this:

goto www.apple.com/investor
click on "Annual Reports"
click on "Click here to view the 1998 10-k"
scroll down to Part II, Table2.
Some of the other tables are interesting, too.

Here's an exercise--what percentage is 124K websites of the total number of websites available? If it is a large percentage, say, over 50%, well then I might hafta agree. I submit the number is more like 5%. If so, ur sayin that a 5% sample gives a solid number?

dh

[hitech]

All those number's are moot points what numbers I use is % of online flight sim players using the mac. I did learn those number's very well. Rember I was the CEO of ICI and tracked those number all the time along with usage time of pc v mac and easy mode v real mode and churn rate,% deletions after first month and lots of other things. We do know the bussness.

I also know the expense side of producing a mac version and dont assume its just the cost of porting, every release takes double testing, more time in putting a release together.You also need to provide customer support which is either more training or more people. You also suddenly cupple release scheduals to the slowest side of 2 developments along with other feature issues.

Now there is a point where our customer base can become large enough where porting to the Mac makes economic sense.  We are not at that stage today.

HiTech

[Speijk]

Hi Hitech,

I always understood that writing crossplatform code makes the process of develloping for two (or more) platforms much cheaper compared to writing for one platform and porting that code to another platform.
Porting takes a lot of work and a lot of testing just because the code was optimized for another platform. I am sure there are tools around to help develop crossplatform applications.

How about the linux platform? It is getting stronger everyday. Within some years you might need to develop a linux version. It would be much eassier if you had a platform independant base to start with.

What platforms might come important in the next 5 (to 10) years?

I Guess the scope of your company goes beyond next year ;-)

Regards,
Speijk
Who does not intend to know what is a wise thing to do

[Speijk]

This just came up in my mind, it might be a consideration:

I read that the amount of Mac users of "the other sim" was 17 to 20%. This is a lot more then the 5 % marketshare.
My squadron has 10 members, 2 of them are using mac's. In the end we will go for the sim that supports both platforms. I don't know how many squadrons that are using both PC's and Mac's exist (or how many players are organised in a squadron). If they think like we do the penalty of not including the Mac simmers might be much more then 20%.

Regards
Speijk
Who still doesn't know what is a wise thing to do

[hitech]

I agree with you that the platform percentages can change over the next years. The code base for AH has been written from the start to be cross platform. Rember at one time I had written a code base that supported Mac,dos,w95,Intel unix and sparc's all at the same time. I do understand cross platform programming and have structured everything so that we can rapidly change to other platforms. Right now I only touch the W95 API and directx at the minimum level. It not that i don't keep the mac in mind, it is just that at this time I can not justify supporting the mac.

BTW when factoring in percentages you also have to factor in what percentage of mac's that have a good 3d accel card in them. In fact ID be intrested in knowing what percentages of players dont have 3d card's in both the pc and mac.

HiTech

[Ronni]

Horn,

The messages on this thread got really wide because the UBB is attempting to put the url you entered above on one line, and it doesn't fit.  I see you posted another link in a following message, so if the wide-ness bothers you, feel free to edit that message and remove the looooooooooong link.

Ronni


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Veronica "Ronni" Newman
Sr. Programmer/Webmaster
HiTech Creations, Inc.

[-Ireg-]

It's a simple matter. They choose not to support MAC and I even won't think about to have a look in this product. I'll choose to fly with the MAC-friends I had made in Warbirds.

[Tigger]

Get the BBQ ready, from the comment here as well as all the one's in "Mac Users cc here".

I take back the comment of the mac users "badgering" HT and crew, change that to "blackmail".