RE: Seeking perspectives on a computer purchasing predicament
- From: "Chris Hofstader" <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 10:44:33 -0400
Darragh: I think the point through all this should be why the hell have
GWMicro
and FreedomScientific not added support for 64 bit systems after all
this time? It's not like this is new technology. And the fact that
best buy are only supplying these machines with 64 bit processors
should be the kick we as the customers of these products need to get
us motivated to complain and protest to these A T companies to start
supporting this new technology.
cdh: Well... JAWS, Window-Eyes and other major label screen reader and
magnifier upgrades are sold primarily to current customers with pre-paid
SMA contracts, a population who has already committed to the given
technology and cannot, therefore, refuse an upgrade or insist on a specific
technology being supported as once their SMA checks cleared, they abdicated
any leverage they had as consumers by giving away the cash, the only tool a
consumer of AT has, to the publisher. Other upgrades are sold to
organizations and individuals who already own the software, hence, already
have hardware on which it will run and know better than to try it on
anything that doesn't carry the publishers' seal of approval.
cdh: Based upon sales numbers when I still worked at FS (it's been about
four years since I left but I've seen no evidence to the contrary since) FS
sells about 1000 new units of JAWS each month but has an installed base of
greater than 200,000. The new customers are those most likely to want to
run the screen reader on new hardware. Development/marketing investment
strategies only make sense by spending as little as possible to keep the
huge captive audience of current installations buying more SMA contracts
which, in brief, function like an annuity and continuing with the minimum to
at least equal their competition to continue bringing in the new customers
each month.
cdh: Until the new customer clamor is loud enough about a specific
technology or until a major site license customer insists on a new
technology or a competitor looks like they will pierce the near monopoly
share with a new technology, there is no acceptable business case to support
new technologies whatsoever.
cdh: Jamal is one of the highest profile users in the blinkosphere but even
his words will fall on deaf ears without providing a value proposition that
makes a lot of dollars and sense to the authors and publishers of access
technology.
cdh: As far as I can tell, only two AT CEOs (Mike Calvo and Mark Mulcahey)
are also consumers. All of the rest are motivated by their specific job
description which is to maximize return on investment for their
shareholders. Mike and Mark are motivated to make cool stuff work because
they need to live with it day and night and are in the somewhat enviable
positions of having the authority to help define their own technological
futures. Until a true free software (free as in GPL rather than free as in
beer) we cannot, as a community, expect to have similar persuasion.
Happy Hacking,
cdh
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