Re: [OT] time-limited demos, selling software etc.
Re: [OT] time-limited demos, selling software etc.
- Subject: Re: [OT] time-limited demos, selling software etc.
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:35:32 -0400 (EDT)
[I've been lurking here for a long time. The group has been
invaluable to me in answering questions about AU programming. Would
that vendors provided clear, precise and complete documentation,
_plus_ cookbooks, for all released system software (the way IBM did in
the old days). Then more than half the questions on lists like this
would be unnecessary.]
On demos:
From the customer's point of view, _and_ from the point of view of
making sales, I like nagware. It took me several hours of practical
use to realize what a good program Graphic Converter is, especially
for the price, and especially the lovely OS X version. At that point
I was pleased to purchase it.
For more expensive products, nagware plus a few minutes' timeout (per
invocation), or degradation (with a warning that it's happening!!)
after a few minutes, should often suffice.
I really don't mind what I'd call the "short-shot" demo, which isn't
completely unusable but starts inserting data corruption (obvious
noise or pictorial artifacts) one or two minutes after startup.
That's enough to allow actual use of the program in small but
practical situations, which for me is almost essential to a buying
decision. An example is Audio Hijack Pro, which I bought. Jumping
to maximum noise level is inexcusable, and the vendor or programmer
should be tied to a chair and forced to listen to it for a couple of
hours :) Degrading the output without warning the potential customer
(with an alert box on startup, and ideally also when the degradation
starts) is also inexcusable.
Date-limited and usage-time-limited demos are okay, but aren't quite
as good as the above: By the time I get around to examining the
program to decide whether to buy it, it's usually expired!
The demos that have 3/4 of the features missing, and disable "save" as
well, usually get about ten seconds' examination from me, and then I
erase them. But for further customer examination of features after a
short trial, or for consideration of an upgrade, they probably have
their place. Demos of notation programs probably have no alternative
but to disable saving, at least after a trial period.
The nicest demo of all is provided by products like Jeremy's "Metro":
That is, a very usable low-end version of the product at a modest
price (or even a range of several versions across the price range),
plus good online documentation of the additional features available in
the full version ("Metro" is pretty good about that, the Bias products
not so hot). In addition, all these vendors offer a crippled demo of
the full version to assist the customer with the upgrade decision.
....oh, and another _NECESSARY_ property of a good demo: a complete
one-click uninstall, with nothing left in /Library/Preferences or in
any Application or System/... or Library/... or /User/Library/...
directory after uninstalling. This isn't hard to do, and seems to be
_VERY_ rare in Mac OS X land (more common, though not universal, with PC
software). As a long-time DP and Peak user (and short-time Metro user),
I'd like to demo Logic and Cubase. But in the absence of a guarantee
of complete cleanup on uninstall, it hasn't seemed worth the potential
system pollution and waste of disk space to try their demos!
When I find myself find/grep'ing through all the above-named portions
of my whole system disk to remove artifacts of a demo, I swear very
loudly at the offending vendor!
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