Any draft software for MACS?

[ttjackson]

Is there any good draft software made for MACS?

Thanks.

[NICK@HQ]

None that I know of, so the best solution is to run RotoLab in a Windows partition using either Boot Camp, Parallels or VMware Fusion.

[DoubleJ]

and of the 3 I reccomend Fusion, because you can run it within the Mac OS. The problem of running Rotolab on a Mac is the cost to get a windows OS, if you can find one cheap then go for it. Look on eBay and Craigslist. Fusion can be had for about $60.

[pate]

The problem of running Rotolab on a Mac is the cost to get a windows OS.

I thought the problem was the cost of the Mac. ;-)

-Merv
RotoLab

[ttjackson]

That is what I thought. With the increased move to MACS, do you all foresee a MAC draft software emerging in the next few seasons?

[NICK@HQ]

I thought the problem was the cost of the Mac. ;-)

I know you're joking (or at least I hope you are joking), but it's surprising how many people think Macs are that much more expensive than PCs. That's only true in the low-end market where Apple doesn't bother to compete. There you really can get a much cheaper PC box (that you probably don't want as is). When you get to the machines you really want, they stack up, feature for feature, in comparable ways. Or else the Mac is cheaper. Really.

[RAY@HQ]

I know you're joking (or at least I hope you are joking), but it's surprising how many people think Macs are that much more expensive than PCs. That's only true in the low-end market where Apple doesn't bother to compete. There you really can get a much cheaper PC box (that you probably don't want as is). When you get to the machines you really want, they stack up, feature for feature, in comparable ways. Or else the Mac is cheaper. Really.

Yeah, but the marketplace is dominated by low-end purchases.

[RAY@HQ]

That is what I thought. With the increased move to MACS, do you all foresee a MAC draft software emerging in the next few seasons?

I don't see this increased move to Macs... and whatever increase there is likely is being boosted by people running Windows emulation software.

[NICK@HQ]

Yeah, but the marketplace is dominated by low-end purchases.

Indeed that's true, just as McDondald's sells far more food than good restaurants. There's always a large market for companies that compete on lowest price. But when you want a good meal, you go elsewhere. Apple doesn't compete in the fast food arena, and that admittedly leaves out a huge segment of the market. But in the market they do serve, they produce a nice meal at a competitive price compared to others in that market.

[RAY@HQ]

Cute analogy, Nick, but I don't think it holds. We can't eat McD's every day, but lower-end computers are just fine for the purposes of most casual users. Apple's lack of competitiveness in that end of the spectrum puts a hard cap on the market share they can gain.

Of course, margins are higher at the other end of the spectrum... but nobody wants to hear that Apple might be as profit-driven as any other company, and less interested in "changing the way the world computes", because they absolutely can't do that with their current offerings.

[pate]

Don't get me wrong, the Mac's a nice machine and its a bit hipper. But as Ray pointed out, they can't touch the PCs on the low-end and nowadays, the low-end is a pretty stout machine, easily handles stuff like Fantasy Baseball. And that is very appealing to a large segment of my users, that want a dirt cheap Laptop because they don't do this stuff full-time. It is still a very small market compared to the PC. And I see the same thing, a lack of specialized RAD tools and controls that I use to build RotoLab. On a personal level, I still haven't found one thing the Mac can do that I can't do on Windows.

-Merv

[NICK@HQ]

Cute analogy, Nick, but I don't think it holds. We can't eat McD's every day, but lower-end computers are just fine for the purposes of most casual users. Apple's lack of competitiveness in that end of the spectrum puts a hard cap on the market share they can gain.

Of course, margins are higher at the other end of the spectrum... but nobody wants to hear that Apple might be as profit-driven as any other company, and less interested in "changing the way the world computes", because they absolutely can't do that with their current offerings.

They don't seem to want a massive share of the market from what I can tell. They want more than they have, yes, and they are getting more than they had and that is increasing, particularly in the portable space. Just go to a college and see what the students are carrying these days. But Apple likes the market they have, with margins and profit that lets them thrive.

If they chose to compete on the low-end in order to massively increase their market, they would lose their profit margins and they'd be struggling with profits the way Dell is. Race to the bottom in price and you get market share, but at the cost of profitability. Dell has the market share, and Apple has so much cash on hand they could just buy Dell outright if they wanted that kind of market. They don't.

None of this matters in the long run. We are moving to a world where it just won't matter what client hardware you want to run. Open standards mean the software will just run on anything, your PC, your phone, your laptop, your tablet, your game system, whatever new they come up with. Google can make spreadsheet software that runs on the Web (or even locally on your hardware without the Web), and Google couldn't care less if you have a PC or a Mac or a Linux box. So for now we have RotoLab that runs on anything you want, either a Windows box or a Mac that can run Windows too. One day Merv may just port it to something like Google Docs where anyone can run it on some portable tablet with a touch screen or the like with voice recognition hearing the player named by the auctioneer and automatically bringing up HQ stats pulled wirelessly from the Net and showing it to you for you to bid if you wish.

[RAY@HQ]

Actually, I work on a college campus, so I have some idea of what the kids are carrying these days. But yes, I agree with much of the rest of your post.

[NICK@HQ]

Actually, I work on a college campus, so I have some idea of what the kids are carrying these days. But yes, I agree with much of the rest of your post.

Ah, I did not know that about your work. Cool, so you probably see maybe 2 or 3 out of 10 laptops being Macs, which was my point. After that I think we have reached a good stopping point for the off-topic discussion.

[ttjackson]

So the short answer is if I want to run ROTOLAB (which I love) any time soon, I need to bite the bullet on software to run windows on the mac. Any suggestion on a cheap way to do this? (while I appreciate the debate between MAC & PC owners, i have a mac now which I love except on stuff like this AND good financial software).