tomgdrums wrote:tiger wrote:tomgdrums wrote:I'm still experimenting and I'm just starting to understand a little bit about it. So I still do not know what the optimal recipe is.
Stockfish fulfills the needs of an infinitesimal fraction of people. It's a technical product made by a technical guy for people with the same set of mind. It does not work for people who want to discover chess or improve, it does not work for people with real chess needs. It works for people who read CCC (and to be polite I'm not going to mention what kind of percentage it represents relative to iOS devices users). It is downloaded because it's free. Easy. Put a price point on it and watch it get some impressive depth. In term of page ranking I mean.
I keep on reading CCC to keep in touch with the nerdy computer chess community but it is just a BAD habit of mine. Being influenced by what I read here is counterproductive in the sense that normal people have needs that have nothing to do with what is said here. I'm still trying to make everybody happy but this might be a mistake.
// Christophe
Wow. Tord has been nothing but complimentary to you and Chess Tiger, and unless I am missing some hidden sarcasm in your posts you have been rather impolite to him. In fact most of your responses to honest questions seem to be snotty and aimed to show how "put upon" you are by having to make your product. If it is that much of a downer for you, don't make it. Move on to Tic-tac-to as you say.
What did I say that is upsetting you so much?
// Christophe
Well since Tord is not offended then it is okay. But it is just interesting watching Tord praise Chess Tiger and you insulting Stockfish.
Come on... I am not insulting Tord by saying that Stockfish is (in my opinion) not suited for the majority of people who, on the App Store, are looking for a chess program.
Look at the offer on the App Store and see for yourself what is selling well.
As I have said somewhere else, I think Tord can be proud of Stockfish and it definitely has a lot of fans. But if you think that it is the ultimate chess program for iOS device, then you are completely wrong.
On the App Store you find every kind of people, from very young to very old people, male and female with no clear majority of one genre over the other, people with interests in arts, music, games,...
A fraction of these people will come accross the chess games apps, others will come specifically looking for one.
The large majority of them either do not know the rules, or believe they do but actually don't. I'm still getting complains about the en passant capture... The PalmOS version popped an information box when playing an EP explaining that it had just played a legal move! I need to resurect this popup. I'm getting this question over and over: how do I castle? Or this one: the program has just played a strange move, moving his King and Rook at the same time, what happened?
(I'm not insulting the users here: everybody has to learn before they can really play chess - I had to)
You need to look at the big picture and realize that for most users, Stockfish is not the right program. I'm not saying that mine is either. I do think it is better
in this regard because I spent a lot of time working on some details, like providing the rules of chess and trying to have (hopefully) better looking graphics (I spent 3 weeks working on graphics alone - at the end my eyes were hurting). But a lot of work still needs to be done.
Let me give you an example of why I consider Tord to be a technical guy (I am one too) and that Stockfish is a technical app:
One of the nice features of Stockfish for iOS is that you can actually run the chess engine at home on a powerful PC, and the app in this case acts as a GUI for the remote engine.
I'm not aware of any other program doing it. If there is one, at least Tord has been the first one to provide such a feature.
This is naturally a feature that most people reading this forum appreciate, even if they do not actually use the app or use this particular feature. Stockfish CAN do that, it's great. You can have the power of a Quad in your pocket!
Now consider all the people who have downloaded a chess program from the App Store. I'm not taking any risk by saying than less than 0.1% of these people have any need for this feature. And that even less could actually set it up correctly (it requires opening a port in your router at home - you need to know how to do it - not Tord's fault).
So it's a great and sharp feature, but as the program lacks simpler features that would appeal to a much broader audience, my opinion is that Stockfish is a more technical program.
I stand by what I have said about Stockfish in the second paragraph of my initial post (quoted above).
Most people here consider that Stockfish for iOS is great because:
- it's one of the strongest engines
- it's free
And they are right.
What I'm saying is that the App Store is a very competitive place and that Stockfish sustains a good ranking because it is free.
I believe it would not sustain this ranking if it was not free.
On the other hand
I think Tord should make money from Stockfish. He has already explained that he does not want to deal with the associated problems but I think that many people who be glad to pay for it and Tord could add technical features for them. There is a market for it, which is not the main market, but it hurts me to see bad clones of Stockfish making money when Tord doesn't.
And no, I'm not contradicting myself.
// Christophe