Fwd: Battling Windmills

[Kee Nethery]

>Stephen Somogyi writes "But Revolution's multi-platform support has 
>an Achilles' heel: the program's interface doesn't quite adhere to 
>OS X's conventions.  Revolution's Quit and Preferences options, for 
>example, aren't under its application menu; they're under the File 
>menu, as in the classic Mac OS."
>
>So let me understand this, Mr. Somogyi.  Prior to OSX it was your 
>position that all applications must have Quit & Preferences in a 
>File menu; but because Apple did it differently in OSX, now any app 
>with Quit & Preferences in the File menu is flawed?
>
>Is it just me, or is this garbage just one more example of the focus 
>on form instead of substance (read that lack of depth of research) 
>that is typical of software reviewers?
>
>And whether it is or not, I'll use a big flashing stop-sign-shaped 
>Quit button and no File menu if it suits the purpose of my 
>application.  If Mr. Somogyi and other "interface police" want to 
>focus on that instead of the substance of my application, I'll move 
>my focus to Windows...now that I can.
>
>Why is it that so many revolutions disintegrate into dictatorships 
>over time?  Apple gave its users the HyperCard hammer to destroy Big 
>Brother, then took the hammer away, and now hammers us to do it 
>their way.  Perhaps it's time to reread Animal Farm and vow to keep 
>the pigs from destroying the promise of our Revolution?


If you have ever written reviews for a computer magazine, please chime in.

Reviews have limited word counts. They cannot go into great detail. 
The writer has almost zero control over what ends up in print.

Reviews have to appear balanced. Unless the product is universally 
revered by everyone in the computing community, they have to point 
out at least one flaw.

Any publicity is good. The alternative is Stephan (that's with an "a" 
not an "e") writes a review about something else. Even a horrible 
review in a major magazine will increase sales. I've seen this many 
many times. This was by no means a horrible review.

So in the summary there are no cons listed, BE THANKFUL! Basically 
the behind the scenes message is "This is a pretty cool program and 
the biggest complain I can find is something that is so trivial to 
fix in the next revision and is not big enough of a complaint to list 
in the summary."

If you want to help Revolution, you want to look at all the positive 
aspects of the review. You want to thank MacWorld for doing the 
review (they paid Stephan real money to review this product that was 
fairly unknown to them). You want to thank Stephan for doing a great 
job on the review (he could have found more significant ways to 
compare it make people think it was not worth looking at).

Folks, this was about as good a review as Revolution could have 
gotten for it's first review. Be thankful.

Kee Nethery