Re: New Apple II SuperSite Online

[Joseph R Regan <JRRegan@msn.com>]

On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 13:54:29 -0700, Eric Shepherd
<sheppy@sheppyware.net> wrote:

>Well, for the record, I don't know of any Apple II software released in
>nearly 10 years that comes on a copy-protected disk.

I have to be honest here and say that copy-protection vastly demished
my purchasing of Apple // software. The distributors and the authors
themselves were equally to blame as the 'pirates' in the demise of the
software support on the // line.

When harddrives became easily available for the // line there seemed
to be NO support in allowing protected programs to be able to be
loaded and ran from them. I bought a 20meg Sider for $999 (yeah I know
- killer deal, eh?), but STILL had to wait for SSI's funky RDOS to
slowly load and run it's wargames. NOT! It was much easier to say
'Screw SSI' and look for an outlet that didn't have a frustation level
associated with it.

Another memory surfaces of a fellow - Ralph Bosson. He wrote a mixed
infantry tank wargame that blew away ANY unit level wargame on ANY
platform for almost a decade -- UnderFire. It was heavily
copy-protected and wasn't cracked for years. About that time, late
80's, I attended an Origin's in Maryland and saw the author. I was
doing the walk by and saw the expansion disk for UnderFire but didn't
purchase it as I overheard the conversation that he was having with
another customer at the booth. He indicated that UnderFire was and
always would be copy protected; aluding to piracy and loss of sales.
Well, _I_ didn't purchase the expansion disk _solely_ because I didn't
want to locked into a god-awfully slow floppy based game. Hell, if he
had a version that would have been able to be installed on the
harddrive I would have bought an additional copy just for convience.

Those examples are reason why I stopped purchasing Apple // software.
I reduced my purchases to bare minimum. It wasn't a 'pirate' that
deminished my purchasing of Apple // software. Nope.