[Ham-Mac] MacMemoriesManager

[Mark Cohen]

In general, people really should treat e-ham reviews as a grain of
salt..  

That being said, it is sad when a developer is thin skinned about such
things. People will always find a venue to criticize anything,
especially a commercial software application. We as consumers believe
that we should be able to try out before we buy. (Or touch/feel a
physical object) In the case of software, trials are very important, but
feedback is even more so. 

In the case of MacMemoriesManager, I can see the issues put forward by
the person who reviewed the application. Generally speaking, most Mac
users (especially those long term users who used the non-unix OS) are
used to a specific interface to their applications. The
MacMemoriesManager does the job, but it certainly lacks the user
interface polish of todays Mac applications. For example, the buttons
and arrows at the bottom of the screen lack text tags(titles) So you
have to hover over or use the drop down menus.. The images are just not
intuitive enough. .. Not a criticism of Don's work, just something I
noticed that made the application a little more difficult to use than it
should have been. 

That being said, there are NO other applications on the market for the
Mac that approach the functions of this app for ham radios. We are
relegated to running VMs (parallels or vmware) or under emulation
(Wine/crossover).. All of these apps are less than optimal because there
are ALWAYS serial port issues with this. In the case of Crossover/wine,
you have to go into the application's directory tree and create a
symlink from com1,..com4 to /dev/ttyUSB# .. This is a royal pain when
you have hotplug devices.

So, In the case of MMM I wish that Don had a thicker skin and/or a
desire to improve his app. I really like the ability to manage the
memories on my radios and I will miss this functionality.

Hopefully, someone will take over the project and keep it around.

For any hopeful developers out there who plan on writing mac apps, I
recommend a couple of ways to approach the business.

1. Keep your app inexpensive.. Hams are CHEAP and hate to spend money on
ANYTHING... Frankly I'm surprised that people even create stuff for us
:)
2. Try to follow a UI standard. There are LOTS of people out there that
have spent TONS of money and time working on User Interfaces. Don't try
and re-invent the wheel. 
3. When you get negative criticism, try and look at what the user is
trying to say.. Often people sit behind their computer and spew tons of
crap at others.. Only because they are "anonymous" behind the screen.
IRL (In Real Life) people are a LOT nicer to eachother.. When you get a
negative review, ask the user how they would have approached the
problem. Often this will get them to think and realize the amount of
work that you put into the application and they might think before they
hit the submit button..

Just my .02

Mark (K6EF)



On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, Don Agro wrote:

>A number of people have written to ask what happened to  
>MacMemoriesManager.
>
>Simple. A single review on eHam killed it.
>
><http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/4038>
>
>It is now free and unsupported. I used to wonder why more people  
>didn't write ham software for the Mac. Now I know.
>
>73 Don Agro VE3VRW
>
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-- 
A STRANGE GAME.
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS
NOT TO PLAY.

HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS?