<<I'm in the trenches on the QA side of things and claim no insight to any high-level decisions, but I can assure you that releasing DV Rack for PC only reflects absolutely nothing about how serious we are. >>
Hi Mark, I was obviously playing on your name, nothing pesonal, but in an industry so geared toward Mac, and Mac so geared to the future of our industry, I think it's a pretty accurate criticism.
<<Our talented crew of developers are all PC-oriented, and we have our hands full developing and supporting an ambitious line of products.>>
That exclude me, my company and most producers and facilities that I know.
<<By nearly any measure you could point to, we've been quite successful,>>
Obviously not the specific measure being discussed here though <g>.
<<but not yet to the point that we have the luxury of hiring another dozen developers to rearchitect our products for the Mac platform>>
I doubt a dozen developers is even remotely needed, and I think you guys know that DV Rack is the one product that Mac users are very interested in and should be cross platform.
<<Ultimately, it comes down to cost-benefit analysis--what's the best direction to focus our resources>>
Which is ironic coming from a company that reccomends that it somehow meets that threshold for your potential customers to invest in systems costing much more than your program just to be able to run your program
<< there's little if any room for worrying about how potential customers along the road not taken will feel about the fact that we went down the other path.>>
Now there's a marketing slogan for the ages.
<<Incidentally, the reason that DV Rack is not cross-platform is that it makes extensive use of DirectX. Designing it to work on Macs would indeed require extensive rearchitecting.>>
And you've made abundantly clear to the countless thousands of Mac producers and facilities that it's not worth your time or effort to do. Too bad, it sounds like a great tool that some of the best will never get to use, even though a lot of us were ready to invest in your company's products...you just don't want to invest in us as customers.
<<Also, the clips that DV Rack produces are fully compatible with Mac-based NLEs. So, yes, you would have to invest in a PC laptop in addition to the program>>
A ridiculous request from a software company in 2005. Sorry, but it is.
<<but you could then plug the external hdd into your system of choice and edit away>>.
Which would require yet another investment rather than using the existing laptop drive. These aren't solutions from an innovative company, they're road blocks to a lot of potential customers.
<< [edited to add: Your second post appeared as I was writing mine. The idea of buying a laptop principally for running DV Rack clearly does not appeal to you, but a surprising number of customers have done just that, and they report that it's been well worth the investment.]>>
It's not a matter of appealing to me or not. I would be a knucklehead to go out and buy a $2k laptop and external HD setup as well as investing in DV Rack with absolutely no idea of the quality of the product. Obviously no Mac user can demo DV Rack so who exactly is going out and buying new computers and your software with no way of testing it in advance?
I mean let's be realistic Mark, you're in marketing, I'm a marketing consultant. You're product is a low price solution to normally high priced field monitoring and aquisition. Your company's stated solution to me and the hundreds of thousands of Mac users is: too bad, we're not interested in you, but if you're interested in us, go out and spend more than you would on new Sony field monitors and dedicated FS systems.
Sorry, but wrong answer.