askSam dead?

Posted by 22111
Sep 11, 2013 at 07:41 PM

“Sorry, this all seems pretty inaccurate. I think you’re saying that high-dollar niche software is always better than low-cost general purpose software. But I don’t think I can pay $1000 for a program that is just like UR but has formatting in the tree or $1000 for a program that is just like CT except with WYSIWYG; those programs just don’t exist. And I don’t call either of those features mandatory, I call them extraneous. But something else I find mandatory would surely be extraneous to the next person.”

I probably didn’t made my point clear enough. I did not want to say that if you pay 10 times the price, you get a similar program, but with that functionality not missing anymore. (Scrivener is a very outstanding thing not bending to general rules; if they sold it 5 times its price, some people would call it expensive, but many people would consider that price justified and “normal” - 250 dollars, btw, is the old price scheme of The Brain.) (And AS is worth its 99 dollars at bits where it reappears regularly, no one is trying, today, to “sell” its asking price of 400 dollars.)

I wanted to express this: Many people use programs like UR or AS as CRM and for similar functions, and of course, dedicated CRM tools, costing between 800 and 1300 euro plus VAT, and coming with annual maintenance schemes, fulfill such tasks in a much smoother way, whilst 99 dollar AS, 89 dollar UR or (was it 69 dollar?) Chaos Intellect (and without annual fees) both make CRM available to you for next to nothing, comparatively speaking… but then you have to live with many limitations which will intrude in your everyday workflow, and then for some limitations, you can create some macros, and with other limitations, you will have to live forever.

And as for information management, it’s the same thing, there are such 100 dollar programs, or even 30 dollar programs, and you live with them, because there simply is not something really better at 300 dollars, but you would have to buy something at 2,500 dollars, with annual fees, and so you live, for many years, without bolding in the tree, without clones, without (important features of your choice here).

The real problem lies in the fact that development of traditional, non-web/cloud software of such “cheap” kind has been more or less stalled for some years now. Under normal circumstances, tools like UR would be in active development, and thus would get a decent editor after some years of users complaining; as it stands now, such programs will never get those missing features added.

So I think what I say is not wrong, inaccurate perhaps. Problem is, no real development in “cheap” software; then, a gap of many hundreds of dollars; and then, real professional, very expensive software not justifying its price for most people.

And yes, there are some notable exceptions to this rule.