D&Di - Monster Builder Beta Launch Announced

[EnglishScribe]

But macs are only 10% of the marketplace! Glad to know that WotC is doing so well they can turn away 10% of their enfranchised customers without concern. . . .

Sources disagree. The marketplace share of the macs in the US may be as low as 7.5% in the US and 3.36% internationally. Spending 80% of your development time and costs for 3.36% of your market makes no financial sense.

Source: http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/22/mac-market-share-in-q1-2009-3-36-percent-apple-earnings-strong.aspx

 

[Henrix]

I really like the Marital power keyword


But, really, a fantastic program!



(And, sorry, but isn't not being able to use all windows software part of the price tag on a Mac? Just as it is on Linux (etc.)?)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Sources disagree. The marketplace share of the macs in the US may be as low as 7.5% in the US and 3.36% internationally. Spending 80% of your development time and costs for 3.36% of your market makes no financial sense.

Source: http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/22/mac-market-share-in-q1-2009-3-36-percent-apple-earnings-strong.aspx

This percentage might not apply for the specific makeup of the WotC target audience.
Still, the actual percentage might still not warrant the additional development time.

Now if you start with a team that is as good in multiplatform development as the current team is in WPF development, the cost would probably be not that high. But then we take the existance of such a team as a given, and it seems more likely that WotC is lucky to have the team they have now.

If the market for Mac is large enough, maybe some software development company should ask WotC for a license to produce a Mac software? It would probably still cause overhead, but it might be more justified then doing it yourself. (With enough overhead but increase the ease, the license could contain details on the data structures and an easier ability to share the data.)

 

[Obryn]

The Mac crowd is also better-equipped to run a Windows program, than the Windows crowd is to run a Mac program.

Heck; OSX includes Boot Camp nowadays, so dual-booting is fairly standard and well-supported. On the other hand, to run OSX on a non-Mac PC, you need to go through the whole Hackintosh rigamarole - which Apple would rather you not do, and which you can't do on all PCs.

-O

 

[davethegame]

This percentage might not apply for the specific makeup of the WotC target audience.
Still, the actual percentage might still not warrant the additional development time.

I think the percentage of Mac users among D&D players is higher- but the funny thing to me is how many of the D&D designers and developers are Mac users themselves.

I bought VMWare almost specifically to run the DDI tools on my MacBook, and while it's annoying, I don't expect them to change software development procedures any time soon. It looks like the focus is getting more stuff out and getting it working then going back and allowing for Macs or changing the way the software updates, etc.

 

[Echohawk]

I bought VMWare almost specifically to run the DDI tools on my MacBook

<raises hand> Yeah, I also bought VMWare and XP specifically to run the DDI tools on the Mac. And while I'd prefer a native Mac application, I'd far, far rather have WotC focused on churning out new tools than on Mac specific versions of old tools.

 

[avin]

Percentages of use on a Windows/PC forum doesn't seem a solid source... (I'm a PC user).

 

[ki11erDM]

It has major issues with the mac.

The power to fix that is in your hands, learn to code, and contribute to one of the open source projects like Mono.

*edit*tookoutinflammatorycommentsthatwouldderailthethreadevenmore*edit*

And know that I know the Onenote thing is just not my highly customized systems fault will go post a bug report at WotC.

 

[Mistwell]

Me too, me too!


This thing is all kinds of awesome. Thumbs up!

I love it! I'm snagging that snowman.

 

[fanboy2000]

It has major issues with the mac.

It runs great on my Mac. In fact, it runs better than some of Microsoft's own programs.

I have had non-beta software on the Windows side of the my machine run worse than the monster builder. In fact, the only problem I foresee is that now WotC has to keep up this level of speed and excellence in future software developments now that they've proven they can do it twice in a row.