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[Burt Hazard]

Good idea, they could even design it to look like an animated cow that would “graze” through the entries…and late at night, in between all the UNIX housekeeping chores, the FCP yak could enter into philosophical discussions with it.

[Solie Swan]

🙂

[Mitch Ives]

Given that fixing the broken “Q” function in Safari seems to be a low priority, I wouldn’t count on it. I’ve learned in conversations with them that the COW is (surprisingly) a PC oriented operation…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com

[Kathlyn Lindeboom]

[Mitch Ives] ” I’ve learned in conversations with them that the COW is (surprisingly) a PC oriented operation…”

Unfortunately, it seems the coders prefer pc. Ron and I are both on macs.

Kathlyn Lindeboom
The Mistress of Mmmooooo!

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Mitch Ives] “I’ve learned in conversations with them that the COW is (surprisingly) a PC oriented operation…”

Mitch:

There are many things wrong with this statement:

• First, I can’t recall having conversations with you in which we said that we are PC oriented. .
• Second, I doubt highly that we show a “PC slant” as both Kathlyn and I use Macs — Kathlyn has a PC but my PC was given to our coder. I just didn’t use it much anymore.
• Third, the reason that there are a few features that PC users have here that are not available to Mac users is due to the fact that MicroSoft’s JScript supports functions that, until now, simply were not available in JavaScript.
• Fourth, the reason that the “Q” function is broken in Safari is due to Apple changing things again and we are replacing this interface and have little interest in putting more work into it.

But please feel free to think whatsoever you wish, I’ve come to expect that from human nature — but at least it’s consistent.

Best regards,

Ron LIndeboom

[Mitch Ives]

[Ron Lindeboom] “There are many things wrong with this statement:
* First, I can’t recall having conversations with you in which we said that we are PC oriented. .”

You may not remember Ron, but that wouldn’t alter the facts. We’ve had conversations at DV Expo and NAB. I learned that other than you and Kathlyn everyone else is using a PC. The post right before yours from Kathlyn would seem to support that point. At this year’s NAB I asked the tech in your booth (before you arrived) about the “Q” function being broken again and his response was “I don’t know, I only use PC’s”.

I don’t see my post as something to be defensive about, it just explains the ongoing “Q” issue, and suggests that development of a Mac Widget would probably be a low priority.

[Ron Lindeboom] ” * Second, I doubt highly that we show a “PC slant” as both Kathlyn and I use Macs — Kathlyn has a PC but my PC was given to our coder. I just didn’t use it much anymore.”

I don’t believe I used the word “slant”. That would indicate a bias or preference towards PC’s. I never got that from you or Kathylyn. Still, the fact remains that the tech side of things is PC based and tends to not always be aware of things like the broken “Q” function or strange screen redraws on the Mac.

[Ron Lindeboom] ”
* Third, the reason that there are a few features that PC users have here that are not available to Mac users is due to the fact that MicroSoft’s JScript supports functions that, until now, simply were not available in JavaScript.

* Fourth, the reason that the “Q” function is broken in Safari is due to Apple changing things again and we are replacing this interface and have little interest in putting more work into it.”

This is an issue all owners of web sites face. I own another business where the site is very complex. We face as many issues with IE on the PC as we do with Safari on the Mac. Being in business, I insist that the web site coders have Macs and PCs to test with. Something that doesn’t work properly on a PC is no more acceptable than a Safari issue, but then that’s just us.

Your explanation for why you won’t be fixing the “Q” function makes sense… it might have been good to see a post explaining that?

[Ron Lindeboom] ”
But please feel free to think whatsoever you wish, I’ve come to expect that from human nature — but at least it’s consistent. “

Not sure what that means… I don’t think anything other than the fact that a Dashboard Widget probably isn’t high on your priority list, which makes perfect sense… it wouldn’t be if I were in your shoes either.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com

[Curtis Thompson]

mitch…

there is no and never has been a lower interest level at this site for mac users than pc users. ron is enaging you in a longer discussion of this point, but the bottom line is that there is no difference.

i have the q function in my list of to-do’s. i do not work at the cow full-time, and so unfortunatley, there is a bit of a lag time sometimes when certain os or browser upgrades break functionality.

it should be resolved this week. in the interim, please let’s just end the discussion of a “pc bias” at the cow because it’s just not there.

sitruc

Curtis Thompson
Technical Director
Creative Cow

[Mitch Ives]

[Curtis Thompson] “mitch…

there is no and never has been a lower interest level at this site for mac users than pc users. ron is enaging you in a longer discussion of this point, but the bottom line is that there is no difference.

i have the q function in my list of to-do’s. i do not work at the cow full-time, and so unfortunatley, there is a bit of a lag time sometimes when certain os or browser upgrades break functionality.

it should be resolved this week. in the interim, please let’s just end the discussion of a “pc bias” at the cow because it’s just not there. “

Curtis, I’ve reread my posts. At no time did I ever indicate that I thought there was a preference for PC over Macs on the COW (just look at all the Mac program based forums). The COW like many businesses use PCs on the development side of the site. This is a fact, but doesn’t need to be a point of contention.

I do think users of any site should point out when something isn’t working right on the Mac (or PC), in case it hasn’t been seen by the coders. This is the same on any other sites. On our sites, we get emails on problems with PC IE as well. It’s called communication. In the case of the “Q” function, it’s been broken since 10.3.8 or 10.3.9. I waited a few weeks figuring it would be discovered… then wondered if anyone had pointed this out yet, so I mentioned it at NAB. It’s not the end of the world, we all have FireFox to use (though it suffers from ongoing security problems). At the same time, to be fair, this is not the first time we’ve experienced this problem, so it’s not like Safari users are hypersensitive. I also know that it’s been a pain for you to have to fix it more than once.

Returning to the actual topic of this thread… which was about a Dashboard Widget for OSX 10.4. My point was dropping everything to develop a Dashboard Widget isn’t going to be a priority for a lot of companies, the COW included… nor should we expect it to be… at least not until they are universal on both platforms. That was the topic of this thread and the point of my post.

I never used the word preference or bias, but it appears that when refering to the operations side of the COW, someone took that to mean I was insinuating that there was a preference. Perhaps I should have been more specific… but it also appears that there might be some sensitivity in that area that I managed to brush up against.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com

[Mitch Ives]

Curtis,

Forgot to thank you for working on the “Q” function. Didn’t want you to think your efforts aren’t noticed or appreciated…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Mitch Ives] “You may not remember Ron, but that wouldn’t alter the facts. We’ve had conversations at DV Expo and NAB. I learned that other than you and Kathlyn everyone else is using a PC. The post right before yours from Kathlyn would seem to support that point. At this year’s NAB I asked the tech in your booth (before you arrived) about the “Q” function being broken again and his response was “I don’t know, I only use PC’s”. I don’t see my post as something to be defensive about, it just explains the ongoing “Q” issue, and suggests that development of a Mac Widget would probably be a low priority.”

Hi Mitch,

I remember you quite well, thank you. But what I still do not remember is even remotely insinuating that we are a PC-sentric site. We try very hard to be balanced and while Kathlyn and I use Macs, predominantly — Eric (whom you spoke to at NAB) uses PCs and Curtis uses both Macs and PCs. So the preponderance of bias (if there were one, which there isn’t), would be more readily made for a Mac bias.

The balance of the team are Linux-based and mostly are there for security and overall sys admin functions and so if it were up to them, we’d all likely be open-source and commandline. They are hardly what you might call “PC cnetric.”

So, final score on the Cow’s interface and development team:

• Mac users: 2-1/2
• PC users: 1-1/2

If we have failed to inform people of a broken “Q” function, our apologies — it’s just that we are quite a small group trying to do many, many things and the fact is, things get dropped all the time. (It’s the nature of trying to do this big an operation with such a limited amount of resources.)

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom