This is an offer you really don't want to miss: Starting today, MMarch 28, and for 10 days only, the regular and educational version of Mellel will cost much-much-much less!
A regular license will cost $29 instead of $39, an educational license will be just $19 instead of $29. Click here to buy.
Important: The offer is available only via our web store, and not via the in-App. Click here to buy.
And, just to make you even happier, you'll also get the discount buying via the Mac App store!
One feature we can already talk about, as it is now complete, is line numbering - that is, placing line numbers beside the text. This feature is missing from most word processors, and where it does exist it is missing.
Not so in Mellel 2.9. You can, of course, simply add line numbers in a very simple fashion, from the section palette, but if you need something more - you can control just about everything you want, from the positioning of the numbers to the colour of the separator line.
As with any release from now on, we will dedicate a portion of our efforts to making features work better and offer improved ease of use. One such area is related to our page attributes. Here we would not go into details, except saying that we believe this revised and greatly enhanced feature will really change and greatly improve your enjoyment of this feature... You'll see.
Other improvements in Mellel 2.9 regards the way Mellel looks. Again, we will not go into details about a feature that is not implemented yet, but the change will be significant.
That was a real surprise. Recently, we've decided to reduce Mellel's price and eliminated for-fee upgrades (for anyone who've purchased Mellel after December 2007).
We had good reasons for this change, and we'll talk about them a bit later on, but this was not the real surprise - it was in the fact that we've received hundreds of emails from customers that were not happy with this change!
They also had a good reason. Their main content was that by paying for upgrades they buy a "policy" that ensures them that Mellel will be developed in the future. "We don't mind paying," many of them said, "because we know you make your money from upgrades. If you stop selling upgrades, perhaps that will mean that you'll stop making money and will not find a reason to further develop Mellel."
Their reasoning, while sound, is faulty in one crucial respect: we actually never made our living from upgrades. While upgrades were a nice addition, they were never more than an addition. Our bread and butter, so to say, was always based on users who liked Mellel, recommending to others to buy it.
We could, of course, adopt a "hard" upgrade policy. Most of you are familiar with such policies: software companies forcing you to buy their product anew or for a hefty upgrade fee every couple of years or so. We hate this rip-off policy too, and never really felt it in our hearts to adopt such a policy. So, we managed with a "soft" policy: you could upgrade from any version, no matter how old, to the latest version, and for a very small, flat fee. This is why, while we have an amazingly high upgrade rate, the upgrade fee never amounted to a significant portion of our income.
In came Apple. The new Mac App store is here to stay. Though off to a bit of a slow start, it will change the shape of things in the Mac software arena. Currently, the Mac App store caters mostly to Apple itself (via its applications which top the charts), to some game makers, and to many Me-too and Yet-another applications. But this will change, and quite quickly, as the Mac App store becomes a standard feature on the desktops of about 16 million users who will buy a Mac next year.
It is still early - for us as it is for others - to fully understand the nature of this new beast. It is clear, though, that the Mac App store - where there are no for-fee upgrades - will tend to force a change in the usual upgrade fee policy for all software companies, regardless of if they are at the store or not.
It is still early to fully understand the impact of the Mac App store, but early indications point strongly toward a "price sensitive" market, more akin to the App stores for the iPhone and the iPad, than to the traditional software market. One can understand that - after all, one does not tend to spend tens or hundreds of dollars on software you cannot really test before buying.
The Mac App store, then, was a factor in our decision to lower prices and to change the upgrade policy... and so far, we do not have any reason to regret this decision. Sales are brisk, and we're sailing on.
"Bible Tanach" costs $1.99, and is a real useful tool if you're interested in having the Bible in Hebrew and English on your iPhone and iPad. It's a minor hit these days on the App store (OK, a minor hit in the Reference section, but we're proud of it nonetheless).
