RevStore

[Mark Swindell]

This is a very interesting post from someone who was in a position to know what was going on back then.  It confirms (at least for me) what I always felt to be the case, and why Apple ultimately let HC die on the vine.  Most coders of any language are not design experts, nor do they, of necessity,  have much going on in terms of artistic or aesthetic sensibilities.  Amateur coders maybe even less.  I recall getting shot down for offering this opinion about the dismal appearance of the majority of HC stacks on HC and SuperCard lists years ago.  For Apple to have its name attached to awful-looking, poorly-written hypercard stacks was just not a smart enterprise move, no matter how empowering the HC platform to "the rest of us."

The same can be true for Rev stacks, though clearly the toolkit for nice-looking apps is much nicer.  Many of the examples in the User section might rise to the level of perhaps good proof-of-concept demonstrations, but many, if not most, look unprofessional.  That's not a knock on anyone, it's a subjective observation, but one that I think would be confirmed by most disinterested 3rd parties.  (Does it then become objective?)  I'm referring here, by the way, to stand-alone apps for public consumption, not business-related utilities, which probably account for a great deal of the income generated off Rev programming.

I think a great problem for Rev stacks is that they are mostly created by one-man or woman shops.  There are not teams with project directors, artists, photoshop experts, animators, etc.  (Scott Rossi may qualify as a team, in this scenario, but he is unique.) This is both liberating and constraining, funny how that works.  If there were more collaboration between graphic artists, design experts and programmers, perhaps the output would be more aesthetically viable.  But now we're dealing in big budgets.

Of course, this doesn't even touch on the functional aspect of the software, which is, at the heart of things, even more important.  But while you may not be able to judge a book by its cover, you're more apt to open one up that is presented interestingly and professionally than one type-written on newsprint and held together with paper-clips.

Mark

> Le 2 mai 2010 à 04:13, J. Landman Gay a écrit :
> 
>> But with caution. I'm in favor of keeping it out of the spotlight until there are many more apps available, hundreds hopefully. A few meager offerings is not inspiring.
>> 
>> And they have to be quality offerings. As someone who had to review and release hundreds of HC stacks to the AOL libraries, I know that 99% of what came in was pure crap. Because HC was so accessible, everyone thought they were a developer. Avoidance of even the suggestion of a HIG was the norm. Radio buttons used as checkboxes or pushbuttons ("because I like how they look,") menus missing or out of order ("I don't need an Edit menu,") known commercial app icons (MacWrite) used for private stack purposes ("go cd images",) you name it. Virtually everything about these stacks was wrong. Outsiders scoffed. Rightfully.
>> 
>> And then there were the kids. I wavered between disgust and delight. Their stacks were invariably flip card animations done with crude line drawings, generally on topics humorous to nine year olds. "Kill Barney" was very popular, we had probably a dozen of those, not counting the rejected ones. The weapon of choice varied from guns (all models) to swords and knives; one stick man farted old Barney to death. We had to make a separate library for these and tag them with editorial code words like "simple line drawings" so that everyone else would know not to download them.
>> 
>> This lack of professionalism in HC stacks was one of the reasons it was rarely regarded as a serious tool, and it gave HC a bad name generally. The number of really good stacks was pretty small. Unfair as it is, the quality of the output often reflects on the tools used rather than the authors. If there is ever a Rev app store, it needs to have lots of files, all of which pass a certain standard of professionalism. That means someone has to check and verify every submission, which would open a whole other can of worms.
>> 
>> I confess though, in retrospect I really do wish I'd saved a copy of "Man Gets Beheaded By a Ceiling Fan." You had to be there.