OSNews

I say this discussion applies equally to some of Apple's other new and recent products like iCal, iPhoto, iSync, and iDVD (see a pattern forming here?).

Well, to be fair, Apple has bought their share of good products, too. They bought SoundJam MP and its entire development team from Casady & Greene, and they turned it into iTunes (NO SKINS FOR YOU!). Final Cut Pro sprang from a product Macromedia was sitting on for a while. Cinema Tools HD and its team came from FilmLogic by Focal Point Systems. They got AppleWorks and FileMaker from when they bought all of Claris. ClarisWorks has been around since the Apple ][). FileMaker's history is...a little more complicated (Nashoba Systems -> Forethought -> Claris -> Apple). I believe DVD Studio Pro was bought as well.

Anyway, the point is that Apple has been competing with third parties for a while, and this competition has not killed their respective markets. Microsoft does it too (Office, Windows Media, SQL Server), but they are the undisputed market leader in desktop operating systems, so this discussion does not apply to them. FileMaker is not the only database system, FCP+Cinema Tools is not the only NLE solution. AppleWorks is not the only small-time productivity package...or is it?

So it's worth wondering, how well do products that compete against the the recent flood of i-Stuff on the Mac? Do iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, etc. have competition? Are they successful, or have they left? If we can get answers to those, then we may be able to reasonably GUESS what will become of Karelia.

--JM

PS. Sherlock 3 will still have quite a bit of catching up to do. Karelia can still take the opportunity to OutSherlock Sherlock with more and better features thanks to their plugin API. If they last long enough, I believe they should also start pursuing services outside the US and Canada before Apple does. Oh, yeah, that Windows port couldn't hurt . Maybe a Linux port too to be included with Lindows and Lycoris on those Wal-mart PCs.