I work for a software company in MI and we currently only make one product for the mac. We are considering expanding in this area in the hopes that we will increase the sales to windows users as well, just from more word of mouth. Is this a reasonable goal? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I may even be able to give free licenses of our current mac software to those of you that provide thorough feedback. Thanks a lot!
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new mac software dept
- Thread starter plwrght
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Not sure how making more Mac apps will translate into getting windows users interested.
You have to realize that even if ever Mac user bought your software, you're still only hitting a small percentage of the computing market. I was a product manager for software companies for many years and the biggest mistake they all made was not doing a thorough business case analysis before developing and bringing products to market. Make sure you know your target market and what their needs truly are. And don't forget to do the proper financial analysis. Everybody's time costs money, from developers to sales and everywhere in between.
Jonathan
You have to realize that even if ever Mac user bought your software, you're still only hitting a small percentage of the computing market. I was a product manager for software companies for many years and the biggest mistake they all made was not doing a thorough business case analysis before developing and bringing products to market. Make sure you know your target market and what their needs truly are. And don't forget to do the proper financial analysis. Everybody's time costs money, from developers to sales and everywhere in between.
Jonathan
plwrght said:
Are you asking if people think you can increase your Windows sales by word of mouth cool factor on the Mac? Or do you want to expand into Windows offerings? There is some history of applications whose cool factor definitely extended into the Windows world...iLife, and iTunes in particular, are the big examples. It might be possible. I think Windows and Mac users of multi-client IM software are more aware of each other too (i.e. a lot of Trillian users seem to have seen Adium and vice versa).
And also, you may benefit from the fact that many Mac users also use Windows to some extent.
Can you tell us more about your one existing product, or the genre into which you wish to launch? I think this makes a big difference. For instance, if you're developing anti-spyware software for the Mac...hehehe...well...
Tell more, and I'd be happy to help more. And I think many others here would too.
What IS your product? It's hard to think about who you want to market something to without knowing what it does...
Thanks so much for your help thus far. We have a very successful screencapture and editor package called Camtasia Studio. We typically sell to educators, IT departments, and presenters, as well as the home user. Let me know if there is any other info you might like.
mkrishnan said:Are you asking if people think you can increase your Windows sales by word of mouth cool factor on the Mac? Or do you want to expand into Windows offerings? There is some history of applications whose cool factor definitely extended into the Windows world...iLife, and iTunes in particular, are the big examples. It might be possible. I think Windows and Mac users of multi-client IM software are more aware of each other too (i.e. a lot of Trillian users seem to have seen Adium and vice versa).
And also, you may benefit from the fact that many Mac users also use Windows to some extent.
Can you tell us more about your one existing product, or the genre into which you wish to launch? I think this makes a big difference. For instance, if you're developing anti-spyware software for the Mac...hehehe...well...
Tell more, and I'd be happy to help more. And I think many others here would too.
I presume you have made a grid of the competing products like Snapz and others, and done a feature/performance comparison to show that your product is unique and.or better?
Ok, after a little research I think I'm starting to understand. For everyone else:
plwrght currently works for TechSmith, and they currently make a Quicktime Codec called EnSharpen, which is advertised as a lossless encoding with high compression. For Windows users, they also sell Camtasia Studio, which appears to be essentially SnapzProX for Windows. They recommend SnapzProX for Mac users.
They also offer SnagIt, an advanced screen capture utility.
Morae, which appears to be a software/website usability testing software.
And lastly, the TSCC codec, which is the default codec for their Camtasia Studio software.
plwrght is wondering whether expanding their other products to Mac will also help increase their Windows sales from the extra "Word of Mouth" advertising that they would get.
If I got anything wrong there, feel free to correct me.
Camtasia Studio: SnapzProX currently has the market for screen capture cornered. I've never used Camtasia Studio, but unless you can produce a version that goes above and beyond SnapzProX and still offers a competitive price, you aren't going to go very far with it.
SnagIt: I have yet to see a 'print screen' utility that I would pay for, although, again, I haven't ever used SnagIt. I've never seen a need for any ability that doesn't ship with OS X, but that might be simply because it hasn't been offered to me. I have a Screen Capture widget, but all it does is essentially type in the shortcuts for me, and auto-save them to the desktop in a specified format.
There's my thoughts....
plwrght currently works for TechSmith, and they currently make a Quicktime Codec called EnSharpen, which is advertised as a lossless encoding with high compression. For Windows users, they also sell Camtasia Studio, which appears to be essentially SnapzProX for Windows. They recommend SnapzProX for Mac users.
They also offer SnagIt, an advanced screen capture utility.
Morae, which appears to be a software/website usability testing software.
And lastly, the TSCC codec, which is the default codec for their Camtasia Studio software.
plwrght is wondering whether expanding their other products to Mac will also help increase their Windows sales from the extra "Word of Mouth" advertising that they would get.
If I got anything wrong there, feel free to correct me.
Camtasia Studio: SnapzProX currently has the market for screen capture cornered. I've never used Camtasia Studio, but unless you can produce a version that goes above and beyond SnapzProX and still offers a competitive price, you aren't going to go very far with it.
SnagIt: I have yet to see a 'print screen' utility that I would pay for, although, again, I haven't ever used SnagIt. I've never seen a need for any ability that doesn't ship with OS X, but that might be simply because it hasn't been offered to me. I have a Screen Capture widget, but all it does is essentially type in the shortcuts for me, and auto-save them to the desktop in a specified format.
There's my thoughts....
camtasia user
I am a med student and my professors use Camtasia to record their lectures. These lectures are then posted online for either streaming or download. I have been downloading the lectures to my mac and using Quicktime to view them. (QT has the option to increase the playback speed whereas Media Player does not on macs.) Recently i have had trouble viewing the lectures I have downloaded. An error message appears which says I am missing a codec required to view them. The same message appears with Media Player. When I attempt to play the lecture there is audio but no video.
Can you help me with this? I have been unable to figure out which codec is missing. I have downloaded Ensharpen thinking that might be it but it didn't work.
Thanks.
plwrght said:
I am a med student and my professors use Camtasia to record their lectures. These lectures are then posted online for either streaming or download. I have been downloading the lectures to my mac and using Quicktime to view them. (QT has the option to increase the playback speed whereas Media Player does not on macs.) Recently i have had trouble viewing the lectures I have downloaded. An error message appears which says I am missing a codec required to view them. The same message appears with Media Player. When I attempt to play the lecture there is audio but no video.
Can you help me with this? I have been unable to figure out which codec is missing. I have downloaded Ensharpen thinking that might be it but it didn't work.
Thanks.
helena92 said:
The reason I asked the question is that, I wonder if they switched to a new codec; perhaps, one that requires WMP10 on Windows (and has no analog, sadly, for Macs or other platforms)?
helena92 said:
Hmmm... almost all music on computers is compressed. That is, it's made to take up as little space as possible, but still sound good. The codec is the thing which tells the computer how to read that compressed file and make sound out of it again. Apple, Microsoft, and a number of others develop codecs, and some of them are free, and others are proprietary, and only one company makes software that uses them. Some of the Microsoft codecs fall into the latter category. Only Microsoft knows how to uncompress the file. And in the case of the codecs that are unique to Windows Media Player 10, they are only available on a couple of operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Mobile 5, etc). Does that help at all?