OS X Educational Shareware Market?

[curry]

Richard MacLemale wrote:

>I think that, with many schools doing Mac OS X migration, there's a whole
>market of educational users looking for elementary level OS X applications
>that are NATIVE OS X and don't require Classic.  Speaking for my own county
>I know this is true.  There are titles available for OS X at the elementary
>level, but nowhere NEAR as many as were available in the OS 7 and OS 8 days.

Glad to know there's the opportunity. I'm currently working on 
getting back into actively releasing educational shareware again.

>1.  Piracy, and piracy of registration codes.  (I found my old program Mr.
>Fixitup's registration code on 12 different websites, and the program hasn't
>been sold in 5 years!)

Did it have name tied to code or just code? I'm planning to also have 
a statement on the reg screen that encourages honesty, and maybe also 
require them to type in the code again when hard disk changes. (Or at 
least something they have to click to agree to that encourages 
honesty.) I agree with some people who say focusing on good software 
and marketing is more important than really advanced protection 
features, but I do believe in a practical level of protection that 
will make a difference with normal people who have some conscience.

>2.  Competition from free online Flash games and activities.

Hmmm... Spread rumors to discredit them? :-) Just kidding.

>3.  Consumer apathy about paying for shareware.  Seriously, there's still
>plenty of people who are wondering where Napster went because they don't
>understand why it was ILLEGAL.

Even otherwise honest people need educating about it, plus society 
needs to be more honest and more in general.

>But there's a serious excitement over OS X in schools, and elementary
>schools are just now in the process of thinking about making the move.  The
>number of elementary schools that run OS X is increasing and it will keep
>going up for probably the next 5 years as schools slowly switch over.  So
>I'm wondering if anyone might be willing to share their thoughts about the
>OS X educational software market?

That's really good to hear!

Curry Kenworthy