Build for Classic

[Jeff Reynolds]

Sorry this is not so. They sitll have some small budgets for software  
and want to be able to run new stuff they buy on all the computers  
they can and in some case its only old computers they have.

Its not a huge market in the over all scheme of software, but in the  
education market, especially K-6 the publishers, distributers, and  
school buyers always asks and if you say no they will either say no  
thanks or at best grumble a lot.

Not having a classic app in this market still severely hurts your  
chance of getting published, distributed and bought. I have a feeling  
this will be a few more years till its dead enough to ignore.

I hear a lot of non education folks talking about how we should be  
developing for the ed market here. sorry you just have to go out and  
experience that market for a while to see whats there and how it  
operates, its very different from the markets/clients you are use to.  
Its a totally different world you cant change it with a few 'ideas'  
thrown in, it dictates what you have to do to it since its sooo much  
larger than anything we can control and has money political problems  
out the wazoo.

I also want to make it clear even if publishers and distributors  
didnt force me to develop the os9 versions for this market i would  
since so many folks out there still want to use the product on those  
computers (i know we have lots of educators come up to us at  
conferences) and the whole reason i take a huge pay cut to work on  
education stuff is so that it gets used and makes a difference. I  
could not sleep at night if i were to cut those folks off just  
because it was not making me much money to do so. We keep our  
products inexpensive enough that teachers even buy them out of their  
own pockets or get a parent who has offered to buy and donate things  
to the classroom, so they can buy these little pieces of software/ 
content, but not enough to buy a new computer. Yes we try to make a  
profit, but the profit we make is not something most folks would be  
happy with probably for a living.

I realize the rest of the rev group is not in this boat. Im fine with  
that, i just want to find out what the final say from rev is on the  
os9 issue. is it dead at 2.6.1, are they going to do one last try or  
what and then i will plan accordingly. I have just been trying to  
find out if the classic is really dead at 2.6.1 or if there is going  
to be one more round as promised in 2.7 and 2.8.

my only fear with developing in 2.6.1 and then using the later  
versions for creating the osx and pc apps is that some gotcha will  
show up in bringing the older stack into the newer system for app  
building. i think this is low risk, but it smacks of a murphy  
situation...

Please rev just tell us what the scoop is and ill be happy. I dont  
intend to stomp my feet and demand it or that there is the business  
justification for rev to do this. i just want a straight and final  
answer. I was not trying to start the debate if rev should be keeping  
classic, just defending why i had to keep developing classic from  
folks that do not understand the ed market I work in. i think you  
folks are right classic is dead in the larger markets and should be,  
but trying to kill it in ed by not developing for it is not helping  
education, just hurting it.

cheers,

Jeffrey Reynolds



On May 20, 2007, at 8:35 AM, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com  
wrote:

>> The thought was: those who
>> are satisfied with the old OS are satisfied with the old version  
>> of our
>> software.
> <snip>
>> I suspect this is true in education as well. One could make an  
>> Apple II
>> version of a program but even schools still using A IIs will be  
>> unlike to buy it.
>> There may be a lot of classic
>> computers in education but that doesn't mean there is a big market  
>> for classic
>> programs.
>
> Excellent points Paul. I hadn't thought of it that way, but of course
> you're right. If you're not interested in upgrading hardware, why
> would you upgrade software?
>
> -Chipp