Social Marketing analyst Jeremiah Owyang has posted an interesting tale of artist Nadia Plesner’s hijacking of Louis Vuitton’s luxury goods brand to help raise funds for Save Darfur’s “Divest for Darfur” campaign.

As I wrote on Jeremiah’s blog,

Luxury brands do not have the luxury of remaining silent. They are the expressiveness of the well-heeled, for whom verbalizing, “I’m richer than you.” is a sign of a lack of refinement. So LV is *required* to publicly react in this case.

Their best option would be to sponsor a forum in which the global community can participate and engage with the local Darfur community and any and all who are engaged in the atrocities or can act to prevent it; a forum which (it is hoped) effects a change, but in which, at the least, participants feel as if they’re doing something. After all, a brand which symbolizes wealth *and* power is able to wield quite a bit of both itself.

The real dilemma for a brand which positions itself as a symbol of wealth and prestige, is how to present its position on non-lifestyle topics. To say you represent the constituency of wealth and influence, yet are unable or unwilling to exert either for social and political issues is preposterous. To choose to remain out of the “conversation” regarding these matters is to invoke the legend of Marie Antoinette, who when she was told the peasants of France had no bread (according to the legend), said, “Let them eat cake.” It indicates a shallowness of character, indifference to world affairs, impotence or fear of loss, none of which can be considered admirable traits and thus worthy of public expression by the upper crust. And to be directly hostile to efforts to assist the victims of genocide is to support the perpetrators of this outrage.

No, Louis Vuitton must demonstrate their ability to act on behalf of the victims and those who would assist them, or acknowledge that they are incapable of effecting any change and allow their brand to be repositioned as the symbol of a lack of influence, power, scruples and/or purpose.

I suppose it’s fitting that Paris Hilton has become the face of Louis Vuitton.

For years, you and your mealy-mouthed predecessors have promised to make things work, and make things better. And for years you’ve complained that whenever you tried to fix things somebody else threw up roadblocks. “It’s the President’s fault.”, “It’s Congress’ fault.”, or “It’s the lobbyists’ fault.” And if only you had more time, and more of our money, you’d be able to fix things. But the only thing you manage to do is spend more time and spend more money and things don’t get fixed.

But now, we’ve discovered this thing called the Internet (it’s a series of tubes), and while it’s been fun to share our home videos and prank one another, we’ve also gotten to talking with our fellow Americans. And something that keeps coming up in our conversations is that our country’s in very bad shape, and you’re not doing your job.

You had the budget thing tolerable for a while, but then you went and spent us back into a deficit. Then the terrorists attacked and things were really bad. But we supported you when you said we had to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden, but it’s been nearly eight years. For all the money you spent, why don’t you have bin Laden?

Then you insisted that we had to go to war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein had WMDs, but he didn’t actually have WMDs. And he went into hiding, and you found him hiding in a hole, this guy who didn’t have anything. You found him hiding in a hole, but you haven’t found bin Laden, the terrorist who funded attacks in America.

And it’s interesting that you aren’t willing send your own kids to fight this war that was so important to you. This war to protect U.S. interests, you said. The rest of us have lost loved ones and real Americans in our cities and hometowns, folks who give our small communities meaning and a sense of honor. You’ve given us draped coffins and broken men and women, some missing limbs, some missing their former souls, but you haven’t given us your own sons and daughters, nor have you given us bin Laden.

This “important” war has taken longer to finish then the Second World War, in which we fought Nazi Germany and Italy across the Atlantic, and Imperialist Japan across the Pacific. We fought three countries. Countries that had real, dedicated armies. At the same time. From an economic depression. And We won. But that’s because you weren’t in charge back then, because you can’t even beat the leftover enemies of one country that has little more than sand, and we’re paying for you to use fancy (and expensive, I might add) planes, tanks, bombs and satellites which you like to blow up. And yet you still haven’t found bin Laden.

And now our economy’s again in the toilet because folks don’t want our money. You give Canadians the right to buy normal, tasty thin American bacon instead of that round stuff they had to eat because their dollar was worth less, but you don’t give us bin Laden!

You give us airport security that hassles and harasses us, but doesn’t stop weapons from being smuggled onboard planes. You give us illegal aliens crossing our borders. You give us banks that overcharge us on fees and interest rates. You give us homes that are worth less. You give us $100/bbl oil, and $3 gas. You give us colors that tell us our phone calls can be tapped, and that we can’t take pictures of buildings because Americans are up to no good. But you still haven’t given us bin Laden.

Some of us made lists of things that we weren’t happy with, of how you haven’t been doing your job like you’re supposed to, and how you’re not helping anyone but yourselves and your friends. And we don’t like that at all. At first, some of us thought we just might be unusual, crackpots on the fringe of society. But the more we started having our own chats with others across this country, the more we realized we are not alone; that many others are fed up with the nonesense you’ve been pulling. And some started reminding us that when the Constitution talks about who the bosses are in this country, “We the people” are the ones it’s talking about.

And we’re taking charge again, as you can see.

So the 30% of us who remembered we are the bosses are getting together with the 70% of those who forgot, or felt their votes don’t count. And we’re also coordinating a united action: come November, we’re handing you your walking papers. We won’t be coughing. We won’t be throwing sweaters. We won’t be heckling you. Come November, you’re fired.

The Citizens (and real bosses) of The U.S.A

People look at the trappings of materialism, of possessions, and of an indulgent lifestyle, and they infer the absence of hard-work, sweat and struggle. They associate the possession of goods with success, representative of a successful person or someone who can get things done; being obviously done, because he’s no longer working hard.

However, the true measure of one’s success are the goals he has set for himself. For success is the achievement of goals, and unless your goal was the possession of great many material possessions, you are no more successful by having them then you are in not.

Understanding this, we can say Bill Gates isn’t a success although he has achieved great material wealth. The goal he had established for Microsoft, as defined in their original mission statement, was “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.” This is the reason why Microsoft competes vigorously in any industry related to computer software or which is heavily dependent on software.

If you think I’m just nit-picking over minor details, then you’re getting the cart before the horse. You’re looking at their position of prominence and wealth as establishing their character; whereas by focusing on their mission, the people of Microsoft didn’t stop once they achieved a measure of material wealth. They kept trying harder and harder to dominate other markets, and risked that material wealth, until they eventually dominated those markets.

You’re also demonstrating a great deal of self-centeredness, measuring others against your own personal standard for success.

Chances are, when you first read the title of this entry you thought of the façade rather than the success. Hopefully, by thinking more clearly on what is the true measure of success, your personal measure of success, you’ll concentrate on those critical areas which will help you achieve them rather than the façade.

Recently, Turner Classic Movies aired the 1956 film The Opposite Sex, a film about the stereotypical 1950’s housewife who discovers her husband is having an affair, divorces him, but remarries him a year later (I guess).

Anyway, some of the dialogue is noteworthy as it demonstrates the error of just reacting to events instead of remaining cool, analyzing the situation, and acting on decisions that put you in a position to collect the desired outcome. Your desired outcome.

Here it is:

Once her divorce becomes final, one of her friends flies out to Reno (remember, this is the ’50s) to accompany her on the long trip back to New York (remember, this is the ’50s).

Amanda asks, “Are you satisfied?”

Kay hesitates.

Amanda continues, “Steven isn’t. Kay, has it ever occurred to you he might marry that girl?”

Kay hesitates again. “If that’s what he wants.”

“That isn’t what he wants. She wants it, and she hasn’t been wasting any time. I’ve seen clever operators in my day…”

Kay pauses packing. “You don’t seem to understand: it’s over.”

“You’ve played right into her hands. Walked wide-eyed into every trap she’s set for you. And now you’ve removed Steven’s last protection, his marriage.”

Kay looks at Amanda. “Why rehash this?”

“Because this is wrong! You’re not like these jaded, frenetic women shedding their husbands like they shed last year’s dresses.”

Kay continues packing.

“Look, Kay. I hate airplanes, and I hate cactus, and I hate people who give advice to other people. So I don’t know why I’ve flown 3,000 miles to this God-forsaken waterhole unless it’s because I can’t stand seeing something good go down the drain.

“Maybe it was good once…”

“Oh, you’re talking like a child! What do you think marriage is anyway? Something safe and comfortable you can take for granted? This is a rough world, Kay, and marriage has to live in it. It has to be won over and over again, as many times as necessary and against all challengers! And anyone who hasn’t the guts for it ought to have learned to live alone and like it a long time ago!”

Kay glares at her. “Like you?”

Amanda steels herself and continues, “That’s right, like me.”

Kay fumbles about. “I’m sorry, Amanda, that wasn’t very nice.”

“Well, at least it’s a step in the right direction. Stop being so nice, Kay! If you have any feeling left for the guy, get to New York as quickly as possible and tell him.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not the fighting kind.”

Now, you may be asking yourself, “Why has Alfonso gone nutso and started quoting old movie scenes. And especially bad movie scenes?”

Simply because earlier today, Scott Anguish, one of the eminent NeXTStep/Mac OS X developers who’ve assisted the rest of us Cocoanauts in getting our code to work and whose works have been referenced by Wikipedia articles, began shuttering his site due to one of the Internet trolls stealing his work. (Again, the topic of another blog entry which I’ll post after Mori’s latest bugfix is released.) He ended his explanation of events with the following, “I’ve worked 13+ years on supporting developers by maintaining Stepwise (which truly is a labor of love) and I don’t want this theft and misrepresentation to damage that effort.”

Really?! Then why just roll over and let him keep it? Don’t just cave into him! Do to him what should be done to all bullies, you kick them in the teeth and pound their heads into the ground!

Now, the perpetrator of this infringement might be a little more skilled than the average individual where programming is concerned, but that doesn’t make him more skilled than the average programmer. Indeed, having only one area of human activity you’re skilled in doesn’t make you skilled in all. Nor does having the right answer once make it the right answer all the time.

There’s an old saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Well, it’s obvious this bully needs to acquire additional tools, because he’s got a few loose screws.

Keep your material up, Scott. Please keep adding to the valuable content which has benefitted us, and the users we work for, tremendously. No amount of sputtering by a counterfeiting troll can prove to be a substitute for you.

How timely! I had been working on the last entry for nearly a week, and was giving the 8th or 9th proofing when Manton Reece tweeted, “Finding the comments on CandyBar upgrade pricing kind of interesting. http://tinyurl.com/26aggr“.

That’s happened quite a bit lately, as I’m a bit of a perfectionist and entries I’ve began have been bogged down in my proofing stage. At least I was able to finish and publish the entry when those comments began. I guess I’ll have to do less polishing and just more shoot from the hip, dangerous though that may be for a corporation; and likely to result in a retraction or two in the future.

But it’s precisely those retractions and changes in policies and reactions to public opinion that developers should learn to handle. Most just don’t like having to say no. Well, most people don’t like to say no. But it’s important to know to say no, as you don’t have time to do everything you want, and you have to learn to prioritize based on what’s important to you.

Here are a few of those interesting comments left for that article:

I bought CandyBar 1 & 2. I won’t be paying Panic for 3, they priced it outside of my impulse range by trying to make it into more than it needed to be. I’m sure it was a lot of work, but that upgrade price is just too much for some icon swapping.
– Aurich

Another $5 product priced at $25.

Sounds like a job for serial box!
– Greasy Breakfast

There’s always LiteIcon. Not nearly as pretty and doesn’t do the dock trick — but it’s free.
– Insomnic

And that’s the point: if you want more functionality, expect to have to pay more for it. If you don’t want to pay for it, settle for less or do without. You’re not obligated to work overtime on your day off so your company can make more money off you, nor are companies obligated to lower their prices just so you can afford to buy their products.

quote:
Why are some people so against paying for something that had a lot of work put into it?
Because it doesn’t DO very much! If I put a lot of work into taking a dump are you going to pay me for it? What if I were to wrap it in shiny plastic? Would you pay me then? CandyBar is about 99% interface and 1% function. The point is that what this program actually does is largely unspectacular and is available for free by other means regardless of how much work was put into it to make it look nice.
– Fiendish

Schools used to teach that things could be separated into wants and needs, but back then parents used to take responsibility for their kids’ education. A Lexus is no more effective, yet is far more expensive, than a Kia for driving from one place to another. A Ferrari even more so. Not everyone wants or can afford the more expensive vehicles, yet they sell very well. A man has to pick the standard of living he’s content with.

If you’re running a business, the most important thing has to be the money (or some reasonable substitute). Some people like to espouse terms like ethics and morality and customer service, but those aren’t requirements for running a business. Those are principles by which you make decisions for how to run a business. And making decisions with those principles can make for a healthier business in the long run. But they aren’t necessary for a business. An unprincipled business that is profitable will outlast a principled business that isn’t.

People are afraid of money. People don’t want to be greedy, or worse, don’t want to be seen as greedy. Most people have a dysfunctional gauge for money which varies wildly depending on its context and is completely disproportionate to its true purpose. Money is just a product, made by man, used to trade goods and services. It is a way to shift one asset you have to another. Like your health and time or a house or car, money is just another resource that you can manipulate and assign a value to. Money doesn’t exist or accomplish anything on its own.

From a moralistic point of view, money lacks any. It is neither good nor bad. Even the saying “Money is the root of all evil” is a misreading of text from the Bible, which doesn’t condemn money. The actual text is, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith…,” and you don’t have to have a dollar to your name to covet. You don’t need a dime. In fact, a great many people in the world who criticize those who work hard to achieve financial success are also out there buying lottery tickets every week. Is money attained hastily in a desperate attempt to improve your life better than money gained after working a lifetime, or inherited?

You should think of your role in business as a farmer, looking for a harvestable crop. Disregard what you’ve heard about money not growing on trees. Everything grows. It’s a universal truth. You just need to recognize what the tree is for a business: its relationship with its customer. Now you can’t just have any customer and expect to harvest cash from him. Just like expecting walnuts from an apple tree, there are customers that don’t produce money for you because they aren’t the right tree for your business. And even the right tree requires the right soil conditions, the right amount of sunlight and the right amount of water. If you don’t have the right environment for the tree, pick another tree or you’ll waste a lot of your time and effort and trees.

But some trees are unhealthy. Some trees won’t bear fruit no matter how well you nourish them. Letting yourself be cheated of your hard work is just as bad for business as cheating your customers. There has to be a balance which is healthy for both parties in the relationship.

Now there may be a lot of customers who cannot afford your product, who will have to go without, or resort to unethical behavior to obtain it. But the same is true for your business, it cannot afford to buy everything to maximize its efficiency. You have to compensate and adapt and act based on your abilities.

But if you can’t refuse to take work which isn’t profitable your business won’t be profitable. And if your business can’t be profitable it can’t survive (unless its main purpose is to be a tax write-off!).

Uproot the wrong trees so they can be replanted in the proper environment, and plant the right trees. You’ll be able to take better care of them, and the remaining trees will be better off as well.

So this winter, do the right thing by your business and your customers: learn to turn away customers which are unhealthy for your business so you can take better care of the ones who aren’t.

A few days ago, there was a thread on the Macintosh PIMs group that descended into a diatribe against the current state of PIM software and the cost of software. In response, I wrote what turned into a very long, poorly-conceived, and most likely ill-advised response to some of the opinions voiced. Very few quotes are enclosed, as it’s mainly a response, not a rebuttal.

Please forgive what is sure to be a foolish action on my part, but nothing concerning the current state of affairs will improve by actively avoiding public discussion of the issues. None of my comments are an attack on the people whose comments I responded to, particularly db whom I responded to especially. Consider his remarks a proxy for a lot of the “it costs too much” complaints I see on sites like VersionTracker, MacUpdate, iusethis, and elsewhere on the Internet. And it’s with the intent to publically respond to those complaints that I choose to do so here, rather than the Macintosh PIM group’s mailing list. My apologies to the Mac PIMs group, and the rest of the netizens (although there are worse things one should unsee). With that in mind, here is Apokalypse’ contribution to the conversation. Your comments are welcome.

Ted Goranson wrote [Context added so his position is somewhat clearer. His remarks are included as Mori is mentioned. -- AG]
> the value added. Users who know nothing about development somehow
> expect the same, unreasonably low pricing scheme.
>
> These people, for example are why we don’t have Incontrol and
> Infodepot, why we lost MORE. Why Mori was all but lost.

db wrote:
> I’m going to try again (to change this topic
>
> Ted/Edward,
>
> I appreciate the understanding and constructive disagreement, however
> large or small, though actually I don’t think we really disagree about
> anything substantial, other than pigs flying. I have proof, from the
> state of Maine no less, which is the original home state of Mori and
> still the home of Mori’s original Developer, HogBay Software:
> http://sendbread.com/
>
> Mori got smart and moved to Florida, well before winter set in. I have
> no idea where the pigs went.

db wrote:

> And you expect Mori to get
> it right with a part-time developer.

Since there’s been some mention made of Mori of late, I believe it’s in the community’s best interest for me to stir things up a tad bit more in the hope that by sharing my experience as Mori’s owner/developer, a better understanding of the current state of the Mac software market might help to improve the situation for us as users and businesses.

And I know, db, that you like to constantly talk about Mori’s “original” developer, in a wistful (or rueful) tone, but the truth is Jesse wasn’t developing Mori when I purchased it from him, had lost all interest in continuing development months before, and never wants to touch Mori code again. This isn’t an attempt to be cruel, but to make the point with finality. If anyone has any bugs to report or feature requests they want to make, they’ll have to tell me. I’m the only one who’s responsible for the condition it’s in now, and the only one who’ll be able to make the necessary changes. I’m the one taking Mori into the future. Or to put it into less delicate terms, Mori may once have been Jesse’s little girl, but I’m making her a woman.

The Low-Baller Wins Myth

> There are some folks who will defend M$ pricing, or the price of an
> unlocked iPhone in Germany. That’s OK, but not me.

> If you recall, I am asking for a more modest personal edition price,
> to help the product succeed by increasing market penetration (and
> frankly, user goodwill) in order to make an integrated PIM available
> to more users. I’ll bet that your Mac and it’s apps save you $1000s
> more than they cost if you use them effectively in a work environment.
> But if Apple sold them at a price that more closely approached the
> savings gained by it’s users, users would have revolted and there
> would be no Macs. The Apple IIe saved me a ton of time in college but
> that doesn’t mean I would have been willing or able to pay two or
> three times as much for that option. My strategy is to charge as
> little as I reasonably need to and I’ll keep busy. If some fool wants
> to pay someone more thinking they must be getting a something better.
> Fine. I don’t like working for fools anyway.

> I think their is a marketing possibility that more at lower pricing
> will offset less at higher. Not everyone is a fool.

The problem with your strategy is it fails to account for shortfalls in sales volumes, changes in the market, and other unforeseen events; both corporate and personal. For a lower price to make a difference it has to be substantially lower, and for volume to make up the loss in margin it has to be several times higher. Selling 25% more of a half-off product won’t cut it. And when your target market is the price-conscious, economic conditions which impact their budget also impacts your sales. Wal-mart successfully, though unintentially, demonstrated that for us these past two years.

People spend 50-300% more for an Apple iPod than for anyone else’s portable media player. Not just 20-30%, but up to 300%! That’s two to three times more for a device to play songs or display pictures. The multiple is even higher when you consider the features lacking in an iPod which are available in other players. So you think iPod buyers are fools. I think your opinion that price is the main consideration for consumers is faulty. Or is there some special excuse we give Apple for pricing above the market, instead of “a more modest personal edition price”? (The iPod Shuffle furthers my argument, not yours, as the Shuffle is priced against Apple’s own products, not the rest of the market: it is has even less features.)

When you made that crack about me developing Mori part-time, I was insulted. But then I realized that, in all honesty, I am only developing Mori part-time. I’m also handling web-site duties part-time, which include controlling spam, updating the site software, touching up the databases, writing blog entries, performing backups, and preparing traffic reports. I’m also fielding customer support, whether it’s email, IMs, the fora, or bug/feature tracking. I’m also handling marketing, which includes contacting blog writers, contacting writers and editors in the media, preparing market plans, product literature, artwork, etc. I’m also writing user docs, screencast scripts, tutorials, and the like, in several languages. I might be doing all this, but my development work on Mori itself is, as you say, strictly part-time.

Most software developers in the Mac market are small shops. MicroISVs. Indies. Whatever the term, sometimes it’s a shop of two or three people doing product development. By far, though, the bulk of the product developers today are one-man shops. Somebody working solo. And that solo developer typically doesn’t make enough to support himself on his products’ sales. It usually doesn’t matter because these indies are usually students or employees of another company. Their product is just something they whipped up for their own needs or interests, and they decided to offer it for sale to make a few bucks (just like the Apple story we’re all so fond of).

However, I’m neither a college student nor employed anywhere else. I’ve even turned away contracting offers due to the backlog of development tasks. So I have to question what your beliefs are when I read your crack about my work on Mori as nothing more than part-time in the same paragraph where you complain that Mac software is overpriced, and how small shops can’t afford market research!

A Cowboy [Coder] Isn’t A Landowner

> I think many (not all) of the little one-man shops fail because they
> lack the willingness or ability to see or use the advantages of
> cooperation with others. They sometime simply want to be in charge,
> their own boss, and see cooperation, of course, as giving up control.
> That’s the way it is when you work with others. Unless they have such
> a big hit that allows them to hire others, they’d be far better off
> cooperating with others. Look how many GTD and info management apps we
> have from very small shops. Few have a chance at decent success
> working alone, and especially when competing with the larger shops
> which simply engender more consumer confidence because of their size,
> never mind having more resources to begin with.

Now you’re finally saying things I can almost completely agree with: most indies want to strike out on their own so they can be their own boss. The problem is most lack the chops to do it. Being intelligent in one field, many assume they know what it takes to be successful running a venture entirely on their own. Being socially awkward, many are too untrusting of others to risk venturing with them. Indeed, many realize the likelihood is that any new venture will go belly up in less than five years. Though most entrepreneurs fear personality clashes with potential partners, the most common cause of failure is insufficient resources.

What incentive does one developer have to cooperate with another? to give his source code and a promise to share profits with a competitor? I’ve repeatedly attempted to persuade other developers to work with me, but loved as I am for my winning personality and disarming smile, I’ve been unable to convince them to abandon their products and support mine instead! Crazy, no? Perhaps they need some sort of compensation for their investment in their product and their customers; some security or other evidence of the legitimacy of the deal, and its probability of success. Would having a bankroll improve the likelihood of him joining me so that we “have a chance at decent success”? How do I accumulate this bankroll with your strategy “to charge as little as I reasonably need to and I’ll keep busy”? While being a low-price leader may be a marketing strategy, volume isn’t proof of commercial success. Long-term commercial success is dependent on your money being busier than you.

There are a couple of your comments that undermine your entire “more modest personal edition price, to help the product succeed by increasing market penetration” fallacy. One is, “Unless they have such a big hit…” Unless? So you admit the chance of that happening is slim. And if the chances of having a big hit and the volume that it creates are slim, then prices will have to remain high to stay in business. Also, if you think having a low price will guarantee a big hit, you are guaranteed that a competitor will come along and undermine your sole competitive advantage with an even lower price.

The other comment debunking your assertion is, “…larger shops which simply engender more consumer confidence because of their size, never mind having more resources to begin with.” Without the margins and volume to build up your resources, how do you expect to engender more confidence in consumers?

If you don’t make enough profit with the early adopters of your program, you’ll never last long enough to develop the additional features, user resources, documentation, etc. to be purchased by the mainstream. In addition, your organization will likely implode due to an inability to adequately provide service for your customers.

You probably have a larger selection of PIMs to choose from now than ever before, so why aren’t you satisfied? It’s because they aren’t as powerful or feature-rich as the old ones were. You’d say they lack the quality, or aren’t of the same caliber as the old apps. I’m pointing out that, twenty years later, the apps are substantially less expensive as well; and they don’t get better because the developers can’t afford to invest more development time and money in them!

Road Closed Due to Growth

Do you know what it takes to add that power and those features you long for to the software on the market? It doesn’t take listening to the customer, because customers have been talking about their needs for years. It doesn’t take writing better docs, which people don’t like to read anyway. It doesn’t take promotional discounts or educational versions, which have a limited lifespan in effective marketing.

It takes engineers. Software engineers and time. Time to think about how the current product was architected. Time to think about what features need to be added. Time to think about what features can be added given the current state of the product. Time to design the code to add those features to the product. Time to code the features into the product. Time to test the code. Time to fix the code. Time to redo the steps again and again until it’s ready to be released. Or worse, until they run out of time.

Do you think engineers are given special treatment for all this wonderful code they’re adding? Do real estate developers or hotels put a roof over their head because they’re improving products? Are hospital visits, medical treatment, or even health insurance without a price because we’re indispensable? Do engineers get any food or caffeine of any quantity without charge because of their role in society? Or should they be required to sacrifice their own needs and wants for transportation, entertainment, family, etc. to fulfill some “higher calling”?

Someone who enters the PIM market as a business isn’t looking to scrape enough money to buy himself a shiny new MBP for Xmas. There’s more than just the cost to purchase equipment. Or pay electric bills. Or Internet access. Or to purchase technical books and journals. A business can’t just make enough to cover the salaries of its employees, its legal fees, its taxes, etc. It has to cover the cost to invest in growth: of its products, its corporate infrastructure, and its owners.

Someone has to foot the bill for all these things while time is being spent adding those improvements you want so much, whether it’s a VC, an angel investor, a spouse, family, friends, whatever; and that someone is going to want a return on their investment. You get a lot of turnover in this industry because these would-be entrepreneurs discover the return on their investment just isn’t satisfactory.

A competent software engineer can make at least $75K/year, even as a fresh graduate. For a 2080 hour year, your product has to bring in $36.06 per hour to cover his salary. His salary alone. If you don’t want him to work on development part-time, like I do, you have to pay others to do the marketing, technical writing, artwork, administering servers and websites, the business-administration-type stuff, etc. So, say you as the business owner make a worst-case salary of $80K, and your developer makes $75K per year. So after other operating expenses of $65K, and a 20% profit for the year, a business should bring in $264K. That is for strictly online sales without a marketing program. It excludes marketing expenses such as advertising, sales commissions, packaging, product literature, trade show exhibitions, etc.

That’s $129.513/hr in sales for a company to be comfortably profitable. (Oh, did we forget to deduct the processing fees deducted from sales by the payment processing firm? You can go out of business if you forget these details!) If we don’t make that, there isn’t a point pretending we run a business. And if you don’t have a business standing behind the software you use to manage your information, quit pretending to be surprised when it’s no longer under development, being supported, or that the features you enjoyed on the old packages will ever return in anything new.

Companies are bought and sold. So are product lines. Products with a sufficient revenue stream continue in the market, regardless of their origin. Products that aren’t worth the trouble die; regardless of how loved they were and how missed they’ll be. So if you’re not prepared to spend the money necessary to obtain a solid, powerful package now, then let time take its course. The part-time developer you’re supporting will either get the features added in there eventually, or drop the product for something more rewarding in his life.

Those who cannot learn from PIM history are doomed to re-key their data

Let me explain why there isn’t a strong third-party PIM in the Mac market. Future product development is based on past product development. Whether it’s the profits from past products, or using the codebase of previously engineered products (e.g., Cocoa and Carbon), one product is built upon others. And whenever someone gets the bright idea to write another to-do list or contact manager or agenda application, whether it’s to learn how to develop for the Mac, or because they have more time than money, they have to develop the basic functionality first. Then, they think, “This is so helpful for me, I bet other people can use it too,” so they make it available to others as freeware or shareware, presumably to others who perceive a similar lack in existing apps or possessing a similar lack of funds.

Then, his app begins to find users. Slowly, of course, because it’s new and the majority of people will let others be the early-adopters. But his app will find some users because it sufficiently meets their feature/price requirements. But! its feature set is shallow because he started from scratch. And! there are a few bugs here and there that need to be fixed. And! it doesn’t sync with Apple’s bundled PIMs. And! it lacks support for their phone or pda. He doesn’t have time to add innovative features because he’s too busy trying to catch up. Now it stops being just a hobby and starts to be real work. Then he thinks, I’ve got to get something more out of it. If he feels he can do it, he’ll start charging (more) for it.

Now there are people who don’t mind spending hours in front of a TV set, playing video games, or downloading and reading stuff off the Internet. It’s something to occupy their time. A way to unwind. Maybe someone likes to tinker with cars, spending months to strip down a junked Mustang and rebuild it into a street monster. It’s a nice way for him to while away the days. Perhaps when he’s finished he’ll just cruise the strip in it. Maybe he’ll street race. Maybe he’ll sell it off and use some of the money to buy another clunker and start over again.

Regardless of the number of times he rebuilds cars for fun, his mindset changes when he begins to treat it as more than just a hobby. His goals will be different. The decisions he makes will take on a whole new importance, and even the tools and processes he uses will have changed.

It’s the same way with software development: you can afford to waste time and money on it when it’s just for kicks. But when it competes with the rest of your life, when a child becomes ill, your spouse loses a job, or your kids are in college, those things that occupied your time are re-evaluated; and you decide whether or not it needs to be treated more seriously, and how committed you are to its success.

And businesses that were profitable in this market re-evaluate their returns due to the competition. They consider whether branching out to other product lines or other platforms will be more rewarding. Developers, large and small, let sales coast without active development. Eventually, their products are outdated, or the platform is (like Mac OS 9 or Tiger). Then some developer decides there’s no to-do list or contact manager or agenda app that matches his feature/price requirements, so he writes one from scratch…

And that is why the PIM market, indeed, the Mac software market in general, is so poor today, and only a few categories have clear market leaders.

As far as PIM goes, it’s obviously an inadequate term for the types of products that fit in that category. There are calendars, to-do lists, project planners, address books, outliners, and on and on, but Mori is specifically a digital notebook app. And while users and developers can add agenda, contact management, GTD, file management or even wordprocessing and spreadsheet functionality through the use of scripts and plug-ins, it doesn’t come with the features typical of those applications. In fact, a lot of the design work I’ve been doing over the past couple of months has been to reduce the excess behavior in Mori and recast its feature set with an eye towards note taking and organizing superiority. Any additional behaviors will have to be the result of plugins. This means the plugin API will be more sophisticated though.

The point is, I’m not going to add features to Mori to handle all PIM needs. And I’m not going to cater to the notetaking needs of every Mac owner out there. Apokalypse will be focusing on the professionals who understand the value of their time, and demand software that delivers productivity gains that make them look good. SOHO users. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate everyone else, but I can’t afford to help everyone else, and the quality of the products will suffer badly. This is one reason why I’ve continued Jesse’s practice of sending prospects to other products, you can’t be all things to all people.

So, as a user of PIM products, figure out what your needs are. If you’re just looking to keep a list of your friends and family members’ contact info, track class activities or have the occasional sticky, the iApps bundled with the Mac should be enough. If your needs are more sophisticated and your time is a resource you use to produce money, find the software that will maximize your productive use of time in managing your tasks, contacts, info, etc. and purchase it. Even at minimum wage rates, you should recoup your investment within the first week!

If you want engineers and small businesses in general, and me in particular, to improve the quality of your life, you’re going to have to improve the quality of mine. How can we maintain a continuing relationship otherwise?

This morning a visitor to my blog posted a rather interesting comment as a reaction to my purchase of Mori and Clockwork from Jesse of Hog Bay Software. The writer isn’t a current customer, nor was he aware when the transaction occurred. So being in the market for notepad and organizer software (digital notebook), he was naturally cautious regarding which product to purchase. The reasons why I’m publishing his comment as this blog entry rather than leave it as a comment are, first of all, he’s expressing a sentiment shared by many visitors which I wanted to address again to reiterate my commitment to the products purchased from Hog Bay Software, and secondarily, he expresses a rather alarming state of mind which technology purchasers now have and which I wanted to bring to your attention: customers are quite gun-shy when it comes to making technology purchases in this day and age, expecting very little in terms of stability, lifetime, and service and support by the provider.

Here’s his comment. My reply follows.

A new comment on the post #44 “Apokalypse Software Corp. Acquires Mori, Clockwork from Hog Bay Software” is waiting for your approval
http://apokalypsesoftware.com/news/apokalypse-software-corp-acquires-mori-clockwork-from-hog-bay-software/

Author : Don (IP: n.n.n.n , dslnnn-nnn-nnn.xxxx.xxx.X.net)
E-mail : email withheld
URL : URL withheld pending response
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=64.81.88.250
Comment: Just discovered Mori. Looks great on first glance. But I’m hesitant to spend $39 on an app that’s just changed hands. And even more important than the money is the possibility ones “life” - notes about an enormous myriad of stuff, could become useless in the future. It wouldn’t be the first time such a change went well and smoothly, perhaps even improving substantially over time, but it also wouldn’t be the first time one didn’t (or even that an app went downhill in both functionality and level of bugs).

I had such an experience, about eight years ago, when the makers of PaperPort and the software that went with it (I should have guessed that having one company make the hardware and another the software was a recipe for disaster) failed to to offer software for the then-new OS X. This was after I invested in several copies and we converted our office, as much as possible, to scanning and filing all paper documents using the system. Many hundreds of hours went down the drain with their self-serving decision, and our easy access to the old data went with it. And we had to go back to dealing with paper.

There were a number of similarly worrisome user comments in your forum. My take: Good, that you were willing to leave them there - shows integrity. But your “base” is going to be mighty nervous until you (1) answer all relevant posts promptly and (2) actually get a track record in moving forward on product updates and bug fixes. And inheriting a product that apparently has as part of its plusses an expectation that it will be modified by user consensus makes the weight all the more heavy!

So I’ll watch to see what happens in the next 30 days before I decide to migrate our ways of organizing much of our data toward Mori.

It looks promising. Good luck to you. I wish you success.

I certainly understand your apprehension in risking an investment in time and effort in moving your firm to a software product, let alone one which recently changed hands, and is now published by a tiny, tiny software outfit (microISV). Considering the issues certainly is a demonstration of wisdom on your part and requires a disclosure of the facts on mine.

I purchased Mori from Jesse because it represented a savings of substantial time on my part in developing a system I have had in development for some time. So I’m not abandoning the vision of my ideal system (which Mori is still quite short of) by dropping the product or not furthering its development.

The actual risk assumed by Mori’s customers (as with any microISV) is that I am somehow incapable of continuing development and my heirs are unable or unwilling to do so in my stead. The saving grace in such circumstances is that ownership of Mori and Clockwork will revert to Hog Bay Software. This is quite a distinction that Mori enjoys over comparable offerings, in that its survival is assured by contract.

Issues of future compatability have always been a concern for technology. While the differences between Tiger and Leopard are much smaller than those between Mac OS 9 and X, current releases of Mori and Clockwork are known not to work on Leopard and won’t be rectified until the night of its release, at the earliest. (Let’s pray there are enough copies of Leopard available on its release date so I don’t have to physically harm anyone to deprive them of same.)

The question of our expectations for future technology persists through any purchase cycle. It was present when I decided Jesse’s work on Mori and Clockwork sufficiently corresponded to my goals to make the investment. It is present when someone selects the software on which to run a website (Apokalypse has four main CMS packages, with several versions, on which its various web properties are run, so I understand the frustration caused by a lack of interoperability and upgradeability.), purchases a new computer system, etc. It is a sad fact of the current state of technology that until it’s advanced enough to adapt itself, we cannot hope to be certain that our choices will continue to match future needs. The best course of action is to select technology which will serve our needs for the present and next three to five years, and ensure that there is some bridge to preserve our investment should we find that the chosen technology has hit an evolutionary dead-end.

To address that issue, and overcome such objections, Mori will have better export options in the post-v1.7 future. As for the present, my continued development of Oneill (Mori v1.7) has revealed further bugs in the v1.6 branch which will see an additional bug release to rectify them for current users. This v1.6.4 release will ship before Leopard, but I don’t expect it to resolve the incompatibilities with it.

You’re welcome to continue monitoring the progress of Apokalypse’s products. Honest questions and discussions are welcome here and the forums. It’s unreasonable to expect customers to have confidence in what a company does if its employees and principals don’t, which is why I make rare exception to letting comments remain on the forum which aren’t euphoric or gushingly pro-Apokalypse. As the line in 1776 goes, “The king is a tyrant whether we say so or not. We might as well say so.” Public perception of my commitment to my offerings will be echoed through other locations on the Internet regardless of any posturing on my part. So I might as well permit them here, where I (and hopefully future employees) have a duty to read and respond to them, and those who’ve invested their time, effort and money in support of Mori and Clockwork (and all future Apokalypse products) can trust their concerns and sentiments are reproduced accurately and honestly and answered in a similar spirit, respecting their intelligence and value to the community. Thus I won’t attempt to dismiss the forum postings which you characterize as worrisome as I recognize their concerns as legitimate when it seems as if there’s noone responding to customer needs. To that end, I’ve made my contact information more publicly accessible. (Now I just need to remember to properly set my status messages as necessary!)

Fads: lolcats, All Your Base Are Belong to Us, Star Wars Kid, fashions

Trends: Urban sprawl, dynamic languages, globalization/nationalism

Memes: Regional dialects, object-oriented programming, proverbs, calculus

Items move from the upper, more ephemeral, lists to lower ones over the course of time.

Oh, and it’s jibe, not jive. And quit using myself until you learn when to use it.

There’s a flurry of activity on the macsb mailing list regarding product activation for software as a result of this post. It seems the purchaser of an RSS reader was denied the ability to re-install the program on his computer because he had done so too many times.

Product activation is one technique some software publishers use to reduce the theft of their products. Other techniques have been hardware-based, such as the dongle, and software-based, such as serial numbers, entering data from the printed documentation, etc.

And the problem, insofar as Charles Miller relates, is when legitimate users are penalized because the publisher or his server is afraid one legally purchased copy of the product has become thousands of stolen copies. It is always at the discretion of a businessman to decide what person he would like to do business with. It is also at the discretion of a person to decide what type of company will get his business. Some things you accept as a cost of the relationship, be they qualities of the software, customer support or payments.

A software publisher must decide a multitude of issues that relate to his customers: the features in his software, technical support, sales and distribution channels and how to combat product tampering and theft.

Anti-theft measures, such as serial numbers and product activation, generally operate by disabling functionality unless proof of ownership is demonstrated. For an RSS reader, which requires Internet access to begin with, it’s reasonable for the program to require validation with the publisher’s database of purchasers. However, it’s also reasonable for a purchaser to be able to re-install the software on at least the same machine as often as his needs dictate.

Now, given the choices between entering a serial number and your email address to activate a program, it seems to me to be easier to remember your email address. But then it’s also easier for a thief to guess at as well. And figuring out who holds a license for your products versus who’s broken into them requires additional manpower and overhead. Is the amount of sales that are protected worth the cost of one-upping the determined thief and degrading my customer’s experience, albeit slightly?

This was one of the bigger issues I’ve wrestled with as my own product nears completion, and when I began writing this entry I was determined to ship it with a product activation scheme as a theft deterrent. However, given its product category, the resources and delays associated with incorporating and maintaining some anti-theft scheme I’ve decided to forego adding one.

Not only do I want to remove every impediment to my customers’ enjoyment of the software, I want to reduce the friction and suspiciousness which every customer touchpoint sustains as a result of the “proof” dance. It makes for a better experience for my customers and myself.

Purchasers will be able to download a copy of the product they licensed, and the updates, as often as they need to, whenever they need to and whereever they need to without having to activate or register the software to use it. (After all, they’ve already purchased a license so I should know they’re registered, right?)

The only requirement for running the software is to have a copy of it. It won’t be keyed to a particular machine and it won’t report a customer’s activities back to HQ. The only mechanism that will be in place, and I’m explaining my planned implementation now in the interest of privacy advocacy, is licensees will need to use a licensed email address to download the initial purchased version or an update. The program will only submit the email address (as well as machine type and MOX version) when checking for updates, and the default setting for automatic checking is off.

In addition, customers will be able to track their downloads and, if they so desire, create an optional password to restrict access to downloads

What about the thieves? Well, the determined thief will have stolen regardless of company policy. The casual thief won’t find it as tough to steal from me as he would from others, but I hope my software is considered so valuable to potential customers that they would still consider it a bargain at several times its price.

It takes a small man to criticize and undercut others for the sake of attention.

It takes a small man to lash out at another because he feels slighted or put upon.

It takes a small man to blame his cronies when the consequences of their actions brings more than he expected.

It takes a small man to shy away from doing the right thing because it isn’t popular.

It takes a big man to show just how small a small man really is.

There were no big men in this little sideshow, although the Rutgers University women’s basketball team stands slightly above the rest.