My name is Kenneth and I write cool Mac and iPhone software. This is my personal weblog where I post about stuff I find interesting. I usually write about Mac development, the business of shareware and the Mac community in general.
read more →I have some good news to announce: today, iLaugh has been formally acquired by Comedy Central.
I’ve been a long-time fan of Comedy Central’s shows, and it is one of my favorite channels to kill time on.
Starting today, Comedy Central owns iLaugh and will be providing updated content. I will be continuing to work on iLaugh as an independent contractor.
Please visit Comedy Central’s press release for more information.
The MacHeist Argument™
As another season of MacHeist comes, yet again the blogosphere is up in arms crying foul.
A recent post by Marco Arment captured my attention.
The argument has been done to death the first season, no need to go over it again. But there’s a few things so fundamentally wrong with his argument that I have to call him out on it.
It’s the usual Phill Ryu publicity stunt that will result in a bunch of blog attention, a few developers selling licenses at very steep discounts, and a token charitable donation to downplay the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Ryu will likely walk away with.
Firstly, having worked with and for MacHeist personally, I can tell you first hand that it isn’t just a one-man show. There’s a much bigger team of Directorate, Coders, Designers and more, as you can see on their about page. Phill Ryu is best known as the public face of MacHeist, because it is his role. But by no means is it his own personal cash crop.
Secondly, specific numbers aside, donating 25% percent of revenues to charity is certainly not a “token donation.” A quarter of any revenue is not to be taken lightly. Now, granted it might be a marketing tool, but don’t let that negate the fact that charity does end up with a pretty huge donation in the end. MacHeist donated $500,000 last year, and this year looks like it might be getting a full million.
a previous MacHeist offered developers about $5,000 per application for sales that eventually grossed over $300,000
Now, this is just plain false. This is unconfirmed data and is based merely on rumors. It might very well have been the case, but do not parade it as fact, and do keep in mind that at the time a $5000 flat offer for an unknown business model that could very well end up in a flop was a pretty serious risk to take. The MacHeist guys did in fact claim that the numbers were much higher. Either way, this argument has gone back and forth enough the first season.
But the part that really gets on my nerves is this:
Their developers can tell themselves that it’s a good deal and it’s worth eating the discount to gain exposure.
We — and I say that as a developer who participated in a previous MacHeist bundle — are old enough to tell what’s good for us. What we especially don’t need is outsiders telling us we’re being ripped off. We’re running a serious business, and trust me when I say that we do not take such decisions lightly. What’s worse is that the person giving this argument is not even a Mac developer, according to his blog.
What you need to understand is that MacHeist is a business. We developers also run businesses. The keyword here is business. We don’t take these decisions on emotional value. We take these decisions because we judge that they will be beneficial to our businesses. We have to consider many things: The price of supporting and distributing thousands of licenses; (Please note that not all MacHeist sales actually mean an extra user for the developer. Many customers buy the bundle just for a specific app.) The actual (flat or percentage) monetary revenue we make out of it; The exposure we gain; The image this gives off the app.
Additionally, I’d like to prove this by giving the example of Gus Mueller. In the first season, he was offered a deal, which he declined, because he perceived it as a bad business decision. On the other head, he accepted the deal this time around with Acorn, because this time his perception of the new deal was different.
I have one thing to ask you, and that is not to believe when people tell you the developers are being ripped off. Rather make the decision to purchase the bundle on whether it has enough value for you to justify $39.
Anigma Beta & News Mailing List
I’ve just setup a mailing list for Anigma. We’ll be keeping you up to date with development, and when we’re ready, you’ll be the first to get beta access.
Subscribe to the mailing list now!
Spring Cleaning
Spring has come, and with it I decided to tackle a long-overdue item in my Things to-do list: cleaning up my blog.
I don’t believe in deleting things. I’ve always dreaded the idea of deleting something I had created or written. As a result, this blog had been housing everything I ever wrote, since I first decided to start a blog, back in 2004.
Back then, I was still a little 13-year old wannabe kid who didn’t know much about anything, but liked to pretend he did. This meant that up until now, I still had quite a few terribly spelt, or otherwise embarrassing posts of no particular interest to anybody.
No more. I have moved these post to a blogger blog for archival, so I wouldn’t lose everything I had written while still not embarrassing myself on this blog. As of today, the archives of this blog only date back December 2006.
Make Me Laugh – Win Your Free Copy of iLaugh!
As iLaugh’s developer, I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading jokes. There comes a point where it feels like you’ve heard them all, and what used to be funny just sounds lame.
Here’s the deal, if you manage to make me laugh out loud with a joke, I’ll reward you with a free iLaugh promo code. While supplies last. (There’s only about 40 codes left for me to give away.)
Show me your best joke in the comments.
At the end of the contest, I’ll compile a list of the very best jokes, and publish them through iLaugh as a new source, as well as on this blog.
Update: if you can, rather tweet me your joke @SeoxyS.
