Developing Windows only plugins

[perpetual3]

users who are willing to pay good money if the product is good

Indeed, if the product is good.
And if it fills a gap in the market.
And if you have a nose for advertisement
(or have good connections with someone who does)

I know I can code, but I also know I suck at all the rest.

A gap in the market - I don’t agree. How many mini Moog emus does one need? Softube releases a new one and it’s a hit. Eqs and comps are continuously released.

A nose for advertisement - where? I find out about all new software by checking KVR and gearslutz. Rarely, youtube. I can’t recall the last time I saw an ad for music software, but I block ads. EDIT: this argument is based on anecdotal experience, and I was going to delete but decided to leave it here with the caveat that my experience is not necessarily representative of what may be the industry norm. Other may find out about new plugins primarily from advertising.

A good product will be a good product.
Look at the gain match plugin by letimix. No ads, no marketing, just a great product with great word of mouth. (Caveat: it’s at a great price, and should be priced higher, but the developer wants to get it into as many people’s hands as possible).

But hey - it’s YOUR business, your value proposition and I’m not going to tell you to support Macs if you simply don’t want to.

But as I said earlier - it’s strange for software developers to ignore the portion of the market that is known for paying decent prices on software. A race to the bottom serves neither the business, nor ultimately the consumer if businesses go bust.

[perpetual3]

Delete (wow)

[perpetual3]

Delete: duplicate.

[perpetual3]

Delete, duplicate.

[perpetual3]

Delete

[Richard_Synapse]

But as I said earlier - it’s strange for software developers to ignore the portion of the market that is known for paying decent prices on software. A race to the bottom serves neither the business, nor ultimately the consumer if businesses go bust.

Yep, that is an important point. Also I don't know a single Mac user who is into warez. Ultimately that means the number of Mac users is much higher than what looking at Apple's market share would suggest.

Richard

[AndyMusician]

The race to the bottom is another topic. It has nothing to do with the OSs a dev wants to support.

[AndyMusician]

Oh come on, enough with the exagération.
Instead of all this, why don’t you and developers like yourself simply stop supporting MacOS and see what happens.

Because time is money.

Are you a dev?

[BertKoor]

Mini moog is not a gap in the market. It is a friggin black hole. Because no two hardware minimoogs are identical. And it has a cult status ofcourse.

[audiothing]

I did not frame it like that. I just said Mac users are conditioned (by Apple and their pricing scheme, for decades now) to pay more (in general - not specific to software) even if they don't have to (there's always other options).

If someone pays a considerable amount of money for a computer (regardless of whether it's really worth that much or not, which is also a very subjective matter) then he/she is probably going to spend more on software as well. And, from a business point of view, this is a good thing. Not supporting this market share, especially now with the switch to Silicon, would be foolish (again, from a business pov).

I also think the argument "there are always other options" is pointless. Ubuntu, for example, is free, with free and commercial DAWs and plugins (sure, not a huge list, but probably good enough for many).
Rather than "options" and price, I think the most important factors for users, especially professionals, are ergonomics, workflow, and software availability. In our latest survey Logic Pro was the first most used DAW by our customers (but that's just us of course, that's why it really depends on the audience and target you are focusing to).

I'm not sure how "motivating" it really is when Apple breaks shit on every OS update.

That's my reasoning: if I release more plugins with the time saved not developing macOS plugins, it could potentially compensate for the lost sales I would have had with macOS customers. For me, it seems plausible because of the way each macOS updates breaks things every 1.5 years. That's a lot of time wasted fixing things you don't have to fix on other OSs.

There's a whole thread (actually more than one) about this. Everyone has a different experience with the recent macOS updates. This is ours, so far.

The switch to Silicon could be a really good business opportunity (probably not as big as the switch to Intel was). But if your Mac users are a small percentage and the cost of keeping up with Apple is too much...sure, let's talk about iPhones price

i read multiple times from multiple devs in multiple of these mac vs. pc threads that the market share of mac in audio had been going down for many years now.

For us, it's the other way around, depending on which period I compare to. From 2019 to 2020 I see a 5% increase in Mac users/customers, which I think it's really good considering the higher conversion rate.

[perpetual3]

The race to the bottom is another topic. It has nothing to do with the OSs a dev wants to support.

If you are ignoring the portion of the market with the reputation for paying decent money on software, then by implication you are only serving the portion of the market which does not. “Prices which are too low” on products in a saturated and competitive market lead to a race to the bottom as competitors lower prices to attract new customers.

[perpetual3]

Oh come on, enough with the exagération.
Instead of all this, why don’t you and developers like yourself simply stop supporting MacOS and see what happens.

Because time is money.

Are you a dev?

Sure time is money - that’s exactly the whole point of this conversation: whether it’s worth the dev’s time to support a platform.

As a threshold issue, I don’t see how the validity of my argument is dépendant on my being a dev. Certainly two rather well known devs seem to understand my point of view.

But since you asked: I’m graduate student working on intelligent systems. In addition to finishing my thesis, I have two jobs in the industry, one with a Fortune 500 company. Not that any of that necessarily has anything to do with the validity of my argument, but I’m coding pretty much all day. If not that, I’m looking at equations and researching.

[AndyMusician]

The race to the bottom is another topic. It has nothing to do with the OSs a dev wants to support.

If you are ignoring the portion of the market with the reputation for paying decent money on software, then by implication you are only serving the market which does not. “Prices which are two low” on products in a saturated and competitive market lead to a race to the bottom as competitors lower prices to attract new customers.

What are you talking about? The synths I got for 1$ (by AIR) are all Windows/mac compatible. Most plugins out there are Windows/mac compatible and yet you can get them at very low prices on sites like VSTBuzz. If there's one person to blame for the race to the bottom, it's the guy behind VSTBuzz who do bi-monthly "no-brainer" sales. But like I said, it's another topic. I think the link between Windows users and race to the blame is very weak.

[perpetual3]

Mini moog is not a gap in the market. It is a friggin black hole. Because no two hardware minimoogs are identical. And it has a cult status ofcourse.

Well, the initial, knee-jerk response to the Softube Model 72 was essentially that there was no need for another mini Moog. In the mix, who can tell the difference between Monark, Diva, Legend right? And then people played it and then people loved it. I totally understand this. I love delay effects and continually purchase them, even if technically there is overlap between them.

[AndyMusician]

But since you asked: I’m graduate student working on intelligent systems. In addition to finishing my thesis, I have two jobs in the industry, one with a Fortune 500 company. Not that any of that necessarily has anything to do with the validity of my argument, but I’m coding pretty much all day. If not that, I’m looking at equations and researching.

So you're not an audio plugin dev. My question is to them not you since you don't have direct access to the data to answer it.