Just in case anyone missed it, Menu Master 1.1 is available.

More info: Menu Master

Download: Menu Master 1.1

Biggest change is 10.3 compatibility. We'll keep punching at our keyboards to get FontCard and Labels X out soon.

P.S. Themers take note, the deadline of February 2nd draws near!

Apple as a company is great. It makes excellent looking hardware, awesome products, and has a nice public image. Mac OS X is great too -- it opens a whole new world of possibilities for its users by providing a nice looking UI, powerful UN*X back-end, and sophisticated control over the little nuts and bolts here and there.

But the best thing I like about the Macintosh world is the software. We, being a company that creates and publishes software, or indieware, are a part of a semi-large crowd of Mac developers that do their best to make software that helps people make their use of computers more comfortable and enjoyable.

Many people asked me over AIM and other means of communication, how do you make a success by developing indieware? After countless hours spent on IMs repeating things over and over again I have decided to write up a small "blogticle" about developing software on your own, marketing and selling it, and making a living off it. Now, I am not going to tell anything revolutionary here. All of this is mostly my own summarization based on experience being in this business for about 7 years now. There are plenty of interesting articles around, such as The Do's and Don'ts of Shareware or Software Strategies for Emerging Developers, and many more. Either way, I figure that my personal vision on the subject may help you on the long run, too.

Read on, if you're interested, as I am not going to clutter the front page with the full text.

The first part is called (surprise, surprise)

Yes, planning. This step, often overlooked by beginner indieware developers is one of the most essential ones. If you don't plan before starting writing code, there's a high chance your software will never fly high enough to support you.

So you have an idea for a new software you're eager to write. You are all anxious to sit down, crank open Interface Builder and start throwing the basic GUI together. But...

First thing to ask yourself is how useful your software would be? Would you use it? Some people I know are making software they don't use personally and try to sell that (OK, "day job" work doesn't count, I am talking about indieware here and in the rest of the article). My vague point is that the product will not sell good enough if you do not use it yourself daily, or see no real use for it, or are not inspired enough to use it. Call me superstitious, but how you feel about your software creation is more or less how users will feel about it, except they will have less love and tender feelings than you do towards it.

Second thing to do is think what you can offer feature-wise in the very first version of your future product, and what can you add and improve in the future versions. If your product is a one thing runner, either forget it or make it free. You are not going to keep people interested (read: buying) your product, if you don't enhance it all the time and show the progress.

Third point is to figure out how much time you can devote to the development. The rule is simple there: if you want the software to support like if you was working full-time, you will have to work full time on it. If you want it to bring you beer (milk) money, few hours per day is probably enough. There's one caveat here, though. The fact you work full time on a software does not necessarily mean you'll get enough money out of it to support you as a full time job. But the contrary is nearly always true: if you do not devote a significant time to the development, you will never get enough money off it. If you're serious about becoming an indiware developer working full-time on your project, and currently have a day job, here's my piece of advise: start saving money now so you can support yourself on a bare minimum for 4-5 months; then quit your day job and work on the project while using the saved money. If all is right, you'll be back on track after your product is out and kickin'.

A little side step here: many people think as soon as they get to the version 1.0 point, the software will begin bringing profit and the work will be paid off. While this is true in some cases, in general, releasing version 1.0 is a first (significant none the less) step, but there's still a whole road ahead.

Fourth, and last, point for the initial planning is to sit down and study the potential competition. Go to some popular tracker sites, such as MacUpdate or VersionTracker and try to find similar products. If found, look at their download counts and ratings. If download counts are no good (less than a thousand or two for the Mac OS X software), and the feature set is about the same, you probably should not bother investing serious time and effort into making something similar -- it may be better or more polished, but you can see pretty clearly the demand for such a tool. On the other hand, if download counts are booming, and reviews are positive, you may have some hard time positioning yourself on a well established market. This is not impossible, yet a subject of another strategy which I will cover in one of the next parts of this article. The bottom line: study your future competition. Learn what users like and what they don't. Sit down and think. Go back and read about the competitor's product again. Google it. Read some forums. Think again.

Generally, thinking is mostly what the whole planning part is about. Do not be ashamed to spend a week or more in the planning stage. It is perfectly reasonable. You are about to start working your butt off to get to that road of success, and if you don't spend time thinking on how to achieve that goal, you are not going to achieve it. Ever.

This is it for the first initial planning part. In the next part, we'll talk about setting up your development environment and maintaining the development process. Then, we'll hop to marketing and promoting your product, and touch a few other finer points of being an indieware developer. Stay tuned, and hope some of you find this (and upcoming) read interesting.

Fortunately, there's plenty of interesting people using Mac OS X. One of the pretty interesting reviews I have recently discovered (if it is old, forgive me) is Amit Singh's "What is Mac OS X?" article. Quoting first paragraph:

This document attempts to give a hacker over-friendly answer to the question "What is Mac OS X?". My original motivation in writing this was that somebody had proxy-volunteered me to give a talk introducing Mac OS X to the Linux Users Group at my work place. While thinking over what to say to those folks, most (if not all) of whom are strangers to Mac OS X, I decided to write a supplementary document that they could refer to at their leisure.

An interesting read, even for me. Thanks, Amit!

I could use some additional beta testers for Mighty Mouse. If you're interested in testing it, please drop me a line at jason at Unsanity. Put a com at the end of that Unsanity.

Please give me your name, an iChat nickname if you've got one, and why you want to test Mighty Mouse ("because I want to, jerk" is a valid response).

Thanks!

A quick note to point you over to ShapeShifter for version 1.1.

This version adds several new text color features and enhancements. The change list is quite long, so I won't post it all here. Version 1.5 is The Big One™ that we're still working on...so no, this release does not include Omega.

We've got a few other updates that are nearing completion soon. Many thanks for your support!

P.S. Who wants to buy an Unsanity t-shirt? We're going to print up a few different designs and I'll print some extras for those of you who are up for displaying your unsanity for the world to see. ;)

Does anyone have a Gamecube, Mario Kart: Double Dash, a broadband adapter, and Warp Pipe? I really wish to play someone else online a good ole fashion game of Mario Kart: Double Dash.

Give me some kind of contact information if you are willing to play. So we can work out a time and day.

A somewhat expanded remake of one of the pictures I saw back in the days... What is amusing, it is still valid. Found it recently on one of the Russian blogs, translated the captions (back) in English, and here they are:

Due to requests from theme authors participating in the Unsanity and OWC Theme Contest, we're announcing an extension to the contest timeline.

The new deadline will be February 2, 2004 with winners announced one week later on the 9th.

This will allow for more time to put the finishing touches on artwork and still be able to compete for over $1000.00 in cash and prizes.

We've seen some nice work thus far! Keep it coming. :)

Here's pretty random pictures from the expo... This time about us getting ready to do the presentation on the haxies. The crazy guy on the last picture is Jason, author of Mighty Mouse and ShapeShifter. The weird looking guy in an orange Unsanity t-shirt is me.

First picture (with Jason on it) also features a spiffy "eccentric edition" of the Unsanity t-shirt we were giving out (blow-up picture of the t-shirt here).

Congratulations to our friends at Rogue Amoeba for winning the MacWorld SF Best of Show. That totally rocked, and I certainly see why you got it -- no matter when we passed your booth by, there were plenty of people around, grooving around your stuff. Awesome!

As for us, our presentations at the OWC booth are over, so we'll just be lurking in the show. You can email me privately if you really want to hook up and say hi or something. =)

So this latest announcement from the Big S yesterday was the iPod mini. I've played around with one right before they were announced on a keynote (as soon as Apple booth had the black curtain dropped) -- and I must say that they indeed look pretty nice. I am not sure of the color selection, but I liked most the pinkish and the yellowish one. They retain that nice smooth feeling the iPods have, and while it is different somewhat, it is still nice. The scrollwheel with the buttons embedded in it works as advertised and frankly, that design decision was to be expected -- it's not that hard to track just presses apart from the circular movements. The whole thing is not completely light, but compared to the "bigger" iPods, it is lighter. The armbelt thingie is groovie. So the whole thing looks, feels and sounds pretty much right.

The only thing that's wrong, in my humble opinion, is the price. Huh?! $250? Why not add $50 and get a real thing with 15 gigs instead of 4? I am pretty sure there's a good market for the mini thing -- despite the price, it is smaller, and more convenient to many. So I guess that's the price you pay for portability. Either way, $200 sounds more right to me for that kind of product, but who am I to set the prices, right?

Off to the expo where we have another presentation at 3 pm at the OWC booth (tossing out t-shirts to the crowd is the best part!). Groovie!

Hello from San Francisco!

Several of us from the Unsanity crew are here in SF prepping for the MacWorld festivities. (it is a party not a conference right?!?)

For those of you that are here also, we'll be presenting demos at the OWC booth (#2233) at 3pm Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We'll ramble and rant about things unsane, demo our products, and even give out some swag. (read t-shirts)

Come by and say hi to us if you get the chance. We'd love to meet any and all of you!

OWC booth presentation schedule

P.S. How about that cool new <<insert product here>> that Steve announced?!? ;)