This was easily the biggest Church Tech news of the day Thursday. ProPresenter v4 will break from it’s 10 year tradition of Mac only support and now offer a Windows version!
Here’s the pertinent info from their webpage…
ProPresenter for Windows... Seriously...
For 10 years, we've developed ProPresenter for Mac only, and have been asked repeatedly if there was going to be a version for Windows. Our answers were always the same:
- The tools that enable us to do what we do on the Mac aren't as robust on the Windows platform.
- We have nothing against Windows, but felt we could make a more powerful and reliable product on the Mac.
- We'd rather focus on making the best software for any platform, rather than divide our efforts by supporting two platforms.
All of these answers were valid, and as the marketshare of the Mac has increased over the last several years, the question has become a lot less frequent. At the same time, however, we've been troubled by some things:
- There are a lot of churches that don't have Macs, particularly overseas
- There is a great variety of Windows-based machines on the market that are seemingly very capable.
- A new computer purchase is often difficult in today's economy.
- Many PC users get excited about our product only to be let down when learning it's Mac only.
- Some organizations will not purchase a Mac just to run ProPresenter.
- If we can improve the worship experience on the Mac, why not use our expertise to do the same for Windows?
Through the years, a lot has changed. Computers have become far more powerful and technologies have evolved. We've kept our eye on Windows technologies that would enable us to create a quality ProPresenter experience for Windows users, and we now believe we have found the right tool set, and assembled the right team of people to make ProPresenter for Windows a reality!
So, the cat's out of the bag. We'll be keeping you updated via our website as this story unfolds.
But wait! There’s MORE!! A site license is cross platform!
Site License: $799 (Concurrent use) … $399 for Site License Upgrade
Our Site License allows you to run it in multiple environments on one campus simultaneously (each campus requires it's own license). This license works on both Mac and Windows versions.
At lunch our Tech Arts Director was eager to make the purchase for v4 :-) Our main auditorium uses ProPresenter on Macs, but all our classroom’s use Media Shout on PC’s. The ability to standardize down to one software application is huge from a training and troubleshooting standpoint. To date there’s not been enough ROI to justify replacing all the Media Shout PC’s with Macs running ProPresenter … and this would mean we won’t have to :-)
Of course this all HINGES on the windows version of ProPresenter4 being a solid app. It WILL BE a 1.0 windows release which makes me slightly nervous coming from a company not experienced in writing windows code. The upside is that I already know many churches that are eager to try out this windows version. So if there are bugs they’ll be found quickly and hopefully addressed in similar fashion. Start crossing your fingers now ;-)
So who else out there will be testing this windows version with us?
We have PP3 on 4 macs throughout the church. I'm sure we'll be interested in looking at the MS version
Posted by: Scott Wilder | February 12, 2010 at 11:38 AM
We sure will be trying it out.... cannot wait for the release.
Posted by: Austin Spooner | February 12, 2010 at 11:15 PM
We have ProPresenter on several areas of the church, but MediaShout in the smaller venues. This will mean that we can standardize presentations and also let people set up presentations on their regular PCs instead of either carting a Mac to their desk or sitting in the room where the presentation Mac is.
I am excited about this.
Posted by: Bob Brown | February 12, 2010 at 11:30 PM