Alf: Unsanity has been on for five years now. How was it when it started?
Brian: Unsanity started rather slowly actually. :) We came from a different segment of the market than we are in now. Our first two products were mp3/audio players. (Unsanity Echo and Mint Audio) We spent a lot of time and effort developing them and learned some great lessons in the process. Both players are now discontinued and our efforts have been focused on utilities for Mac OS X for 4 years now.
Alf: How did you come to the $10 pricepoint? If it were $20 would it have been any difference?
Brian: We actually started out at an even lower price point of $7 for our "haxies". We soon realized that we had underpriced and raised to $10. We actually get a lot of customers telling us that we are still too low and we should charge more! We think the price point we entered at has been a been important to our success. We always try to provide quality products at a fair price. Hopefully whatever that price is our customers will still find the value of our products to be well worth it.
Alf: What does Unsanity mean for your clients?
Brian: Unsanity means they can expect quality products at a fair price. It means customization and having your computer behave the way you want it to. It means dedication to working through and around limits and habits.
Alf: Why do you have a corporate weblog?
Brian: It started out as a way for us to just rant about various topics and then grew into a great way for us to communicate with our users and the rest of the internet community. In a nutshell, it's there for fun - hopefully for us and the readers.
Alf: You use to have the Comments open, but last time i checked, they were disabled Why is that?
Brian: Comments are on/off on a per article basis. I actually can't remember a time when we had them off. They have bee on for the vast majority of our posts.
Alf: How has the relationship with you clients through internet has shaped the company or its products?
Brian: Our customers are what drive us. We have some fantastic users and much of the success of the products is due to great feedback received from them. We continue to solicit feedback and always listen to it. (though we don't always have time to reply to each of them!)
Alf: How do you get feedback?
Brian: We gather it most formally through our published email addresses (feedback@unsanity.com) and then from any other method we can. Internet forums, reviews, ratings, weblogs, etc.
Alf: Would you like to have more communication with your audience? How would that be achieved?
Brian: We are always open to more communication with our audience. There are plenty of ways to do that ... the trick is balancing time spent in communication with users and time spent in development of product. ;)
Alf: Anything you would like to shout to a starting Mac developer?
Brian: Find a niche! Don't over complicate! Find someone or some company you like and figure out what makes them a success and then apply those things you learn! There is nothing wrong with using great strategies from others to get you started. Your time to innovate will come later with experience.