Editorial: Mac Freeware vs Shareware

You are quite right that freeware is great and in some cases even superior to the shareware alternatives. However, I have to say that ease of use is more important to me than any other considerations. That’s why I have a Mac: I want the Computer to work for me not the other way around; so, for example, I choose Scrivener for my writing because it does the job best and my time and enjoyment is worth 100 times the 35 $ Scrivener costs. If there was a freeware alternative that did 90 % of the job, I would still pick Scrivener, because these 10% are what makes the crucial difference between just adequate and mind-blowingly great in many cases.

In a similar vein, I used MacJournal when it was freeware — but I didn’t abandon it when it went commercial, because it still worked best for me.

And it’s not like I don’t have to pinch my pennies; but if it’s important enough for me to work with, it’s worth paying for.

J

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It’s great that you’re going to write about free apps.. just wanted to share my thoughts.

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I agree with you that most of the time I don’t really use the “extras” that come with buying the shareware’s full versions… but I do it as a “thank-you” to the developer who has given me an incredible application that makes my job and life easier. I just believe that we overlook sometimes the hard work and dedication that go into creating some of the incredible applications we all use. Not only do I think paying for shareware is a way to “tip” the developers for a great product, but most of us aren’t Apple execs with fat bank accounts. If my $5 or $20 helps pay the bills for another struggling person, even better.

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If you don’t really care about fit-and-finish of applications, don’t care how it looks or whether it works optimally, what made you choose a Mac?

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I have three comments: First, I’m of the same basic opinion - freeware seems to be underrated in the Mac community. I almost get the impression that people have this underlying assumption that anyone who buys a Mac has disposable income, because if you were poor you’d buy a Linux box or maybe a secondhand Windows box, right? But you can buy a Mac mini for about the same price as many new PC’s and it’s a lot better machine for the price, so you can’t assume someone is wealthy just because they have a Mac. When I first got my Mac, it surprised me how many of the types of programs that were freely available to Linux or Windows users were only available as shareware or commercial products on the Mac. But the real problem is not entirely that the freeware isn’t available - the other side of the coin is that there are few good central repositories of Mac freeware.

Second, to “God of Biscuits”, I would say that one reason people might choose a Mac is that it’s not one big virus and trojan horse magnet like a PC (at least not yet), but it’s a heck of a lot more user-friendly than Linux. Linux people seem to have this aversion to GUI’s, and when you ask for help the first thing they tell you to do is go into the terminal program and type some obscure commands that make no sense. If I wanted to type commands, I’d have stayed with MS-DOS! The Mac has the security to not be susceptible to every virus that comes along, and then there is the fact that you don’t have to be a propellerhead to use it. Eye candy is NOT a real big deal for me, and besides, it’s really easy to change to icon on an app if it really bothers you.

Third, Austen mentioned the one type of software I haven’t been able to find for the Mac. Under Windows I used to use a program called GreatNews, which was an RSS newsreader that was far better than anything else I’ve found. The biggest advantage was that once you clicked on a group, you could scroll through the FULL TEXT of ALL THE ARTICLES. Most newsreaders give you one or the other - you can either see the full text of the articles, but you have to click on each one individually to bring up the next, OR you can scroll through all the articles, but you only get summaries. I have yet to find any other program (on Windows or the Mac) that lets you simply scroll through the full text of all the articles in a feed (or group of feeds). Oh, and the other thing about GreatNews is you could optionally tell it NOT to mark any articles read until you mark them as read, so if you get interrupted in the middle of reading an article it’s not already marked as read, and doesn’t go away if you inadvertently close the program or shut down the computer.

In closing I have one suggestion for your freeware apps: muCommander. Not the prettiest program, but if you come from the Windows world and are used to working with any of the dual-pane file managers (based on the old Norton Commander), or you have used Midnight Commander or Krusader under Linux, then you’ll want muCommander. It’s freeware and in my opinion works far better than the “native Mac” shareware program.

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Fox: Download Vienna, then go to View > Layout > Unified. Then go to Preferences… > Mark current article read: > After “Next Unread” command.

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Austen Saltz, venerable article author extraordinaire: It’s about time! I always look at the bottom of MacApper articles and skip them if they’re about shareware, since I have no means of getting money onto the Internet.

Does anyone know of an RSS feed for Mac freeware? It’s annoying to have to look for the price, if one is visible, on any major Mac app feed.

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Superdotman, thank you very much. TUAW has a freeware category:
http://www.tuaw.com/category/freeware/

I’m not sure if you can get an rss feed from it though….

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I use a mixture depending on what I need. I use Vienna over a paid RSS application because Vienna is attractive, easy to use and fully-featured in my mind; I don’t want/need anything more when it comes to RSS. I still use Handbrake, even though I paid for hawkeye (hawkeye does more, but Handbrake is better at its job)

Things like TextMate and Coda though are worth paying for. I didn’t realize how much I’d been missing out.

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Austen Saltz: It has an RSS feed if you add rss.xml to the end, but I’m trying to find something on the scale of VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

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If you’re buying a Mac because it doens’t have viruses, then you’ve just lucked into having a Mac than actually appreciating it.

What is it that you think *MAKES* it user-friendly? Fit and finish, polished look, and especially well-thought-out features (meaning the look AND how you accomplish tasks).

It’s not just about an ugly icon for the app, but the graphics within an application (like the toolbar), *AND* their placement *AND* the affordance given by the graphic itself.

You have to stop thinking like a Windows user when you approach acquiring new Mac software. Find the app that feels best, accomplishes your most necessary tasks the most effortlessly and with the best results, and then decide what suits you best.

If you think that spending $20 on a app that becomes a staple for your daily use is “too much money” when there’s also a free application out there, then you’re a cheap b*stard who’s pennywise and pound-foolish.

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More freeware reviews the better. There are so many cases where there are better freeware alternatives that get ignored because they may not be as pretty as some shareware options(*cough* delicious generation *cough*).
Im willing to pay for good software but im not willing to pay for software that looks good but is less functional then a freeware alternative.

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I agree with you Austen, freeware on the Mac is amazing. If your readers want to learn about more freeware for the Mac, I cordially invite them to check out my MacReviewCast podcast each week where we look at 5-10 freeware apps plus reviews of the top software, hardware and Web sites that make using a Mac special.
Thank you for letting me give a little plug.
Tim Verpoorten

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I’m all about freeware, especially since the few times I’ve forked over money for a shareware, I ended up stopping use of it.

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God of Biscuits, you are absolutely right, I’m a cheap b*stard who wouldn’t feed a troll if he were dying of starvation on my doorstep!

As an aside, it always gets me when people say that you have to stop thinking like a Windows user to use a Mac (or Linux, for that matter). This is why Microsoft has about 90% of the PC market. I look at it this way, if you’re selling vanilla ice cream and your competitor is selling chocolate ice cream and getting 90% of the business, you are not going to win any customers by insisting that they have to stop thinking that they like chocolate. Linux in particular could have been much bigger on the desktop by now except they’ve always looked down their noses at anyone who thinks that maybe Linux should work a bit more like Windows. Well, Windows didn’t get so popular by giving people something they don’t like!

One thing I appreciate about the Mac is that, as far as I’ve seen, they almost never tell you to open a terminal window and type some obscure command to accomplish something. They actually grasp the fact that most people are comfortable with a GUI (which Microsoft popularized - note I did NOT say “invented”), which is something that many Linux users still don’t get. That sort of things is one of the big reasons I bought a Mac, in that case I was indeed “thinking like a Windows user” and chose the system that’s more Windows-like from the viewpoint of the end user. Sure, some things are different, but there is nothing inherently evil about thinking like a Windows user.

Anyway, once I pay for a system, if I choose to run utter crapware, that’s my decision to make (not that I would, of course). But I have seen an awful lot of shareware, and not a few totally commercial products, that are basically junk, and a lot of freeware that’s really great. In any case, there’s a difference between being poor and being cheap. I tend to use a computer for about five years before replacing it, so I wanted something that I thought would last, and didn’t think Vista has much of a future (and there is a perfect example of high priced software that’s not worth what they’re asking for it, in my opinion anyway).

To Superdotman: Thanks for suggesting Vienna! I tried it and then found the “Broadsheet Clipping” style and all I can say is WOW! I am thoroughly impressed!

I attempted to post this message earlier this morning and had included links to about five Mac freeware RSS feeds I have found, but I guess this is one of those sites that rejects any comment with more than a couple of links as possible comment spam. I put the list in a pastebin at http://www.pastebin.ca/814014 - that’s only one link so hopefully this comment won’t get rejected again.

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Fox: The MacUpdate freeware pipe is perfect! Thanks.

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Hi, Tim Verpoorten

Great to see you here! I love the MacReviewCast and listen to it regularly over here in Germany. I’ve found many a gem through you.

I encourage everyone here to check out Tim’s podcast, if you haven’t done so already. It’s both entertaining and informative — as well as refreshingly down-to-earth.

Best,
J

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@Fox: “As an aside, it always gets me when people say that you have to stop thinking like a Windows user to use a Mac (or Linux, for that matter). This is why Microsoft has about 90% of the PC market. I look at it this way, if you’re selling vanilla ice cream and your competitor is selling chocolate ice cream and getting 90% of the business, you are not going to win any customers by insisting that they have to stop thinking that they like chocolate. ”

This is about as flawed an analogy as I’ve ever seen.

The Mac UI/UE has a consistency that is based on a very few axioms. if you don’t bother to understand those, you’ll never see the consistency that emerges from it, and you’ll never have that sense of ease of use. you’ll just be using a machine that has different icons from your Windows machine and you’ll never gain the effiency advantages. But hey, it’s your time to waste.

Try looking first for the application which suits your needs best. Then worry about the price. you’ll be happier in the long run. This isn’t a matter of opinion, it is, in fact one of the fundamental tenets of good user interface design.

i’ve seen switchers go through 5 different steps to try to accomplish a task on their Mac that if they’d allowed for a different mindset they could have known that those 5 different steps on a Windows box were actually just a single step on a Mac….or in some cases, simply moot on a Mac.

Example: Windows users bitch about mac apps rarely coming with an uninstaller and that windows is better because you have a choice of a bazillion different uninstalling software programs. Want to delete most apps from your Mac? do the reverse of the INstall: drag the app to the Trash.

I never once claimed that a windows user was evil. I said the Mac experience is DIFFERENT to a Windows user experience.

I could list a dozen things about the Mac UI off the top of my head that are superior to Windows, but that would be off topic.

As far as freeware vs shareware vs commercial software, I tried the freeware Handbrake and didn’t like it, from the app icon to the affordances of process which give the user reassurance that the proper things are happening, to the results of its compression. Then I tried Visual Hub (shareware) and found almost everything about it to be superior to Handbrake. So I spent $20 on it. I could have gone with Popcorn (commercial) for $60 or $80, but Visual Hub isn’t just “good enough”, it’s simply good. And worth the $20.

You weren’t around in the Mac community when WordPerfect 1.0 came out, with its multiply-deep modal dialog boxes which all worked the DOS/Windows way, and no one bought it. When WP 3 came out, it worked like a Mac application and utilized many Mac-platform technologies which also made it a first-class player in the user’s productivity and to this day it’s my favorite word processor.

People here are trying to help you understand a brand new (to you) environment and you just play stubborn and immovable and primarily claim you bought a Mac to avoid a Windows problem, instead of buying a Mac because it’s a higher quality experience.

and yet here’s everyone else trying to help you better appreciate what you’ve gotten yourself into now that you have Mac.

Lighten up. One of the other hallmarks of Macs is that Mac users tend to help one another.

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God of Biscuits, I thought my analogy was excellent. Sorry you couldn’t understand it.

The funniest part of your message was this: “and yet here’s everyone else trying to help you better appreciate what you’ve gotten yourself into now that you have Mac.”

Funny, the only person I see trying to do that is YOU. The rest of us are having this great conversation about the merits and availability of Mac freeware, and here you come along and set up your virtual lectern and try to come off like some kind of highfallutin’ professor or preacher. Problem is, I didn’t sign up for your course, or ask to join your cult.

What makes me a lot happier is when people don’t try to give me unsolicited advice, particularly when it’s apparent from the get-go that they’re trying to change the way I think. When I was younger I fell into the trap of thinking that I needed to listen to such people (or at least pretend to do so), with very bad results. If I’d listened to my own instincts I’d have been a lot better off. I’m not saying there’s no truth in anything you’ve written, but man, you need to get off your high horse. Your advice might be a lot better received if you offered it in a spirit of humility, not as some teacher of all wisdom when it comes to the Mac. People do have their own way of doing things, which may not be the best way in YOUR OPINION, but it’s their way. I’m sure you would not appreciate it if I told you how you should use your computer (especially if I did it with an air of stinkin’ superiority), and you’d probably be about as inclined to take my unsolicited advice as I am to take yours.

I’m not just playing stubborn and immovable - I can really be that way, especially when given unrequested advice! Furthermore I cut my teeth in Fidonet echomail groups, so I’m not about to back down just because someone else comes along with a strong opinion. Even though you use the royal “we” in your posts, you should have noticed by now how alone you are behind your pulpit. The only one that has even bothered to respond to you is me, and I’m lobbing virtual rotten tomatoes in your general direction! If you listen carefully, you can even hear the crickets chirping!

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People came into this converstaion talking about how the freeware/shareware market for the Mac is different to how it is for Windows.

And I added that there’s more to the differences that what you were pointing out.

… Vanilla vs chocolate? You’re joking, right? The Vanilla vs chocolate debate is similar to quality software vs cheap ill-thought-out crap?

not everything in this world is a simple matter of opinion. And if I sound like I am talking in a “high-falutin’” manner, it’s because i’ve been a user interface engineer for twenty years.

There is method and theory and fact to it all. Small annoyances add up to larger frustrations. Poor feedback diminishes trust in an application. Consistency across applications is important. Controls which also provide affordance are key. None of these things are matters of opinion, they’re academic and experiential fact.

Who the hell cares if you played around on fidonet? Should I counter with having had an email address and login accounts on DEC-20s since 1982?

Don’t you have any interest in trying to grasp concepts which may be new to you? Don’t you want to maximize the value of the Macintosh you just purchased?

Pardon me if I assumed those things, because shopping for new software is usually prompted by someone wanting to add value to their own productivity and/or entertainment with their own computer.

So you go. Stand your ground. learn nothing new. Buy the crap software for no reason other than it’s free and in a year you’ll go around telling people that the Mac is no better than Windows except for the malware.

You’d be right, but only in the land of your small-mindedness.

The rest of us look with better eyes. There are more than simple matters of personal taste which have produced the consensus that Macs are superior to Windows boxes, believe it or not.

I didn’t state anything in my original posting that I didnt’ have examples for, and I called your analogy flawed because choosing software isn’t solely a matter of personal taste. There was no royal “we”, there was a collective “we”, meaning the mac community at large, which I’ve been a part of, through good and bad, since early 1984.

But hey, you know better in spite of admitting you’re stubborn and immovable even as you accuse me of lacking humility.

There’s some awesome freeware out there. There’s awesome shareware. There’s awesome commercial software. And in my own experience and wisdom gained therefrom, offering advice in choosing quality first and balancing that with budget was given to help you have a better experience with your Mac.

I apologize for assuming that informed points of view were considered valuable.

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@God of Biscuits: The fact that you have been an interface designer for 20 years actually doesn’t help your arguement. People who make music are more likely to pick out trouble with music, and it’s the same thing with interface designers.

You design interfaces, so it means a lot to you to have a good interface. That’s you, it’s who you are, and what’s important to you. On the other hand, just become someone has a different opinion than you doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

Sure, you design interfaces. You probably know a lot more about it. But if it’s not important to someone else, then that’s that. Almost everything is an opinion. The only sure thing in the world is that we exist. Besides that, anything can be argued.

You said 20 years, so that puts you at a considerably “up there” age. You apparently have a job, and are getting paid good money.

I don’t know about Fox, but he’s most likely younger than you (high school, college, early 20s - I’m just guessing here). I’m not assuming, but odds are that Fox doesn’t make as much money as you. Your job is to design interfaces, you think it’s important and spend your money on it. Fox, on the other hand doesn’t think it’s as important as the price of software. Is he poor? Maybe. I don’t know. He’s just a little less inclined to spend money on a prettier interface.

Now let’s examine me. I’m in high school. Maybe when I grow up I’ll change my mind. But right now, freeware rocks because it’s what I can afford. And there is a lot of good freeware that very few people know about. Examples: Genius, schoolhouse. That’s me. Those are my priorities. It depends on who you are and your priorities.

For the record, I completely got the ice cream analogy.

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So, Austen, your balance between good software and budget is different than mine. But it’s still a balance. That balance point is different for each of us.

But ask yourself why the Mac is better? Do you know the reasons? Why aren’t you using a PC? it’s so much easier to get warez for Windows, and for that matter, it’s a helluva lot cheaper to build your own Windows-compatible box in the first place!

You must have a reason.

I got what Fox was aiming at with the vanilla vs chocolate, but it’s flawed because if you follow it logically from that first blush of “this makes sense”, you’ll quickly find that it applies to almost nothing about choosing software.

“Free” aside, do you choose an app because you like blue and its app’s icon is mostly blue and not green, which you might hate, and for no other reason beyond that? If so, the vanilla vs choc argument works for you. If you have other needs or wants, then it completely falls apart.

UI development is more a science than an art, but GOOD UI always involves healthy amounts of both. This isn’t opinion, it’s a demonstrated thing. It’s an objective thing. Vanilla vs Chocolate is never more than a matter of personal preference, and even that may not be a choice anyway, instead depending on your genetics or your life familiarities.

The work of UI and UE professionals is to hide as much of the “computer-y” stuff away and to optimize the tasks you need to accomplish. The best UIs make you forget they’re even there.

Yet ANOTHER example: I won’t spend $600 on Photoshop because its feature set is mostly of no use to me, and those that are are aimed at graphics professionals who have their own jargon and own processes, neither of which I am profficient in. I *have* the $600 to spend, but I choose not to, because there’s Acorn. it’s $30 and it does the things I need it to do and it does those things BETTER and MORE EASILY than Photoshop because its graphics impart more generic information and its tools trade flexibility for ease of use.

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GoB: Not that it matters, but if we are going to play the “who used a computer first” game, my start was on a DEC PDP-10 back in 1974. I was stubbornly writing programs in BASIC when everyone around me was insisting that BASIC would be dead soon and that FORTRAN was the language that everyone would be using (we were both wrong to some degree, but BASIC is still around, whereas you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find a FORTRAN compiler for any modern system).

Anyway, I’m sorry that you are so offended that others might not consider your opinions valuable, and have to resort to using descriptions like “small-minded” to refer to those who disagree with you. The opposite of small-minded is big-minded, which I assume you think you are, and to contain a big mind you need a big head. And I certainly won’t argue if that’s what you think you have!

And just as a general comment, in my experience I’ve observed that most engineers don’t think in quite the same way that non-engineers do. That can be both good and bad. The problem is that if you ask an engineer to design a bridge, hopefully he’ll pay enough attention to detail that it will be a strong structure, and not fall down when a construction crew parks their equipment on it. But if you ask an engineer to come up with a bridge that is pleasing to the eye, they may have a quite different idea of what would be pleasing than an artist, or even a member of the general public that knows nothing of engineering OR art, but knows what they like to see when they look out their car windshield.

With computer software, you want three things: Reliable (no bugs), ease of use, and a pleasing interface. I’ve observed that many competent software designers will give you any two, and THINK they are giving you all three, but they really aren’t. For example, it may have a pretty interface and it may never crash, but it will be hard for everyone except the designer to use it (of course HE thinks it’s easy to use, because he designed it to his own personal preferences!). Personally, if I have to choose any two, I’ll take bug-free and easy to use over the nice interface, but that’s just me.

And although I’m not young anymore, life has dealt me a few hard knocks. I’m not complaining, but the fact is I just don’t have money to burn on software when there is a good freeware alternative. There are probably college students that have more disposable income than I do, but that’s neither here nor there. Now that GoB has indicated that he’s a software engineer, I suspect that he probably makes a living by writing commercial software (or did so at some point in his life), and that’s part of the reason he’s pooh-poohing the freeware option.

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Obviously you cherry-picked from the first paragraph or two that I wrote or you’d notice that I called for a balance of things in an approach to using software, including usability, function, budget.

Any good engineer embraces domain experts and involves them, embraces visual- and user-interface experts to get the usability right and leaves the documentation to tech writers who know what they’re doing.

i *NEVER dissed freeware. I dissed the notion that Mac software should be chosen SOLELY on the basis that it’s free. I even gave examples of software that was free and works well-enough, but put beside it very cheap software that was quite a bit more usable, and that other things besides cost should be considered, some of which should be considered *above* cost.

You want to play the saint (or martyr), that’s fine with me. Show me up buy supporting those small software shops who work very hard to make very good software that they sell for next to nothing. You’ll be a paragon of virtue in my book.

YOu seem to think that every last thing in life is subjective and that there exist no hard-won, hard-learned rules and notions that make good software good. That’s factually inaccurate and you should admit so.

or just make everything black and white, vanilla and chocolate, and dear god, stay away from all grays and all nuance!

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You’re still trying to tell me what to do, aren’t you? Give it up. What you just don’t get is that you walked into this conversation with your unsolicited views and advice, and you don’t seem to accept that they aren’t being received well. And, when someone differs with you, you go on the attack and start the name-calling and the attempt to insult their intelligence and make it personal. Frankly, I’m tired of this whole conversation (if you can call it that) and I have better things to do with my time than respond to any more of this nonsense. I would tell you to take your opinions someplace where they are appreciated, but I just can’t imagine where that might be.

(This, by the way, is why many big companies don’t let their software engineers talk directly to the users. A fair percentage of them have the same level of social skills as what we’re seeing here).

I’m through!

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I gave recommendations as a person who has experience as both user and developer so that you could maximize the value and use of your own Mac.

Sorry for trying to help. Sorry (to myself) for using idioms that you could take out of context to call me a name-caller.

But you’re the immovable object. You even said so. I should’ve quit commenting then and instead gone out to find some pearls and a few swine.

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Oh, and fox? scroll up. Read comment #1.

Then comment #4, which is an abbreviated version of #1 in the form of a question.

Then comment #5, especially this bit: “The Mac has the security to not be susceptible to every virus that comes along, and then there is the fact that you don’t have to be a propellerhead to use it.”

Sounds like everyone agrees!

And then because I simply said “You have to …” instead of the more idiomatically appropriate “ONE has to…”, I’m an imperious bastard in your eyes.

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Oh no! I’ve ruined what could have been a wonderful friendship!

Or not. You both make good points, and whatever works for you works for you. No need for the arguing. I can’t believe I’m in high school and you guys are bickering and making everything personal when you’re both MUCH older than me.

@GoB: But look a #’s 7, 12, 13, 14. They all think the opposite. People like what they do. I think the Fox just felt like he was being talked down to.

You both make good points, but I’m still standing firm that the look of an application is, sure, nice to have be nice, but beyond that just a bunch of different colors. The features are really what matter to me.

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This is such a trivial dispute. You Mac guys just crack me up.

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Mr Reed….

attention to detail isn’t trivial. unless you’re a Windows developer

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