This is Why Mac Apps Rock

Written on March 21, 2007 by Nick Santilli and 11 people have commented

Scott Stevenson at Thecacao (also of CocoaBlogs) puts down some great thoughts about that thing that makes Apple developers and their apps stand apart from their Windows counterparts.

The main point is that we prefer the user experience over a boat-load of features. Windows apps are notorious for over-crowded menu bars and options coming out the wazoo. The Mac side of the house is much more stream-lined (take TextMate for example) in appearance, even if it offers great capabilities under the hood.

Scott also speaks to the point that porting a Windows app to Mac isn’t a great practice, as the experience doesn’t transition so nicely..

A textbook example of this is Firefox. A great browser, but Safari is far more popular on the Mac because it’s designed for a Mac user. In fact, this runs so deeply that Camino — a Mac-only app which uses the same Gecko engine that Firefox does — enjoys a fairly strong following.

Skype is an excellent example of a port done right. The application has the same basic set of abilities as the Windows version, but it was clearly redesigned for Mac users, even though this meant more work on the part of the developers.

It’s a good, quick read, and really nails the situation perfectly as far as I’m concerned.

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#1 Mark says:
It’s interesting if Safari is really “far more popular.” I’ve always preferred Firefox by a large margin, for some reason. Hmm.
#2 mdmunoz says:
FF has never seemed like a Mac app to me. I’m not sure why.

Maybe because it doesn’t use Webkit, the Keychain, the Address Book, Automator actions, Mac widgets, Applescript, or Bonjour.

Or maybe it’s the way it refuses to antialias text.
#3 Brad Fox says:
I’ve switched back to Safari from Firefox 2.0.
Similar story to mdmunoz, something just didn’t sit right with Firefox.
#4 GCFiedler says:
Actually, FF isn’t an option for me on my G5 iMac. It consistently crashes. This sucks, because many secure sites I use won’t work with SAFARI. So Safari doesn’t really rock that hard.

The Mac client of Skype, though appreciated, has more problems with echoes (delay parallax?). We don’t have these issue when we Skype with Windows clients, headphones or not.

So, the grass is green over on the Mac side of the fence, but there are still plenty of dandelions on the lawn.
#5 sankar says:
Safari is byfar the best browser for MAC. The main week point i feel about Firefox is its inability to use ATSUI engine to render texts. And i feel, that makes the look and feel so “not-mac” like for Firefox. Otherwise its great browser in Intel Mac’s.
#6 Honza says:
I think FF is great, but I stick with Safari, even though I have to use PC at work (so I use FF there). Previous posters mentioned that something doesn’t feel quite right with FF, and I’d agree. It’s like a round peg in a square hole. Or maybe a more like a trapezohedron in a hole for a icosahedron, or maybe a…. sorry I need to go wipe the dribble off my chin.
#7 Horst says:
I prefer FF over Safari in general because of extensions like Firebug, Greasemonkey and Stylish which simply make my life much easier than their counterparts for Safari.

And doesn’t the Windows version of Skype support Socks5 proxies, which is a missing feature in the Mac version?
#8 sean says:
Safari is horrible. So annoying to optimize sites for.
#9 tdi says:
yes i totally agree. I am a new mac user (changed from linux), and i love the way mac apps are done. They are not overloaded with features, yet very powerful.
#10 Cristian Amarie says:
This Safari (beta 3 public, I mean) would be great if it worked on Windows:
- home machine, simply crash (illegal instruction)
- home machine, 3 monitors, maximized on middle, open File menu - appeards on 1st monitor
- maximize on 3rd, minimize, maximize - reappears on 2nd monitor. D’oh.

Windows apps may be cluttered, buggy, annoying, overloaded etc. But I never seen something like this on any Windows app just the Safari public beta 3 “experience”. I’m sure Apple developers can do better than this… until then, back to FF and IE.