Quote from: RubberChicken on October 03, 2007, 11:36:55 AM
On the positive side you are at least no longer claiming that you have any intention of developing the loader for Mac. On the negative side I still recall being told over a year ago that it was.
Businesses change their plans, in an ideal world there are any number of software projects that I would like to undertake. The reality is that we are a small company and have limited resources so we need to target areas that we think will provide the greatest benefit to us. Currently we are focussed on building up our brand with the new iwatchthis.com.au site and working on a number of projects with PVR manufacturers. We are stretched too thin to have time for a native Mac solution at this time. If a third party developer or open source project wants to take up the slack then we have provided the resources they need. We would also be willing to provide a reasonable level of technical support to anyone wishing to do the work.
Quote from: RubberChicken on October 03, 2007, 11:36:55 AM
Is it not just a little ironic that..
1. The Mac user base may not be worth spending the moderate development costs, but you have no problem asking those users to pay you several hundred dollars more than you ask of a Windows user, to buy your router based solution. You also have no problem asking us to pay the same fees as Windows subscribers, despite the lower level of support.
When you purchase an IceTV subscription you are purchasing a licence to use the guide on up to three supported devices, we don't care what mixture of devices you use and we don't charge different fees for different devices. We have no desire to limit use of the guide beyond our standard conditions and it would put an unreasonable administrative burden on us to try and provide a special "Mac using Topfield Owner" discount to offset the lack of official connectivity options.
For a subscriber to use our guide in a Topfield PVR they must be able to get the EPG data onto the Topfield. The officially sanctioned method to do this is to use a windows PC and the Topfield supplied Altair software or our own Iceguide4Topfield loader that is built using the Topfield supplied drivers. We have also chosen to provide an additional method via the IceBox as a value add for people who don't wish to leave their PC on all the time or find it more convenient to use an always on appliance to manage the guide updates, or in this case are unable to make use of the support connectivity options.
I appreciate that this solution is not to your liking but the lack of Mac support for the Topfield should really be addressed to Topfield. I am sorry that you feel we are singling out Mac using Topfield owners for some kind of "tax", but this is not the case.
As a Mac owner myself I can sympathise with your position, if I owned a Topfield I would probably use Nathan Oates' program with some AppleScript to make it run periodically or if I had the time write my own application, I know this is not possible for everyone which is why I asked people to rally all the Mac using Topfield owners to contact us so we could see if the demand was high enough to warrant writing an app for you. I don't think we have had a single request yet.
Quote from: RubberChicken on October 03, 2007, 11:36:55 AM
2. You don't want to risk damaging our Toppies using lethal third party code, but are content that in not offering it we will use it anyway if we don't pay extra for your router. I'm not aware of any software vendor that takes responsibility for damaging equipment, I'm very used to seeing a big waiver on the install screen and would happily admonish you of that responsibility. I've been using Nathan's solution for over a year and it has not cooked my Toppy yet. I'm sure not all of us want to sue the pants of you.
Unfortunately there is a big difference between acknowledging the existance of unsupported and potentially damaging programs and actually supplying a program that may brick your Toppy. I'm sure that the majority of Mac using Toppy owners aren't planning to sue us but we are not prepared to take that risk at this time.
With regards to our router, we make a very small margin on the IceBox, just enough to cover the costs of the custom firmware development, it is an enabling technology for delivering our guide not a source of income in itself.
Please end an email to support@icetv.com.au if you want a native application for the Mac OR if you are a Mac application developer email us for assistance