MAX 6 DAY SALE: 35% off Max products (even Mira and Gen) until July 12

First, if you were not aware of this already, you should understand that your app store transaction is between you and Apple. Apple does not reveal the identities of people who buy apps to developers. We don't have your name or your credit card information, and a merchant can only refund a transaction that he or she made in the first place. I don't set the rules. I wish I did. I understand it's a pain. I buy iPad apps too.

Second, I can confirm that we are working on a Windows version of the Mira objects for Max. I apologize to those of you who purchased Mira without realizing there wasn't a Windows version yet. We clarified the app store description after the first couple of days when we became aware that people were assuming there was Windows support. We will have a beta of our Windows objects for Mira soon and believe me, we all wish it were finished already! Now you might say, "why should I pay for beta software?" Well, you aren't. We will not advertise Windows support as a Mira feature until we are satisfied with the performance and stability. For those of you have already contacted us about Windows support, we will be in touch as soon as we have something, and the objects will be a public beta as well.

Finally, let's talk about pricing and money. I would rather talk about what all your friends at Cycling '74 wake up every day to do, which is create and support the best and most innovative software for our customers that we can, but I understand that when money is involved, sometimes we need to talk about it.

To date, we have invested close to a quarter of a million dollars in our mobile technology. I don't expect to make it back by selling apps for $50 apiece (or any other price), and moreover, we will continue to invest in this area, because we've only scratched the surface of what we want to do. I believe this money was a good investment because I believe Max + Mira is an incredibly cool thing, and no one else was going to make it. The economics of mobile software are frankly not very favorable right now, and since many of you are interested in software development, you're probably aware that only a tiny fraction of apps will ever make any money. But I don't want your sympathy! Let's be honest: at the moment, your purchase is being subsidized by sales of desktop software. So $50 is a deal, although maybe it doesn't seem that way in an era of Google financing software development by shoving ads in your face and everyone else selling your demographics. Software developers may also know that when you buy an app in the app store, Apple takes 30% of the sale, so we are making even less than it might appear. So that $18 you're concerned about, well, Apple already took $13 of it.

However, for those of you who are really bothered by the fact that your friends can buy Mira today for less than you paid for it, feel free to get a refund from iTunes. I promise we will reduce the price for one day sometime in the next couple of months. Then you can get the same deal. That's really all we can do, because, until we have a lot more sales information to change our opinion, the original $50 price will be the regular price, as of July 13. Just to be fair to prospective customers interested in Windows support, we'll have this one-day sale after you have a chance to hear from others how the Windows objects are working for them. We don't need dissatisfied customers.

I apologize if our lowering of the Mira price by $18 left you with a bad feeling. That was never our intention. We typically try one or two price promotions a year, and our inclusion of Mira in this year's sale was primarily driven by curiosity. What would happen if we lowered the price? We can't just ask people, we have to try it and see what happens. I would love it if we human beings were not price sensitive, but we are.

Mira is our first mobile app, and we are trying to learn about the possibilities. I hope you can understand that, and put up with a bit of experimentation. However, none of us at Cycling '74 believe price manipulation is the path to success. For us it's about adding features to Mira and improving its performance. These enhancements will be free of course, and we are monitoring your feedback carefully to determine how to prioritize future development. That is part of the deal with being an early adopter: when you take a risk, you get to influence the future direction of the product. We look at Max and Mira as a system. We want Mira to be a reasonably priced addition to the system and we want the system as a whole to inspire the imagination of our users. Our vision was an app for people who use Max, and only people who use Max.