![]() Clearly it’s not something where we have to worry too much about breakage. Kafasis: Yeah, that’s pretty nice to be aware that we’re on that list. Or maybe figure out if we’re doing something wrong.” I believe that a couple of our apps are on an Apple internal white list so that they say: “…if our OS update breaks any of these 100 apps, then we need to figure out what’s up and maybe contact the developer. I wouldn’t say it’s ever been… Apple’s never been trying to kill anything. Kafasis: Well, certainly every time there’s a major OS update, 10.4 to 10.5, 10.5 to 10.6, we have to be concerned about just what underlying changes in the audio system - that the users never see - but we have to interact with. Is that something that has been a problem for you? And, over the years, you’ve gone through many OS iterations. ![]() So you’ve been developing products that get very much into the nitty-gritty of the Mac. It’s very much something where I was lucky, and we had the tools to make these products that people wanted. I wish I could claim some genius for this. And we leveraged that to make three different apps: Audio Hijack for recording, Nicecast for broadcasting and Airfoil for transmitting… and then accessories and companions.Īgain it’s not something where we said “We are going to be an audio company, let’s make six audio apps.” But it’s developed very organically, and a great way to make new products was to leverage the existing technology. And so, it’s something where people rapidly saw the various ways this technology could be used - this audio grabbing/hijacking technology as we refer to it. People said, “Hey, you guys can grab audio from any application, but I want to send it to the AirPort Express.” And so we looked at it and worked on it and eventually made an app that did that. And from there it started to be this thing where people would say, “Oh, I need to do X with audio,” and so the next big one was Airfoil, our Airport Express device extender. And it was something where we used the same audio technology, the same audio grabbing technology, but instead of saving it to a file, you send it out to the Internet. Everyone one wanted to use it like a VCR, and we didn’t even think of that during development.Īfter Audio Hijack, I guess, our next product was Nicecast which is audio broadcasting. We sort of put it out there… and when we saw what people were doing with it, we scrambled to add features. And we really didn’t know what people would use it for. You have to have a browser, you have to have an e-mail client … and you have to have an MP3/media player.Īnd so, we at Rogue Amoeba had developed a product called Audio Hijack - that was our very first product that let you record audio. ![]() Previously, I’d been working at a couple of companies that did MP3 players, and iTunes kinda killed that space. Kafasis: You know, we really just sort of fell into it. TMO: So what headed you down the path of audio? But the idea is that the stuff is pretty consumer friendly. Kafasis: I like music, but my systems at home are not, you know, phenomenal. TMO: And not to just the AirPort Express…. no one else is doing, like sending to AirPort Express with Airfoil. TMO: And you do some things that are seemingly impossible. The funny thing is, no one in our company is a real audiophile, but we’ve certainly found a niche in the audio space. TMO: I want to talk a little bit about the apps that you do. Kafasis: Rogue Amoeba is almost eight years old now. ![]() So… you’ve been a Mac developer for how long? TMO: I’m here with Paul Kafasis from Rogue Amoeba Software, LLC. At WWDC, TMO’s Dave Hamilton met with Paul Kafasis, the CEO of Rogue Amoeba, to talk about how his company ended up becoming audio gurus, the development of their audio products, why they’re not on the iPhone in a big way, how this year’s WWDC was still very useful for them and the what the future holds for the company. ![]()
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