Ambrosia Software
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Ambrosia Software is a predominantly Macintosh software company located in Rochester, New York. Incorporated August 18th, 1993 by its president, Andrew Welch, Ambrosia produces utilities and games. Their primary method of business is shareware; they allow for 30 day trials of any of their software. Registration is voluntary, however, if one does not register they do not have full access to the program.
While the utility Snapz Pro has sold the most copies, Ambrosia is most notable for the distribution of games. The first game ever produced by Ambrosia was Maelstrom (basically a version of Asteroids, but with improved graphics), which became quite popular. Other games are the Escape Velocity series, the Macintosh version of Uplink and Apeiron (recently ported to Mac OS X). Recently, Ambrosia released WireTap Pro, a digital recording program. WireTap Pro is used to record audio from any application on Mac OS X and save it to any of a variety of formats.
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Titles
Anti-Productivity Software (Games)
Ambrosia Software's games include (in order of release date, latest at the top):
- Darwinia (Mac OS X port)
- Gooball
- Apeiron - ported to Mac OS X
- Aki
- Uplink (Mac OS port)
- pop-pop
- Bubble Trouble - ported to Mac OS X
- Escape Velocity Nova - original Macintosh version, and ported to Microsoft Windows
- Coldstone
- Deimos Rising
- Pillars of Garendall
- Ferazel's Wand
- Ares
- Cythera
- Slithereens
- EV Override
- Mars Rising
- Harry the Handsome Executive
- Avara
- Escape Velocity
- Barrack
- Swoop
- Chiral
- Maelstrom
Ambrosia's announced upcoming games, as of May 2005, include:
Ambrosia, in conjunction with DG Associates, has also released the Escape Velocity: Nova Card Game.
Productivity Software (Utilities)
Ambrosia Software's utilities include (in order of release date, latest at the top):
- Screen Cleaner Pro (April Fool's joke.)
- WireTap Pro
- Snapz Pro - ported to Mac OS X
- iSeek
- ColorSwitch Pro
- Eclipse
Community
Ambrosia Software has gathered a sizeable following in the Macintosh community in part due to forum-based discussion of its products, and the out-going personalities of the company's employees. Mainly supported through the company's web site forums and their IRC server (irc.ambrosia.net), the community lists over 12,000 members with support forums for each of Ambrosia's utilities and games, complemented by general discussion forums focusing on politics, graphics, games and general camaraderie.
“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; so-called nagware. This policy has since been changed and the company today employs typical shareware piracy prevention measures. Their software products now fall under the category of crippleware. An article in the company's newsletter, the Ambrosia Times, outlines the factors that played into the policy change.
External links
- Ambrosia Software (http://www.ambrosiasw.com)
- Ambrosia's Forums (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/)
- Upcoming (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/news/upcoming/)
- The Ambrosia Times (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/news/newsletter/)
- #ev3 Quote Archive (http://ev3.jonpearse.net/)