Hi Ric,
Thank you for your kind words and passionate response. Allow me to address your topics, in my opinion, of course. First off, just because a person has an iPhone or iPad does not in any way mean they also have a Mac. As you know these devices work equally well with both PC and Mac, or more specifically Windows and Mac OS X - I'll get to that in a moment. The community you see, airline pilots, are away from home quite a bit so these devices make a great solution for someone needing e-mail, web, texting, apps, on the go. Just as BlackBerry did in prior years and other smart phones. I'm glad we're able to provide a logbook solution for these devices with simple and fast sync via the cloud sync system. As you know it only takes a few moments to enter or update your flight, tap sync (or double-tap anywhere to start a sync) and you're done with logging.
You mentioned how you've been using a Mac for six years yet your PC has required service. This actually has nothing to do with PC or Mac. It has to do with the quality of what you purchased. You can buy a PC for $300 (or cheaper) at WalMart, i.e. a cheap heap wherever you want. Or you can buy a great PC such as we use in our office, we use nothing but Dell XPS Studio 9100's. Never had a problem with those or my older Dell at home that's been going strong for years. I have two Dell servers in our data center that are over 10 years old and still going strong! It has nothing to do with what you're talking about which is the OPERATING SYSTEM. Today we have Windows 7 and Mac OS X "Lion" - both of which are outstanding operating systems. I bet you probably paid quite a bit more for your 6 year old Mac "hardware" than you did your PC? Doesn't matter, the point is it all depends on the hardware you purchased, not the OS which is the topic at hand here. Apple controls the hardware, they have a very limited subset of what you can buy and it's expensive but good quality. They don't let you buy poor quality hardware like you can in chain stores. If you remove the cover though, you find the parts are made by the same manufacturers, hard drives, video cards, motherboards, displays, it's all the same, one is in a prettier case.
Now some people think Windows gets viruses - both platforms are susceptable and vulnerable and require anti-virus/security software -- not running this on your Mac is not smart! I have several Mac's and PC's - I have never had a virus or trojan on a PC (Windows) yet in Mac OS I've had several discovered. I use Norton/Symantec products. Apple is great at marketing and quite frankly lying. They mislead the consumer into thinking you're safe - you are not. Have you read the Steve Jobs bio yet? I think that will open your eyes about how much integrity really went on in that operation. They produced a great product as a result but they are masters of misleading (or dare I say manipulating).
So let's get down to the topic of Logbook Pro for Mac (desktop). We are a small company and we can't develop a logbook application, correctly, for every platform on the market today: Mac OS X, Windows, BlackBerry, WebOS, Palm, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, iOS, Android, Linux -- the list goes on. We have to weigh in a lot of factors, one very important one is what is the best platform for creating a great software application that is stable, reliable, and feature rich. Microsoft has unrivaled developer tools that allow us to make that happen. Yes, there are logbook products available for Mac OS X but the data storage capabilities are frightening. Most use a system called SQLite which is extremely vulnerable to corruption. I hear people describe their logbook on another vendor's product as "walking on egg shells" - they never know what they're going to get from their data, if it will be corrupt today, or be completely gone! We are not going to sell a product we can't trust that will be reliable. We treat Logbook Pro as a bank account - we do not want you to ever have money not accounted for - aka flight time.
It is very easy to run Windows, just a software program, on a Mac just as you do any other application. Therefore we can deliver the absolute best in logbook software using Microsoft and .NET technologies which we are using for the next major release of Logbook Pro coming out later in 2012. Now, if you're still with me, we are also building a mirror of the Windows application as a Web application. The web is amazing now and with HTML 5 and all of the rich capabilities in .NET web development, we can provide you an amazing logbook via the Web that will also sync with your Windows app and Devices. I'm letting the cat out of the bag a little but I think it will answer your questions. In the end, hardware won't matter, everything can run the web even tablets. Apple may innovated a great thing with the iPhone/iPad but it may come back to haunt them later. As iPhone/iPads "replace" the PC as we know it (Mac or Windows) it's going to hurt their big revenue items which have been Mac, iMac, MacBook Pro's, etc. for items that are 1/3 the cost. I'm an Apple shareholder so I watch it and it hasn't performed well even with all the Mac craze going on. So should we invest the time into Mac OS X or iOS? I think you'll see how we have to make decisions that will pay off in the long run and not invest thousands of dollars in man hours developing for a small market or even a dwindling market as people move to tablets. We are planning stand-alone logbooks that will also sync with our Windows, Web, etc. apps - I've always had a passion for "sync" (data anywhere) and that's what we've been architecting the past five years which has started to show via Cloud Sync.
So that's the background and my thoughts on these matters. I hope it sheds some light on it all and why I have to make the decisions like this while running this company. We are growing, hiring, and the more people we bring on the more we can cover. These piddly 19.99/yr subscriptions which some make a big deal over is what funds this development. Businesses cannot grow and return you software on the investment without revenue. It's up to us to build products that are useful and reliable to you as a pilot.
Thank you again for your business, loyalty, and we hope you enjoy Logbook Pro and it suits your need as a pilot.
Happy Holidays.