Bio: Jason Davies is vice president of sales and marketing at Petaluma-based Berkeley Integrated Audio Software, known as BIAS. The company develops audio editing software for Macs, and has a top application for the iPhone. The program, called iProRecorder, sells for $2.99. The success of the iProRecorder has BIAS wondering just how deep into the mobile application market they should get, as mentioned in my story here.

Web site: www.bias-inc.com

Questions and Answers

DailyGeek: What are your thoughts on the announced upgrades to the iPhone’s operating system and the opportunities for developing new programs?

Davies: The version 3.0 upgrade should offer significant advantages for both developers and users.
There are several features of particular interest for us as a developer of a popular recording application – iProRecorder – for the iPhone and iPod touch (2nd Generation).

1.

In App Purchase: This will allow us to offer extended features to customers using our application directly, without every having to leave our app. Should we decide to offer an extended feature set at an additional price, we can scale the features accordingly and enable customers to add more options after initially acquiring our application. Instead of having to purchase an additional app, the customer could essential upgrade features as needed without buying the complete product again with an extended feature set.

2.

Apple Push Notification service: This will allow us to reach our customers directly when important information is available, for example, alerting the customer of additional features beyond the included documentation, detailed information regarding updates, and more. Essentially, it allows greater direct communication with our customers.

3.

Accessories: This will allow more hardware companies to develop audio input products, for example, to allow customers greater flexibility in terms of input quality, input level control, and other options.

4.

Maps: iProRecorder already offers location stamping – which provides the city and zip code where a recording was made. With maps, we can potentially offer customers greater detail with respect to the precise location a recording was made – great for more easily identifying a location when referencing field recordings.

5.

Embedded emailing: iProRecorder already allows recordings to be emailed, but this will improve when we can embed email services in our app directly. Currently, we upload recordings to our server and then relay an email containing a URL to download the recording. While this is actually a great feature and avoids having to send a large attachment directly, for smaller files, it will be a convenient option to send the recording directly. It will also allow users to contact us via email easier to request support or features.

DailyGeek: What type of phone do you use?

Davies: iPhone 3G

DailyGeek: What is your favorite cellphone application?

Davies: It’s hard to have a single favorite app on the iPhone – there are just so many that I enjoy.
From Apple, there is Safari – which is a great web browser and is integrated into the iPhone. Google Maps is also very handy – especially with the integrated GPS. There are a few great games my kids play, but my favorite third-party application is iProRecorder (DailyGeek: it’s made by his company BIAS). It allows me to easily record audio in the field and then send recordings via WiFi into Peak, my favorite audio editor (DailyGeek: Also made by BIAS. He gave me a copy to review, which I plan to do at the DailyGeek blog).

I forgot to mention two other interesting iPhone apps -
Shazam and midomi. Shazam identifies music – you simply allow the application
to “listen” to a song, and moments later, it identifies it with
amazing accuracy. midomi also identifies music, but by singing a melody. So, if
you have a melody in your head, you can sing it into the application and it
does a pretty good job of identifying it.

DailyGeek: What search engine do you use?

Davies: Google – I honestly haven’t tried other search engines since first using Google and the fact that it’s integrated into my favorite browser makes it hard to consider using another.

DailyGeek: Your preferred Internet browser?

Davies: Safari, though occasionally I do use FireFox for the few sites I go to that don’t seem to be compatible with Safari – for example, the web site for Paychex – the company we use to manage our 401Ks.

DailyGeek: What program do you prefer using for Twitter?

Davies: I have to admit that I’m not yet using Twitter – though I’ve recently received an invitation and will probably check it out soon enough.

DailyGeek: What other social network applications do you use?

Davies: Facebook, but honestly, I don’t have a ton of time to really use it much these days between work, family, and the business emails I need to respond to.

DailyGeek: Favorite Web sites?

Davies: Some of my favorite sites are these:
http://www.appleinsider.com
http://www.google.com
http://www.youtube.com

DailyGeek: Favorite way to get news?

Davies:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com
http://www.petaluma360.com
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.cnn.com

DailyGeek: Favorite productivity tech tool?

Davies: iPhone 3G

DailyGeek: Favorite piece of technology that is not mainstream?

Davies: I’ll list a few – all relating to music production:
M-Audio Project Mix I/O – digital audio workstation controller.
Gissentar from Godin (a semi-acoustic/electric 11 string fretless guitar influenced by the Oud).

DailyGeek: What is your favorite Open Source software program?

Davies: Honestly, I’m not currently using Open Source software directly, though some of our servers at our office use Linux. As for Open Source apps, I generally use commercial solutions simply because of the additional features and support.

DailyGeek: What question should have I asked?

Davies: Do you envision mobile devices such as the iPhone ultimately replacing laptops?

Davies to Davies: For some yes, but I think a slightly larger tablet is going to be what it takes more me to abandon my MacBook Pro – we’ll see what Apple unleashes next- : )

Bonus question from last week’s participant Jeffrey Aguilera, who founded a company devoted to fighting email spam:

Aguilera: I have seen mythical accounts that Mac users are more than twice as likely to purchase software than Windows users. As a software publisher with both Mac and Windows titles, do you see similar patterns with your products? Apple and Microsoft have spent millions to establish stereotypes of each other’s users. How would you characterize the difference between the Mac and PC users of your products?

Davies: Interesting question, but I think I need a bit more
clarification. For example, is the
account based on relative software sales totals
between Mac and Windows users, or software unit volume? In other words, if Mac users spent more than Windows
users on software, was that because they
purchased more titles, or because the titles they purchased were priced higher?It would be easy
of course to draw a conclusion – based on dollars spent on software between Mac and Windows
users – that Mac users are more likely
to buy software, but if the figuresdon’t take into account title volumes, it
would be more correct to say Mac users
spend more on software, rather than presuming they are more likely to buy software. They may be more
likely to spend more on software
generally.

On that note, I think
historically this may be true simply because:1. Macs were more expensive than
Windows based PCs. Perhaps those buying
Macswere able to spend more on software. Those using Macs may have tended to be professionals in media content creation
fields – wherehigher priced software titles were a requirement for their work.2.
There were fewer titles available for the Mac, fewer Mac users, and lower volume sales – all which would lead to
higher prices from Mac software
developers simply because they would be selling lower volumes.3. More software
titles and a larger user base – both of which are the case on Windows – means also more software
piracy. It is far more common for
Windows software to be pirated which means fewer software purchases generally. There also may be many
Windows developers offering free software
solutions.

To some extent, things have changed a bit. Mac users are
still buying more of our retail software
titles, and professionals still make up a
large percentage of the customer base.

However, with the popularity and lower pricing of the Mac,
more customers are drawn to lower priced
titles and in many cases, are buying
fewer titles simply because the Mac includes so much software by default. A Windows user may initially pay
a bit less for a computer, but then has
to purchase more software than a Mac user might
initially. In our business, the majority of our revenue comes from
our Mac software sales mainly because we
started as a Mac only company, and have
yet to offer an audio editor for Windows, and for our space (music and audio), there still tends to be a
high concentration of Mac users.

However, all of our software plug-ins such as SoundSoap (our
easy audio cleaning solution) are
cross-platform and some of our largest OEM
bundles have been with Windows based products, particularly in the video space.
From my experience, there seem to be more Windows users buying consumer-level
video editing software than Mac users for example. iMovie comes with the Mac so
I would imagine fewer Mac users would buy consumer-level video editing software
initially. Another interesting development of course is that Mac users can now
choose between Windows and Mac titles since Windows can also be installed.
To some extent, some Mac users are now
buying titles that are only available on Windows, while some Windows users are
now buying Mac titles as they initially buy Macs with the idea of running
Windows, but decide to use the Mac OS as well – which is of course making platform
sales tracking more complex.

In comparing Mac and Windows users of our products, and
other products in our space, I don’t think the stereotypes really hold these
days – especially with more and more users buying Macs and running both operating
systems. At the end of the day, our customers are buying our solutions and it’s
less about the operating system and more about how we can help them to achieve
their creative and professional goals.