Inside Ranchero with Brent and Sheila Simmons

DrunkenBlog: Inside Ranchero with Brent and Sheila Simmons

A really nice interview with the makers of NetNewsWire (Ranchero Software the two person team of Brent and Sheila Simmons), my favourite RSS Feed reader on the Mac platform.

Some fantastic comments :
* talking about NetNewsWire being the most popular RSS feed reader in the world (estimatations that we have a million users, including full and Lite versions.)-

“(pinky to the mouth) An MBA might look at those numbers, and the growth potential of RSS on Windows, and say now is precisely the time to extend your dominate position and bring NetNewsWire to the masses. It worked for the iPod, why not NetNewsWire?”

“One of the joys of running your own business is that you can tell the hypothetical MBAs to hypothetically get lost. Life’s too short. I want to work on things I like working on. That excludes Windows.”
(Now drop the windows port questions!)

“Linux ports would be fun to do. But as a business decision it would be a nightmare.”

“you run the risk of treating your users like criminals[when talking about user piracy], which some companies already do.

I’d rather respect people’s honesty and goodwill by default. If one person out of a thousand doesn’t deserve it, I’ve done the right thing by 999 people — and they’re the folks I think about when I’m writing software.”

[When talking about Podcasting]
“I think it could become a really useful way to get information that we used to get only on the radio, where you have to listen to something only when it is aired, or go searching on a website for an archive of a broadcast.”
…..
“I highly doubt that people will tire of audio — and it’s likely we’ll see more and more video too. The tools for creating this stuff are getting better and better. That’s what Macs are for, no?”

“no matter what, text is the thing. There will be more audio and video, but text is and will remain the primary means of communication on the internet.”


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