My Dream App

Austin Sarner has been developing in Cocoa for a while now and making Mac apps for even longer. His most notable contribution to the Mac shareware scene has been AppZapper, although he has also worked on a number of other freeware and shareware projects, including the much anticipated upcoming Disco. When not coding, Austin meticulously juggles his time between his other passions: Ukranian Nationalist folk music and keeping his hair straight.

View Austin Sarner's Blog →

The core idea of Portal doesn’t excite me too much. That said, with an animated wormhole interface and a properly thought out system, there is some real value here. Farzad has been blogging up different features and ways to handle different situations like mad — and it shows. This has all the signs of being a well thought out app. Perhaps its biggest pitfall, however, is that in accounting for all of these possible situations it might end up being complex. Again, not sure if the idea of file syncing constitutes a dream app, but it’s among the better full packages that have been presented so far.

Let’s assume for a second that HIjack can be done perfectly. Work with every forum system. Parse every attribute, avatar, signature, and customized element out there perfectly. For the people who visit a lot of forums, it would be a great tool — there’s absolutely no argument about that. The problem I see is that most people don’t read forums, and those that do tend to read under 5 or so. The only real value this app offers is to people who are browsing/participating in quite a few forums. While I’m confident a market exists (and the MDA voters probably represent a good amount of it), I can’t see average people visiting enough forums to justify trying out this app. Kudos to Kevin for coming up with a good idea with some amazing mockups, and it’s an app I’d love to use myself… just when looking at the target audience a “dream” app should have, this seems far too niche.

I like this idea a lot and the mockups Dan has posted have really convinced me that it’s possible to accurately gauge how much work you’re doing and how much goofing around you’re doing. I’d agree with some of the judges comments that todo integration with this kind of thing could be an amazing feature. Imaging beine able to check off a todo item with a high priority and seeing your plant buds flower. I tend to group Atmosphere and Blossom together as the two “status” apps. Obviously they are functionally different, but between the two I think Blossom has a lot more real world appeal. This is the kind of app that people won’t know they need until they see it and try it, and then if the cool factor kicks in properly they’ll be sold for sure.

Still not inspired by the idea of a GTD app. While I appreciate some of the comments the contestant has made regarding simplicity and scalability… I still fail to see how a GTD app can scale well. I’m looking for a good organizer, but I don’t think GTD is the solution.

People are going to hate me for saying it but I’m not really a fan of this idea. The obvious is that it’s going to be nigh impossible to actually make it work with a majority of forums out there. Assuming it’s possible to pull some magic and get the compatibility to a decent level, I still see no benefit to browsing through your forums in this interface. I’m all for Front Rowing things but if you can’t reply and be part of the community with it, what’s the point? The standard browser looks just like Mail and fails to inspire me at all. I realize the core idea is decent, but it just seems like it all relies on some non existent forum web service. And really, even if it appeals to a bunch of readers here, how many people actually read that many forums? I don’t see how a dream app can have such a small target audience.

I totally love this idea and can only imagine how fluid and seamless the entire music making process would be. I really want this app to be made just to play around with it. The entire interface is simple, straightforward, and focused around sampling audio input and spitting out nice sounds.

The most recent mockup that Andrew posted looks cool, but I honestly hope this is eliminated. The whole idea seems to have been run down by people on the forums who don’t take into account real possibilities. A nice, straightforward, randomized, and fluid battle on your desktop that starts every once in a while is cool — Command & Conquer 25 Mac OS X edition is NOT.

I go back and forth with this one because it’s really hard to gauge how I can feel about a Dashboard competitor. I’ll stick with what I’ve said in the past, though, and that’s how much of an overall better design this seems to have. Instead of focusing on meaningless custom designed widgets, this adds a lot of structure and integration to all of your status indicators.

Blossom is a neat idea. I have to say that I was unsure of how easy it would be to define what productivity means to you, but the latest mockup proved me otherwise. If it is really that straightforward to tell Blossom what to qualify as work and what to qualify as goof off or play time, then I have no doubts about the cool factor of having a plant grow.

Whistler seems like a really neat idea. Creating music in such a dynamic and straightforward way appears to be a surprisingly untapped area. While the app is entirely dependent on its implementation to prove that its worth using, the idea definitely gets me thinking. I, for one, would have a blast just tapping my desk and hearing it play the notes back.

I hadn’t taken a good look at Ground Control’s potential until recently. My initial reaction to a Dashboard replacement can only be described as lukewarm — that said, after seeing the mockups, my opinion has been swayed significantly. It is clear that Russel has this app thought out from the ground up. If the plug in API is simple enough (or, hell, if there is a simple IDE bundled with it), then I think this could be real killer. I don’t use Dashboard, but I want to… and I would if it didn’t suck, so maybe this can fill my needs.

Stick-It is a logical progression of the metaphor Apple created with their original implementation of Stickies. If I can drag a sticky note on to my desktop, why can’t I drag it to a window or a menu item? Stick-It fills this hole If it can be implemented properly on both a per application, document, tab, menu item, etc. level then I would use it in a heartbeat.

Once I sat down and thought about this one I really saw the potential. This is definitely a neat idea that can take advantage of a bunch of different technologies that you wouldn’t outright assume make good combinations.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this. While it’s definitely a cool idea from a visual perspective, it doesn’t offer much value to the user. What’s the benefit of this over looking outside or using a weather widget?

As crazy as it is, I think this app could fill the right kind of niche to bring more people to the Mac.

Telepath is a really cool idea on the outside but it would require a lot of time on he user’s end to set it up and make it work for them. Like Minerva, it is only as valuable as how much effort you put into it. There is potential here, I’m just not sure if people are ready to give up previous SMS messages to email notifications they don’t need.

Could be a great interface but it would be hard to make a visual metaphor like this work over the more ergonomic likes of NewsFire or Safari RSS.

Chatboard is a great idea that takes SubEthaEdit to the next level. I am constantly writing stuff with colleagues in SubEtha and I’m ready to take things to the next level.

While it’s beautiful and would certainly be a nice interface, I can’t imagine reading a book on a screen. Maybe when 400dpi displays come out…

When you look at how well something like Comic Life did, it’s not hard to appreciate Puppet Constructor. The contestant has posted quite a few cool ideas, and, if nothing else, it would be a fun way to not get things done.

I really like the interface potentials for this and I’m sure it could have some really cool features… but who wants to read a book on a computer screen?

As described in Farzad’s blog — the wow factor with different syncing animations could be great. I find it hard to believe that file syncing is still a major issue. Besides being able to move over preferences and other settings, I’m not sure what the point is for having a large app to handle it.

This is one of those apps that you never think you’d get excited about… but with some of the features Michael is talking about, this could be the be all and end all of recipe/meal management on your Mac. iTV is bringing your mac to the living room so why can’t CookBook bring it to the kitchen?

Sounds like Dashboard done right to me. Reminds me a bit of Statoo from Panic, and this could be a slick app with a decent module community behind it.

GTD is a buzzword these days, and there are a steady stream of GTD apps coming out. Omni’s, the Midnight Softworks one, and I’m sure plenty others. I think there is potential for an app that can introduce the GTD system to the user in a seamless way — but fully implementing something as complex as GTD makes learning the app as bothersome as actually getting your tasks done.