Favorite Software Developers/Least Favorites?

[coius]

Favorite:

#1, BroderBund. MYST Anyone?

#2, MicroProse. Transport Tycoon is the best game I have EVER played

#3, Apple (last of them for a reason. They have been making computers obsolete faster than anyone else

Least Favorite:

#1, Microsft (although I like Windows 2k, Pro, and *sometimes* Vista, but Vista can be a PITA, on top of that, the 9x Series (Including ME) was atrocious. I mean, it was downright horrible. stability issues all over the place)

#2, Jagex (sorry, but even though they are a Java Based game for Runescape, but it got me hooked for a solid 2 years, and then they make the game horrible by making it down to about 1st grade level, despite teenagers playing it

#3, Blizzard. Although they have Diablo II for a good game, and a few others, but WoW, despite me playing it, they keep making machines obsolete quicker too (or components). it went from having 32 or 64MB VRAM (128 if you were lucky) Max, to downright needing between 256->512 to do anything halfway decent in the game. On top of that, their increased downloads for the game (mandatory) taking sometimes up to 600MB each, it's getting ridiculous. I am beginning to hate logging in because I fear having to wait forever to get the latest download...

At least they could have it load while you are in the game. what's the chance you are going to need it as soon as you log in?

 

[LCGuy]

I don't even know why the hell anyone needs 256MB of VRAM anyway anyway, to me 128MB seems gigantic! Sorry, but I just thing gaming in general is getting to the point where its just starting to get stupid.

 

[Christopher]

Everything these days that have something to do with a computer is getting stupid/ridiculous.

 

[Scott Baret]

Honestly, I can make do with 256K of VRAM if I want colour. 8 bit on a 512 x 384 screen is fine for me. 512K is preferred so I can see 16 bit on the same screen (which I like because I like to use photos of my friends and I as backgrounds--I even dither them for my Plus).

I almost forgot about AOL...anyone remember the old days when you spent five minutes going to a forum because you had to wait for artwork to be added?

 

[iMac600]

The above three posts I read over and over, well said. Computers these days are just stupid hulking boxes of overpowered and overpriced junk that we wouldn't even need if developers were more code efficient and if people would actually get off these machines every once in a while and see real life, instead of trying to simulate lifelike graphics with a the GeForce 59,000,000 GTI or whatever the hell it's called.

For the record another developer I wasn't keen on in the past is David Watanabe, he's a legend when it comes to UI design but far from it when it comes to supporting his products. Now though, that i've been in his shoes, I respect him a lot more. It's no question why he doesn't handle product support well because frankly, developing for Mac users is easy, but the users always want more and more until they expect supernatural features from a single developer, and it sucks the life out of you if you're on the receiving end.

Just my 0.02c.

 

[CaryMG]

Dephine, Ocean, Gremlin, DID, DoMark, LucasArts, Sierra & Origin !

:b&w:

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

There's too mucgh hate in this thread so I'm gonna just name some of my favourite OS X developers...

TextDrive (for TextMate - OS X's new BBEdit)

Plasq (for Skitch)

Red Sweater Software (for MarsEdit)

mark/Space (for Missing Sync - *the* way to fly Windows Mobile from a Mac!)

Blacktree (for Quicksilver)

Adium

The Transmission Project

Flickr (their Mac Client is as nice as easy as the web service)

Adobe - yes, they are money grabbers but their software *rocks*, if you work in an industry that needs tools like that it's worth every cent.

Apple - a couple of people have beat up on them but I have far to much Apple software that I flat out love. OS X + Aperture + DSLR = amateur photographer happiness. iWork 08 is flat out cool. OS X itself is great. Bugs happen, so get over it.

 

[bluekatt]

The above three posts I read over and over, well said. Computers these days are just stupid hulking boxes of overpowered and overpriced junk that we wouldn't even need if developers were more code efficient and if people would actually get off these machines every once in a while and see real life, instead of trying to simulate lifelike graphics with a the GeForce 59,000,000 GTI or whatever the hell it's called.


Just my 0.02c.

so why do we keep buying them then ?

you al might bitch and whine about it now but i bet there are very few people here who dont at least own one intel macintosh one ppc machine and at least one os X machine

 

[equill]

... but i bet there are very few people here who dont at least own one intel macintosh one ppc machine and at least one os X machine

Many PPCs (including G3s), perhaps. OS X, maybe, running even on G3s. Intels, not necessarily. I know of at least one such. Read not my lips, but my sig. I own nothing younger than six years old, despite that my wife has a G3/500, G3/600 and G4/1GHz.

Not everyone wants, let alone has, the latest.

de

 

[Scott Baret]

I do have a very recent Intel Mac for my OS X needs, but also keep around an old G3 (clamshell) for OS 9 since I have Photoshop Elements for 9. I also have several 680x0s (the ones I use the most at present are a Plus, an SE, a IIci, a Q700, and three Classics) plus a big old 486.

 

[iMac600]

If you NEED a latest system, then that's fine. Some of us do, for video editing or media production. Yes you can do that on a G3 or G4 but it will have you tearing your hair out.

The problem is when a word processor needs an 800mhz processor to run and 15 minutes to boot (Word 2004?), but has NO new or intensive features over the 1994 version that ran on a 486.

 

[Christopher]

dude Office 2004 on a macbook pro runs as good as it does on my pismo with 512MB of ram.

 

[iMac600]

You're running on a MacBook Pro? When it came out it was running on G4 and G5 PowerPCs. It ran well on some machines but it's still overkill for a word processor that had no real advantages over Office X.

Besides, it takes 15 minutes to load up on our Intel C2D iMacs, all 33 of them in the R37 Computer Lab.

 

[Cory5412]

Office 2004 takes forever to load on an Intel-based Mac because it's a rosetta app. in one photoshop test I ran, my G3/500 PowerBook "demolished" a 1.83GHz MBP, both systems had 512mb of ram. (The G3 got like 27 mins 30 seconds, the MBP got 29 minutes 30 seconds. Not the biggest difference ever, but the MBP was one year old, the G3 was six or seven.)

I use Bean on my iMac for text processing, and for anything really heavy, Office 2007 on my ThinkPad, it runs really fast.

[An actual post about software developers will come later tonight.]

 

[II2II]

It's kinda silly to say that new word processors have nothing on their predecessors. After all, Microsoft and Corel and Apple do have to convince people to buy the new product. And they do have to convince people, since Office is rather expensive.

I think that it is fair to say that most new word processors have few new features that many people will use. The few new features that will see heavy use will be things that the user has no choice in, like the user interface cleanup of Office 2007 or the Intel code of the latest Mac version. Or worst, people will be roped into upgrading for interoperability: the reason why people use Word over WordPerfect is much the same reason why people will end up using Word 2007 over Word 2003. Of course there will be specialist features that some people will use a lot. For example: I would imagine that the new equation editor is better than the stripped down version of MathType that Microsoft shipped with Word in the past (how can it be worse). There will also be a bunch of features that people will use once or twice, either for genuine labour saving or just to justify their purchase of the upgrade.

Over all though, I'm left wondering: why can't we have different products targetted at different needs. A student doesn't need mail-merge, unless there is a major case of plagiarism going on; a novelist is unlikely to embed images; a secretary doesn't have time to play around with word art or borders; a child would probably be confused by by VBScripting (that, or program the most successful macro virus ever).

Meanwhile these "you have to own this end all and be all product because someone is going to send you a Word or Excel attachment that won't work properly in a competitor's product" products suck for some users. The last version of Office I used (2003) was more painful to use than LaTeX+awk+gnuplot (masochistic Unix applications) for scientific applications. Researchers are still stuck buying a third party bibliographic manager to compliment a product that includes the kitchen sink, but apparently lacks some fundamental writing tools. And screen-writing software seem to be a popular category, so I suppose Word fails there too.

So why can't people give up on bloatware and just get specialized and lean applications. (After all, consumers are a large part of the drive in the market.) That way you can save all of that RAM and all of those CPU cycles for the important things in life. Like watching YouTube (or, in my case, Annenberg videos).

 

[Cory5412]

On the specific note of fundamental writing tools, Word 2007 now features (rather prominently, I discovered it within about an hour of non-directed playing with Word 2007) citation and bibliography management tools.

Right now, I've got to admit that I'm pretty happy with Microsoft. They offer really deep discounts for Students. Office 2007 is about $60 right now from theultimatesteal.com, and students can get Microsoft's developer tools and a copy of Server 2003 for free, which is pretty awesome. Plus, I've got to admit, Windows Vista kind of rocks. I've had it on the ThinkPad since September and it's been just about rock solid. I really don't need to (but probably will) reformat it. Even then, I'm waiting until summer, just so I can back everything up and do a proper job of it all.

Unfortunately, I really dislike to add dislike to threads like this, but I've got to admit, I'm really unhappy with Adobe right now. I've recently discovered that Bridge CS3 works almost infinitely better on Windows than it does on my Mac.

The Adobe thing is more of a personal complaint than anything else -- It's mainly the fact that I've now got no Mac-only apps, and the one app I expected to be awesome on my Mac, runs better on my cheap impulse-buy PC laptop than it does on my relatively high-spec iMac, and the nice iMacs at the School of Comm.