I'm increasingly resorting to asking questions about a product/service before investing in it — this includes posting on the official support forums, or when that's not available, emailing directly. Thus, it frustrates me when a company makes it adverse for potential buyers to get in touch. A real turn-off, infact. Case in point: VMWare Fusion. I've heard lots of wonderful things about their virtualization software, but when I had questions, I had to go through a longwinded registration process, navigate through a battery of choices that didn't matter to me, and haven't had my issue resolved yet. (I doubt that's going to get a reply unless I bump the thread.)
What's wack is that VMWare Fusion has an active presence on Twitter, among the best I've seen. This inconsistency is in part because VMWare has more products than Fusion (which lets guest OSes run on your Intel Mac), and unlike their competitor Parallels Desktop for Mac, VMWare's site doesn't have a focused, specific area for Fusion which is apparent from the get-go. I think Parallels does a better job of marketing, too, because I immediately felt a stronger sense of understanding their features + benefits.
Remember that when you pay for something, it's not just the product you're buying, it's also the service — customer service, that is.
Another example: in the screencasting tools dept., I've had friendlier and more responsive pre-purchase service from iShowU than Screenflow. Both come highly recommended to me. However, while the latter has some neat features the former doesn't, the former gives me more confidence that they'll closely consider and implement what I'm requesting. You can't get your wish every time, but even once is enough to make a notable positive difference. And more companies small and large should go beyond paying close attention, and act on it.
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In the case of screenflow, I'm sorry to hear that. They used to be a different company and were acquired by telestream. I was afraid that the top-notch personal support from the program author would disappear, and sounds like I was right.
I sure hope it made the author's life better to sell out to telestream, because it'd be nice if SOMEONE benefited.
Ok, wow… I've gone back and looked at the ShinyWhiteBox site, and holy cow, IShowU is far from the product it used to be. The new iShowU HD Pro looks a lot like screenflow, AND looks to be better for exporting stuff to Final Cut, which is huge. Screenflow is supposed to be able to do that but I cannot get the video quality to remain when trying to do so.
I'm upgrading my old copy of iShowU right now!
Okay these are some tips:
. But the bad thing is that i have no idea how to import them to iMovie so look with great quality because if the project is HD it looks really bad, like a bad YouTube Vid.
-Don't use VMWare Fusion or Parallels, the performance is really bad because its like running two computers in one.
-Use Boot-Camp
-I Really recommend you Screen Flow, it has a real goo quality, but its like 100 Bucks
So, in short, you feel like a SecondLife user, Tor?
@radar: Amazing what can change, eh? There's also Screenflick which does some of what I like on Camtasia but isn't in iShowU HD Pro or Screenflow, like the click effects. http://www.araelium.com/screenflick/ It's affordable @ US$20 too.
Camtasia for Mac is also planned… I look forward to it but want to make movies *now*.
@Alvi: I'm using a KVM switch, I find this gives me the best of both worlds right now.
@Maggie: Hm?
@torley Camtasia has been promised on techsmith's web site for months, actually over a year I think.
"We are actively pursuing a Mac version of Camtasia Studio and will officially announce our intentions soon."
That hasn't changed since at least as long as I've been using screenflow.
Screenflick seems to have some nice features, but also seems the slowest to export.
Hmm, actually I really like Screenflick's ability to store the clips and export them later. I had tried it once but rejected it because it had no editing like screenflow, but now I'm using Final Cut Express 4 anyway, so… I like!
Screenflick also has the ability to show mouse clicks more precisely than iShowU or Camtasia. I also wrote to OmniDazzle peeps asking if they'll get some more basic effects for screencasters.
Yeah, unfortunately I've found that screenflick has more problems with artifacts and not keeping up with frame rates than iShowU HD and ScreenFlow. In fact, I can't use it. It also doesn't keep a constant frame rate as well, and that messes up Final Cut Express, resulting in huge render times for small videos, vs iShowU HD or ScreenFlow where I can match the Final Cut Express sequence preset exactly, and therefore export in a minute to a few minutes depending on the length.
The Leopard only ones are definitely superior at capturing things with fewer dropped frames and no weird artifacts.