I should have my head examined for jumping into this silly little spat... but what the hell, it's a slow day at the office.

Let's assume for one minute that Rob, and Mac, and Hugo, and John, and all the rest suddenly have an epiphany. "Doh!", Hugo says. "I see what Derek has been driving at. Maybe Windows isn't the greatest operating system of all time after all. Let's just send him our source code and let him do all the work for us. What a great idea."

Well, even if Rob and Mac and John and all the rest agree with him, think it is the best idea since the invention of MP3, they CAN'T do it because they have signed an NDA. That means they can't disclose the software libraries. Period. Not to anyone, not to someone who promises not to disclose it to anyone else, not even to a nice guy like Derek Balling. Try going to the people whose software empeg has agreed not to disclose, and see if they will disclose their source code to you. LOL.

That takes up room. I've already got a P2-400 that takes up too much space...

Are you telling us that you already have a Windows computer that can talk to the empeg, and that all this... this.... discussion (to put it politely) is not because you won't be able to send the occasional software update to an empeg, but because you'd rather use your onion... no, cabbage... no, rutabaga... Oh! Got it! ...your Apple to do it instead?

insert flame war from ravening hordes of Macintosh fanatics here.....

If space is that big a problem.... right this minute ebay has more than 300 laptop computers with high bids under $200, some less than $100. If you spent the amount of time it would take you to port empeg's software over to a Macintosh platform and debug it, even given the source code, you'd be better off getting a part-time job at McDonalds making hamburgers and using the money to buy one of those laptops instead.

Reading over this post, I can see it has somewhat of a spiteful tone. I dont mean it that way at all, Derek. I'm not mad or annoyed or upset at anybody. In fact, quite the opposite -- amused would best describe my feelings towards this whole thing. Above all, I don't want to start a flame war here -- in fact, I was hoping to maybe inject a little reason into the discussion and maybe keep one from starting!

I'm sorry you won't have native Macintosh support for your software updates in the immediate future -- but since you don't even have your empeg yet (is that right? I'm trying to remember...) that hardly seems to be an immediate problem. In any case, there are lots of solutions to that problem that don't involve making empeg Inc. change their business plan!

tanstaafl.










"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"