[MW Forums]

After 2,700 entries, two months of eliminations and tens of thousands of votes, the winners of the My Dream App contest have been announced. more

[Wickund]

I hope Apple jumps on this (Atmosphere) for Leopard. I can see my productivity sky-rocketing.

[leicaman]

I'm certainly glad Portal won. Sorry Hijack lost by five votes. And there are some questions about how some votes were determined to be fraudulent. That five-vote difference should get the attention of some developer who is looking for an app to create and bring Hijack to fruition!
Now, about Portal. This is an app that Apple should pick up and develop themselves! Except it lets people bypass having .Mac to sync. their Macs. OK, forget that idea. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[fribhey]

"Each of our winners will receive a MacBook and 15% royalties on their applications."
only 15%? are you kidding me?

[d00d]

I think I can hear the collective sigh of relief from the developers now that Hijack doesn't have to be implemented. Talk about a maintainability nightmare.

[bastion]

only 15%? are you kidding me?
In practice that's actually somewhat generous. Even without counting the computer. (Which at 15% presupposes over $7300 in revenue, an amount far from assured.)

[OM_user]

Yeah, and Atmosphere and Portal are going to be so easy to implement, right? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
I'm no developer, but if I were, I don't think I'd want to tackle something as complex looking as Atmosphere. It's gonna be a resource pig. And for what? To show realtime weather on your desktop. How useful will this really be in the long run to anyone? Seems more a novelty that will wear off after a few weeks and then get turned off by most. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not convinced at this moment.
As for Portal, I could see it being very useful, but file level syncing can be a complicated process to do right. Witness some of the syncing problems we've faced for years with iSync/.Mac, etc. Duplicate entries, syncs that fail altogether, etc. And this is Apple and their small army of developers. How easy will this be for the devs in this contest to do? Better yet, don't take my word for it. Look at many of their comments on this. They admit this is not going to be easy to implement.
I'm sure they'll be able to do it, but I wouldn't use this until some of the inevitable bugs are shooken out of it. I don't like messing with my files and relying on an app not to screw them up or have them lost in the process. I guess we'll see how these pan out.

[icerabbit]

Portal - yippie.
Syncing does not have to be that hard. In essence we're talking: If file a in folder b on machine x is more recent than file a in folder b on machine y & z, then copy it over. This is stuff we all used to do 15 years ago or longer with little file managers. OS X doesn't have it. Automator is a step in the right direction, but requires a lot of user work initially & knowledge to set things up. For syncing you need .mac /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif
I think a lot of people have asked Apple to allow LAN syncing, but they have not. The Apple .mac team, which seems to be - from the consumer standpoint - the fifth wheel on the wagon. Understaffed, without vision and lacking resources. I just say that based on the very slow progress in .mac apps, features and iDisk speed. Or they must have a lot features in the pipeline, but they chose to do only incremental little updates every year (actually this year we had nothing so far) to keep things spread out.
So let these developers step up to the plate. Detect machines in local LAN via Bonjour. User selects the machines he/she wishes to keep in sync. Selects the folders, settings and applications. Then you have n folders, n files on n machines. There are other examples out there on the same subject from which they can learn what to do and what to avoid. The biggest obstacle would be permissions between the machines, open files, open applications, ...

While I could see Hijack as a benefit for myself, I honestly cannot see that ever work. There are too many forum brands, too many customized forums ... it is a nightmare to wrap your head around automating your way through that. And, on top of that impossible to maintain it. Everything can fall apart with anything from the slightest change to the forum updating to a newer version.
Atmosphere
Of course you can always look outside the window, but why not take the view on current weather and the forecast to the next step? I'm happy to see this made the cut. I like the idea and can't wait to see a beta version. I think it does not need to be a resource hog per se, if for instance they can suspend the application when the desktop can't be seen. Provide some levels of customization towards detail, rendering, ...
Like the others said, congratulations to the winners. And thumbs up to the other contestants.

[d00d]

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Yeah, and Atmosphere and Portal are going to be so easy to implement, right?

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Compared to Hijack, I'd say, yeah, they definitely are. And when it comes to maintainability (keep in mind that in most software projects, Maintenance ends being like 80% of the cost), they definitely beat the pants off Hijack.

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I'm no developer, but if I were, I don't think I'd want to tackle something as complex looking as Atmosphere.

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Maybe looks complex, but really, I don't think it'll be that horrible to implement. It's just a lot of graphics play.

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As for Portal, I could see it being very useful, but file level syncing can be a complicated process to do right.

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The initial implementation won't be easy, but long term viability is much more realistic goal than with Hijack.

[d00d]

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Syncing does not have to be that hard. In essence we're talking: If file a in folder b on machine x is more recent than file a in folder b on machine y & z, then copy it over.

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You're ignoring the possibility that it's modified on both between syncs. And what if something gets deleted? Syncing isn't that trivial.

[Janus]

Isn't Atmosphere a lot like Seasonality, which is available at:
http://www.gauchosof...re/Seasonality/

[kwill]

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Syncing does not have to be that hard. In essence we're talking: If file a in folder b on machine x is more recent than file a in folder b on machine y & z, then copy it over.

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And what if file a on both machines have been changed since the last sync? Should highest date be the only variable to distinguish which gets written over? Where is the database of sync sessions stored -- on one machine or both? If a third machine is included during the in initial sync but off when two sync, what happens when it later comes online? What if the hard drive on one machine is not large enough to sync with the others?
I'm not saying it is an impossible task but to dismiss the challenge as simple is being a bit naive.

[kwill]

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Isn't Atmosphere a lot like Seasonality

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No, rather than displaying meteorologist-level statistic and satellite photos, I'd say it is more like a desktop background version of
Yahoo Weather.

[dmstewart]

I'm sure it's just me. But what a trivial "dream app" to take first place. My excitement knows no extent for this. Cute screen shot. I would not download the app if it were freeware, not even to test it. (Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe my iMac is right next to a window.)