The author has what looks like two mac laptops plus an external monitor. At least one of the macbooks is a macbook pro from the image in the article, so conservatively $3.5K in hardware? And $50 -- less than 1.5% of hardware price -- is too much money! I understand people have been conditioned to think software should be free, but getting hung up over $50 to fix what sounds like a significant hassle seems dumb. The alternative is what -- getting a hardware kvm or physically switching keyboard + monitor connections?
Also fta:
Since arguing with Bartels, I have discovered Teleport, a newer, free,
Mac-only keyboard-and-mouse sharing app. Its existence made me think,
briefly, that I had won the argument. But Teleport has issues (the mouse
gets stuck on target machines) and I've found it, for me, unworkable.
The mind boggles -- does this man not value his free time at all? He continued searching for software to avoid paying the $50. I'm curious how much time this guy would spend to avoid paying $50 and moving on with his life. There's obviously a limit, or he'd be enrolling in a CS undergrad to write his own to avoid spending that precious precious fifty bucks.
That said, I kind of agree with underwater the vendor misprices the app: $24.90 per computer, when the software is literally useless without two computers, should be $50 per pair + $24.90 for 3rd, 4th, etc.
At least one of the macbooks is a macbook pro from the image in the article, so conservatively $3.5K in hardware? And $50 -- less than 1.5% of hardware price -- is too much money!
I'd say a specialized application like that provides well below 1.5% of the value that two Macbooks provide. But even if it wasn't:
when CBS replaced my PC with a MacBook, giving me two-Mac setup
He didn't pay for the Macbooks, his employer did. So their price is irrelevant to this discussion.
> $24.90 per computer, when the software is literally useless without two computers, should be $50 per pair + $24.90 for 3rd, 4th, etc.
Uhm, but the price is just that as you said: 2 x $24.90 = $49.80 which makes around $50 per pair.
The decision to sell individual licenses is made because it makes it easier to offer add-on licenses which you can conviniently add later at any time. I agree though, that we may need to improve how to communicate it.
I've often found that journalists place a very low value on their time, possibly since they're paid so little. I had one conversation where I convinced a journalist that this software would save him 7 at least hours and cost $100...to which he responded, "If it's just 7 hours, why would I spend $100?"
The mind boggles -- does this man not value his free time at all? He continued searching for software to avoid paying the $50.
I understand your reasoning, to a point. But remember that he was previously paying $0 for an open source app that provided mostly the same functionality, and it's a big jump going from nothing to $50. In that situation, I'd probably spend quite a bit of time researching my alternatives so that 1) I didn't have to pay $50 more than I'm used to paying, 2) I don't have to pony up an extra $25 if I add another computer to the mix, 3) I can tell my friends and coworkers about the free alternative so it gains momentum and supplants the pricy version.
The "price/utility" equation is very much at play here. A $50 replacement for a free app better provide an enormous utility to make it worthwhile. There's a certain cross-platform text editor that gets mentioned lots here on HN that I bought because it was very useful to me. "Small" apps like a mouse sharing widget just aren't useful enough to me that I'd be willing to support that price point.
Also fta:
The mind boggles -- does this man not value his free time at all? He continued searching for software to avoid paying the $50. I'm curious how much time this guy would spend to avoid paying $50 and moving on with his life. There's obviously a limit, or he'd be enrolling in a CS undergrad to write his own to avoid spending that precious precious fifty bucks.That said, I kind of agree with underwater the vendor misprices the app: $24.90 per computer, when the software is literally useless without two computers, should be $50 per pair + $24.90 for 3rd, 4th, etc.