You are wrong, it was also available from YYGs, that's how I boughtt it.
Yes, the Mac app store didn't really sell that many, but like steam was another store front. You could get a trial from us though....
In terms of the education.... We gave schools 3 years to swap, education sales had dropped to virtually zero and were continually told they should be swapping. We are well aware that schools etc. take a loooong time to change, but if the issue wasn't forced, they never would - it's as simple as that.
Second, if it had been that bad, they could have gotten in touch and explained it to us, we could have helped. While we wanted to make sure everyone swapped because we couldn't keep going indefinitely with 8.1, if a whole term was going to be screwed, we could have done something.
Third - The installation of 8.1 on school networks was an utter nightmare. We got continual support questions about how to install it, how does an MSI work, network drives - you name it. School IT departments can
sometimes be filled with utter morons - you wouldn't believe the stuff we've gotten. 8.1 simply wasn't great at going on school machines, and did sometimes require that you know...well, what the hell your doing. Studio is MUCH easier, it cuts down support a lot, it's far easier for schools to deal with, and lives with closed network systems much better.
Fourth - 8.1 is still out there on hundreds of sites for download. The free version as you pointed out, requires nothing more than to download and install. If they were that buggered, then it would have been a simple matter to download, scan it with as many scanners as you could, and give it to the pupils.
Fifth - if they'd been doing this course for years before, then surely they would have HAD the installer already that they could have given to the kids?
Sixth - Even if we'd given a few weeks notice - or a couple of months for that matter, this sounds like it was over the break so would have made no difference. They would have needed a year or more, and frankly...they already had about 3. Schools won't change unless they have to. They buy something and sit on it - well, forever.
As a business, we can't support old products forever, but if someone is utterly screwed, then they can talk to us - we're not evil, I think we've proven over and over we will try to help when we can. We've worked with a few schools and colleges to move to Studio, but we can only do so much. We aren't Microsoft, we can't support legacy products for 10 years +, and lets remember it was marked as legacy for a looooong time.
As to Mac.... it was used even less than 8.1, the sales were next to nothing, and it's education impact was virtually non-existent. Because we're still going to help those who have it get the installer, the actual impact on people is zero. It's a horribly dated program - hell, it was when it came out, but it had been in development for so long, Sandy just wanted it finished and "something" out there. So when Russell and I joined, he pushed to get it finished.
not after and then tell their customers that they're not obligated to provide the download and suggest they should have known better because of how old it was.
And this isn't what we said. We've said if you need help, contact the helpdesk and they will help. We've not told them "tough luck, you should have kept it". Just like 7, 8 and 8.1, we still allow customers to contact us if they're stuck, and we'll help them.
As for any product, once the new version comes out, you will expect at some point updates and fixes will start to get less and less over time. I've said we aim to keep support going for it for a good while, and even when it does eventually stop, like 8.1 and GM4Mac - it will still run.
Also... for the record, I don't consider Parallels to be the way to do things on the Mac, it should be a proper Mac app. While it's a work around - and does work, it's certainly not something you can expect people (devs or schools) to reasonably do. The next version should finally fix this, as there will be a Mac version.