[Ham-Mac] ARRL discrimination - Think different

[ham-mac@mailman.qth.net]

On Monday, May 19, 2003, at 05:15  AM, Volker Grassmann wrote:
> I can imagine, that Apple may consider radio amateurs an interesting 
> target group: 1) there are 100.000s of hams in the U.S. and in the 
> world, 2) hams may be considered early users of innovative 
> technologies, 3) hams may be considered multipliers in the market 
> because we interface private and professional users in various 
> aspects, 4) Mac OS X is gaining more and more momentum in ham radio 
> (see Steve's, NI5V, growing list of OS X applications), 5) ham Mac 
> users may generate lots of awareness (see, for example, this email 
> forum or, alternatively, the 'human race' TV documentary driven my a 
> 'MacHead'), 6) ham Mac users represent a very large number of 
> operational Mac systems (sum the amount of Mac computer systems we are 
> using at home and in our companies and we can say: "see, ham Mac users 
> represent more than 100.000 Mac systems in the market" - wow!, 7) .... 
> (add your personal arguments here) ...

  HAMS are CHEAP.

  LoL

  Funny, maybe, but at least here in the United States, it rings very 
true. More Hams here are likely to put together a cobbled-up system 
even if it saves them $50 over a store-bought one, at least in my 
experience. The people who run Macintosh do so for a variety of 
reasons, but I don't know that you'd be able to make a compelling case 
to get the "rest of them" to invest the extra $$$. Having said that, 
it's true that the price ratio on Macintosh equipment has really come 
down, and it's not so much a premium any more, but it still *is* a 
premium when compared to the "buy a case and all your parts and throw 
it together".

  I love my Macintosh systems, and yes, I think they are better than the 
Windows systems. However, I also know that if there were a lot of Mac 
amateur operators clammoring for the software, people might be writing 
some of it. I ported the EchoMac program over to the Mac. I don't even 
use it myself, but I ported it because I thought others might. However, 
I don't think the number of users of that, even being a FREE program, 
is very high. VersionTracker shows 536 total downloads, MacUpdate shows 
344, so that isn't even a thousand users.

  Oh well, I don't even know what my point is, but demand tends to draw 
the resources to it, and I just don't know what level of demand there 
is. Ask Don Agro at Dog Park Software, or Chris Smolinksi at Black Cat 
what kind of demand they get for new applications. Is it really enough 
to justify "going to Steve Jobs" over?

  For my part, though, I did write a letter to the ARRL, and voted the 
only way I could, by not renewing. If you are developing a new system, 
there is *NO* reason not to design it for all the major systems, 
especially when using a cross-platform framework like wxWindows. This 
is why I am upset, because the work involved would have been trivial, 
and no effort was made to include the Macintosh directly or through 
contact with other developers.

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  - Steven M. Palm
  - Ham Radio Call: N9YTY
  - Attempts to make thine own star shine shall lead thee into darkness.
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