VVI has had another record semi-annual financial performance; the fourth one in a row, in fact. And this could bode well for more Mac OS X products, though things aren’t so rosy as far as Logitech is concerned.
“During the last half of 2000 sales and earnings exceeded any previous semi-annual result since VVI’s incorporation in 1992,” John Brilhart, Chief Technical Officer of VVI, said. “This is the fourth consecutive semi-annual period that we have reported such growth and favorable results. VVI continues to have no long-term debt and has retained earnings that exceed all obligations and projected costs of planned new products. These favorable financial results are an outcome of focusing on customer’s needs and the value our products and services add to their businesses.”
VVI is a privately held corporation founded in 1989. The financial performance for the last half of 2000 was the best since its incorporation in 1992, according to Brilhart.
“This is good news for the Mac OS X community because VVI has been an avid supporter of the Mac OS X Server platform,” he told MacCentral. “Anyone that wants graphing, charting or data visualization for their Mac OS X based systems should contact VVI as we’re definitely known to have exceptional software for that purpose and have excellent expertise with the Mac OS X programming environments.”
He says VVI is working “very hard” on the next release of their software, which will be a substantial revision and addition of features to its software code base. Though Brilhart says the company isn’t ready to make its plans or strategy public right now, he adds that the fact that VVI has so much Mac OS X related expertise should give an indication of their commitment to the platform.
Meanwhile, current and future owners of Logitech input products can’t be certain of OS X support, according to notes on Logitech’s customer support site.
A tech note says that the Logitech ADB devices shipped with MouseKey software, which is supported in Mac OS 7.x-8.x. It hasn’t been tested in, nor is it supported in Mac OS 9 or higher.
“Additionally, there are no plans to support Logitech ADB devices under Mac OS 10 or higher, as these devices are no longer manufactured,” says the note. “Instead, Logitech has focused its resources and efforts into our current offerings for Macintosh users, MouseWare.”
Okay, that sounds reasonable enough. MouseWare M3.x is the version of MouseWare software for Logitech USB devices for the Mac. But it’s not backwards compatible with Logitech ADB devices. This software requires Mac OS 8.6 or higher; however Mac OS 10 (which is how Logitech refers to it rather than X) isn’t supported at this time and such support isn’t a given, according to Logitech.
The company says it’s “currently evaluating support for Mac OS 10” for MouseWare. However, when it comes to its QuickCam line of cameras, there’ll be no support for Mac OS X or later “because no further development is planned for these cameras.”