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The Bat: Great program, terrible documentation and support
superboyac:
The Mac image editor is simply elegant
-vizacc (February 24, 2011, 10:36 PM)
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Yup, that's my new favorite word. I hate sounding like a fanboy, because I am SO not. But when it comes to interface, Apple beats pc software most of the time, and it's not even close. Now, windows users will say "But we can do more, and windows stuff is more powerful" which is true. But from a business perspective, interface is what sells, not powerful features. Powerful features sell to people like us who are hardcore software powerusers, and have a lifetime of experience with computers, but we only represent a very small number of sales. But if you want to sell the maximum number of programs, you HAVE to make sure the interface is easy and is giving people what they want...i.e. what Apple does. Now, if you don't want to sell a lot but just want a powerful program, then you don't need to worry about it, which seems to be the attitude of most pc developers. But if I hear that developers are wondering why their stuff doesn't sell more, all I can do is smirk and think "Look, if you want to sell more, you have to give people what they want. Not what you think they should want."
vizacc:
It makes you re-think how to write software...
For instance,
- are all those toolbars really necessary?
- are all those fancy buttons really necessary?
- does the customer need this feature? should it be designed in a better way? ...
Windows is going in complete opposite direction than Mac. There are so many technologies and UI interfaces for Windows - MFC, NET, WPF, Silverlight, Flash, RIA, Restful interfaces, browser interface, SOAP, Ajax and probably a dozen more UI toolkits for Windows...
Then look at the way how iPad and Mac OSX apps are developed. Then you say,
WTF were you doing all that time writing software without thinking about the user??
superboyac:
It makes you re-think how to write software...
For instance,
- are all those toolbars really necessary?
- are all those fancy buttons really necessary?
- does the customer need this feature? should it be designed in a better way? ...
Windows is going in complete opposite direction than Mac. There are so many technologies and UI interfaces for Windows - MFC, NET, WPF, Silverlight, Flash, RIA, Restful interfaces, browser interface, SOAP, Ajax and probably a dozen more UI toolkits for Windows...
Then look at the way how iPad and Mac OSX apps are developed. Then you say,
WTF were you doing all that time writing software without thinking about the user??
-vizacc (February 25, 2011, 10:21 AM)
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True. I actually don't blame Microsoft as much as the developers. The way I see it, we need Microsoft to do their OS the way they do. In fact I think Windows OS is brilliant and don't have a lot of complaints about it. Windows provides an environment where developers can pretty much do anything (unlike Apple). The problem is the developers don't know how to wrangle in that complete freedom. They need to take all that development freedom and present it to the user in an easy way. That' why I get totally turned off by programs that like to use a lot of command line features to do their functions (i.e. The Bat's quick templates). Instead, they should spend a little extra time and create some buttons, windows, and visual elements that turn that programming language into something that is easy to grasp and work with. I mean, how far do we go? If people were comfortable using command line stuff, they'd be comfortable just coding things themselves. So if you truly want to help the average user accomplish a task, you take your expertise (programming) and convert that into something that is general and universal...buttons, icons, etc.
That's I get super pissed off when I tell the Bat developers that their word wrap in Microed doesn't work. They say, "well just press Ctrl-L whenever it doesn't work". The problem with that is most windows users don't think about word wrapping, it just happens. Now, I have to always be thinking about word wrapping. It's fucking annoying. imagine if, as I'm typing this post, I had to remember to press a keyboard shortcut to make sure things get wrapped, otherwise each paragraph would be one long line. It's not right, it's almost mean. They are saying, I don't care about you kind of people...which is most of the people.
vizacc:
annoying
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I dunno, but they might want to look what iPad, MacMail, Android Mail, GMail and how others do it, but
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shhhh!!! it's a secret :P
timns:
Can this Bat of yours be customised, plug-in'd or otherwise extended? If so there may be a way to shoehorn in a better editor while retaining all the other fine features of the program.
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