How not to market a product...
A couple years ago I was really excited because Creative announced that they would release a Soundblaster Live card for the Mac. I was great because Mac users would get to have the kind of sound that PC users have gotten used to over the past five or so years. The first bad sign was that the card was delayed.
In July of 2001 the cards started to arrive in Mac owners hands. The first issue was incomplete drives and no OS X drivers. Keep in mind that OS X was released months before that. Then there were the other issues, Like not working, incompatibilities, and weak drivers. Some of the features just didn't work.
Rumors of OS X drivers circulated. Creative was unwilling to say when they would release the OS X drivers. Based on that I never bought the card, and many others didn't. I like many of the very people most likely to buy the card had already moved on from OS 9 to OS X, why buy a card that didn't work?
In May of 2002 Creative release OS 9 driver version 1.1. It did fix many of the issues for OS 9 users and allowed then to get some use out of the card. The OS X drivers never appeared, and the product is no longer listed on the Creative web site, except in Support.
Today I looked at two new products that provide enhanced audio for OS X users. Creative has vanished from the Mac marketplace and has no one to blame but themselves. They did everything wrong that they could have done. In the end they left and missed an opportunity. I am sure that they will tell you that there just wasn't a marketplace, it's an easier excuse to blame Mac owners then to realize that you screwed up...mj
4:55:16 PM
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