How would you suggest doing that?
Unfortunately, it would be very difficult. Though, I agree. We are probably the wrong people to ask in the long-run.
Short term, we're your primary evangelists, so it is good to know where we stand. But long-term, we're a group of users who are (obviously) already interested in a Windows-exclusive software product. A few of us are also Mac users, but we certainly aren't core Mac users.
Anecdotal evidence isn't evidence at all. However, I'll still tell you this...
I've been trying for years with LOTS of my friends to evangelize MC. Almost every time someone new comes over to my house, and I fire up Theater View to play some music or a movie or whatever, I get "oohs and ahhs" and questions about the software that drives it. I always explain.
Of my Windows-using friends (probably something like a 50/50 split), I have one guy that has long been interested, but won't pay the $50 when "iTunes and VLC is good enough". He totally agrees that MC is WAY better (and
really wants JRemote now that it does streaming), but... He's using a $600 laptop from two years ago. He doesn't have a HTPC, and he just doesn't spend much money on software unless he absolutely
has to to accomplish the goal. This is typical. People are interested, but they don't have decent hardware, and... Everyone else drops their interest
immediately when they find out the price.
Of my Mac-using friends, I've only
once heard someone grumble about the price. I've gotten a bunch of "that's all?" style responses, and "Man, I wish they had a Mac version, I'd buy that in a heartbeat." I explain (and demo) that they can use it with Parallels and a Win7 VM, but that usually generates frowns. That takes the price up to several hundred dollars, if you don't otherwise need the Windows license or VM software, and it is still a little fidgety in a few ways. Plus, you need to run Windows, and most of them really, really don't want to for their own reasons.
Apple doesn't sell $450 netbooks. The worst machine they sell right now (the low-end Mac Mini) still has a 2.3GHz Core i5 Sandy Bridge, and almost all of my friends who have Macs have $1k+ laptops (and nice home theater setups at home now that they
already use with their laptops). It is a different market, and they're less price-conscious by default, or else they wouldn't have chosen an Apple.
And, I think, they're trained by all the other Mac developers out there that
software costs money. When you're a graphic designer trying to figure out how to scrape together $1500 for the latest version of Adobe Creative Suite, or even $200 for Lightroom, the price for MC and the functionality it provides "feels" like a bargain.
Plus, almost every single one of them I've ever talked to
loathes iTunes, and really wishes for an integrated solution that handles audio and video, just like what I have, to use with their home theater systems and HDTVs at home, and on their laptops when they travel.
But, to be clear, when I said I would "sell" a few extra copies to friends, I'm not even counting
these people. For
that, I'm talking about copies we'd buy here at the office. We'd buy those in a heartbeat.
There is this though...
Also, would this mean MC could sync with the iPad/iPhone?
I know you can't (easily) make MC sync directly with iOS devices. But it
would need a better sync solution for these devices, because I can't think of a single one of the people I described above that don't also carry an iPhone. I think using iTunes as a handheld, similar to Prod's plugin, but less clunky and integrated is the best choice.
It can be a "we're working on it" thing, and it doesn't need to be perfect at first, but something that allows them to add iTunes as a "handheld" and then just sync to it like they would sync to any other handheld in MC directly would be key.
But, I also think this would appeal to people like Joshua Topolsky, who use a Mac and an Android device, of course. I've heard him, in particular, complain incessantly on the Verge podcast about the crappy sync solutions available for Android phones. That'd be some
real exposure there.
Poll
