Apple says could move to Intel, but happy with IBM

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Economical nonsense! ISVs are Dinosaurs.

I?ve been a (quite worldwide renown) ISV for almost 25 years. I made software exclusively for the PC platform, but for many different OSes (DOS, Win 3.x, Win 9.x, Win NT and above, but also OS/2 16 and 32 bits as well as different releases of Linux). Let me tell you that as long as you stay with standards development tools (no ASM and pure C), it?s not such a big deal to develop and maintain apps over cross platform OSes. The hardware cross platform development is then a very different story. So, I never made my apps available for the Apple world. Why? Just because that market is too small and that the return on investment is not proven if you compare it to the same amount of bucks spent for the X86 architecture. Furthermore, I don't want to speak of the lack of support of ISVs by Apple! Now, when (if) Apple had decided to make their OS available for the X86 platform (Darwin), I would also have surely proposed my apps for it. Otherwise, it would have been be an economical nonsense! Being an ISV (that is really an INDEPENDENT software vendor) is a very tough situation. Making money with software when giants (including Apple) reduce the field of third party applications to nothing everyday by bundling (often poorly designed) complementary apps into their OS (fax, remote control, messenger, browser, word processor, music and video editors, etc. etc. etc.) killed most of us (ISVs)! So even today the few alive ISVs try to survive and even those with exceptional skills and tremendous apps (e.g. Connectix with VPC for both Mac and PC that I truly admired a lot) ends by selling their competences (and products) to big players. I?m now retired of that ARENA (yes, the software world is a place for tigers) and I feel sorry for the next generations of computer users who won?t have a bunch of choice when most of the ISVs will definitely disappear! But let me be right on that point: I don?t blame MS only. Apple (its almost sole competitor with a little bit of Sun) is not better. PC and Mac users pay over priced OSes just because of the ?goodies? included into the OSes and don?t buy anymore third party apps! So, I think that ISVs are dinosaurs that are going to evanish sooner than later!

What do you think?

Cheers.

Posted by: Fifi   Posted on: 11/07/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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