> On Sat, 2009/06/13, Grant Erickson <erick...@umn.edu> wrote:
> From: Grant Erickson <erick...@umn.edu>
> Subject: Re: Coming up with ideas
> To: "Graham Cox" <graham....@bigpond.com>
> Cc: cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com
> Date: Saturday, 2009 June 13, 11:13
>> On 2009/06/12 23:34, Graham Cox wrote:
>>> On 2009/06/13, at 13:27, WT wrote:
>>>> On 2009 Jun 13, at 04:36, Graham Cox wrote:
>>>>> On 2009/06/13, at 12:30, Development wrote:
>>>>> Hey, how do you guys come up with ideas
>>>>> for new programs?...
>>>> I wish I had your problem ;-) I come up with
>>>> ideas for new apps several times a week.
>>>> I'm going nuts trying to figure out how
>>>> I'll ever find time to implement them
>>>> without dozens of developers!
...
>> Well, most of them reflect two things:
>> a) my interests and
>> b) the lack of certain categories of affordable
>> software on the Mac.
...
>> a) really good CAD software that was in a
>> hobbyists price-range but was of professional
>> quality and a true OSX app, not a crappy port
>> or half-baked shareware effort
> While it is still not as good as Illustrator
> at what it does and still not quite as good
> as Claris CAD at what it did, I found
> IlexSoft's HighDesign...
> VersaCAD, Graphite, AutoCAD, Canvas,
> PowerCADD, ArchiCAD, MacDraft, and
> VectorWorks when considering both value and
> ease-of-use.
I've been longing for a good, inexpensive app
along those lines, too, since working on one
years ago. We had over 200 developers working
mostly on one CAD/CAM product, but with others
working on integration with others' specialized
packages, e.g. for plastic mold design and the
CAE packages.
The best I've seen have disappeared from the
markets or cost a king's ransom (ours was $100K
a pop, as I recall, but you could have 64 or
more designers using it). The ones I've run
across more recently are mere toys, and
cumbersome at that.
I've thought about what it would involve, and
turned back each time. Neither the Quartz
nor OpenGL libraries/frameworks lend themselves
to it. In some ways it was simpler way back
when drawing consisted of sending escape
sequences to graphics terminals, and it didn't
require standing on your head to draw something
elsewhere than the view origin; you just said
"draw an ellipse with foci there and there",
or "draw a circle inscribed in the triangle" or
"draw a circle with center there, in that part
of the sky-scraper and with radius of
2 millimeters and parallel to the current view
plane".
Others would be to see gimp ported to use Quartz
instead of X11 or whatever, better bidness
graphing programs, outlining/writing assistants,
reading/writing teaching programs & games,
poor man's GIS, more graphical report options
for genealogical info, EASY to use encryption/
decryption, bibliographic data-base, games that
did not skimp on physics but ditched the speed
gimmicks, weather-watching app that would let
me watch an imagery loop that lasted 30-120
seconds instead of skimping and showing a jerky
5-second loop, handy integrated program for
sending out resumes and tracking when which
version was sent to which e-mail address
(I'm using iCal and AddressBook and MarinerCalc
and TextEdit and lots of copying and pasting,
and file selecting, now; but would much prefer
to just click on a dozen check-boxes, and then
a "do it" button, and have it keep track of
which ones bounced, too ;B-) and a handy
data-base to keep and share my black-list
of firms with unethical practices (though I
suppose a group in AddressBook would suffice).
"The best way to have a good idea is to have
a lot of ideas." --- Linus Pauling (quoted
in Martin Edelston & Mary Buhagiar 1992
_I Power_)
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