Ambrosia Software

Ambrosia Software
Ambrosia Software
Type Private
Industry Software, video games
Founded August 18, 1993
Headquarters Rochester, New York
Key people Andrew Welch — President
Products Shareware video games and utilities
Website www.ambrosiasw.com

Ambrosia Software is a predominantly Macintosh software company located in Rochester, New York. Ambrosia produces utilities and games. Its products are distributed as shareware; demo versions can be downloaded and used for up to 30 days.

Ambrosia's best-selling program is the utility Snapz Pro X,[1] according to a 2002 interview with company president Andrew Welch, although the company is better known for the production and the distribution of games. It was incorporated August 18, 1993, by its president, Andrew Welch, after he graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1992.[2]

The first game produced by Ambrosia was Maelstrom, a remake of the Asteroids arcade game. Maelstrom won a number of software awards.[3] This initial success led Ambrosia to release several more arcade-style games. These included Apeiron (a remake of Centipede), and Swoop (a remake of Galaxian).

The unofficial mascot of Ambrosia Software is Hector the Parrot.

Contents

Products

Games

Ambrosia Software's games, in order of release:

Ambrosia, in conjunction with DG Associates, has also released the Escape Velocity Nova Card Game.

Productivity Software

Ambrosia Software's utilities, in order of release:

  • Eclipse — Screen saver CDEV
  • Big Cheese Key — FKey to mask screen image from boss.
  • FlashWrite — Text editor Desk Accessory
  • FlashWrite ][
  • ColorSwitchMenu bar item to change monitor color depth
  • EasyEnvelopes — Envelope printing Desk accessory. Later a Mac OS X v10.4 and Mac OS X v10.5 Dashboard widget.
  • Snapz
  • To Do!
  • Oracle
  • ColorSwitch Pro
  • Snapz Pro— Screen capture application
  • iSeek — Desktop search application
  • Snapz Pro XMac OS X-compatible version of original
  • WireTap Pro — Audio recording utility
  • Screen Cleaner Pro — April Fool's joke
  • DragsterFile transfer application
  • iToneriPhone custom ringtone transfer utility
  • WireTap Studio — Audio recording, editing and master storage; won a 2007 "Eddy Award" from Macworld
  • WireTap Anywhere — professional virtual audio patchbay utility, enabling the recording of any Mac OS X application's audio output from within any Mac OS X audio application.
  • SoundboardMac OS X Audio playback ("computerized cart machine")

"Crippled" shareware

One of Ambrosia's founding mantras was that shareware software should not be distributed as crippleware. The company's software was released on the honor system with only a short reminder that you had used the unregistered software for "x" amount of time, creating what is commonly called nagware.[4] This policy has since been changed and the company today employs typical shareware piracy prevention measures.[5] Their software products now fall under the category of crippleware.[5] Matt Slot has written about the factors that played into the policy change.[4]

References

  1. ^ "MacSlash Interview: Andrew Welch of Ambrosia". MacSlash (retrieved from the Internet Archive). 2002-01-23. Archived from the original on 2007-12-31. http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20071231193241/http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/23/1836201&mode=archive. Retrieved 2011-04-28. 
  2. ^ "Home-grown Ambrosia feeds software niche", Michael Saffran. In RIT: The University Magazine, Vol. 10, #1
  3. ^ "Into the Maelstrom". The Mac Observer. 1999-12-08. http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/december/991208/maelstorm3code.html. Retrieved 2011-04-28. 
  4. ^ a b Slot, Matt (2002-03-11). "The Plain Truth about Casual Software Piracy". TidBITS. http://tidbits.com/article/6752. Retrieved 2011-04-28. 
  5. ^ a b Welch, Andrew (2000-01-22). "Ambrosia Times: President's Letter: On CDs and Shareware". Ambrosia Software. http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=26&t=34016#. Retrieved 2011-04-28. 

External links


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