Many Faces of Go software?

[CarlJung]

I use it every day and would feel naked without it.

Just curious, what features is it that you use every day?

[deja]

I use it every day and would feel naked without it.

Just curious, what features is it that you use every day?

Everything I use MFG for can be done on other programs for free. I've just gotten accustomed to using this piece of software for a variety of things. Having said that, I use it primarily for replaying games with the territory feature turned on. It does a great job of accurately marking territory, which I find useful. I also use it for solving go problems, studying joseki, and occasionally playing a game against it.

Is all of that worth spending $90 on? Probably not given the alternatives but then I'm known for buying things that any other rational actor would shake her head (aka my wife).

[Mike Novack]

Did he...

All reasonable points. I also bought MFG (see my earlier post) so at some level thought it was worth it, otherwise I wouldn't have bought it. I use it every day and would feel naked without it. Nevertheless, it's "odd" that he continually asks this same question and continually keeps the price at $89.95. If I remember correctly, He also asked this question on GD and the answers he got were, again, around $50. So at some point you begin to see that the question is not genuine but rhetorical.

Dega, was MFOG12 the first version of MFOG you bought? If you had earlier bought MFOG11 or 10 then some mistake if MFOG12 cost you $90.

That's why I have a different take on the "listening" question. He was getting responses from two classes of people, non-customers and prior customers. Both classes indicated that they thought something around $50 would be more reasonable for MFOG12. In other words, the prior customers said they thought that they shouldn't be charged more than ~$50 to upgrade and he did listen to them.

a) They had proven (by their having done so) willingness to have paid ~$90 the first time.
b) Thought that upgrading for prior cuctomers should be about half. This second is very important.

When people who had never bought MFOG said that they would be willing to pay ~$50 that is not fully reliable information that he would actually have many more new customers at that price. Coupled with the fact that if he charged new customers $90 he would have had to lower the price for "renewing" customers proportionally or he'd piss them off. They weren't saying a particular price OK but that they thought 1/2 price fair to them.

[MarcoRosso]

I've used Many Faces of Go 10, and 11. They are good for the problem libraries, however SmartGo is far better priced. Also if you have an ipoid touch/ipad/iphone it is well worth the 12$ for the plus version. As for Moyo Go studio- the studio is too complicated for a GUI, has performance issues on a lot of computers, and in general isn't very nicely written. In 3 year's it hasn't improved much either . That being said, the good thing it has is the SGF editor. It's GNUGo AI is poorly lacking, reminds me of MFG version 10.

[Mike Novack]

I've used Many Faces of Go 10, and 11. They are good for the problem libraries, however SmartGo is far better priced. Also if you have an ipoid touch/ipad/iphone it is well worth the 12$ for the plus version.

Took me a few days to get around to looking up SmartGo which is why the delayed comment.

Are we talking about apples and oranges and prices not at the same points in time?

You say that you've used MFOG 10 and 11 but that SmartGo is "far better priced". I'm confused by that statement.

To which level of MFOG would SmartGo be an equivalent? (in playing strength)

If to MFOG 10 then @$30 the MFOG 10 is cheaper than SmartGo.
If to MFOG 11 then @$50 the MFOG 11 is the same price as SmartGo

It is normal for pretty much all software that it's price declines as it ages, not just go software. We shouldn't be talking of the price of versions of MFOG as if the current price were still the same as the price when the software was new.

[Numsgil]

I've used Many Faces of Go 10, and 11. They are good for the problem libraries, however SmartGo is far better priced. Also if you have an ipoid touch/ipad/iphone it is well worth the 12$ for the plus version.

Took me a few days to get around to looking up SmartGo which is why the delayed comment.

Are we talking about apples and oranges and prices not at the same points in time?

You say that you've used MFOG 10 and 11 but that SmartGo is "far better priced". I'm confused by that statement.

To which level of MFOG would SmartGo be an equivalent? (in playing strength)

If to MFOG 10 then @$30 the MFOG 10 is cheaper than SmartGo.
If to MFOG 11 then @$50 the MFOG 11 is the same price as SmartGo

It is normal for pretty much all software that it's price declines as it ages, not just go software. We shouldn't be talking of the price of versions of MFOG as if the current price were still the same as the price when the software was new.

To put voice to a peculiarity of people: no one wants something old. Given the choice between a new version of Y or a 1 edition old version of X, many people will choose Y. Doesn't matter if the 1 edition old version of X is better or not. You can see this in all sorts of different products. Marketers have long since learned to slap a "new" sticker on something, even if it's old, because it gets people's attention and the buy it.

If it were phrased in terms of "standard", "supreme", and "gold", or something like that, where features that "gold" level subscribers get slowly trickle down to the "supreme" and "standard" clients, it's more palatable to everyone involved, even if it amounts to about the same thing. But this implies some sort of subscription based service where regular updates at all the levels are expected.

Actually on the subject, subscription based software works pretty well. You plonk down x$ and get access to the next few versions as part of that, plus any bug fixes. I have a few different programs I subscribe to that work like this.