From: "David Illig" <usenet@davidillig.com>
Date: November 21, 2006 12:56:00 AM MST
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: new firewire Italian camera
Milton Aupperle wrote:
In fact, Astro IIDC should never have been built - it simply makes no
sense economically to do it or even continue with it as there simply
are not enough Mac users to buy software. Other than video or audio
and maybe some PhotoShop usage, there are no other perceived uses for
a Mac. And With BootCamp and MacIntel, basically Mac specialty
software is going to "poof" and disappear off the market as people
just switch over to Windows software.
So it is not a great picture going forward.
That's on the one hand. Your viewpoint is no doubt valid for you, because your software
serves a tiny niche (FireWire webcam planetary imaging and -- I assume -- microscopy)
within other small niches (astrophotography and medical imaging.)
On the other hand, Software Bisque is bringing their software -- all of it they say -- to the
Mac. It won't happen soon, as they are doing a complete re-write of everything for
Windows as well, and that's a lot of code. They showed an early version of TheSky on a
Mac at NEAF this year, and let all comers have a hands-on with it. Bisque's upcoming
program GrandTour, for which I was an alpha tester, is being developed on Macs for
Mactel and Windows.
Then there's Garmin -- another bit of specialty software. Garmin has promised full Mactel
support. Delayed from the original projection, for sure, but Garmin are sticking to their
story.
And Nebulosity, a very nice image processing app, is now available for the Mac as a
Universal Binary.
One Mac-based developer put it to me this way: "I develop for Windows but I won't use
Windows myself. I hate it for just as practically every Mac user who *knows* Windows
hates it. I'm bringing ***** to Intel Macs because a) it's easier to port now that the Mac
uses Intel processors and b) I think that other Mac users are like me -- they don't want to
run Windows." That certainly describes me.
In short, I'm not as pessimistic as you are. Gartner reported in October that the Mac has
over 6% of the U.S. market, a significant increase. Other independent reporting says that
the MacBook and MacBook Pro now have about a 16% share of the U.S. laptop market. That
is not insignificant, given the growing popularity of laptops in general, and people --
including developers -- are taking note of the MacBook/Pro's increased share. If they have
any brains at all, and most of them do, they know that people are buying Macs because
they're fed up with Windows, not because they want a new way to run Windows.
David