radioSHARK v2.0

radioSHARK 2.0
radioSHARK v2.0

Well, it looks like they’re going to finally turn radioSHARK v2.0 loose. I’ve been waiting for this for quite a while, but now that it’s come to it, I’m actually pretty nervous. This was actually the first app that I wrote for Mac OS X and it has taken the longest to make it’s “official” appearance.

I personally like the new version (of course I may be just a bit biased), though I can see room for improvement, but that’s pretty much the case with every piece of software. Still I expect that more than one person will rip me to shreds in some review somewhere.

That has been the biggest adjustment since leaving GLW for Griffin. At GLW our users numbered in the dozens, and if they didn’t like something or wanted a particular feature, they spoke directly to us. Here I have thousands of (mostly) anonymous people using my software and the relationship very impersonal. If I want to find out what people are thinking I have to visit sites like VersionTracker.

Even if the majority of people like the software, they’ll always be some that, for whatever reason, hate it and will explain in great detail how bad it sucks and how the developer should be draw and quartered, his head placed on a pike in the middle of Apple’s Campus as a warning to future developers. Well, okay maybe not quite that extreme, but I do have a hard time with the criticism. It’s like someone telling you you’re baby is ugly. You would tend to take that a little personally even though the comment may have been completely anonymous. Anyway, something I’ll have to work on.

P.S. See, I’ve already been looking at the comments on VersionTracker. I can’t help myself. slbooks_dotmac mentions skinning the app and I have some thoughts on this. I would really like to rebuild the main interface using WebKit, ie HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It would seem to me that would present the lowest barrier to entry for people wanting to tweak or completely redesign their own interfaces. The only UI element that doesn’t lend itself well to this is the spectrum analyzer, but I’m sure there is a solution. Any radioSHARK users out there reading this that have an opinion on that idea?