Re: Linux interface questions
Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro@mac.com> writes:
> Many developers don't bother to take the time to ask themselves why,
> then, are these people on the Mac? The dismissive (and wrong) answer
> is that they are computer illiterate morons who are afraid of a two
> button mouse, or fashion victims who are too shallow to see past
> Jonathan Ive's impressive industrial design. The reality is, they are
> very busy people who know that there is too little time in each day to
> waste any of it fighting their computers to get things done. One of
> the most important ways that the Mac look and feel saves them time is
> that all HIG conforming apps work in essentially the same way. Once
> you learn one, you know how to use them all, and your computer becomes
> invisible, an extension of your thought processes.
Well then I might ask politly how you made the transition from the IDE
before Xcode and XCode. I'm a programmer and it was a tough step. Most
has changed in a slightly way. Another one who just "wanted" to get
GPL running had a very hard time with it and was willing to pay for my
support to get those things going. A totally simple thing and a in
intelligent person was not capable of achieving what he wants to. And
I can not say that I feel that just because it happens that I'm using
Mail I have not troubles using other packages. Programmers want to get
their stuff done too, but that are obviously not the majority of
users...
>
> If a developer's attitude is "well it works, so no big deal if it
> doesn't work exactly like other Mac apps," that developer is likely to
> find himself scratching his head wondering why users are choosing a
> competitor's offering with fewer features rather than his. The reason
> is simple - Mac users, by and large, value the Mac look and feel over
> extra bells and whistles.
Well than they probybly disliked the Aqua stuff. Because so much was
new. Strange enough Apple has come back to better business with their
Mac OS X. And guess what even the Mac magazines explian to those
look and feel people how to use the command line.
> Their computers are tools. They want them to
> do the job at hand with an absolute minimum of interference. A hammer
> doesn't require that you wrestle it to the ground before you can drive
> a nail.
This comparison just holds for simple tools. Would you expect that
every one can drive a car immediatly? Or beeing able to sit into a
cockpit and just fly away. Please explain to us why one has to learn
plumbing, timbering and what other jobs are out there.
> A computer should not require that you struggle with it to do
> something that every other application on the platform does, but your
> application has chosen to do in a non-native way (Mac users just about
> never copy and paste text with the mouse.
Think about that, how am I supposed to work with some "desktop
publishing" software and compiler in the same way?
>They will use the Cut, Copy,
> and Paste key commands which have been the same since 1984, or they
> will use the Edit menu items, which have a similarly long history).
Maybe, IIRC you can use that stuff in LispWorks too.
> CAPI, as is, is precisely the sort of 80% native solution that Mac
> users avoid in droves.
I doubt that.
Regards
Friedrich