App Ideas

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Does anyone have any ideas for applications that you would like to see built? This could be something that doesn't exist at all, or just something that hasn't been done well in the past.



Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    I do. It is a really good one.





    Eric
  • Reply 2 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by aplnub

    I do. It is a really good one.





    Eric




    Tease.
  • Reply 3 of 18
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    It is so good I would like to tell Apple and them tell me, here is a check, it's our idea now.



    Eric
  • Reply 4 of 18
    how bout an app that *actually works* that detects when your powerbook and g5 are on the same rendezvous network and syncs up your itunes libraries. i have yet to find and app like that that updates files, ratings, and play counts correctly, aside from me manually moving crap over which is annoying. i would like to be able to download stuff from iTMS on my 'book, make some playlists, change ratings, then maybe buy some different songs on the g5 before i wake my 'book up at home, then have all of it sync up when i do wake up my powerbook.
  • Reply 5 of 18
    Here are a few ideas that I thought through, but I don't think I will get the chance to work through:
    • an easy to install LDAP server (packaged) with rendezvous support so that addressbooks would be easy to share.

    • work on a way to provide a rendezvous service to notify computers on a network of routers advertising as network gateways, and automatically add those gateways to the routing tables so that you could create add-hock networks that intelligently configured themselves to include routers (nice when your boarder routers might switch or go offline at any time...). Think of it as distributed DHCP.

    • an app to provide a GUI for starting/stopping/restarting StartupItems. This would read the two statup locations and offer an easy way of managing them. Bonus points for also looking for the switches to turn them on and off, and for being a preference pane.

    • an apache module to reverse-proxy any websites that it detects via rendezvous (this is probably the most difficult as it requires dynamic reconfiguration of mod_proxy... and I am not sure that mod_proxy is up to that). Bonus points for a control panel to configure this (exclude or includes lists, what interfaces to serve to and look to, etc...)

    • a GUI tool to setup ssh "authorized_keys" files on remote machines to allow password-less logins (this is probably the easiest... but a solid setup would be more difficult). Bonus points here are for allowing for setting the users on both local and remote, and for handling all of the different error cases.

  • Reply 6 of 18
    I remember readings something about a way to share an address book with LDAP but i have no clue how.
  • Reply 7 of 18
    Jwink3101: Addressbook.app->Preferences->LDAP... however that does not provide the LDAP server configured for sharing the entries you put in. MacOS X does ship with slpd (the OpenLDAP daemon), but it is not configured, let alone an easy configure.
  • Reply 8 of 18
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    I was going to start another thread on this, but I'll save two clicks of the mouse and post it here.



    The world of Web development is in a complete mess and I'm convinced that only Apple can fix it.



    I understand that this means alienating Adobe again by putting GoLive out of its misery, but it's the better alternative than the rest of us experiencing the misery ourselves.



    And before the Dreamweaver crew jumps in to say how great that app is, let me say: It's not.



    This is 2004 people. I can edit videos for broadcast without learning code. I can typeset a whole publication without learning code. I can create a song without knowing how to code.



    But to maintain a decent website remains solely in the hands of the geek parade.



    Web Design is a rapidly expanding genre ruled by mediocre technologies.

    GoLive needs to go away, as does Dreamweaver, Flash and FrontPage.



    If InDesign, Quark, Final Cut and a gazillion other apps don't require you to learn code. Why should web design apps. Learning to program code in order to use an app is so 1994.



    Apple needs to create a web design app that banishes the ability to even tinker with code. If HTML won't do, create an alternate and openly distribute it, like Darwin, or OpenTalk etc.



    I want easy access to all the pages of the site using the sidebar iTunes interface, and the ability to accept plug-ins that third parties can support.



    I want options. I want to easily generate dynamic content, and all the bells and whistles - manage ads, opinion polls, Quicktime broadcasts, even plug-ins to create and manage forums like this one.



    All without any need to know how to code. It's the Mac way.
  • Reply 9 of 18
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    Forgot Blogging.



    Any Web Design app should include built-in blogging support.
  • Reply 10 of 18
    iNote

    Innovate, easy, intuitive, single-window, awesome note-taking application. Perfect for students and appointments. Perfect for Tiger's Spotlight. Share them via Rendezvous (err... OpenTalk?), publish them on WebDAV, or even synchronize them with Exchange. Even Entourage doesn't synchronize their Notes feature with Exchange, how pathetic is that? Apple already added Exchange support to Mail and Address Book (via iSync), it's time they expanded it to other apps like iCal, iNote...



    iWrite

    Apple already trademarked this one. I'm hoping it's around the corner soon. Finally, a decent Word alternative yet still fully compatible with the .doc format.



    Excel Killer

    It's about time. I saw that Quantrix Modeler demo and my jaw dropped. Why hasn't anyone done this before? Shows how much innovation Microsoft has put into Excel (lack thereof). Too bad Quantrix is $1000.



    Backup for non .Mac users

    I don't want .Mac, but I sure would like to use Backup. I don't need something incredibly complicated, just simple and robust to backup data on my server at work.
  • Reply 11 of 18
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Karl Kuehn

    Jwink3101: Addressbook.app->Preferences->LDAP... however that does not provide the LDAP server configured for sharing the entries you put in. MacOS X does ship with slpd (the OpenLDAP daemon), but it is not configured, let alone an easy configure.



    What does slpd have to do with LDAP? slpd, as the name suggests, provides SLP (Service Location Protocol), not LDAP.
  • Reply 12 of 18
    I agree with iNote . It should be easy to take notes, share them, upload them, and have an outline feature that is easy as well. Then, because it is an XML format, you can print them from templates.
  • Reply 13 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bborofka

    iNote

    Innovate, easy, intuitive, single-window, awesome note-taking application. Perfect for students and appointments. Perfect for Tiger's Spotlight. Share them via Rendezvous (err... OpenTalk?), publish them on WebDAV, or even synchronize them with Exchange. Even Entourage doesn't synchronize their Notes feature with Exchange, how pathetic is that? Apple already added Exchange support to Mail and Address Book (via iSync), it's time they expanded it to other apps like iCal, iNote...




    granted, it doesn't sync to anything, but omnioutliner, which has come free on every mac i have purchased, is absolutely a perfect note-taking app. i laugh when i see Word open on other laptops.
  • Reply 14 of 18
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Frank777

    If InDesign, Quark, Final Cut and a gazillion other apps don't require you to learn code. Why should web design apps. Learning to program code in order to use an app is so 1994.



    While I totally agree that we could use a nice, simple WYSIWYG web-site-creating app for novices, we will never reach the point where knowing HTML code is irrelevant for web publishing, no matter how slick the WYSIWYG app. The reason is that code is the nature of the beast. In all the examples you mention - page-layout, video, etc. - code has nothing to do with the graphical final output. But for web design, code *is* the final output. Code is what gets sent from the server to the client. The browser interprets that code to display something on the screen. The code is the product, so to know the product means to know code. There's no escaping it, unless the web one day transmorgrifies into some bizzaro interactive-PDF format, where the rendering is done server-side instead of client-side. But the bandwidth won't be there for a while yet.



    Now, on the same page as a nice, simple WYSIWYG web-site-creating app for novices, I'd like to see a nice, simple, WYSIWYG development tool for novices. Interface builder is already half-way there, but it obfuscates its potential simplicity with a mountain of irrelevant (to the novice) capabilities. It would be cool to see a program-development app which is all WYSIWYG and drag-and-drop, where you can describe what little logic you need in almost-plain-English. True development for the masses. Like Hypercard of yore. We'll see if Automator winds up covering much of this territory.
  • Reply 15 of 18
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Towel

    While I totally agree that we could use a nice, simple WYSIWYG web-site-creating app for novices, we will never reach the point where knowing HTML code is irrelevant for web publishing, no matter how slick the WYSIWYG app. The reason is that code is the nature of the beast.



    Postscript is code, too. It's a programming language, and you can fire up an editor and write postscript code just as surely as any other kind.



    I think that the whole "web" thing has gotten intricate enough that one application is insufficient to the task. There's no reason you couldn't have several apps collaborating on a project the way you do with Mail/Address Book/iCal, or AppleWorks, or iLife. The individual apps would be a lot easier to use for being focused, as well.



    There are two larger issues, from my perspective. First is, the legacy of the "browser wars:" Broken, mutually incompatible, bug-ridden crap for rendering engines strewn all over the landscape. The end result is that you aren't just outputting a programming language, you're outputting spaghetti code that tries to determine which dialect of which language to use when, and which settles for the (invariably hideous) least common denominator whenever possible.



    Second is the limitation of the medium. Even now, the app couldn't be drag-and-drop, it would be drag-and-search-for-a-way-to-make-that-work-without-taking-forever- and-drop-there-or-somewhere-nearby-or-error. This, combined with the absolute (and important) privilege that the client has to decide what it will parse how, means that it's a lot of work to put together a dirt-simple web design app even if you stick to modern standards.



    Has anyone used Freeway? I haven't used it myself, but it seems to get pretty good reviews as a design app. It's apparently aimed at DP types more than total novices, but still, it's an alternative.
  • Reply 16 of 18
    I'd like to hear more ideas about the iNote app. I am just finishing my first Cocoa books, and want to start an open source project. This is kind of what I was thinking, but since we all think differently some different perspectives would be cool.
  • Reply 17 of 18
    I have to say that i like Dreamweaver but that is simply becuase there has yet to be another app better. There could be and i await the day but until then DW is fine.



    I love Adobe PS so i was very upset at how horrible goLive was.
  • Reply 18 of 18
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Seems like there are some problems with making newer content presentations like CSS WYSIWYG too. People have requested that Stone's Create, which outputs to printer/pdf and html, pick up on the CSS/XHTML thing, but Andrew says that it would tear up the whole Create integrated drawing/print/web thing.
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