Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 PinkRose Jan 18, 2010 1:33:10	Just wondering if there has been any progress made on making books able to be purchased digitally yet? Thanks.
#2 mudbunny Jan 18, 2010 13:20:04	I haven't heard anything, but i will do some poking and see what turns out.
#3 guentherm Jan 27, 2010 19:26:23	With the iPad up on deck now - I would think that Wizards sees the potential in e-booking 4th Ed stuff.  Especially since Apple's store has a pretty decent record behind it.....and some decent revenue sharing as well.
#4 mauss Jan 28, 2010 8:35:43	Wizards hasn't been exactly Mac friendly so far. Why would they start now?
#5 tiamatthedragongod Jan 28, 2010 15:07:32	Wizards hasn't been exactly Mac friendly so far. Why would they start now? Revelation?
#6 Dane_McArdy Jan 28, 2010 16:24:10	Wizards hasn't been exactly Mac friendly so far. Why would they start now? You don't have to be mac friendly to make your book an e-book that can be used on a mac. Mac isn't flash friendly.
#7 mauss Jan 28, 2010 18:58:32	Wizards hasn't been exactly Mac friendly so far. Why would they start now? You don't have to be mac friendly to make your book an e-book that can be used on a mac. Mac isn't flash friendly. What's your point? Were they thinking about putting the books out in Flash? Or are you saying they were going to do the DDI tools in Flash?
#8 Dane_McArdy Jan 29, 2010 13:51:16	Wizards hasn't been exactly Mac friendly so far. Why would they start now? You don't have to be mac friendly to make your book an e-book that can be used on a mac. Mac isn't flash friendly. What's your point? Were they thinking about putting the books out in Flash? Or are you saying they were going to do the DDI tools in Flash? Mac refuses to recognize one of the most used formats, Flash for the simple reason they are trying to force people to use a format they want, which they control. WoTC isn't unfriendly to Macs because they are tyring to control a format, but for the simple fact that currently, there aren't enough Mac users that would make it profitable to go that route. Sorry for the Mac users out there, but it's that simple. Making a version for Mac users doesn't equal making money, so they aren't going to do it. So while people and sit there saying WoTC is unfriednly to Macs, it's not really true. But Macs not being friendly to it's users, because it wants to control, is true.
#9 mauss Jan 29, 2010 14:29:05	Wizards hasn't been exactly Mac friendly so far. Why would they start now? You don't have to be mac friendly to make your book an e-book that can be used on a mac. Mac isn't flash friendly. What's your point? Were they thinking about putting the books out in Flash? Or are you saying they were going to do the DDI tools in Flash? Mac refuses to recognize one of the most used formats, Flash for the simple reason they are trying to force people to use a format they want, which they control. WoTC isn't unfriendly to Macs because they are tyring to control a format, but for the simple fact that currently, there aren't enough Mac users that would make it profitable to go that route. Sorry for the Mac users out there, but it's that simple. Making a version for Mac users doesn't equal making money, so they aren't going to do it. So while people and sit there saying WoTC is unfriednly to Macs, it's not really true. But Macs not being friendly to it's users, because it wants to control, is true. What format are you talking about that Apple is trying to force people to use? I think you may be taking the term "unfriendly" too literally. In this context it means that they aren't supporting the platform at all. It doesn't necessarily mean that they hate macs or that it wasn't a business decision based on financial reasons. Now, seriously I'd like to hear about this Flash alternative that Apple wants people to use.
#10 Dane_McArdy Jan 29, 2010 15:43:15	EDIT: Nevermind, I'm not actually going to waste my life arguing this on the internet.
#11 mauss Jan 29, 2010 20:29:08	hmm, I think it's called Quicktime? Well you got me there Dan. I have no proof that this isn't true. And perhaps it is. Of course, Flash does work on Apple desktops and laptops. So I'm not really sure why that would be if they wanted to force people to use Quicktime. You are the one that tossed out that WoTC hasn't been friendly towards Macs, not me. Your statement doesn't any way show that WoTC's choice not do the Mac platform has to do with not being able to even make back the cost to do so. How else should someone take such a statement? Well I now know how YOU'LL take it. And I apologize. Would you feel better if I redact my statement to say "WoTC hasn't exactly supported Macs so far. Why would they now?" Or would you still be pissed that my statement tends to be negative towards WoTC? And you're absolutely correct. Nowhere in my statement did I say or imply that WoTC's choice not to do the Mac has to do with not being able to make back the cost to do so. That's because I don't really buy it. My take is that WoTC bought into a proprietary software package or the company they initially hired to do it did so. And by the time they realized stuff was going to be late, it was too late to switch. Obviously I have no proof of this. But I guess it stems from an idealistic and naive notion I once had that the big daddy of rpg's, who's games I had immensely enjoyed for half my life, was going to make their finally realized digital version available to everyone. And if you can't tell, yes there is a bit of disappointment in my tone when I say that WoTC hasn't been friendly to Macs. Apples reason is they feel Flash causes too many crashes. Adobe is unhappy with Apple because so many sites use flash. Youtube and Hulu for example, two of the biggest online video distrubitors. So sites that use flash, (it's estimated 75% do) don't work on many of Apple products, because they don't support flash. How frustrating. You're partly right here. Apple does feel that Flash gives a stilted user experience on the Mac. And I'd have to agree with that. But the notion seems to be that Apple is against the Flash experience that most people talk about when they talk about Flash (ie. video viewing or super creative interfaces and experiences). But I'd argue that that's the wrong angle to take. When I think of Flash, I think of the ubiquitous ads that take forever to load and the lack of accessibility standards. Your quote of 75% of web sites use Flash seems rather high to me unless you count Flash ads. There's a reason Flash blocker add ons are so popular with Firefox. Also to say that sites that use Flash don't work on many of Apple's products is totally incorrect. Just the Flash swf files don't render in iPhone, iPod, iPad Safari. The rest of the site is perfectly usable. Regular Safari, Firefox, Chrome on a Mac display Flash, it's just not as smooth as on Windows from what I hear. For me, Flash tends to be choppy until it fully loads and then is fine. Youtube is using the HTML5 video tag now, so there's no problem with the largest video distributer on the web being viewed on the iPad/Phone/Pod. In fact the Youtube app comes as one of the native apps.
#12 RogerWilco Feb 12, 2010 18:31:48	Mac refuses to recognize one of the most used formats, Flash for the simple reason they are trying to force people to use a format they want, which they control. WoTC isn't unfriendly to Macs because they are tyring to control a format, but for the simple fact that currently, there aren't enough Mac users that would make it profitable to go that route. Sorry for the Mac users out there, but it's that simple. Making a version for Mac users doesn't equal making money, so they aren't going to do it. So while people and sit there saying WoTC is unfriednly to Macs, it's not really true. But Macs not being friendly to it's users, because it wants to control, is true. Apple doesn't have Flash on the iPhone or iPad, or any other programming or scripting language because of the security concerns it would have on that type of device, to have the ability to run arbitrary software. In other words: it might brick your phone. Instead they are pushing for HTML5 (not QuickTime), just like they did with things like touchpads on laptops or USB, long before anybody believed those could become standard. They did graphical user interfaces 10 years before Windows, were the first to sell computers without floppy drives, or many of the other things we take for granted today. Sometimes the step they want to take is too big, but in general they often end up beig right a few years down the line. As for making a version of your software that works both on Windows and Mac: It's a choice you have to make when you start developing the product, but if you do, it hardly incurs any extra costs. Once you have a mature product and have entrenched yourself in vendor specific technologies like DirectX instead of OpenGL, then it ges hard and costly to do anything about it. WotC not catering to Mac users is something that they entirely did themselves. If taken into account from the start, it would hardly have cost them anything extra. Programs like World of Warcraft, OpenOffice, Firefox, all Google software, all Adobe software, etc. do it without much effort.