Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2004 10:09 am

quote:
Originally posted by Jerran

Now on to the media player debate: For some things, I like Windblows Media Player...however, because it only lets you record in Windblows Media format

Windows. Can we say Windows? Not Winblows, not Windoze, it's Windows. 99.5% of us here must be using Windows, otherwise we couldnt reliably run zMUD (allowing for the small success of zmud under linux+wine).

As for the format recording, alot of people are liking .wma format and more, and it is slowly getting a foothold in cd-r players. If you want to record in MP3 format in WMP, you have to purchase an MP3 pack. Other codecs are available for WMP if you really must have them (but I dont know anyone who does). The drawback here is truly the lack of options when it comes to recording, NOT the lack of formats to choose from. There isnt a VBR option for either WMA, nor MP3. You can choose the bitrate itself, but not whether it is static or variable. WMP9 also lets you burn music cd's, with the typical drag and drop approach of other burning packages.

I dont know anything about Real software, I lost interest years ago when the software refused to play nice with my other software. Fairly certain winamp has had CD playing abilities for a long time too.

I think I miss the point of the rest of your post too, but it looks like you want all media programs to be able to have the same uber capabilities as the others (ie all rip, burn, copy, line-in etc). If that happened, then all the media companies would go out of business - which is not the healthy competition Zugg has been talking about in a couple of recent posts. What each competitor should do, in all fields, is pick one aspect of their product and innovate the **** out of it.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

quote:
Originally posted by seamer

[quote]Originally posted by Jerran
I think I miss the point of the rest of your post too, but it looks like you want all media programs to be able to have the same uber capabilities as the others (ie all rip, burn, copy, line-in etc). If that happened, then all the media companies would go out of business - which is not the healthy competition Zugg has been talking about in a couple of recent posts. What each competitor should do, in all fields, is pick one aspect of their product and innovate the **** out of it.

My statement was that all software of a certain type is bound to become quite equal. I think people miss some points as to why Microsoft's products always seem to get too popular. People don't want to download dozens of programs just to watch the latest movie clip about some game. Most companies would require you to buy the product too.

The Microsoft Media Player has become somewhat of a standard with its streaming WMP format... To solve the issue is simple though: Make the WMP format open and free. That is the only way to make it work without having hundreds of formats. Imagine what a mess it would be to set up a server with that.

If you look at Real Networks player they also use a streaming format that is closed. So I don't think we should blame Microsoft too much. This is a bussiness practice which a lot of companies seem to be using.

The best solution for all parties is probably to abandon both WMP and Real Networks file format though. After all we have MPEG and that is all we need. WMP is just a way to make it hard for you to copy the file to your computer to enjoy full quality.

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:11 pm

quote:
I think people miss some points as to why Microsoft's products always seem to get too popular. People don't want to download dozens of programs just to watch the latest movie clip about some game. Most companies would require you to buy the product too.

Thank you for making my point for me. And congratulations, you have completely fallen for Microsoft's marketing scheme. Microsoft wants everyone to believe that they are performing a wonderful service to the world by bundling all of this other software with the OS for free. But because they have a monopoly on the operating system, what they are doing is illegal. But they have successfully brainwashed people into believing that their business practices are for the common good.

And I didn't say that it was bad for the operating system to have *some* media capabilities. Obviously that's a core need. Being able to play an AVI movie clip is a good idea and has always been part of Windows. But since when did the operating system's media player need to play Internet Radio stations, or make audio CDs or DVDs? It's perfectly reasonable for the operating system to treat a writeable CD as another form of storage media that you can drag files onto like any other disk. But if you need fancier functionality, you should go out and buy a software product designed for the specific job you are doing. That's my opinion anyway.

And I disagree that left to itself all software of a certain type will become equal. There are plenty of software applications that have great competition and do not have Microsoft using it's OS monopoly to control. Just look at software development tools themselves...there is a vast difference between Microsoft's Visual Studio and Borlands Delphi products. Look at the high end database software such as Oracle and Sybase and SQL Server. If you think they are all the same product just because they share a common SQL language, then you haven't ever really worked with any of them.

When there is proper competition, each company chooses an area to innovate in and to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Look at cars...even within equal price ranges each car manufacturer has their own specific features that they market to try and attract the consumer. The very essence of mature competition is being able to distinguish between products. They do *not* become all the same.

What you get with real competition is somewhat like an "arms race". When Vendor A adds Feature A to their product and everyone gets excited about it, then Vendor B wants to add the same feature to their software in order to compete. But just adding Feature A to their product isn't good enough, because then they are just the same and there is still no reason for someone to choose Vendor B. So, Vendor B either finds a better way to implement Feature A, or they invent Feature B and add it. Now Vendor A is behind and wants to catch up. This goes back and forth again and again over time. The winner is the consumer who gets both Feature A *and* Feature B and better implementations of them both. It helps bring new ideas into the product.

But, when Vendor A is giving the product away for free and bundling it with the operating system, then Vendor B must overcome a tremendous business hurdle in order to get people to buy their product. Now they don't have enough money to fund new development or new innovations. So the market stagnates. That's the situation with the email market right now. There has been very little innovation because it is hard for larger companies to sell enough product to fund development. The only people who can contribute are the hobbiest who don't care about the money, or the companies that can afford to subsidize development from profits from other products.

Look at Zugg Software and the ZuggMail product for a specific example. If I wasn't making enough money from zMUD to pay the bills for the next several months, then there is no way I could afford to work on an email program. If I was starting from scratch as a smart programmer who wanted to form a company and write some software, I couldn't afford to write an email client unless I had some other job paying my bills for a couple years. And you are not going to find a lot of "start up" capital for such a project because everyone will point at the free Outlook Express and ask how you are going to compete with that.

The only email and workgroup systems that have shown true innovation are Lotus Notes, now from IBM, and some of the new stuff Oracle is working on. And look, these are huge companies that can subsidize their development via other products. Lotus subsidized Notes from their Lotus-1-2-3 profits for years before IBM bought them out.

None of this is new. Microsoft has been doing this for many years now. Anyone remember the whole dBase situation? dBase had the market share of small database development. Microsoft wanted that market. They had written Microsoft Access to leverage their Visual Basic code into a database application environment. But Microsoft Access was considered a toy (and still is to some extent). It couldn't compete with "real" database applications written in dBase. So, in order to win the market, Microsoft "gave away" Microsoft Access for about $30. dBase cost several hundred dollars.

Maybe dBase was too expensive. Who knows. Microsoft was certainly losing money selling Access for such a low amount. But they didn't care because it was being subsidized from their MS Office profits. We've seen the outcome. dBase went out of business. Borland bought them out at one point to try and save them, but they couldn't compete with Microsoft, especially when Microsoft added Access to their Office "suite", even though Access was really a software development tool and not an "office application". So dBase died. We lost the innovation that they provided. dBase did some neat stuff that you couldn't do in Access, but it was lost. Now we are stuck with Access and have little choice when it comes to small database development.

Borland continued to try and compete in this area. They included the "Borland Database Engine" (BDE) in Delphi and their other development tools for a long time. You could built much more robust database applications with the BDE than you could with Microsoft Access. MS Access had trouble with multiple users, database locking, and database sizes that the BDE handled better.

But when Microsoft put the core database technology into the operating system with ADO, MDAC, and the OLEDB drivers for databases, the BDE was dead. Nobody wanted to distribute an entire database engine with their application when there was a database application built into Windows. In theory they could have written an OLEDB driver for the BDE (someone might have already done that). Certainly Oracle and Sybase and the other "big" databases were forced to write OLEDB drivers for their systems. However, anyone who has actually written any MDAC applications can tell from the beginning that the JET OLEDB (which is the core of the Microsoft Access database engine) has an advantage. Most of the features in the ADO extensions (ADOX) are only available for JET. Microsoft was forced to stop distributing the Jet OLEDB with the MDAC software, but MDAC is still optimized for Jet and the Jet developers still have a lot more "inside" information about the workings of MDAC compared to other database developers. And now Microsoft has optimized it's own SQL Server OLEDB. If you want to use an Oracle database, you can use the OLEDB drivers, but they are not as optimized as the native database drivers. So, applications that use MDAC end up working better on Microsoft databases...gee, what a coincidence.

Now, the flip side is that MDAC has provided a nice standard interface for software developers to write database applications. I use it myself in zMUD and zMapper. I also didn't want to distribute a multi-megabyte database engine along with zMUD. So, for years I didn't use a real SQL database (like in the database module). But with MDAC I was able to rewrite the zMUD mapper to use an MS Access database format which makes the mapper database much more accessible.

Of course, I had to optimize the code for a specific OLEDB in order to get the performance that was needed. So now we are stuck with the mapper in MS Access format. You can't just throw it on a server and use Oracle or some other database...it just doesn't work. MDAC is only a partial standard. Once you start optimizing your code, you end up stuck with a Microsoft database solution.

So yes, I understand some of the other attitudes that have been posted here. I have *very* mixed feelings when it comes to Microsoft. Because of the Microsoft Windows monopoly, I can write applications that many more people can buy. I don't have to worry about making versions for other operating systems because there are so many fewer of them. I can adopt Microsoft technology like MDAC and provide new improved features to my customers. Now they are hyping .NET and telling me that if I develop using .NET customers will be able to run my applications on *any* operating system (but it will be optimized for Windows of course). If I just believe everything Microsoft tells me and do everything "their" way, then everything will be wonderful and I'll make millions of dollars (as long as I don't write products that compete with Microsoft products).

But there is part of me that just doesn't buy this. I look at the past and I see a long line of programmers and companies that have been put out of business. They all have ideas that have been lost. Maybe their software wasn't the best, but in many cases they were never really given a fair chance to compete.

The trick seems to be doing something that Microsoft isn't interested in. I was able to do zMUD very successfully. But there was a time in the first few years where someone like Microsoft could have blown zMUD out of the water if they were interested. But they didn't...I was lucky. Their wasn't enough money in the MUD market to interest them.

Will I have the same luck with email? I doubt it. My only chance with email is that there are enough people annoyed at the current solutions who will take a chance with a small developer like myself. I know that I'll never get sales anywhere approaching any of the other companies...not even Eudora. Most big companies are not going to risk their email on a small shareware developer. Fortunately, because I'm small, I don't need a lot of sales. A very small percentage of the huge email market should be enough to keep me going. Maybe someday I'll be able to add enough innovation to make a difference. But it's more likely that ever time I add an innovation, Microsoft will add it too and give it away cheap. Or maybe they'll just buy me out to keep me quiet. I don't really know what will happen...it will be interesting to watch.

And now, since this has *really* deviated from my original post, I think I'll go away now and start writing ZuggMail. Yes, Rorso, programming is still fun. That's why I love doing it. But as a small business I can't just program all of the time...I'm also a business manager. And it's the business management side of the job that I really dislike. I don't like have to worry about marketing. I don't like having to worry about sales. But in order to support my family, I'm forced to worry about the business side and just hope that I get enough fun programming to keep me happy.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

quote:
Originally posted by Zugg

quote:
I think people miss some points as to why Microsoft's products always seem to get too popular. People don't want to download dozens of programs just to watch the latest movie clip about some game. Most companies would require you to buy the product too.

Thank you for making my point for me. And congratulations, you have completely fallen for Microsoft's marketing scheme. Microsoft wants everyone to believe that they are performing a wonderful service to the world by bundling all of this other software with the OS for free. But because they have a monopoly on the operating system, what they are doing is illegal. But they have successfully brainwashed people into believing that their business practices are for the common good.

What I meant was the file format lockout. That is to compete you make a propietery file format for playing video no other company can use. Which is why I made Real Networks and the WMP format as an example of just that. If anyone could use WMP the Media Player issue would be much smaller in my opinion. But then again I am using the Media Player at this current moment so I guess you are correct.

Your post really got me thinking about my own use and how it has changed since 95. At that time I used the OS differently. There was no good media player with Windows back then so I used WinAmp which was THE media player at that time. I think it still is better than Microsoft's Media Player. Why I now mostly use Media Player I am not sure.

At 95 I also used Winzip - of course I never registered it though Cool

. Now Windows comes with .zip support though making WinZip redundant(even though Winzip is superior).

When I first got internet access I think I used Internet Explorer. Not because there wasn't anything better .... but it was free and easily obtained(included with most computer magazines).

Of course as I use Internet Explorer I also use Outlook Express. Lately though I have discovered that Outlook Express doesn't really suit my needs. There is a need to be able to connect stuff which OE lacks. I mean I want to connect my schedule with the email by scanning through the email after data.

When I discovered MUD the free zMUD client was the one I began to use. I wasn't too happy to have to buy a full version of zMUD at that time. However I am glad(somewhat... I have wasted so much time on zMUD!) I bought it as it made me see software a bit differently.

So I guess you are quite correct that Microsoft uses a very bad bussiness practice. Perhaps if there had been some 'Windows MUD Client' I would have used that one instead. I mean it is less good than zMUD but so easily obtained Smile

. At the moment though I think zMUD is the best MUD client. Without it MUDs wouldn't be fun.

In many ways you have inspired me to explore programming a lot more. My translation tool is an example of that. Now it is programmed for .NET but that is easily obtained. Actually the real reason it uses .NET is that MSVC++ comes with a RAD for it somewhat like Delphi I guess. You "draw" the forms, and can edit their methods etc. The other method to code it had been to write much more code for the user interface. That much time I wouldn't have been able to spend on that project(after all I think it currently only has 2 users. A record for one of my programs I guess though Very Happy

).

One of the benfits with Zuggsoft that Microsoft can never have to the same degree is that you can talk with the founder. It will be quite interesting to see how well zMail will do. Comparing Outlook Express with zMUD makes OE look bad. Microsoft would never put that much effort into something.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

So it would seem to me that if MS wanted to get past all that legal stuff, they just sell 'Windows XP' without any addons for 1/2 the price, and 'Windows XP Pro Pack' which came with things like media player, internet explorer, cd burning software, winzip, and solitaire...

As for winzip, it sucks :P Use winrar instead, produces smaller archives, has a much nicer interface and... (woah) fits on a floppy :P

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 1:47 am

Rorso, that's a good way to look at it. Things *have* changed a lot over time.

And yes, MS should go back to selling a "Plus Pack" for people who want stuff. That way they are competing more properly with other companies. Giving it all away for free as part of the OS isn't fair. And remember, I'm not talking about core technology here. I'm talking about enhanced applications. The web browser that comes with the OS should a basic one. Same with Media Player. Solitaire is already fine. Then people who want enhanced versions can pay for them.

There is just no reason that Windows XP should *require* IE 6.1. If they need core web functionality in the OS, then put that in as proper operating system services that *anyone* could use for creating a web browser. Web browser applications such as IE and Mozilla, etc could then call the underlying OS API for doing the needed HTTP requests or parsing XML or whatever core services the OS provides. The OS does NOT NEED a full-fledged web browser as fancy as IE 6.1. Previous versions of Windows worked just fine with older versions of IE.

Also remember that very few people actually "pay" for Windows. For the vast majority it comes "for free" preinstalled on the computer they buy. So, reducing the price of Windows doesn't effect those people.

As for WinZip, I was a huge fan of it back in it's heyday before the compression "wars". It was a great program and one of the shareware programs I was proud to register. It's too bad they didn't keep up with their competition. I agree that WinRar is a much better program. It also handles more formats. But a perfect example of how competition has improved the product for the end-user over the years. I don't think WinRar would be nearly as good as it is if they hadn't been competing with WinZip.

They need a better name though. WinRar makes it sound like it only handles the Rar format. It does far more than that and a lot of people ignore it because they don't understand that.

Beginner Joined: 17 Oct 2003 Posts: 19 Location: Australia

Microsoft suck. Windows suck. But I use both at home and at work. In light of this, I'm being as nice as I can by passing on the free CD detail that I came across - so we're all just a little less vulnerable to viruses...

I've signed up for mine, and haven't received any spam from my rather carefully protected email address, so it seems like a sincere offer. CD delivery itself is due in about 1 week's time, I'll happily reply with some feedback at that time if folks are curious.
___________

Microsoft is offering to mail out free security update CDs for most versions of Windows (Win98 and above) to anyone who fills in an online form at its website.

This news is particularly relevant for friends/family who are still on dialup and don't download the latest updates. In the interest of a less virus-infested internet, I encourage you to order as many of these CDs for friends and family as needed.

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http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/cd/order.asp

Novice Joined: 04 Nov 2000 Posts: 34 Location: USA

quote:
So, now I have the "pleasure" of spending the next week rebuilding Chiara's computer from scratch. We already have plans to be gone tomorrow and I have other SCA work I have to get done next week, so this is a really bad time for this to happen. I don't know how long she is going to be off the air.

Zugg, you're in SCA?

Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 2:27 am

Yep...this is horribly off topic, but go to my SCA page for details Smile