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14 Responses to "QotD: Tiger"

1. | Reply gary
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 4:25pm #
   

   I think moving the graphics completely to the GPU will be a big boost. Of course there's no way that my iBook G3/700 will support that.

2. | Reply Chris
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 4:42pm #
   

   Being you develop a RSS aggregator; I was wondering what your opinions of Safari RSS are.

3. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 4:52pm #
   

   Safari RSS (I hope to $DEITY it's not called that in the Finder, etc.) is a good thing. We publish PulpFiction Lite for a reason, y'know. 🙂 That's all I have to say about that for now.

4. | Reply Ryan
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 4:55pm #
   

   I thought Brent's comments were pretty right on.

   If anything it will expand the market for aggregators

5. | Reply Paul J.
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 4:57pm #
   

   First off, I was the guy who (through no fault of FSS) didn't get the serial number e-mail after ordering PulpFiction over the weekend. Thanks for that - I did not want to add yet another support e-mail to the queue just to say thanks.

   Secondly, I'm glad you're not being like those Konfabulator folks and immediately whining that Apple has copied some of your app's functionality into the OS. Of course, PF was never alone in this product category so you've had to compete from the beginning. And from the looks of it, I think PulpFiction will definitely support my needs and wants better in the long run than the built-in Safari news aggregator. There is a sense of entitlement by some Apple software developers that they should have a monopoly on program features on this OS. And until recently, that was very possible because there were so few Mac software developers. I think it's embarrassing how quickly some third party software developers go into "keel over and die" mode when Apple copies a program feature of theirs, instead of trying to compete.

   Anyways, thanks for your help over the weekend. I'm using the new beta and PulpFiction is great. And if the Safari news aggregator feature is making you guys feel uneasy, keep this in mind - you're one year ahead of the curve in terms of matching functionality with that Safari feature (and probably quite a bit more ahead). I'm definitely looking forward to what FSS has in store in later versions to distance PF from the competition 🙂

6. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 5:00pm #
   

   I do think that the Konfabulator folks have a weeeee bit more to complain about than we do, mind you. I'll have a fuller response later, but I've always said that low-end apps create the need for higher-end apps. iPhoto sells more copies of Photoshop Elements than you'd ever believe, for example.

7. | Reply dustym
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 5:02pm #
   

   If iChat A/V officially supports Jabber, I will be extremely happy. Not the *nicest* feature, but it will fill a niche in the Mac software world, a good, solid Jabber client.

8. | Reply Mark Lussier
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 5:16pm #
   

   I would have to say the weblog server, but then again it's based on our code 😉

9. | Reply Paul J.
   Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 5:47pm #
   

   I agree that on the surface, it appears the Konfabulator folks have more to worry about than FSS. But I think FSS is as equally threatened by Safari's RSS as the Konfabulator folks are by Dashboard. The reason is because Safari's RSS feature works very different from PulpFiction's. If people like the way Safari RSS works (in the user experience sense), they might completely reject the PulpFiction way of doing things and FSS will be in quite a predicament. However, all the Konfabulator folks have to do is shut up and work. Anything they do at this point will differentiate Konfabulator from Dashboard and make Konfabulator look more like Dashboard Pro -- or perhaps make Dashboard look like Konfabulator Lite. But they aren't doing that. The only reason I'd be worried if I were the developer of Konfabulator is if I didn't have a road map, or course of action ready -- if I was resting on my laurels of past successes and had no more ideas with which to push Konfabulator forward.

   I know I sound very harsh, but really, we're supposed to be adults. We can't keep looking at Apple like they're our friends. They're a company, and in many cases, they're a competitor. They're only doing what they're supposed to be doing. If a third party Mac developer can't accept this, perhaps they should move to the Windows platform and face an order of magnitude more competition, or move to Linux where your competition cannot be put out of business and undercuts your prices by 100%.

10. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
    Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 5:55pm #
    

    The reason is because Safari's RSS feature works very different from PulpFiction's. If people like the way Safari RSS works (in the user experience sense), they might completely reject the PulpFiction way of doing things and FSS will be in quite a predicament.

    Historically, you've been proven wrong time and time again. People are capable of making the leap from one UI paradigm to another one, especially when the UI they're jumping to resembles, oh, I dunno, something with which they're already familiar.

    Furthermore, FSS will not be in quite a predicament. We've got a number of applications available.

    However, all the Konfabulator folks have to do is shut up and work. … But they aren't doing that.

    It's a bit too early to tell what they're doing, don't you think?

    I'm not sure where your rather negative tone comes from, but it doesn't really seem warranted.

11. | Reply Paul J.
    Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 6:32pm #
    

    I apologize if I've come off with a negative tone. I would say I'm being blunt, but I am not intentionally trying to be negative toward FSS or even the Konfabulator folks for that matter. I wouldn't have bought a license to PulpFiction if I didn't like its user experience. I threw out the idea that PulpFiction is "equally threatened" by Safari because it's a possibility. Some user out there might say "I hate the way Mail.app works, but I love the way Safari works" and the Safari RSS feature may suit them. However, I knew even over the weekend that Apple would have some sort of RSS aggregation in Tiger and yet I still bought it. The fact remains that I like the way PulpFiction works and if I were a betting man, I would put no money on PulpFiction being truly threatened by Safari RSS. I gave a specific example about PF being threatened by Safari, but I was just trying to allude to the fact that when a competitor offers a program in the same category as your own, and it is not a copy or clone of your own program, it can still be a threat -- it may even be more dangerous (i.e. Adobe InDesign vs Quark). So long as somebody is copying you, you control the product category so you at least have first-mover advantage.

    If I seem like I was picking on the Konfabulator folks, it's only because I've been reading what they've been posting in their forums and thought their effort could be better directed somewhere else. The facts are that Konfabulator controls this "desktop widget" market. Dashboard hasn't innovated and is only a clone. It's definitely a threat, but I don't think it's a death blow by any stretch of the imagination. The Konfabulator folks could up the ante in the coming year and make Dashboard seem very unattractive in comparison. They can win over many customers. They've even gotten free publicity out of this. Their program has been validated. They should use all this to their advantage.

    I know I've come off as being negative, but really I was just trying to point out the positives. Sorry about that, I've never been good at relaying the emotional context of my messages through blog comments/forum postings/e-mails. While I don't expect everyone to agree with me, the last thing I wanted was for people to find the tone in which I posed my comments to be disagreeable.

12. | Reply mike3k
    Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 7:54pm #
    

    I'm excited about Automator. I assume it's a front-end to AppleScript, so hopefully applications that support AppleScript will be able to use it.

13. | Reply Brad
    Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 8:05pm #
    

    The thing I'm really excited about I can't talk about due to the NDA. It's something I've been wanting for a long time and thought it would never appear. =)

14. | Reply Gabe
    Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 9:11pm #
    

    I'm really intruigued by Dashboard. The my one and only gripe with Konfabulator was that the widgets stayed on the monitor the entire time. Now with Dashboard, I could hide them when I don't want to see them. I like to have my desktops clean of clutter, so this seems to work for me. However-- I won't really know what my favourite feature will be until Tiger comes out sometime next year.