There is a big ongoing discussion among the Mac developer community about the Delicious Generation — a group of new Mac application developers who seem to prioritize visual flair above everything else. (It’s especially delicious irony to name this “newbie” group after the product of a NeXT-era software veteran, but more on that later.)
In addition to Paul Kafasis’s analysis above, I’ve seen commentary by our friend Rory Prior, and by Erik J. Barzeski, Jesper Lindholm and others. These folks raise various points about the issue, some of which I agree with. But I have trouble with the notion that this is about developers; specifically about these new kids on the block who are not doing things the way they’re supposed to be done. That’s not the real story.
The real story is about what Mac software buyers want. Apple has conditioned them to require a visually rich user experience, and apps like Delicious Library, Disco and AppZapper deliver. Real people pay with real cash money to use these apps. It is not a fluke. It’s not going away. The market has changed, and that’s the story.
Ask the old school why these apps sell by the thousands, and they disapprovingly point to the “superfluous visual effects”. They are a waste of the developer’s time, and because of them, other features suffer. Because Disco includes a particle physics simulation of smoke, its file manager can only show six files at a time. But the market doesn’t care. It wants to be surprised and delighted by apps’ visuals, to a point where it’s willing to overlook serious underlying deficiencies in other areas.
This has the old school in a bind. They are quick to say that they’ve chosen against wasting time on superfluous visuals, focusing on impeccable user interaction instead. But that’s not really a choice. 99% of Mac developers have no alternative course of action. They just don’t have the design skills needed to create visually rich user experiences and hence are now busy downplaying their importance.
It seems to me that the commentary by those who lack the necessary level of visual design skill has closely followed the five stages of grief — I think we’re up to anger and bargaining at this point. Depression is likely to come when we finally acknowledge that a visually rich user experience is a hallmark of a 2006 Mac application.
The key to reaching acceptance, the final stage, is to look at what Wil Shipley, the appropriate father figure to the Delicious Generation, did with his business.
Perhaps you, too, should hire a Mike Matas.
Marko you don't mention the 'h' word - hype. The vast amounts of press coverage that Disco and friends have gotten is the real source of their success in terms of sales numbers. Any product that gets weekly mentions on very popular blogs gets serious sales traffic - I've certainly seen that when my apps have been featured prominently on Apple's download site or TUAW and I'm sure you've seen similar trends. You can make the argument that eye candy = hype, but I don't really buy that myself. I think the hype was generated using good old fashioned marketing techniques and that a bunch of different people grouped together to co-promote their wares and they made so much noise that a lot of the Mac blogs started to give them loads of coverage which got them all over the social networking sites so it snowballed. The moral of the story is that mediocre apps wrapped in eye candy are still mediocre apps and that you can sell anything if you market it enough. I don't think many old school developers are that interested in shipping mediocre apps and focusing on marketing as that's not where our hearts lie. We're hard core Cocoa fanatics and we want to ship amazing apps that sell on their merits rather than just their marketing. We absolutely should hire people like Mike Matas who know how to design great UIs though! ;)