Gruber nails MacHeist to the floor
It’s probably very uncool to admit this in writing, but I am an undying fan of John Gruber’s Daring Fireball 
.
Every now and then, he pulls a post out of his hat that sets the standard to which all other Mac bloggers can only aspire. For analysis, for insight and for clarity, he is rarely matched.
This time, he nails the recent MacHeist promotion to the floor. Completely.
Last week (in a post I missed), he set out the economics underlying the promotion.
Deconstructing the publicity material from MacHeist, he noted:
If you didn’t know any better, judging only from MacHeist’s promotional copy and statements such as Ryu’s, you might think that most of the profits from the bundle were going to the developers of the bundled applications. Not so. Most of the proceeds are going to MacHeist, and the more bundles they sell, the more disproportionate MacHeist’s share of the profit will get.
Today, he totals up the final break-down of money going to charity (US$200,000), to MacHeist and to the developers. It’s not pretty reading:
– MacHeist’s percentage share of the total profit: 87.5
– Average percentage share of the total profit for each individual developer: 1.3
MacHeist clears US$463,500; the developers share a total pool of US$66,500, with most getting a flat fee of US$5-6,000.
To see this episode as “one of the biggest successes in the history of Mac shareware” is only part of the story. It was a great deal for users. It was a fantastic deal for MacHeist. But it shafted the developers.
A deal in which two parties have a great time and one party gets (willingly?) exploited isn’t a recipe for a Mac community that flourishes in the long term. It’s just a heist.
Or as John more elegantly puts it:
MacHeist’s organizers and defenders are arguing that no one forced the participating developers to agree to their terms, and that these developers are in fact happy with how the promotion is going, and that the users who’ve purchased the bundle are delighted with the price. But none of these things are in dispute.
What’s in dispute is whether the money is being distributed equitably. Just because someone is satisfied with a bad deal doesn’t mean it isn’t a bad deal.
Developers? Let them eat cake!
Tags: Apple, developers, gruber, macheist, not apple mail, seeing the whole picture, softwareRelated posts
December 20th, 2006 at 12:15 am
I agree with Tim on this. The difference in the pay-out is too disparate.
On a related but not exploitive the new MacSanta promotion gives a nice 20% discount on shareware and doesn’t appear to line anyone elses’s pockets!
December 20th, 2006 at 12:21 am
There’s 3 estimated numbers in that calculation !
I think I’ll throw in a couple more:
What about an estimated growth in income from updates ?
Or an estimated growth in mac users awareness of the developers product(s) (25,000 users on Macheist and the enormous positive/negative hype in the Mac community) + the sales that possibly comes from that?
December 20th, 2006 at 12:30 am
More truth will come out when they try to do a second promotion. If some developers are back into the fray, then they must have liked the deal that they were given.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:38 am
C’mon, those devs weren’t forced to give away their software - they’ve been paid for it.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:57 am
Although I get the point: they ripped off a bunch of naive devs not too gifted for business… My entrepreuneur side though can only appriciate what they’ve done. They’re in it for the business, and they made a bunch of cash… Of course they advertise it as having another motive than feeling up their pockets… but I can’t give a single example of a business that would advertise as “gimme money, ’cause I want your money.”
Grubber’s post in right on in terms of precision and analysis, but his “the dev should have been paid…” part is completely out of touch with business reality.
Developpers could have done this on their own, technically they’re all capable of building websites, some of them clearly have design skills available… And they would have pocketed 100% of the profit.
But they didnt…
If anything, this should be an eye opener to business possibilities for Mac devs… I seriously have a hard time thinking that what they did was bad.
Unfair? the concept doesn’t exist in the biz world… :)
December 20th, 2006 at 1:25 am
They didn’t rip anybody off. Most of the developers have been around for far too long to be considered naive. Delicious Library? TextMate? Those developers knew exactly what they were getting into.
So far, the only complaints I’ve heard are coming from (1) people who are not developers and (2) developers who did not participate. In other words, people who have no standing or relationship to the agreement.
I don’t understand why everyone is so upset about this. MacHeist, regardless of how much money they’ve made, have provided charities with $200,000 and given many Mac developers a level of exposure and goodwill they could’ve spent years trying to build. There’s been at least one instance where a participating developer has noticed an *increase* in normal, non-related sales.
All the complainers are starting to sound like sour grapes. MacSanta? That’s discounted software with nothing going to charity where only the developers derive any long term financial gain. I guess in the Mac world that’s preferable. I don’t hear anyone complaining about it devaluing the community and I’ve not seen any in-depth analysis into how much they stand to make.
December 20th, 2006 at 1:36 am
estimated growth in income from updates: $0. The apps in MacHeist are released with the proviso that they’re not upgradeable. So if you’ve got Razmatazz 1.0 and want version 2.0 when it comes out, you need to buy it new. You don’t get the upgrade price. Certainly, some people will do that. How many? I’d guess very few.
December 20th, 2006 at 1:47 am
Not all of the apps were released with that proviso. Some, if not all, of the apps in the $49 MacHeist bundles are upgradeable, although some include varying terms and conditions. When it comes time to upgrade TextMate, I’ll be able to do that.
December 20th, 2006 at 1:48 am
So if you’ve got Razmatazz 1.0 and want version 2.0 when it comes out, you need to buy it new. You don’t get the upgrade price. Certainly, some people will do that. How many? I’d guess very few.
Perhaps, but that would be the developers own fault for either not making an app people are interested in or not making an update that the current user think is worth it.
That isn’t excactly Macheist’s fault is it ?
December 20th, 2006 at 1:53 am
I think that people who aren’t a subset of either set of developers listed above can still take a position on the MacHeist issue since consumers are still a necessary part of the equation.
“Charity” is not the defining feature of MacSanta - offering a sales promotion is. This is the kind of developer-generated marketing event that some MacHeist apologists criticize them for either not doing or or not being good at. “Charity” is not the defining feature of MacHeist - making money for the organizers is.
Complaining about MacHeist is similar to complaining about a charity that has too much overhead. Say I give $100 to the United Way and then find that $90 of it went to paying the salaries of the employees holding the collection box. If I complain then it’s sour grapes? I don’t think so.
December 20th, 2006 at 2:12 am
The concept of fairness is actually very prominent in contract law. Certainly, ‘inequitable’ and ‘deceptive’ are important concepts in the business lexicon. If MacHeist induced these developers into thinking that they would be participating in an equitable partnership, then it is quite possible that it has been unjustly enriched, giving the developers potential grounds to seek legal redress.
December 20th, 2006 at 3:02 am
MacHeist isn’t a charity. Comparing the fruits of their entrepreneurial efforts to a charity’s overhead misses the mark.
December 20th, 2006 at 3:08 am
MacHeist isn’t a charity. Comparing the fruits of their entrepreneurial efforts to a charity’s overhead misses the mark. Complaining that someone made too much money off the independent developers, when the independent developers knowingly and voluntarily participated approaches “sour grapes”. (I say “knowingly” because the developers could’ve easily, with less guess work, generated the same numbers Gruber came up with.)
Apologies for the double post. Stupid internets …
December 20th, 2006 at 3:35 am
I’ve never really been a big fan of Gruber. He’s really wordy, and I tend to not agree with a lot of what he says. This is no exception.
Sure, OK, MacHeist is making some pretty decent money. Actually, I’m a little surprised that this is the case. So, they made $824,229 on this promotion. If they kept $463,500 and they paid to charity $200,000 and finally $66,500 for the software donators. This leaves $94,229. So where is this money going?
Now, the concept of a promotion. As a developer, if I were to create a tool that I wanted to sell. Sure, I could put up a site on the web and link to it from my weblog. That might get a single sale. There are shareware sites that help promote software, but I would be surprised if that gets more than 10 sales in a month.
A promotion like MacHeist is a way for developers to get their name out there. Now maybe not a TextMate, but the game they offered will probably get a few. More importantly, software like TextMate, RapidWeaver, iClip, they may not get much money this time around. Where they make money is from updates in the future. If the people that got the software from this promotion. If I wind up liking TextMate enough, I’ll be upgrading it when they go do an upgrade that I will have to pay for. All the software from MacAppADay (What happened to them today, I haven’t been able to get the site up today) are versions that are OK, but they may not be the latest version or more importantly, if they update the software even a subversion, you have to pay to get that version.
Ages ago, I bought Quicken for $15 on Windows. I liked the software so much that when they updated it the next year, I bought it. I purchased about 8 upgrades over the years. I think that comes out to about $400. I have since started doing my banking over the web via the banks website.
There is a site for Windows, Game Giveaway of the Day and Giveaway of the Day. So it’s not just a Mac thing.
I am sorry to hear that the developers didn’t get more money for their software considering how much the folks at MacHeist got. That kind of discrepancy is reminiscent of the RIAA.
December 20th, 2006 at 3:37 am
The developers involved don’t seem to mind, at least the ones I have read comments from. They certainly don’t seem to think it is a bad deal. Here are two comments from participants in MacHeist.
From the president of DevonThink at :
“All these events are adventurous attempts to find new ways to sell and to promote Mac software. They offer us as Mac software vendors new platforms to advertise our products and to offer their users e.g. discounts or freebies. Taking part in these promotion events gives us the opportunity to reach new customers who would elsewise never have heard of us because they’re not passing along the places on the Internet where we are usually advertising or announcing our products.
Now, some are claiming that either these web sites are ripping us off or bringing only customers interested in anything free. They are not ripping us off, we have either mutually agreed on a share or fee, or they’re offering their marketing services for free and make their money through advertising. That’s just fair. They offer a service to the community, users get discounts or free software, and we get the opportunity to sell our products to them, or upgrades. We may give our software for a significant discount, like at MacZOT’s and MacHeist’s, but we also sell so many more copies that it’s still a win-win-win for all of us, users, promotors, and us.”
From Will Shipley of Delicious Monster at
“…but none of us who are bundled with MacHeist were forced to do so; we knew ahead of time what the price would be and how much we’d get, and we decided it was worth it for us.
I think events like this get a lot of publicity, so they bring in new customers that I wouldn’t reach on my own. So I’m not really sabotaging my sales; I’m supplementing them. Seriously, if you came to me and said, “I’m going to resell Delicious Library to customers on the moon, who you’ve never met and can’t reach, for $1 a copy,” I’d say, “Go for it!” I don’t care if I only get a penny if it’s a penny more than I would have gotten on my own.
As a single datapoint, in the two days since the bundle has gone on sale our direct sales (not part of the bundle) have actually gone up. So, I’m not crying.”
December 20th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Everybody got a share of the revenue. Nobody is arguing that point. Gruber’s point is that it wasn’t shared equitably - and it certainly wasn’t.
As for developers making out in the longer run through upgrades? While this may make it _more_ equitable, it certainly doesn’t make it anything close to truly equitable.
Another thing confusing the discussion here is taking Gruber’s words (and Mueller’s too) and thinking they are complaining about MacHeist either being a charity or that they were whining about things when they could have participated. I took much of their complaints to be about how MacHeist (mis)portayed themselves to be developer-oriented. They weren’t! Like Stephen says here, they were in it for the money.
I find it odd that the participating developers haven’t really chimed in yet. Probably due to NDA I guess. But I would have thought that only extends to details of what they got paid, not to commenting in general (pro or con). Naive they aren’t. But silent? I didn’t think them that either.
Finally, on the MacSB group there was some recent discussion about MacZot and it’’s effectiveness. Not many spoke numbers, but I think 3 did. Two saw little increase in sales, one did.
December 20th, 2006 at 6:08 am
Arguing that developers aren’t getting ripped off by Mac Heist is like a skinny white woman saying the day laborers she picked up to work at her house all day for $10 each are getting a deal because otherwise they’d be out of work.
Pimping out someone who lacks options is not fair just because they go along with it. That’s the reason we have the word “pimp.”
Compared to how the RIAA treats its artists, Mac Heist is not only doing less (no production or finishing work) but making more and paying less (no royalties, small upfront payment). RIAA artists end up with money, not a small pay off that leaves them supporting lots of loss leader users.
Good for Ryu for making a fast buck, but I think people who expressing an opinion in the matter are concerned about the developers, not only those who participated, but those who didn’t, who are seeing software in general devalued by a get rich quick scheme that “demonstrates” software developers’ work can be given away for nothing, and therefore has little actual value, while at the same time portraying the event as a love-in for small developers.
December 20th, 2006 at 7:06 am
The developers have not publicly expressed disatisfaction. However, it is important to realize that their public expressions may not match their true sentiments. To publicly allege that they were cheated or defrauded would risk a breach of fiduciary duty as a partner, if not libel. Furthermore, it is generally bad business practice to engage in public catfights over a partnership.
My guess is that when they see the numbers many of the developers will be questioning whether they got the short end of the stick. They may justifiably be seeking legal counsel regarding possible redress for this. They may also be requesting a renegotiation of terms with MacHeist. However, I would not expect to see any of this go public.
December 20th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Assume you and I enter an agreement whereby I provide you with a specified number of oranges for $1.00 a piece for a period of one year. Over that year, as long as I provide the oranges to you and you pay $1.00 for each orange, the contract is satisfied. Just because you’ve arranged to resell those oranges for $5 a piece doesn’t suddenly make our contract inequitable.
But what about me? I tilled the fields, planted the seeds, grew the trees, harvested the oranges. I did all the work. All you’ve done is come along, take my product, advertise it and sell it at a higher price. And? I got paid exactly the price I negotiated.
MacHeist carried all of the risk. Had only 50 people participated, they most likely would’ve lost money on the advertising, etc. This was a risk-free proposition for the participating developers. Those who bear the greater risk should be compensated at a higher amount than those who carry little to none.
The developers didn’t enter into the agreement looking to make money. How do I know this? Because they were practically giving their product away. Nobody who *only* wants to make money does that. So it’s a safe assumption that they had motives other than money. They were looking to widen their customer base. They were looking for buyers they might not otherwise reach. They were looking for publicity. And they got it.
It seems like a win-win to me.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:17 am
No one is saying the the developers were forced to participate or that they aren’t in fact happy with MacHeist.
to quote Gruber’s “Iniquities of the Selflish” post on Dec. 12:
“MacHeist’s organizers and defenders are arguing that no one forced the participating developers to agree to their terms, and that these developers are in fact happy with how the promotion is going, and that the users who’ve purchased the bundle are delighted with the price. But none of these things are in dispute.
What’s in dispute is whether the money is being distributed equitably. Just because someone is satisfied with a bad deal doesn’t mean it isn’t a bad deal.”
What boggles my mind is the cheerleading for exploitation going on around this topic.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:22 am
Yes, the developers are getting their negotiated price. But were those negotiations based upon accurate representations to the developers regarding the scale of the project and the risk involved? Were the parties sufficiently informed? Are the terms of the contract manifestly unconscionable? Is MacHeist getting a deal too good to be reasonable? These are all important questions to which we don’t have the answers.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Boy, it looks like I’m switching side here, but…
What risks? Advertising costs. What costs would those be, going on Digg and putting up a link to MacHeist, sending out an email to all the MacHeist participants. Did they go to the main stream media to have television commercials aired? Did they get radio time? What exactly could have cost them so much money. Your not thinking of the MacHeist website, are you? Yeah, that must have cost them a bunch of money.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:39 am
It is baffling to me why this is an issue at all. These developers are not poor exploited starving students; they’re established and successful businesspeople. It’s just barely possible that they are in a better position to judge the net benefits than any of the whiners here.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:07 am
While we can’t speak for all of the developers, Newsfire and Textmate had to be somewhat informed because they wouldn’t release their software until a certain dollar amount had been donated. I believe Newfire became available once $50,000 had been donated and Textmate at $100,000.
As to the scale of the project, since they were obviously in it for the publicity, the developers had to be hoping it was large. I can’t see them hoping for a minimal amount of publicity or success.
Regarding the unconscionable aspect, since the developers were free to participate or not, I don’t see this as a factor. At the outset, MacHeist needed the developers more than the developers needed MacHeist. If MacHeist didn’t have programs that people wanted, it wasn’t going to get off the ground.
They advertised on a lot websites. For a few days, it seemed like I was seeing advertisements everywhere. Maybe the advertising was donated, maybe not. My argument regarding risk is based on Gruber’s guestimate of $40,000.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Really. $40,000. I didn’t realize that a Mac site would charge that much for advertising. I just can’t see any Mac site getting the kind of hits that a Digg or YouTube would get. No disrespect, I love my Mac’s and relish all the info I can get about them. We are just a small community compared to the Windows universe.
As far as MacHeist needing the programs and not the other way round. Yes, I agree. If the programs offered were relitively useless apps, then yes, the promotion wouldn’t have got 2,000 purchases let alone 18,000. Charity or no.
As I said, I was really in it for TextMate. I was even going to go and buy it separately if they had not unlocked it. Funny enough, I have been lusting over BBEdit now. That 20% discount is making that program a little sweeter. Still $100 is a lot of money for a programming editor. I have a $150 purchase for Intellij’s IDEA upgrade in the queue.
As a developer, I have been trying to decide what language I want to commit to for Mac development. I am currently a Java developer, but Mac seems to be Objective-C. So I’m wondering if I even need IDEA since Mac has XCode. Then I wonder why I would need TextMate or BBEdit since the XCode environment seems to cover all a developers needs. Sorry, I digress.
As for this promotion, I see the developers thinking this way. They now have 18,000 new customers. Is that not worth something?
December 20th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I hear you. That 20% discount on BB is tempting. I bought Textmate with none of these fancy discounts and have been using it for a couple of months now. It is awesome. Give a try. It’s integration with XCode (and just about anything else you can think of) is sweet. I come from a Perl background, so Objective-C is something of a challenge for me. But I’m having fun with it, and that’s all that really matters.
December 20th, 2006 at 10:18 am
I think Gruber is totally off the mark on this one. Let’s break it down, shall we?
His numbers are *not* actual numbers, but “projections” (it came from his mind, not data).
The developers involved all got *exactly* what they wanted to get. The MH people said “Hey, I’d like to include you in a bundle that I’ll pimp for a week, and give you $5,000″. Those developers said “Yes”. No guns were involved.
A charity gained a lot of money it wouldn’t have received had it not been for MH.
MH *is not* a charity. They’ve never claimed that, nor have they claimed to be a non-profit. They made money. Good for them. Perhaps they’ll be able to do it again. Maybe not. Time will tell.
Many, many Mac users got some good shareware at a fantastic price. Some percentage of them will upgrade in the future. Good for them. Good for the developers.
This is a non-story, and I hope Gruber starts writing something worth reading again soon. I’ve found his quality has gone downhill e’er since he decided to go “pro blogger”. Do I continue to read everything he posts? Yeah, I do, because I hope he does get better. I really enjoyed his writing.
December 20th, 2006 at 10:36 am
*If* the promotion was portrayed to the developers as “we’ll give you $5000 dollar unlimited licenses that we can sell in a week (we’re expecting about 2000, or 4000 tops)”, *and* that was a misrepresentation, then there could be fraud involved.
Of course, even with the best of intentions, someone can call fraud. I just got a letter today that I am a part of a class action lawsuit because a former employer dared to match my 401K contributions. Everyone who had money in the plan during the 8 year term (probably 100K people) will split 4 million, the lawyers get 1.6 million. Plus, the value of the company stock most people have in their portfolios will go down. Not really related, just a complaint.
December 20th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Fair? Unfair? It was all spelled out in black and white in the contracts before any of the developers signed on. They all felt that whatever they would gain from the promotion would outweigh the cost of selling some cheap copies of their software. Perhaps that’s a bad decision and perhaps it isn’t, but it was the willful decision of every developer who participated. No one scammed them. No one lied to them. No one “cheated” them. If it was a bad choice, it was THEIR CHOICE.
It also seems that not a single developer who participated has complained about the arrangement, which leads me to believe that they did in fact gain something from the promotion and they are happy with the price they paid for it. If they found the experience worthwhile for their own businesses, than apparently it was. What is Gruber’s problem with that?
I used to be a regular reader of Daring Fireball, but lately it seems like he’s been dipping into the crazy cookie jar. It’s like he writes a rant just for the sake of ranting anymore. He used to offer cogent commentary on topics I found interesting. Now he just trolls the Mac community.
First he names the OmniGroup blog as Jackass of the Week because they gave people a much requested product development progress update (and then he twisted the widely-accepted definiton of vaporware to try to justify his stupidity)
Then he jumps on this MacHeist stuff for like two weeks, which otherwise would be quickly forgotten if everyone actually involved in the promotion didn’t have the unmitigated gall to disagree with him. How dare they question his wisdom! He must blog more until the heathens are finally convinced that they are wrong and he is right — surely that will work.
I remember reading Gruber’s blog and enjoying it a great deal at one time in the not too distant past. Now, he just raises my hackles. He’s a professional troll, and he seems perfectly content to impishly insult, deride and attack anyone who dares have a different opinion than he does. And when someone calls him out as the flamebaiting troll that he is, he latches onto them like a pitbull on a twelve-year-old until (he expects) they beg for mercy or he finds another target that better suits his current mood. I still check his blog for links occassionally, but I don’t see any reason to read his commentary anymore. He’s effectively /ignored on my computer from now on.
Or even better… If Gruber thinks MacHeist is such a terrible tragedy for the Mac development communty, why doesn’t he come up with something better, something “more fair” in his eyes? When he does that, I’ll care about his opinion on the matter. Until then, I hope he just shuts up about MacHeist.
December 20th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
I am not certain how to respond to posters who obviously either haven’t read Gruber, or read him missing large chunks of the point of the argument, or even followed what seemed to be the thread of the comments on Hawk Wings.
To sum up the original Gruber post on the subject, it’s fine and dandy that all the consumers got their bundle of cheap shareware at a steep discount, and it’s also fine that all the developers involved knew what they were getting in on and were happy with the transaction.
What Gruber and others are saying is that profit made by the MacHeist team was obscene 1) compared to the amount paid the developers 2) because of the charity angle used in the marketing and 3) because of the strange way that they spoke of the Mac indie software as both “hidden gems” and “showered with awards and accolades”. This is a necessarily brief summary but hopefully one can understand that there is more going on than Gruber being some kind of torch-wielding troll. It was a statement of opinion that for some reason many people have taken a personal affront to.
What was more interesting and that no one seems to be interested in talking about was some of the debate around this about the new Mac development trends (style over substance) of which Disco and Delicious Library are the poster children. This is a productive thread to talk about because debating and discussing how people use and develop software can influence all Mac users (and given history, all Windows users, too). And obviously the marketing strategy of MacHeist seems to be part and parcel of this “nouvelle vague”.
So as far as I’m concerned, if you bought MacHeist or not, that’s fine. I had been considering Delicious Library and was aware of many of the other applications, so I was seriously considering MacHeist. When the way the finances were being handled was pointed out by Gus Mueller and later Gruber I decided that I would buy two shareware apps I had been considering lately rather than sample a bunch that were mostly redundant to me. I am perfectly happy with Toast, NetNewswire, TextWrangler…and I decided to spend an hour or so and make my own DVD catalog in FileMaker Pro as I am really not interested in scanning the barcodes.
December 20th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
I’m still waiting for a participating developer to come forward with a claim of fraud or something to support the claims of an “inequitable” contract. Until then, it’s all (to use Gruber’s favorite puppet) Artie McStrawman. It’s nothing more than people who have no relationship to the underlying contract complaining and making noise. Static. Inapplicable. So far, all I’m seeing is a group of programmers happy with the outcome and looking forward to positive growth in the future.
Delicious Library is anything but style over substance. It works, and it works well. It’s a solid piece of programming done right. How they ended up grouped in with Disco is beyond me. I think the quality of Disco speaks for itself, as well as its continuing, non-updated beta status. But you’re correct, this would be a good conversation. It’s far more relevant and important than whether a group of entrepreneurs made money, or whether the sales price of a given piece of software accurately reflects the community’s goodwill, or whether 1,500 new customers equates to an equivalent number of future upgrades. Basically, it’s far more important than this thread.
Frankly, until a participating developer comes forward with a legitimate gripe, this whole thread (and argumen) it is nothing more than irrelevant noise from the cheap seats.
(And yeah, I love Gruber but the quality has been in serious decline lately. I’m holding fast and hopeful for the future, much like the developers who participated in MacHeist. Bless ‘em all for participating in what is an as-yet-unheard-of contribution to charity from the Mac community, and I wish them well in the future. I’ll be renewing/upgrading most of the packages found in the bundle, so I guess I’m the exception to that argument as well.)
December 20th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
I love Delicious Library. I got that software for $20 before MH pimped it. The deal was that the developers would drop the price of the program by a dollar a day until they stopped. So it was a gamble to wait to see if the price would drop down another dollar. I caught the deal when it was $20 and figured that 50% off was a good deal. I think it went down a couple more dollars before they stopped, but it was a really cool idea for a promotion. Delicious Monster ran that promotion, so I don’t think they are unhappy with the outcome of this promotion.
I agree with you Stephen about Delicious Library being put along side Disco. Disco is an interesting app. I don’t know if it’s worth $15 or more, but I got it for $5 as a MacZOT, so I don’t feel too bad about getting it. I haven’t used it much, but if someone did a lot of burning of say pictures to CD’s or something like that and didn’t really understand the whole process, I can see Disco being a useful app. Plus it keeps track of the CD’s and their contents.
I wasn’t aware that Gruber had joined the ranks of Kottke and others. I really don’t understand this “Professional Blogger” thing myself. It must work, just look at Weblogs, Inc. They have, what 200 blogs, all cross posting to each other and having very little content. Yet they were able to sell to Time-Warner. Go figure. At least Daring Fireball has some content, not sure of it’s value, but it’s content. I used to read Kottke before he made the move to professional. He just posted links to sites and told us about his daily life. Now, as a professional blogger, he posts links to other sites and tells us about his daily life. Is that really worth paying for?
December 21st, 2006 at 4:54 am
I’m not missing the point of Gruber’s argument. I’m simply saying I don’t care about Gruber’s point. Gruber’s point is meaningless to me. He is making a big deal out of something that has nothing to do with him, me or anyone else other than those who directly participated in the MacHeist promotion. You betcha, the MacHeist folks took a huge chunk of the pie and you betcha, maybe it was more than they were entitled to. But more importantly, you can betcha I don’t care if the deal was fair or not. It’s the deal, and so far the only person to complain is Gruber.
The developers are happy with the deal. He isn’t. And he just won’t let it go. It’s a non-issue that he refuses to stop ranting about as if it actually impacted him in any way at all.
Gruber is ranting about this because he is the only person on Earth who seems to think that this is worth ranting about. It would be nice if he would go back to anthropomorhizing iTunes or debunking the “always repair permissions when backing up” myth or any of the other interesting or, at the least, entertaining articles he used to write. But no. He spends all of his time these days trolling, naming various people Jackass of the Week (sometimes deservedly so but at least as often not) and directly attacking people who hold differing opinions than his own.
It’s time for him to go back to his old job, because he’s clearly run out of material for his blog.
That or he can put his money where his mouth is. I’ll bet he could easily start a similar promotion of his own (how many DF readers you think would buy a DaringFireball approved set of Mac apps?), take less of the profit for himself (making him the greatest Santa ever) and still end up with enough money from the deal to fund his ranting for another year. If he’s so smart and so much more special than Phil Ryu, why doesn’t he just take matters into his own hands instead of slinging mud across the playground?
December 21st, 2006 at 11:45 am
There’s a lot of long posts, so I’ll try to make a short one (which will be overlooked)…
The developers could have negotiated a better deal for themselves. No one robbed them.
But put yourself in their shoes for a moment. Some unknown website (MacHeist) comes to you offering $5k for you product not knowing if they are going to sell 6, 60, or 16,000+ copies. What deal would you take. If they had the option, it would have been nice to get a percentage (if sales go over the $5k profit mark).
I’m just giving a scenario. I’m sure the terms of the next big deal (through MacHeist or not) will be different for everyone involved since the first was a success.
December 28th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
This reminds of the neverending arguments about “equitable” compensation in the tech business. Developers who do the hard work of writing code get paid decent salaries, but the sales people almost always get paid more. I won’t go into all the reasons this is so, but it’s true. I think Gruber should realize this about MacHeist too. Sure, the developers did all the “hard” work developing the apps, but they need hard-working sales people to bring in the money.
MacHeist just found a good way to get customers. They should make most of the money in that arrangement.