Development Priorities
Here is another angle to look at C1 pricing and the reason it is so high. (Other than with no serious competition they can charge whatever they want and they do)
It looks that we all subsidise "free" Sony & Fujifilm versions of software. One would hope that both Sony and FujiFilm pay for it, but I have my doubts. And when you look at the list of supported lenses for Sony vs Nikon (and they had plenty more time to work on Nikon), it feels a bit like adding insult to the injury...
It looks that we all subsidise "free" Sony & Fujifilm versions of software. One would hope that both Sony and FujiFilm pay for it, but I have my doubts. And when you look at the list of supported lenses for Sony vs Nikon (and they had plenty more time to work on Nikon), it feels a bit like adding insult to the injury...
0
-
Or you could look at it and assume that Sony and Fuji, one way or another, are helping to support Nikon and Canon users.
Indeed one wonders whether Nikon and Canon attempt any support for new cameras in C1 at all.
There was a brief time a few years ago - I think it was around the time of the Canon 1-DX launch - when all the stars aligned and a C1 release, presumably somewhat dictated in terms of timing by whatever Apple was doing at the time with its operating system, coincided with the release of the new Canon body and a couple of lenses, all of which appeared as soon as available.
Mind you the 1DX, as I recall, had been announced for about a year beforehand and there was an Olympics event fast approaching. That sort of thing always seems to focus the manufacturer's attention.
Meanwhile, as a Windows user, I sometime wonder whether we are supporting all of the extra functions available to Mac users.
V12, for example, once again enhances Apple Script for which there is no Windows equivalent. And the twice a year aggravation of their changes to their Mac OS must be huge distraction that seems not to have a regular parallel in Windows world, even though Microsoft are more than capable of creating their own havoc. Then there's the Mac user panic about Metal rather than OpenCL. Yet more effort for only part of the customer base.
And of course the new Plug-in facility sounds great but as a Windows user the current option mean I can only have interest if I decide to spend even more cash then the Upgrade cost and get into focus stacking with Helicon. Which I would love to do to find out what it really all about but I would not expect to make much use of it.
So are we Windows users supporting Mac users, version after version?
Perhaps not. The whole thing likely means that, on balance, the revenues can be equitably split to focus on developments that often benefit all users, sometimes are specific to only a sub-set of users but, over all, probably end up split, intentionally or not, fairly equitably according to the known or projected numbers of users that fall into each possible subset or subsets.
But just sometimes on wonders ...
Grant0 -
On the point of lenses, which I forgot about in my previous reply, maybe if there was a Nikon specific version of C1 Nikon would be keen to ensure that all of its lenses were visible as "Supported" - perhaps irrespective of whether the lens actually needed any serious support?
But as they do not offer such a benefit to their customers maybe they are not too bothered about helping to ensure such a service. Especially, of course, for older lenses in their back-catalogue when they need to make all the sales they can for new products.
Sony may have an advantage in that their back catalog "in use" lens range is, generally, more recent and comes from an era when software based correction is an accepted principle or in many cases an absolute necessity to satisfy user expectations on results and price.
Maybe I should change camera brand before my Canon kit becomes totally worthless?
Grant0 -
Grant, it is all speculation on our part as we have no insight to the split of Phase One's software revenue. One could argue that most photogs use the Mac hence the emphasis on Mac development, but who knows. Commercial reality though is irrefutable - right now Adobe is in a weak spot with their change of direction despite having massive resources. And it shows in Capture One pricing 😊
In Australia the cost of CC is AUD180 per year. Capture One upgrade is AUD230 (from memory). I won't be slashing my wrists for $50 (and getting a better product), but I am also sure Phase One will loose some soldiers here.
Also, I hope someone will write geo encoding plugin for C1... 😄0 -
Another way of looking at the pricing is this. I assume that the total costs of developing a new version of Capture One and the total costs of developing a new version of Lightroom are about the same. (Quite likely?) I think it is fairly certain that LR has many more users than C1. [Aside: Partly that is a self-perpetuating situation: all the photo magazines for example seem to assume their readers use Adobe products. There are regular articles about how to do this that or the other in LR, PS, etc. So readers assume that these apps are the standard thing to use. When did Amateur Photographer ever have a regular series on how to do this that or the other in Capture One?] So in such a situation, it is just maths that the product with fewer users has a higher development cost per user, and will have little choice but to charge more.
Ian0 -
[quote="Ian3" wrote:
Another way of looking at the pricing is this. I assume that the total costs of developing a new version of Capture One and the total costs of developing a new version of Lightroom are about the same. (Quite likely?) I think it is fairly certain that LR has many more users than C1. [Aside: Partly that is a self-perpetuating situation: all the photo magazines for example seem to assume their readers use Adobe products. There are regular articles about how to do this that or the other in LR, PS, etc. So readers assume that these apps are the standard thing to use. When did Amateur Photographer ever have a regular series on how to do this that or the other in Capture One?] So in such a situation, it is just maths that the product with fewer users has a higher development cost per user, and will have little choice but to charge more.
Ian
Can't argue with this in isolation. But somehow they were happy to charge 60% of today's fee only few years ago. Plus I am sure they got a massive influx of customers ex Aperture and ex Adobe subscription model since then. I still think this is an opportunistic cash grab. Hope it works for them long term.0 -
[quote="PeterO" wrote:
[quote="Ian3" wrote:
Another way of looking at the pricing is this. I assume that the total costs of developing a new version of Capture One and the total costs of developing a new version of Lightroom are about the same. (Quite likely?) I think it is fairly certain that LR has many more users than C1. [Aside: Partly that is a self-perpetuating situation: all the photo magazines for example seem to assume their readers use Adobe products. There are regular articles about how to do this that or the other in LR, PS, etc. So readers assume that these apps are the standard thing to use. When did Amateur Photographer ever have a regular series on how to do this that or the other in Capture One?] So in such a situation, it is just maths that the product with fewer users has a higher development cost per user, and will have little choice but to charge more.
Ian
Can't argue with this in isolation. But somehow they were happy to charge 60% of today's fee only few years ago. Plus I am sure they got a massive influx of customers ex Aperture and ex Adobe subscription model since then. I still think this is an opportunistic cash grab. Hope it works for them long term.
This may sound strange but a large increase in users (or indeed just sales orders in some businesses) is not always a good thing. Balancing the economies of scale can be difficult although this is usually more challenging when working with physical goods where predicting what quantity should be manufactured for stock purposes is often a dark art.
It's not always down to direct costs either. There are questions about licensing "technology" from others, putting backroom support in place, more powerful servers to support larger numbers of users all diving in to download when new versions are released and, in the case of C1 (I'm not sure about other vendors in this context) included personalised access to technical support resources - something that may be most resource consuming with an influx of people new to the product. That is likely to be especially resource consuming when the people are appearing for reasons that are nothing to do with their satisfaction levels for their current product (which they probably think is excellent and has the huge benefit of being totally familiar to them) but rather the business model for perpetual vs subscription policies.
If one looks at the two main influence of recent times - the cessation of Apple Aperture development and the LR more to subscription only - it is probably fair to suggest that neither group of users suddenly deciding to jump ship were doing so because they were actively looking for a new experience in RAW conversion and image editing. There was and is a strong feeling of simply wanting to find another product that could be persuaded to change to be just like everything they were used to.
That is entirely natural. We all do it to at least some extent. One way or another, whether explaining why something is not likely to be changed or assessing and deciding that a suggested change is a good and viable idea, takes resource of all types.
It is, so far as I can tell, unusual in most businesses for large increases in sales to result in immediate economies of scale and an opportunity to reduce prices. Such benefits may indeed accrue at some point but rarely during a period of expansion or, indeed, contraction. They usually come later, if at all.
The challenge of balancing cost an demand is even more difficult in an apparently shrinking market.
Nominally Apple is the largest camera vendor in the world and the biggest market, by number of POTENTIAL users, is the mobile market. The mobile market likes (indeed needs?) a fast and simple approach to what it does with photos and Apple moved to satisfy that model, presumably reasoning that long term the more traditional model was heading ever more into specialist niche territory that was of little interest to them or their shareholders.
So for those who might step in to fill the void left by Aperture (a void of unknown size in terms of real and committed users) there is the prospect of gaining much larger share of a shrinking market. One long term possibility in that scenario is that you make a lot of investment in your product to satisfy the diverse expectations of the new clients and with a view to writing that off and recovering the costs over several years only to find that the market shrinkage means higher market share but no real and sustained increase in revenues to match the overheads incurred.
The Software industry is especially exposed in that respect, given that probably 80% of product sales (not necessarily buy value although that may also be the case) are never or hardly ever used.
For example if one has access to Microsoft Office one has products that have an incredible array of capabilities, many quite specialised. But if all one uses it for is the occasional email, a letter or report once in a while and a basic "spreadsheet" now and again the waste in overhead - especially when licensed through a subscription model - is significant. However our perception of the cost benefit of getting all of the "free" additional stuff that we are sure to use sometime (if only we could work out how to without a 3 day training course ...) will likely have us thinking we have a good deal.
Mobile phone contracts are another and perhaps more familiar example of the same concept.
The Adobe Creative Suite is, for most of its users with very few exceptions, another. Digital delivery with no boxes, disks or printed manuals expected by the customer, is a great opportunity to up-sell the price based on expectations of benefits that will rarely be utilised.
However this is nothing new. Some of us are approaching that annual period of festivity that we call Christmas and traditionally involves expending a lot of energy obtaining and wrapping and delivering gifts to others knowing full well that most of those gifts will never be 'consumed' in the way they might have been intended by the giver. (And a lot of them, by volume if not individual value, will be of such poor quality that it would do the planet a favour to pay to not produce them! But that is a different discussion ...)
So it is with almost any software. One spends time defining requirement, developing a specification, coding it and then testing and writing the user guide pages. Then after releasing it to the unsuspecting world ... nobody uses it, or at least they don't use in the way intended and start to make suggestions about how it could be improved.
The developer and their customers take a hit on costs based in user demands with a strong possibility that nobody sees any benefits from all of that effort. Cue complaints about costs and then, a short while later, the cycle starts again with new demands for enhanced functionality.
It occurs to me that some enterprising entrepreneur might do deals with software vendors to take previous release versions of some products - just as they were - and re-brand them putting them on the market at low cost on a buy once and keep it basis but you pay for any new releases.
Minimal maintenance. No development other than, maybe, supporting new cameras and lenses, perhaps, in the case of a photo editor. Just follow the market a year or so behind the front line releases. Quite similar to what some of the digital camera manufacturers used to do back in the day when they bundled 3rd party software with the cameras allowing software vendors to deploy what became older versions of the programs with the hope of capturing new customers who would buy the most recent versions and upgrade in a timely and cash flow enhancing way as the years passed. It's probably the sort of approach that can have a cyclic deployment and be rediscovered as a marketing option every 10 years or so.
For anyone who got this far - my apologies for the long ramble but it's a dull, damp feeling Sunday and follow-up discussions to the introduction of V12 seems to be one of the most interesting things to be involved with today.
Grant0
Post is closed for comments.
Comments
6 comments