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[NickM]

As I am sure that many users have read in the past, there has been a somewhat vocal call for a Mac version of MC.  One of the difficult judgments for the powers that be at JRiver is to assess the financial benefit, or opportunity, of the Mac user base.

So, I thought I would (try) to quantify the opportunity.  Laying down the gauntlet to JRiver…

If JRiver is able to release and equivalent Mac version of MC12, I will underwrite 10 purchases.  That means I will get 10 friends with Mac’s to buy the software, and if they don’t then, I will.

I wonder how many other Mac users would step up???

[fitbrit]

MC Mac or McMac?

[JimH]

If JRiver is able to release and equivalent Mac version of MC12, I will underwrite 10 purchases.  That means I will get 10 friends with Mac’s to buy the software, and if they don’t then, I will.

That's extremely generous!  Thank you!

Here are the economics:
We think the work will cost about $300 to $500,000 by the time we're done.  No kidding.   It's huge.  All of the Windows specific code has to be re-written.  As it happens, we have done some of that. 

So, say $400,000 divided by your kind offer of $400.  We need 999 more of you.

Thanks again!

[johnnyboy]

here's another idea that might give u a faster solution

Use that $400 and buy a super basic PC, attach it to a network with no monitor and plug it into your system, whenever you want music just use your Mac to control MC on it - problem solved and will probably cost you less than the $400 and give you what you want instantly!

[hit_ny]

Or second hand and therfore even faster CPU than brand new + RDP.

Why don't more ppl get this  ?

[adamsp70]

Or get VMWare Fusion for much much less.

Runs beautifully on my Mac Mini and turns it into a proper HTPC running MC

[park]

998!

I'd pay full price again for a mac version so that I didnt have to rely on vmware anymore.

[newsposter]

http://www.virtualbox.org works as long as your 'host' is OS/X on Intel.

[NickM]

I already use Parallels for MC12; ripping, editing, filing, tagging - everything except playback.

Mac has Front Row built in and this is more than sufficient for my HTPC needs...

[gummbah]

I'd buy one!

[leezer3]

I need to re-find the other thread, but there's at least another 10-15 of us looking for licences for Mac/ Linux (Much of the same work!)
Finding 900 odd sales really isn't that many in the grand scheme of things I would hope and with the ongoing work, I really do think that this is an opportunity that needs to be taken sooner rather than later.

Cheers

-Leezer-

[BullishDad]

Jim's "1000 sales" was based on NickM's offer to underwrite 10 licenses at $40 each.

So, you need to buy 10 to bring down the number by one.  Or instead of saying "998", it would be 998.9. 

It seemed pretty clear that given the huge investment needed, JRiver has no immediate or near future plans to offer a Mac version. 

[NickM]

Finding 900 odd sales really isn't that many in the grand scheme of things I would hope

Unfortunately Jim has the correct maths...  When he said he needed 999 more people, he meant 999 more people like me, who would each underwrite 10 copies.

However, I also guess that the payback period for a new version like this would be in the order of 18 to 24 months, so the whole lot would not have to be underwritten on day one.  For USD400,000 development, if I were JRiver financial director, I'd need to be confident of maybe a quarter of that in pre-sales guarantees.  That would be 2,500 purchases at USD40 each.

[Alex B]

9,988  (10,000-10-2)

For being able to sell the program JRiver would need to create a top notch Mac version before any revenue comes in. After that the new development team would need to carry on and keep the program up-to-date. They would only be able to share the ideas, not the code, with the Windows team.

[ADDiCT]

Here are some numbers to make clear which OS's are the most interesting ones for application developers. There is, of course, always the question on which basis these numbers are aquired. I believe they reflect the reality quite well, though. A Mac or Linux version may be a nice thing to have, but it's utterly unrealistic to wait for these versions. Just give it up, guys. (;

Btw: i'm no Windows fan or anything like that. But i think it's very interesting how the "desktop revolution", which has been going on for years now, has left little to no impact on the market. OK, a lot of people outside the professional field are aware of the alternatives now, but it seems that the large majority of computer users still stick with Windows, even though the manufacturer and the products get quite a bit of bad press recently (security issues, etc.).

P.S.: does anyone have more numbers on OS distribution? Couldn't find much on the net.

[glynor]

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/01/mac-os-x-market-share-sets-new-record-at-the-end-of-2007

With the sales figures out at that time, it was estimated that by the end of 2008 the installed base of Macs would be just over 10% (one in 10 PCs would be a Mac).  And subsequently, Apple beat their sales projections for Q1 2008 by huge numbers, so the final numbers could end up a tad higher.  Viewed as a simple desktop PC hardware vendor (Apple vs. Dell or HP or Gateway), Apple has been hugely successful.

The problem isn't new sales, it is the enormous previously existing and entrenched installed base of desktop PCs in office environments.  One floor of an AT&T call center with their Pentium 3 boxes running Windows 2000 can "counteract" a LOT of new Macbook sales.  Now, in truth, none of those machines are "markets" for an application like Media Center.  They all run cloned systems which are all identical...  So "counting" them isn't entirely fair.

That, plus Apple has been consistently under-represented worldwide compared to US market share.  This is starting to change, but there are still lots of places overseas that seeing a Mac is a rare sight.  Not shocking... They are a US company afterall, but still one of the issues.

If you normalize OSX market share to only home-user machines, the picture becomes noticeably brighter than the 1-in-10 figure would even seem to suggest.  And, their market share is only expected to grow: http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/gartner-says-ma.html

FWIW... I'd probably be worth around 10 licenses, easy.

I should say... One way to recoup more of the cost would be to also develop a true Enterprise-class database sharing system.  The client is already best-of-breed (far and above all the competition).  My company is currently about to spend around $30k on a Canto Cumulus system (for 10 concurrent users), which will require $10k in yearly maintenance fees (30% of purchase price).

Honestly, if MC offered these three things:

1) An equal OSX client.
2) An enterprise-class database sharing system (similar to Canto's), where we can have users with permissions on a per-asset basis (among other means).
3) A Web Publishing engine that gave us read-only access to our MC library via a web browser in a slick, Web 2.0 type of way (which must be able to be locally hosted).

We would probably buy such a system for comparable money nearly instantly.  There is a serious lack of competition in this market, and prices quickly scale to the $100-200k range for Digital Asset Management systems that are FAR less usable and robust than MC already is... It is, of course, missing a fairly substantial set of functions (those three above are admittedly huge tasks)...

But the functionality is just so ** good (and everything else is just so ** bad)... Just download and try out Canto Cumulus Enterprise for a while, and play with the UI, and you'll see immediately what I mean.  And it is really one of the best out there!

[leezer3]

My poor head (Maths makes it hurt!) ? 
If nothing else, at least some of us here would be good for 10 odd sales! If thats what it takes, then yes I'd step up to the gauntlet along with others.

The market is there IMHO- Neither Mac or Linux has anything approaching a decent media library application, all it needs is someone to actually make the investment; Much harder than it sounds.
As I said in the other thread (Still can't find it), it might take a little while to recoup the money spent, but in the end it would make for a much stronger overall product.

Cheers

-Leezer-

[ADDiCT]

glynor: Ehm... I had to smile a little about the Cumulus stuff. Are you seriously comparing MC to Cumulus? There are worlds - no, _universes_ - between these two products. MC may be capable of delivering a subset of Cumulus' functionality, but comparing these two is like saying that a bicycle offers the subset of functionality of a new and expensive Mercedes, or an Airbus A380. (; There is a reason that MC costs only a small fraction of what a full-blown Cumulus system would cost. There is an interesting point in that comparison, though - i was wishing for a long time that we'd have the option of using a standard database engine as the MC backend, instead of the proprietary database format we have now. IMO, that would solve a lot of issues with sharing of the database, and its performance, too. It would also allow a whole new world of applications, and would be a step in the direction of an all-around, more "open" Digital Asset Management Software, or DMS, or whatever you'd like to call it.

leezer3: Just look at the numbers. Reading has nothing to do with mathematics, after all. The fact is that there seem to be many more Windows installs than OS X installs. The relatively small pile of money you (and other users) offer to JRiver is not nearly enough to make up for the development cost, as JimH wrote. There won't be a Mac OS or Linux version in the forseeable future, unless you're willing to invest $500,000, possibly even more. And even if you would invest that kind of money, it's not a safe bet that the software would actually sell, which in turn would be a threat to the very existence of JRiver. Just live with it.

[gappie]

im not a mac user. not planing to buy one also. but that is only because the software i prefer, prefers windows as os.

i think there is one weak point in the calculations of jimh as i may be so bold to say so. i do think that the development of the windows version is not only payed by the users of mc12, but for a (big?) part by the sales from front ends to big companys like you can see on the site from mc, the corporate solutions (http://www.jrmediacenter.com/partnerplayers.html). i guess the only change a mac version of mc has is when mc expects that there is enough market for those corporate solutions for mac. the sales from mc12 only cover a part of the expences of the development... right?

[glynor]

i was wishing for a long time that we'd have the option of using a standard database engine as the MC backend, instead of the proprietary database format we have now. IMO, that would solve a lot of issues with sharing of the database, and its performance, too.

Cumulus also uses a closed, proprietary database format.... And, according to the engineers I've talked to, does so for the exact same reason JRiver does... Performance.  None of the existing "open" database systems provide anything even approaching the level of performance you need to be able to run these systems with hundreds of thousands (or millions) of assets, certainly not MySQL or Oracle.  It can "mirror" it's database over on a daily basis to an existing Oracle, MySQL, or other relational database system, but internally it uses it's own database (and the mirror is limited in some regards -- doesn't include the "categories" for example).

Actually, we HAVE a Digital Asset Management system currently that utilizes our in-house Oracle database as the back-end, and (despite it being a high-end, enterprise-class database on recent hardware) the performance is absolutely dismal.  This, along with some UI functionality problems, is the main thing that is forcing us to look at implementing Cumulus (which is MUCH cheaper right out of the box).

Agreed about the functionality missing in MC to make it "enterprise-class" like Cumulus.  However, I suspect that it might be less work than you'd think for them to scale it up, based on the very modular approach they've taken to the programming of the system.  Certainly a huge amount of work, but I really think the market potential is there.  Cumulus really doesn't have many "valid" competitors in the space (Extensis is basically it at the low end, and the high-end custom systems like ClearStory, Artesia, and North Plains are generally not all they're cracked up to be except for huge corporations with huge customization needs).

It just has been frustrating that, from the perspective of the client application, MC does everything that Cumulus does (and more) and does it MUCH, MUCH better.  The UI of MC is miles above and beyond what Cumulus provides (which feels sort-of like MC9 but a little clunkier).  From a "server" perspective, of course, it is a different story...

[hit_ny]

i think there is one weak point in the calculations of jimh as i may be so bold to say so. i do think that the development of the windows version is not only payed by the users of mc12, but for a (big?) part by the sales from front ends to big companys like you can see on the site from mc, the corporate solutions (http://www.jrmediacenter.com/partnerplayers.html). i guess the only change a mac version of mc has is when mc expects that there is enough market for those corporate solutions for mac. the sales from mc12 only cover a part of the expences of the development... right?

That's a good point, what % do macs make up in the corporate world ?

I can't believe macs would be anywhere near 10%, maybe a lot lower.

[NickM]

The implcation therefore being that in the non-corporate world (the world where MC users live) there are a higher proportion of Mac users...

[pank2002]

Here are the economics:
We think the work will cost about $300 to $500,000 by the time we're done.  No kidding.   It's huge.  All of the Windows specific code has to be re-written.  As it happens, we have done some of that. 

As suggested earlier you could begin to use non-windows specific code. I.e. use XULRunner rather than IE7 (I do not know if your license allow you to do include it).

I am hoping for a Linux version. I would love to switch from Windows to Linux, and MC is the only app holding me back.

-Rasmus

[ADDiCT]

Damn you glynor, you completely destroyed my point about the database backend! (; Of course, you're right - Cumulus seems to be using a proprietary database as backend, i wasn't aware of that fact. I still would like to see a MC version that can be connected to a MySQL server or something similar, though. I just can't believe there would be performance hit by using a different database "engine", but that's just a theory of mine. Anyway, i've fantasized a lot of times about what could be done with that database. Customized web frontends, easy metadata retrieval, powerful search/replace functionality, centralized media management for different frontends (like, for example, XBMC), etc. . Some time ago, i wrote a script for importing MC exported XML into MySQL, i'll have to look for it sometime, and play around a bit.

[MrHaugen]

Thinking of the 12-24 months or so, untill the Mac version would be completed, and in the meantime having zero builds for the Windows version.
THAT makes me scared 

[gummbah]

Would this be something to look into?
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

[hit_ny]

Really looks hopeful until you check out their multimedia support page

and then you see that windows media player 6.4 (!) is the best they have !!!

Nothing to see here, Keep searching

[gummbah]

Really looks hopeful until you check out their multimedia support page

and then you see that windows media player 6.4 (!) is the best they have !!!

Nothing to see here, Keep searching

Actually J River can be found in their compatibility list, under companies. There are screenshots of Mediacenter running under Linux.
Maybe someone here with a mac could try if it also works under Leopard??

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/company/?app_id=2022

[glynor]

Thinking of the 12-24 months or so, untill the Mac version would be completed, and in the meantime having zero builds for the Windows version.
THAT makes me scared 

The reason it would cost so much is because Jim is assuming that they'd have to continue Windows development in parallel, so they'd have to hire a new OSX development team to work alongside the Windows version.  In fact, they'd really be forced to keep going with the Windows version in order to implement the changes they'd need to the codebase to allow the port to continue to follow along with the windows versions.

Of course, they might certainly spend a few months making mostly internal changes to the code, rather than adding new features to the Windows codebase.  That'd be a bit of a bummer...

I honestly still think it might be worth it.  Just drive around to any place that has public wifi (Starbucks, libraries, parks, etc, etc) and count the number of people with Macs vs. Winclone laptops.  In the US at least, the trend is clear... A huge percentage of those market share is existing installed base.  If you look at current sales figures, the trend towards Apple is clear, at least in the US (and it is starting to filter overseas as well).  If you exclude those corporate clone machines used for business purposes (which aren't really the market for MC at all), and then you look at new sales figures for replacing those older machines as they age... People are switching.  Especially younger people (again, who do you think is the primary market for MC?)...

The "halo effect" of the iPod is certainly working.  By the time the "tide turns" and those market share numbers really start to slide (as the aging existing installed base gets replaced), it'll be too late to just start working on an OSX version.

[e-head]

I'm sure you've thought of it, but you Apple guys should just get a copy of parallels. My friend runs it on his Macbook Pro and it is really quite fast. He just zooms back and forth between Windows and OS X.

Then you could just make a shared partition for your music files (only downside is it would probably have to be FAT32, though there are free Windows drivers for ext2/3, and one would think such drivers would exist for OS X too). I assume parallels allows you to share out or map partitions to the virtual machine?

[gummbah]

I'm sure you've thought of it, but you Apple guys should just get a copy of parallels. My friend runs it on his Macbook Pro and it is really quite fast. He just zooms back and forth between Windows and OS X.

Then you could just make a shared partition for your music files (only downside is it would probably have to be FAT32, though there are free Windows drivers for ext2/3, and one would think such drivers would exist for OS X too). I assume parallels allows you to share out or map partitions to the virtual machine?

Yeah I know of parallels and probably that would be installed on my mac as well.
But you will also need to have a full copy of windows installed.
The great thing of crossover mac is that apparently you do not need to install a copy of windows.

[glynor]

In my experience, with my couple of Intel Macs... Parallels is a piece-of-crap.  VMWare's Fusion is the same thing, but I've had much better luck with it.

Parallels Desktop is okay, but there are LOTS of "ands, ifs, and buts" and the developers are not very responsive.  Also, be careful with the demo.  If you let the demo expire, and you have it installed using your bootcamp partition, there is no way to uninstall it (you have to be running inside Parallels from OSX to uninstall the "hooks" into your bootcamp partition, but you can't get in that way if the demo is expired).

I've tested it a bunch of times with a bunch of versions.  Had nothing but problems.  Fusion, on the other hand, works well.

As far as using MC through it... It still isn't the same as a native client at all.  Video playback and visualizations that use hardware acceleration (G-Force) don't work properly at all (video playback of any high-quality file types that use DirectShow play back like slideshows).  That's a big hunk of my uses for MC, so that rules out using one of the emulators.

[hit_ny]

(again, who do you think is the primary market for MC?)...

I've been trying to answer that question and best i can come up with is..

Ppl with *huge* libraries...

Figure thats the point when the  'I've got to get more organised' light bulb goes off

anything else ?

As far as using MC through it... It still isn't the same as a native client at all.  Video playback and visualizations that use hardware acceleration (G-Force) don't work properly at all (video playback of any high-quality file types that use DirectShow play back like slideshows).  That's a big hunk of my uses for MC, so that rules out using one of the emulators.

MC stretches windows to the max at times, how well would it run in a VM ?

Exercise in frustration i think.

Would you trust your MC library to an emulator ?

[glynor]

FWIW...

1) Parallels and Fusion both allow you to run applications outside of the "emulator" window.  Parallels calls this feature "Coherence" and Fusion calls it "Unity".  Same thing... The apps look and work like a native application as far as window management is concerned.  However, I never got this feature working properly with Parallels Desktop and MC.

2) Neither application is truly an "emulator" in the classic sense of the term.  They load and run the applications via the native APIs (which is why you need to install a full copy of Windows to use them), and because the current Macs all use x86 hardware there is no hardware translation needed, so most features run at full speed.  The biggest problem comes with GPU accelerated features -- Direct3D APIs -- which are still emulated for the most part.  Porting this over to fully use the hardware is a bit more challenging because of the "double" abstraction layer and the speed at which GPUs run.

[hit_ny]

The biggest problem comes with GPU accelerated features -- Direct3D APIs -- which are still emulated for the most part.  Porting this over to fully use the hardware is a bit more challenging because of the "double" abstraction layer and the speed at which GPUs run.

Nice post there glynor

It appears Fusion may be a workable solution for MC on a Mac after all, if you don't use video or any vizzies. I dare say would work perfectly just for audio and the native library calls + windows would make things a lot safer.

[gummbah]

Actually J River can be found in their compatibility list, under companies. There are screenshots of Mediacenter running under Linux.
Maybe someone here with a mac could try if it also works under Leopard??

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/company/?app_id=2022

I am very curious if this will work. Could someone with a mac please try this out?
Thanks

[ubernode54]

I'm curious to see how this works:



I've been using XBMC for years, and while it doesn't have the management capabilities of MC, it would be an awesome client once MC can serve to it.

[glynor]

I actually just tried VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta, and with the new Direct3D stuff turned on in the 2.0 beta, it works with MC surprisingly well in Unity mode (the above-described "make it look like a native app" mode)...

I tested playing back a x264 encoded MKV file, and it worked fine.  The UI is a bit more sluggish than running natively in Windows, but it is certainly usable.  It still certainly doesn't "feel" like a native application, full-screen playback is still sloppy (the OSX titlebar doesn't disappear and the dock is still visible), but it is far better than I thought it would be from last time I tried.

Surprised!

[glynor]

Just thought I'd needle a bit here....

Third Place.  I don't really think you can call them niche anymore.

[hit_ny]

Quite the gap there between 2nd & 3rd place isn't it

'Others' is actually in 3rd place in terms of market share.

[gummbah]

Quite the gap there between 2nd & 3rd place isn't it

'Others' is actually in 3rd place in terms of market share.

But then again:

Apple sold 1.4 miljoen units in 3 months time. You would only need 12.500 of those people to buy MC ($40) to cover for the $500.000 development costs mentioned in the first post. That comes down to only 1% of the people who both a mac the last three month. And then we are not even talking about all the people who already own a Mac! If those start buying MC as well J River could make some serious money.

Now maybe that still does not compare to the amounts J River makes in the windows market. But there are many examples where an established producers misses out on en emerging market, because initially profits seem to small compared to their core buisiness.
One way of dealing that is through spin-offs. MC could take shares in a dedicated MC for Mac spin-off, a small company primarily focussing on the apple market, for which these profits actually might be huge.

Just a tip 

[thurston]

Most people who buy Apple are looking for an idiot-proof system that takes minimum setup and maintainance to use (at least in my experience).  I don't think that is a good target market for MC.

[511PF]

The other problem with Mac support is you have a seriously entrenched iTunes user base.  Unless MC's support of AppleTV, iPhone, iPod touch, etc. is close or equal to iTunes, it may be a tough sell on that platform.

[gummbah]

But what about the fact that more and more previous windows users are switching to Mac?
They are not the old-school mac users that love Itunes so much. I have been searching for a good Itunes alternative for some time now (without success) and there are many topics on forums where people are looking for a good alternative (without success).

What I am saying is that current markets are not the same as future markets and there might be opportunities ahead.

[glynor]

Most people who buy Apple are looking for an idiot-proof system that takes minimum setup and maintainance to use (at least in my experience).  I don't think that is a good target market for MC.

That is incredibly old, and biased, information.  Ever used Final Cut Pro?  How about Aperture?  Or any Adobe program?  They're all among the most powerful programs in their class... OSX is built on BSD UNIX.  You can (and many people do) use them to run webservers, distributed computing grids, databases, and all sorts of "heavy iron" applications that don't exist in the same quality on Windows (even on expensive server editions).  There are plenty of power users using Macs.  I would even venture to guess a higher percentage are power users on OSX than on Windows.

[AustinBike]

Not to get into a religious discussion here, but I think that poster was *partially* right, however the reality is that economics will drive the market.

Apple does have a lot of power users, but they also have a huge number of people who want a simple system that they don't want to mess with.  The simplicity and stability of a mac are the main selling points.

The problem that exists is itunes.  Because it comes from apple and has a rich feature set and integrates in with all their toys (ipod, iphone, apple tv, etc.) it becomes the easy choice for 90%+ of the users.  Even power users; they appreciate simplicity as well.

One of the biggest things going for jriver is the fact that there ISN'T an itunes on the windows side.  Yes, there is, it's called itunes, but it is not the same thing.  It's a conscious add on.  When you buy a mac, itunes is on there and it is well integrated into the system.  For windows systems, you start with media player, which is lacking in a lot of features.  So you start looking.  Here's what the decision process looks like for many:

OSX:
Itunes installed
75% of the features you'd want
25% go looking for something else

Windows:
Media player installed
50% of the features you'd want
50% go looking for something else
You can pay nothing and get itunes with 75% of the function or pay for something with more

If you examine the market for tools like MC you'll see that most people are satisfied with what is out there.  The upsell to MC (i.e. pulling money out of your wallet vs. just settling for pre-install) is greater for the PC because:

A. Infinitely larger overall market
B. Infinitely worse pre-install choice

Let's say for fun that half of the unsatisfied people are willing to pay for something.

So, when you look at the pie chart, ~92% of the market is PC, and 50% of that market will want something else.  50% of them will pay for something.  Addressable PC market is (92% x 50% X50%) or ~20.5% of he total market.

On the Mac side, you have ~8% of the market, 75% of which aren't going to search out an alternate, but half of those that do will pay.  Or, in mathematical terms (8% x 25% X 50%) for a whopping 2%.

That roughly says that for every dollar that you spend in development, you have a 10X ROI potential for the pc market vs. the mac market.

My numbers can be debated all you want, but let's face it, you can't find a scenario where either a.) the costs are close to equal or b.) you can adequately cover marginal costs on development.

Think about it this way.  You believe adding feature X will help you sell more licenses. Adding the feature will cost approximately the same for both platforms, so do you spend $10K if you can get 500 more license sales?  Yes, because you need 333 more licenses to pay for that feature.  But on the Mac side, because of the size of the market, you may only see 50 more incremental licenses (10X smaller market), so you are not covering the dvelopment cost.

You either end up adding features to one and not the other, creating a "feature ghetto" for the mac version, or you unfairly burden the PC version with the cost of developing for the mac.

Neither option is good.

[cncb]

Unless I'm missing something, I don't see how iTunes is usable even for those looking for something "simple".  It is just a long list of songs or albums that you cannot sort or group in a meaningful way.  And while Cover Flow is neat to look at, do people really use it to select something to play (scroll through albums one at a time or go really fast and try to stop at the right one)??  Simple is one thing, but useful is another.  Windows Media Player is even much better in my opinion.  I don't see how there couldn't be a significant market for MC in Mac land...

[AustinBike]

Let me try to explain this in simple terms.

I ride a hammerhead HH100X bike.  It's a modified titus racer x with a different head tube angle, different tube butting and a higher bottom bracket, full SRAM with a freshly pushed fox RP3 rear shock.

Yes, believe it or not, that sentence above was written in english.  And to the people I hang out, not only would they understand that but they would ask if I was using SRAM x.9 or X.0's and wouldn't even question why I had my fox vanilla 125 RLC stepped down to 100mm.

It's a big world out there.

MC fans tend to skew to the "high end" of functionality, so they have already been "self selected" from the pool of all users and basically been deposited into the power user status for music software. We see the limitations of other programs. 

I am picky about my music and love all of the MC functionality, but my wife has 1 playlist.  yes, 1 playlist.  It has 4GB of music.  It sync'd (ONCE) to an ipod mini.  She plays the mini in a dock with that playlist.  She listens to that playlist on the office computer. She listens to that playlist over the 3 tivos in the house. We have 350GB of music, over 50,000 songs.  And she has her playlist.

Welcome to the world of 95% of the digital music users.

Itunes has enough for these people.  Windows media player generaly has enough for these people.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that most of the people in this forum REALLY care about music and functionality. The rest of the world keeps the radio on during commercials and doesn't think twice about it.  We aren't better than them, just wired differently.  That is why for the most part we can see how the other tools are lacking and they just....don't...care.  Which is why they don't pay extra for the tools.

[JimH]

Austin,
I think you're generally correct about the forum participants, but there are many people sitting in the third and fourth rows (and the bleachers) watching you guys talk about the esoteric details.  I think the typical MC user isn't just a music gear head like you.   

[AustinBike]

I'm not a music gear head, I ride a mountain bike

I can't tell the difference between 256k mp3 and flac or ogg.  I listen over my tivo.