The Market?

[curry]

John Tenny wrote:

>Who is the market for Rev ( and the needed books)? In early HC days,
>teachers and kids were big users, with lots of folks starting there and
>growing. It was an easy way for real novices to discover the joy of
>controlling the computer and creatively thinking. But Rev is too
>complex for kids in a classroom (not the individual curious kid, but
>the group), and the navigation in, over, and around all the features,
>documentation pockets, etc. is, from a newcomer's view, actually
>terrible.

I'm glad you got on the subject. I think Rev is the right way to do 
things and would like to see more people use it, but I'm already busy 
just trying to make products myself so haven't spent much time 
thinking about it. I think this is a good area that should be 
considered.

Revolution is powerful enough for professional developers and 
dedicated hobbyists, and the interface and experience is probably 
best suited for them right now. But it's also intuitive enough for 
education and other users, and probably the support or third-party 
support for a smoother and easier interface for them needs to happen. 
I was considering trying some things in that area before, but the 
question is, can a third-party make a decent profit on such a thing? 
I've always been interested in offering a few third-party scripting 
solutions or add-ons, for beginners or for normal users, so if there 
is a market for that, somebody let me know! :-)

A lot of products aimed at education and beginners are so smooth at 
the surface, they pick up people fast, but underneath there's not 
much deeper that you can do, or else it's very tedious. Revolution is 
the opposite--it has so much power, but the surface (while very good, 
and pretty easy for developers and hobbyists) is still not as easy 
for inexperienced users to get started with as some of those other 
products, which allow you to very easily hook up simple actions 
without programming--but then any real, custom programming can be a 
nightmare.

Then there's the problem with fads--they are basically illogical 
reasons for mass actions, so they can turn out good or just as easily 
backfire. HC was a good educational fad, but when the signs showed it 
was becoming a dead-end street, people followed the crowd to other 
products, and the herding behavior doesn't always lead them to the 
logically best place.

To see what kind of smooth and easy interface they need, I think Rev 
and any third-parties should look at Hyperstudio's interface--it won 
a lot of the educational crowd coming from HC, and a lot of the 
reason was being at the right place at the right time with color and 
cross-platform, and they probably had good marketing, but the 
interface and paint tools, and the way to assign basic actions is 
very smooth and easy to use--a wonderful interface that sold people 
on the skin-deep basic features, and what lay under it--any type of 
advanced feature or custom scripting--wasn't all that intuitive or 
convenient from my point of view, but that didn't keep away any 
customers because that wasn't the point where people were sold.

Also, if people come to Revolution *without* having known HC, they'll 
probably have an even tougher time getting started. But I think the 
Cookbook is so promising and useful, a great feature in itself, not 
just for newcomers but for everyone. There were at least two things 
in there that solved things I'd been looking for lately. It's a good 
addition, and needs to be featured quite prominently.

I would like to see RunRev have the kind of professional and hobbyist 
following of RealBasic and the educational following of HyperStudio 
(or whatever the fad is now). I would like to offer some third-party 
additions too, maybe not huge but there are a few things I've worked 
on, so I hope there's an opportunity for that too.

-- 
Curry Kenworthy
--
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