The prodigal newsletter is back! With some nice discounts, lots of not-very-funny puns, and a bit of blabbering
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Mellel News:
What's going on:
Useful stuff and fluff:
-- There's absolutely no reason for a special summer discount. On that we can agree. Still, this only makes having one even more sensible, doesn't it?
Here are the details: the price of the Regular version of Mellel will drop almost 30 percent, from 49USD to 35USD. The Educational price will go down from 35USD to 29USD.
(The price for other offers, such as the upgrade or the Bookends/Mellel combo, did not change, as they are already sold with a deep discount).
When will it end? That we will not tell you now. Maybe a week, maybe more. We will post a notification on our site a day or two before the discount is no more, so you'll have a heads-up notice.
-- RedleX offers a special license called "Five Pack" (or Family/SOHO pack) and includes 5 separate licenses. Up until now, the Family license was offered for 99USD... But not any more. We've reduced the price to 79USD (which means that every license will cost you less than 16USD).
Almost as important, we're now offering the option to upgrade an existing Five Pack, or upgrade from a Regular or an Educational license to a Five Pack for just 39USD. For example, if you have an Educational license, and you want to expand it to five licenses, all you need to do is purchase the Five Pack Upgrade and there you have it.
-- As most of you know, Mellel 2.5 is out an about. This major upgrade to Mellel includes many interesting improvements, with the spotlight laying on Cross Reference. To put it succinctly, Mellel's Cross References is far above and beyond anything you will find in any word processor. We would add that the upgrade price, from any version of Mellel, just 19USD, but perhaps you already know that...
And now we're working on the next version, of course. Mellel 2.6 is the next major version (no details yet), but we plan to release a smaller update in between. Being smaller, doesn't mean that the new features will be less important, of course. One thing already in the making is QuickLook support, with a little bit of a breakthrough. We also plan numerous other little (and not so little improvements there).
Market Share, Again -- As most of you know, Apple is breaking records time and again in terms of sales. But does this record breaking change things significantly in places other than Apple's bottom line?
During the last four years Apple and the Mac made an impressive breakthrough in terms of Mac sales. Apple sold at an average rate of about 3.5 million Macs a year four years ago. Now it's selling at a rate of about 10 Million machines a year. This is reflected also in market share. According to Market Share site Apple went up from 4.3 percent market share two years ago to 8 percent in June this year (some recent reports have it slackening a bit lately, but that's the traditional summer slump. Mac users have more fun and vacations, obviously). The change even got as far as a not from Microsoft, which acknowledged that Apple is making some headway in terms of market share.
Microsoft, quite typically, attributes the change to bad public relations on their part and "noisy" commercials by Apple, knocking down Microsoft's Vista OS, totally ignoring the fact, quoth the brazen MS man, that vista totally and fully "compatible with your whole life."
He's wrong, of course. No one builds market share based on commercials, even if they are fun and funny. In fact, Apple had cute and cuddly commercials in the past, without affecting one iota of market share. The rise of the Mac can be attributed, almost fully, to the fact that people can now buy a Mac and still run Windows if they want. This annulled the "net effect": people buying and using a PC because others use it too. With the net effect annulled or even reversed, people can purchase Macs and still keep in touch with those miserable souls afflicted by the necessity to use a PC.
The change in market share has important "side effects" felt by most Mac users. First among those is the change in attitude. One example for this change is Babylon — a rather staunch no-Mac company in the past — announcing an upcoming Mac version. They did not do that because Mac users have the most beautiful eyes (although they do) but following a simple economic calculation: the hike in Mac market share, especially with mobile users, makes it an unsound economic decision to ignore Mac users.
The change in market share has important "side effects" felt by most Mac users. First among those is the change in attitude. One example for this change is Babylon — a rather staunch no-Mac company in the past — announcing an upcoming Mac version. They did not do that because Mac users have the most beautiful eyes (although they do) but following a simple economic calculation: the hike in Mac market share, especially with mobile users, makes it an unsound economic decision to ignore Mac users.
-- This is something that pops up now and again from users: Can I use Mellel at home if I'm already using it at Work? Can I install Mellel on both my desktop and mobile machines?
The answer, in both cases, is a clear YES. Mellel's license is "just like a book": You can use it on as many machines as you like, as long as only one person is using Mellel at a time. The license, in other words, is per person, not per machine.
-- And a fine example for that appears below.
-- Or are they? A bit old but very interesting discussion of the real difference in legibility between serif and sans-serif fonts.
-- I know. It's a bit of a cliché, but still fun. Proposition for ground breaking new apple products. People seem to be very font of innovations in the room where even kings and duchesses enter alone.
