Re: Is the Jaguar user base large enough to still

FROM : Mark Dawson
DATE : Thu Apr 14 23:52:35 2005

On Apr 14, 2005, at 1:26 PM, Daniel Child wrote:

> I guess I'll throw in my two cents. As people mentioned earlier, one's
> audience is critical, and as a graduate student I have plenty of time
> to look around campus.
>
> For universities, the answer is obvious: assuming frequent upgrades
> would be a mistake. At UH, for instance, there are rooms full of Macs
> running 9.2, and because the hardware is old, it makes little sense to
> even upgrade to 10 anything (pick your cat). I believe some of the
> computer room PCs run XP, but that is simply because the hardware is
> newer. Others are still stuck on 2000 or 98.
>

A more important statistic is: what is your PAYING installed base
running--i.e., what are people running who are likely to buy your
product?  This could be significantly different than your overall
installed base.  From what I remember from older Cocoa and Carbon list
notes, the buying public is much more heavily weighted towards newer OS
than the installed base (I seem to remember one developer who had 60-40
OS 9/OS X installed base split, but a 90-10 OS X/OS 9 buying split--so
for him, it made sense to develop just for OS X, as his large OS 9
installed base wasn't buying his upgrades).  I think the same ratios
hold for OS X versions, too.

Mark