MacAddict is going to start charging shareware authors $500 to
include their software on The Disc - and even more for corporate
contributors. Come November they're going to have to start calling it
The Coaster, 'cause that's all that it'll be good for. Now if it was
$500 for a year for corporate and $50 a year for shareware and included
all of your titles (not just one), maybe that might go over; otherwise,
you're going to be listening to a lot of bippity-bop electronic garage
music and watching a really loooooong flash animation by the
index-writing guy.
Speaking of which, it occurs to me that the reason they're charging
is that it is so expensive to create The Disc in the first place. Let's
see, why is that? Could it be all the fluffy technojunk they put on
there to make it look like they created the content provided for free
from their contributors? What about the fancy multi-colored CD
labels?
Want to cut expenses, MacAddict? Drop the Flash interface. Lose the
custom techno-bop player. Stick with content.
Geeze, these authors are doing you a favor, folks. There's only one
big advantage a CD with a paper mag has over the Internet itself: You
don't have to go find the content yourself. It's all in one place, and
it comes with its own backup. For really big files, it's faster than a
modem or even cable. Take away a healthy collection of files, and
what's left?
No individual file can sell the Disc to readers; it's the collection
of files, the promise of finding something new we hadn't heard of, that
makes us defy our common sense and pay for something that we could
download for free ourselves.
It's all about content, baby.
As Ross Perot once said, "There'll be a giant sucking sound," and
then we'll all have to go back and subscribe to Macworld, for criminy
sakes. I hope MacAddict can find some other way to balance the books -
or they might find themselves with no books to balance.
Two words, guys: Freakin' awful!
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
