So lately I've been getting more and more annoyed with comments from some people about RB 2005. What comments might those be? "This is a Windows product! The sky is falling!"
Christ people, chill out.
First off, we're really a Mac company. Out of the entire place, William and I are the only two who champion platforms other than the Mac. I tend to be a lot more vocal than he does, which is fine. But we're really a Mac company. And no, that's not me bragging. We all know that my loyalties lie elsewhere in the OS war (with BeOS!).
Second off, we based the UI solely off of Mac products. Safari, Mail and Omnigraffle being the three major applications we're modelled after. When doing the designs, not a single Windows app was consulted, which is why I've had to do enourmous amounts of work to get us function properly on Windows.
Thirdly, all of the UI changes that get made to make us feel native on Windows don't happen on the Mac. And people still bitch! For example, the roll-over effects that I added so we stopped looking like a damn Mac app on Windows -- I added them, put in a release note, and the same day I saw a comment on the betas list about how we're only doing things for Windows and we need to do that for OS X as well. Excuse me? A beveling effect on toolbar items? Had I made it work like that on the Mac, I'd be crucified for bringing "horrible Windows concepts" over to the "beautiful Mac".
Frankly, I'm sick of people bitching about the UI. Make your feature requests/bug reports like everyone else, but stop your whining about how we're ignoring the Mac market. With the company having the make-up that it does, you won't get a lick of sympathy from me. Especially given the massive amount of work I've been putting in to try to make us not feel like a Mac port again on Windows. And honestly, I feel more like Sisyphus than a programmer lately. I am infinitely more worried about pissing off Windows users than Mac users. The fact of the matter is that there are just plain more Windows users (and hence it makes better business sense to cater to them), and yet we still don't do nearly enough for Windows users.
Don't get me wrong, I can agree with some of the facts people gripe about (even though I still think they shouldn't be griping -- it's brand spanking newly beta software!).
- It's buggy. Yup, it is -- beta is there to fix all the bugs we run into. Beta means we're done adding new features, and only focusing on bug fixes. The hope is to fix every bug we possibly can to make the IDE solid, and that's the point to getting into beta.
- You lost the ability to position palettes where you want to. It'd be nice if they were tear-off windows, I agree. And perhaps in the future they will be. But for right now, they're functional and work better on all platforms in this fashion compared to them being palettes.
- The UI needs tweaking. Definately! Just look at things like the about box, or the registration UI and it's obvious that the UI is not finalized. One thing that really pissed me off today was seeing someone lamenting that we're losing focus on the Mac market because the registration dialogs look fine on Windows but not the Mac, even after I said they're not finished. Cripes people whine a lot.
What I don't agree with is people saying we're focusing on making a Windows product and ignoring the Mac. Aside from the fact that every single person accusing us is not an employee of REAL Software, and they have absolutely no clue what's going on.... Then they make baseless comments like the old UI was better on Windows. :: sighs :: People just aren't thinking very clearly then. I'm a Windows user and have been for many moons now -- the old UI sucks. Horribly. And even if I ignored the fact that the old UI was a blatant Mac port, the entire concept of the old UI doesn't even exist on Linux (there's no such thing as MDI on Linux, that's how much MDI sucks). So there's absolutely no way the old UI will be coming back -- it's an impossibility. But people will still try to explain to me that it's good enough (along with the fact that it was a good UI on Windows. HA!) and we should bring it back.
I've heard time and again that it's harder to use RB 2005 with multiple monitors. Perhaps that's true on the Mac, but that would be the only platform effected. It was impossible to use the old IDE on Windows with multiple monitors in any sort of decent fashion. You could move the palettes around, and that was about it. I don't doubt some Mac users have issues with the current IDE because they can't reposition many of the UI elements like they used to. What bugs me is that legit gripe turns into "this new UI is unusable and sucks and why should I upgrade", which is total tripe.
Now I know I am coming down pretty hard on our Mac user base in this rant, so I feel like I should make something very clear before I end this rant. Of course, most of the Mac zealots won't be reading this part -- they're already in the comments section telling me how much better the Mac is than Windows. ;-)
I feel very strongly about the UI. For all platforms. It is crucial that we look and feel like a Mac application on the Mac. It is equally crucial we look and feel like a Windows application on Windows, and a Linux application on Linux. The fact of the matter is -- we only have so much time and resources to put into the initial release so people are going to have to make compromises. We're going to feel slightly wacky on all platforms until we can get all the tweaks in to make us feel perfectly native everywhere. Deal with it. I've had to put up with being a Mac application (not even really feeling like one) for three years now. I think the Mac users can handle a little annoyance for a release or two until we get the UI ironed out. I also realize that it's a minority doing the complaining and it's not fair for me to generalize like I am. But I'm very frustrated. I've been working a bunch of long hours trying to make us not feel like a Mac application on Windows only to hear a handful of Mac users whine that :: gasps :: we're catering to the majority instead of them. Phooey. They don't have a clue.
I completely agree! I love the new UI - It'll take some getting used to, but I say: bring it on. In fact, I've been thinking one of my apps (Net Tool Box), which is similarly a blatant Mac port, should do away with the MDI and start looking a bit more like RB 2005. If I want to eventually port to Linux, I'll have to do it.
The web browser metaphor is genius, and although it's currently not quite as flexible as we'd like it, I have faith in you guys to do the right thing. Now that the IDE is being written in RB you, being probably the heaviest users of your own product, will be more aware of the problems than any of us.
I sympathize with you all - I can't begin to imagine the amount of work that goes in. Ignore the idiots on the beta list and keep up the good work.
Thanks Charlie! It's good to hear that coming from an avid Mac user. :-)
By and large, the people bitching about the "un-Macness" of the UI don't appear to have a clue. Unlike most of them, I've actually read the Aqua HIG, and I've studied the apps Apple is turning out. The trend is clearly toward fewer windows in applications, in part because of the way that window layering works in OS X. As for tear-off palettes and that sort of thing, I've never really liked them much, because I have to go hunting for them, or they are cluttering up my screen. So far I have only tried some simple projects, but the UI design appears to work.
But it's important to understand where some of this ranting is coming from. I think that there is a real fear that REALbasic will drift toward Windows and Mac developers will be left behind. Mac users have been burned by this before, a lot, so any sign of Windows drift is seen as a sign of the apocalypse. You don't have to like the bitching, but it's useful to understand its origin.
And I understand the origin, but it strikes me as lacking in intelligence. Look at the make-up of REAL Software and it's painfully obvious that we're a Mac company. It just strikes me as odd that some of our users think the sky is falling because we want a bigger piece of the pie -- it's not like we'll ever ditch support for the Mac.
I was hired on as a Windows-only developer. I was going to do the Win32 port of the IDE along with William and then he and I were going to strengthen our Windows support. While that is true in name (we did do the Win32 port of the IDE and we have done a lot to make our Windows support better), it's really just a bunch of BS -- look at the number of Mac-only features that have come out in the last 3 years compared to Windows-only. ActiveX and Registry support vs Toolbars, Metal/Drawer/Sheet windows, Address book, Dock support, etc. And it boils down to the fact that we have more Mac users in our planning meetings than Windows users, so the Mac technologies always "win" when push comes to shove.
Trust me, Mac support will never die at REAL Software.
I'm not too worried about Mac support waning, at least until RS is acquired by another company. But some of those Mac-only features you cite don't work so well..
As for the complainers, their comments are indeed lacking in intelligence; fears are frequently irrational :) Still, it does get old listening to crap. If you weren't so busy, you might amuse yourself by asking them to explain the parts of the IDE that aren't Mac enough, and what they would suggest, etc. Actually, I do find the close widget on the right side of tabs to be a little odd.
They may not work so well, but they're at least there. I can name over a dozen major features on Windows that have been around for years that we still don't support. Toolbars, rebar, DirectX, scripting, status bars just to name a few.
I am all for making the IDE as Mac-friendly as possible, so long as it stays on the Mac. Same with the Windows features. And I think we've done a pretty good job of things so far. I agree that there are still some goofy holes (like the close widgets) that need filling... but I just don't think there's reason for as much griping as I've been hearing.
Sounds like I'm not really alone though. :-)