My Dream App

The third choice was a toughie. It was Atmosphere, Whistler or Portal - I’ve been oscillating between all three for weeks. Basically, my formula saved me - Atmosphere is fairly simple to code and it will sell fairly well. But it ain’t gonna change the world… If the wind had blown slighly harder over New Zealand yesterday, Whistler would be in this spot.

That said, Atmosphere’s a pretty cool idea. And some of the algorithmic stuff would be pretty fun to code - fractal clouds, algorithmic snowflakes, sporadic OpenGL leaf surfaces randomly shifted and overlayed to build up fallen leaves.

And, I foresee a ton of creativity coming from graphics designers creating new desktop packages - we’ll have to make sure that we make the system really open and really easy to use, while remaining powerful. Unfortunately, Atmosphere won’t foster any creativity from users - it’s a passive experience for them.

Ease Of Programming: moderate
Potential Earnings: moderate
Social Good: low

Finally, Cameron seems only fairly good to work with. He’s enthusiastic, which is good, but he seems a bit less engaged than some of the other contestants. I get the impression he’s more interested in the cash than in making a great app.

Vote for Atmosphere!

Starting with its initial submission this was a plain and simple idea. It has evolved steadily over the weeks which has shown off in very nice mock-ups. The concept kept focused and to the point. It’s basically beautifully rendered weather information right on your desktop. Almost everyone I know wants this app and it’s also one of my favorites.

What’s not to like? I’d love to have this. I really like the composition features and the idea of using local weather to drive the composition is very cool. I’d also like to have support for webcams (with cool effects to sharpen or make the image more abstract), and time-shifting so that I could, say, have a desktop rotating between my favorite places around the world, but not have to look at a dark image at 10am here in California because it’s 7pm in Norway.

i’ve been enamored with the idea of “living desktops” to replace static wallpaper since i got tivo in ‘99 — i wonder why it’s not in more consumer products today. with the number of weather nuts out there, i’m certain there is an audience for this application. i like the unique approach to the visualization – it’s a creative departure from all of the widgets, websites and even tv news formats i’ve seen. i think the success of this app will come down to how good the ambient effects are and the diversity/customization of the compositions. some simple tricks like pan/zoom/flipping of the different layers during composition could make this feel less static. like many of the comments in the forums, i’d like a screensaver option and would prefer the different forecast favorites as widgets rather than the sidebar approach. i’d also like to see you allow people/businesses to publish their own themes. i’m waiting for the whistler/blackcomb theme – sign me up

Atmosphere is an idea that I really hated. Then I took a really good look at it and my perceptions changed wildly. I honeslty don’t know if it’s something that I’d ultimately use myself, but I can definitely see how the masses would flock to this in a big way.

Moreover, Cameron really seems to get it when it comes to UI design. Here’s a quote from Cameron’s Atmosphere blog:

“Features features features! We all know that people love to ram a lot of features into their applications. I do however realize that there is no way to please everyone, and I’d rather have an 80% market than a 100% market with feature bloat any day of the week…Even though there are hundreds, possibly thousands of ideas that you could add in an application like this, ultimately the purpose is to show you the weather at a glance, without being too annoying or gimmicky.”

This hits the nail square on the head when it comes to successful apps. What Atmosphere will lack in features, it’ll more than make up for in robustness. The details and subtleties are what will make this app enjoyable.

From a developer’s point of view, Atmosphere although doesn’t have any big challenges, it’d be a fun app to work on.

Next favourite was Atmosphere. This is what the Mac platform is rightly known for - Eye Candy! I would love to have realistic, dynamic starscapes as my desktop. I particularly enjoyed the details on the environment sliders. To lessen distraction, it would be good to see an option to control the speed at which transitions in the image happen. Generally, this sort of thing is, I think, better served as a screensaver, where you will actually see it, rather than as a desktop where it will be covered by a mass of windows. So an option to display as both desktop and screensaver would be great. That said, this isn’t something that I feel I would pay a lot of money for.

Lovely idea. Truly a Macintosh kind of application and great way to impress chicks.

Atmosphere popped out at me when I saw it among the thousands of entries we got, and among the other finalists, due to its potential to turn into something really, really cool. This is the type of app that’ll get your Windows using friends looking over your shoulder with jealousy.

I mean, speaking of potential coolness, just imagine showing your friends the forecast by literally fastforwarding the weather on your Desktop with a slider. Sign me up.

I have to be honest, I have tried to get into Atmosphere but I just have not caught the bug. A lot of people have waxed nostalgic about the “Bad Dog” days of After Dark. Well, there are reasons why screen savers aren’t so big anymore–they’re old. I realize Atmosphere brings a new, interactive twist with a subject that is always of interest to people (who can’t talk about politics or religion), but I just don’t think it meets the qualifications of a Dream App. It is nifty, no doubt. I would probably download if it were freeware, but I couldn’t see spending a dime of hard-earned money on it. I’m sure there are some who would, as evidenced by the staggering comeback it exhibited last week (sniff), but I am of the opinion that Atmosphere benefitted mainly by being a good optional choice among MDA faithful and a controversial favorite of those that came to MDA via the digg posts. Not to bash, but I would encourage anyone who came in the last two rounds just to vote for Atmosphere, to take a serious look at the other apps and then cast your votes.

As a voter, I would also be concerned that it seems to be in the process of being taken over by dexmachina and neglected by Cameron. Personally, I have been rather turned off by Cameron’s brazen self-promotion, the rather condescending posts of dexmachina, and extremely rude comments from its newfound fan base and while that shouldn’t disqualify a good idea, to me, if I were a developer, it would be indicative of things to come. Which also begs the question: who will the developers be working with should Atmosphere make it–Cameron, dexmachina, or…? Shades of Desktop Wars folly.

My thought is there is enough interest that this would probably get developed by another developer even if it doesn’t make it here. As far as I’m concerned, Atmosphere might deserve its day in the sun (pun intended) but not as an MDA app.

Atmosphere is an excellent idea. Whether we like it or not, so many of us glued to our our computers all day and it’s handy to have weather info at our fingertips (especially if you live somewhere, like Toronto, where the weather changes quickly!). I think this app would be a hit to a huge audience (”Everybody talks about the weather…”). And I love the idea of A Coverflow-like view, very slick.

I love it. It would be very cool to have this tuned to the weather in a specific location, updated automatically. It would be even cooler if the themes were targeted to specific places. I’d also like this as a screen saver and even to display as a widget in dashboard. Integration with weather cameras and live video feeds would be cool also. I want this one for fun and I’d probably have it running all the time! I have to say that it’ll be very boring during a dark evening with no moonlight and complete cloud cover. Does the desktop go black at that point?

Atmosphere is a good idea, but I question whether it belongs in the final three as a dream app. Yes, people are fascinated by weather. And yes, having a desktop that easily reflects your environment is a pretty good idea. But when people look at the weather they’re usually interested in the forecast, or the current temperature. They want to know if it’s going to be rainy or sunny, if it’s going to be hot or cold.

Atmosphere has gone a little different direction, with some brilliant ideas about showing you the eye candy, and the moon phases, and the clouds, and even rain or snow if it’s raining or snowing. That would be fun. But will people be willing to pay for Atmosphere, if it doesn’t have a really good way of showing you the forecast? Not to mention that pictures aren’t the best way to communicate temperature (whether it’s hot or cold). It can be sunny and chilly, or sunny and windy, or even rainy but hot.

Just a short comment this time: I want it!

My initial reaction was, don’t we already have this? but once I saw Kai’s beautiful illustrations I began to warm up to Cameron’s idea. Instead of a window, let’s make this a desktop with a constantly changing weather scene. People love weather apps, and there are already plenty to choose from. Atmosphere needs to do something really different to catch users’ imaginations: a weather enabled desktop works for me.

As a motorcyclist, weather is *hugely* important to me. I want to ride whenever I can and I check the weather constantly. Does that mean I *need* an app that will show me what kind of weather I’d experience if I went outside? No - but it’s nice to have. :)

Fun idea, i’d use it.

Beautiful, simple, and clever.

Unfortunately, it’s just what geeks need: One less reason ever to go outside.

I can see people pointing to this as a prime example of the type of advanced applications developers can do the Mac. As much as people might ooh and ahh at first, I’m not sure if most people would use it after the first couple of weeks. Having said that, I think this one is just too cool to pass up.

Atmosphere got an incredibly cool interface mockup this week courtesy of shadownight. At this point, all of the pieces are in place for Atmosphere - it’s easy to code, and I think it’s commercially viable. I hope this one goes far.

A very interesting and well-thought out concept, if it can be done without too much processor usage and the graphics are top-notch (which by the mock-ups they should be) then I could see this being incredibly popular. Or just wait a few years and processors will have more power than they need and it won’t even be an issue!

This idea has insane amounts of potential, which I’d love to see come to fruition! The only thing that’s even remotely challenging about it is coming up with content.

Seems that there are two options - one is to overlay the current weather on top of your existing desktop picture, so that droplets appear to be spattering against the backside of your screen. Any arbitrary desktop picture could be used with this approach.

The other is to modify aspects of a custom desktop picture with specially tailored content. For example, the sky of your picture would be sunny, or cloudy, or snowy, or clear with a full moon, or whatever is appropriate. This is harder from a content point of view, as the sky needs to be nicely masked out of the desktop picture - this cannot be automated. However, for someone familiar with Photoshop, this is very easy to do. I like this idea more.

But in either case, I want it on my desktop!

Beautiful illustrations, though what’s great about this idea is that it’s quite extensible with add on theme packs. Another thought, I’d like to be able to have the sun phases being drawn over my own desktop pictures, maybe with some rain being drawn on top of that as well. That mix and match quality allows for all sorts of experimentation on the users behalf. Another thought - you should check out DeskShade, a great little app that does similar things. Jan at MacRabbit got the interface right on it, it’s a great extension of Apple’s Desktop Pictures implementation.

This is something I’d enjoy seeing a few times a day but I’m not so sure if it can be anything more than just a gimmick. Most people prefer to have a flat and static desktop so they can focus on whatever they’re working on. I haven’t met anyone who actually use “Change picture every X sec/min/hour” feature in Desktop preference pane or even screensaver behind the desktop on a daily basis so it’s hard to believe that this product will still have its uses after the hype wears off.

From my experience as a pixel artist for Meteorologist app, one thing worth noting is how monster this project will be for artists. Tons of layers, detailed & high resolution weather effect graphics for each weather level. Apple’s 30 inch display features a massive 2560 x 1600 resolution so artists are going to have to work at that resolution first then scale it down. Also not to mention that not everyone have the same taste, some prefer cartoon graphic, others prefer photo-realistic so you’re going to need 2-3 different weather skin set for 1.0 release.

I like this idea very much. It’s focused and could be looking pretty good. I often launch dashboard to check the weather stats so I have to admit that I’m more or less addicted to weather forecasts and “weather pictures”. Merlin Mann put it right: People love weather pr0n. Getting people to buy it could be more difficult but John Gruber’s suggestion on this might be the right approach.

I’ve always been fascinated by apps that have attempted to do this on Windows, but they usually take up a huge amount of resources, have to be an app that you switch over to (and therefore forget about), or just don’t work like they claim to. If this could actually replace the desktop wallpaper and function in realtime, it’d be great. I wonder how processor-intensive that would be, though. And laptop battery life? Goodbye. This is something I’d definitely use, but I don’t know that I’d *keep* using it after the novelty wore off after the first couple of hours. The effects could be wonderful, but after my screen rippled a few times after being hit with the downpour of a rain storm, I’d quickly disable it so I could actually be productive. One of the biggest problems here lies in the fact that weather forecasts are not always accurate. It may say there’s a light rain, but be raining cats and dogs- or it may say it’s snowing when in reality it’s doing nothing at the moment. Plus, these do not accurately portray the volume of precipitation, thus making the incremental changes nearly impossible to represent. Plus, when the weather does not change for long periods of time, it could get very boring looking at the same thing. Then, what happens if I decide to have windows open and not stare at my desktop? I won’t be able to see what’s going on unless I invoke exposé or use my old weather widget (which displays an actual temperature reading, which is helpful).

If this were to become an app, I’d like to see it customizable in that there are various settings you can change. There could be a tropical background, beach background, woods, city, etc based on what’s closest to your actual environment (or what you’d prefer to look at). Additionally, being able to use it as more of a true window would be intriguing- having a living view of a scene with wind blowing, water tides rising and falling, etc.

People love fun stuff on their desktop, so I can definitely see people using this app. I’m not sure, though, that people would *pay* for this app — it’s the sort of idea that I suspect would be *wildly* successful as freeware but might not succeed at all as commercial software. I love the overall simplicity of the idea, though, so I’m definitely rooting for you.

Suggestion-off-the-top-of-my-head: Maybe make a free version where you can only use the artwork that comes with the freeware version, and a “pro” version that lets you use additional artwork bundles — both from you and from other users of the pro version.

I love this idea. There, I said it, are you happy now? Keep in mind that I am something of a weather nut, and that I work in an underground bunker (in an undisclosed location). Couple this with another minor obsession of mine, ambient devices, and Atmosphere is a winner. The whole idea of ambient devices is that they convey vital information to you in a very natural and non-intrusive manner. The weather displayed using my desktop is pretty much the best way to turn my iMac into an ambient weather station.

This could be useful. People love weather pr0n.

I’d love this to have something like Google Map integration so I could draaaaag across the Golden Gate bridge and drill down to what the weather’s like in the Marin Headlands tomorrow. Ever see what Dunstan used to do with current weather on his home page?

Atmosphere is a simply kickass application idea. I’m always tied to my weather widget. It’s the first thing I check in the morning before trekking out to class . Bringing that functionality to the desktop itself, with an air of captivating visuals. And yes, a random weather mode would be awesome. I’m from Texas, so a blizzard would be pretty cool on my desktop. Rock on.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this. While it’s definitely a cool idea from a visual perspective, it doesn’t offer much value to the user. What’s the benefit of this over looking outside or using a weather widget?

A very nice idea only clouded by the fact that I don’t get to see my desktop very often. In fact, I get to see the view outside the window much more often than my desktop with all the cluttered files and application windows obscuring the view. Maybe this thing should be made to float on top of the other windows and use lights, shadows, clouds and things like that to convey its message.

Initially I thought this was a silly idea. This is what windows are for, after all! I live in Vancouver, and the last thing I want to see on my computer when it’s dark and raining for months on end is more rain. Nonetheless, the idea of mutating the user experience to match one’s context in the physical world is pretty cool and hints at some more interesting possibilities.

Sounds kind of fun, but there are two big problems of which I can think: first, it’s not really interesting to just stare at the sun all day every day if you live in, say, Hawaii, and second (and related), most cities tend to have the same basic weather for months on end. If I live in Minnesota, I probably get tired of seeing snow outside all the time; I certainly don’t want it on my desktop for five months every year.

In the end, this is a solution looking for a problem. If I want to know what the weather is like outside, I just look up from my monitor for a moment. I can’t see spending months of my life trying to make that more efficient.

I don’t want my computer to reflect the weather when it is overcast, or for all those dark winter months.

Instead show me a japanese garden, a waterfall, a beautiful sunset, or the view as if my monitor was a window in a cabin located in the rain forrest, and I would love to run this program!