My Dream App

hardest problem chosen by the finalists. everyone agrees that storage is moving to the cloud and i suspect anyone with multiple macs is anxious for this concept to come to life. however, i’d like to have seen less intrusive ui and for it to be directly integrated with os x (e.g., finder, spotlight, backup, etc..). i did like the mock-ups and felt that the more active-ux approach could be more appropriate for collaborative projects between users in a shared online workspace. for this to be successful either as multi-desktop sync or collaboration tool, you’ll be forced to introduce versioning, rollback, conflict resolution, etc… to the application. when you do, preserve that simplicity that you established in the rest of the ux.

I’m not in the target audience for this app (just have one Mac that I use), so I can’t say too much about this in terms of comparisons to existing solutions. But I will say this. Portal at its core is attempting to do file synchronization in a sexy, sleek way. (I love the portal visual concept.) And that goes a long way. See Disco.

A file synching with nice progress animation app idea. I think a solid synching app is needed because the solutions out there don’t fit my needs. Portal could fill that niche but seems to rely too much on fancy animations instead of building on a solid synching concept. The mock-ups have evolved to a more useful interface but I’m still not happy with them, but that’s just my gut feeling.

I’m a dot-mac user, so that’s enough syncing for me. Portal does look very sleek, so maybe that will entice some folks to latch on to it. It’s a good idea, just not my favourite (oops, I mean favorite!) of all the finalists.

I would pay for this. Just tell me where to send the money. When can I have it?

Farzad has probably done the most work of all the contestants to really flesh out a difficult concept for voters to get their heads around. The fact that Portal has come this far with as strong of support as it has attests to that fact. I do understand the limited appeal to those who only have one Mac and that is a liability as far as getting more solid support behind the idea. However, I don’t think that anyone has poked a serious hole in Portal’s overall usefulness, dare I say, necessity, to those that do have more than one Mac and need this type of syncing power. I believe Portal definitely qualifies for Dream App status, but I also understand it’s lack of appeal to those that just don’t need it. You either do or you don’t. Simply put, I can probably live without Portal, because currently, I am personally not in need. But I have worked in environments in the recent past and will probably do so in the future where I will definitely have need for this app. Therefore, I know there is a market out there and one that would see value worth parting with money.

In addition to doing a great job on a “hard to sell” concept, Farzad has been a tremendous asset to the MDA forums overall and I feel would be a good, contributing member of the development team taking Portal to fruition. As a caveat, like Ground Control, Portal is addressing a need that should have been addressed by Apple and as such, will probably be in constant jeopardy of Apple waking up to that fact and rolling the functionality into OS X 10.x. But, unless it is done, Apple won’t feel any pressure to fill the need and users will continue to suffer. While it’s always a chance, I say it’s worth taking. I have to admit that I’m close to the fence here because of the limited appeal, but I do fall on the Portal side.

The core idea of Portal doesn’t excite me too much. That said, with an animated wormhole interface and a properly thought out system, there is some real value here. Farzad has been blogging up different features and ways to handle different situations like mad — and it shows. This has all the signs of being a well thought out app. Perhaps its biggest pitfall, however, is that in accounting for all of these possible situations it might end up being complex. Again, not sure if the idea of file syncing constitutes a dream app, but it’s among the better full packages that have been presented so far.

Portal is an idea that I never really latched on to, unfortunately. In the beginning, it seemed to be little more than eye-candy (the whole wormholes thing), but Farzad has fleshed it out over time.

The problem is that what he’s fleshed it out into just isn’t the way I’d like to see synching work. In a nutshell, I’d like it to be as simple as SuperDuper is at backing-up your computer. I’d figure that 90% people who’d need Portal would only need it to sync two computers but the UI was designed with many features that just seem to overcomplicate what should be a very simple process.

One thing that I will say about Farzad is that all throughout the competition he’s been a great contestant. He’s been very professional and has participated a lot in his blog and in the forums.

I like Portal! I know there are tremendous challenges here and you’d think Apple would have been able to do a lot of this but it seems that there isn’t an easy way to get multiple machines just to sync the simple stuff… Like my iTunes music library automatically. So when I buy a song on one computer, I’d like to have it on all my AUTHORIZED computers automatically. Why is this so hard? Well, good luck on this one!

Until a few weeks ago, Portal was a nebulous concept to me, hard to grasp. Since then, the contestant has created mockups that helped me realize what an amazing utility this app could be. Portal was inspired by AppZapper, and wants to make it as easy to sync your files and application settings as it is to remove apps currently using AppZapper. I don’t have multiple Macs (yet), but if you do this app is almost certainly essential for you. In addition to being a very strong utility, the proposed eye-candy sounds quite enticing. I want to get it just to see the wormhole effect and the Mario Kart effect.

I also had a really hard time not putting this one into my list of “vote fors”. At the beginning of the competition, I was completely unenthusiastic about it. But since then, Farzad has put a ton of effort into it and has been amazingly polite, enthusiastic, and receptive along the way, and I’ve really warmed up to it as a result.

Is Portal needed? Absolutely! Do I want to write it? Nope. The concept just doesn’t excite me. Moving files back and forth ain’t sexy. The UI has promise, lots of it, but it ain’t there yet and the enthusiasm I have is mainly of the “could be” variety. The syncing animations (the wormholes) have never appealed to me, and I’m someone who likes gratuitous eye candy!

Coding Portal is moderately complicated as it involves lots of low-level file system notification stuff and lots of high level networking stuff. I think Portal would sell fairly well, but not hugely. And, unfortunately, nobody is going to wet their pants over how Portal has changed their lives.

I’d hit it, but I don’t have a crush on it.

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

Finally, Farzad seems like he’d be phenomenal to work with! As I said, his enthusiasm, receptiveness and amenability have all been first rate.

Don’t vote for Portal…

I like this very much since it is a problem that I have to deal with every day. One of the big problems to solve is dealing with failure in a graceful way, and being able to undo a partially-completed sync. The only thing worse than no synchronizing is partial syncronizing :-)

A question which still seems to be unanswered is what’s happening if there are conflicting versions of the files you want to synchronize? That’s an important issue for every synching app. Do you have a master setup where files from the master automatically overwrite the files on the other machines? Do you want to ask the user in case of a conflict and on what type of information is she supposed to solve the conflict? Portal needs a convincing answer to this question.

There are other applications that carry the promise of easy file syncing and as much as I want a really good syncing app, I don’t have any of them. The layout of Portal looks well thought out and very easy to use, even for the beginner. Throw in Apple’s Time Machine look and feel and I think you have the makings of a real killer application.

We’ve already got this with dot-mac, and even so, too few application developers support it. You think you can do a better job of corralling software vendors than Apple? You’ve spent way too much time on the eye candy, and way too little on the fundamental challenge of getting this to work at all.

I’m beginning to really warm up to this one after a lukewarm beginning. Farzad has been working his, uhh, rear portal off refining his user interface mockups, and the result is really beginning to pay off. I think that they’re still overly complex, but I can see where it’s going and how it could become compelling now.

Portal has switched from a meh to a yeah for me.

Sorry if I missed something, but is it possible for Portal to tap into .Mac syncing somehow? One thing I have a real need for is the ability to automate the synchronization of individual folders and files between all of the Macs I use with iSync and .Mac right now. That’s even more important to me than Bonjour support.

Farzad has been doing some absolutely excellent work on mockups for Portal. I don’t know why I’m not more excited about the idea. Between its usefulness and its fun factor (see wormholes), it should have me all hot and bothered. No clue why I’m not - it’s a good idea, Farzad’s conception seems flawless, and it’s needed.

I like this idea as I’d probably use it often and have been clamoring for some solid workstation mirroring for many years. Nice layouts for the most part (although I detest the bits derived from direction iTunes7 has taken - the scrollbars are particularly hideous and that blue induces vomiting, but that’s hardly contestant’s fault). I guess some might consider the vortex itself a bit much, but anything that makes my PC friends feel like they live in the past is good by me. The concept seems to almost be a no-brainer given Apple’s Time Machine, but the execution is solid and well thought-out. Yet another concept I would like to see become a real app - it’s becoming difficult to choose a favorite.

I still don’t understand this app. It seems like it’s all about eye-candy. Which is great. Except that syncing files is something you want to “just work”, invisibly.

That said, the eye candy stuff seems like a ton of fun, and it would be cool to implement with an open-API that allows users to create their own content by, say, inserting bits of video for particular bits of functionality, or by writing Flash.

I also worry about marketability with this one. A lot of people use syncing as a form of backup. Time Machine will suck that market away. A lot of people buy .Mac when they buy their computer. They won’t be very inclined to buy a second syncing utility. And, of course, a lot of people aren’t power-user enough to know that such a concept as “syncing” even exists.

Your UI mock-ups look OK cosmetically (although I find it fascinating that so many people already want to rip off the iTunes 7 look-and-feel) but they don’t convey how the app actually works. You need to simplify, simplify, simplify — the UI shouldn’t just look pretty, it should make it clear what the user is supposed to do.

You’re also glossing over some very difficult technical challenges. With Apple’s .Mac synching APIs, developers can write code to sync atomic elements, even if they’re stored in the file system in a largish database. For example, when I sync my Yojimbo database, only new and changed items get synched, even though the whole thing is stored in a 30 MB database. How will Portal solve this?

Portal is a cool idea but not new though. There are several applications out there offering synchronization but none of them really turns me on. Portal could be file synching done right. The “Wow factor” of this idea is definitely the wormhole metaphor for the synchronization process. Imagine a vortex where your files get sucked in and then spit out at the other side. I totally like the metaphor for this kind of action. Besides the interface key to this idea is to make its underlying file synchronziation bullet-proof. And this is going to be the hard part. Because lots of attempts in this area showed that it’s difficult to come up with a working synchronization scheme.

I like this idea as well. In fact, I’ve considered making such a product myself in the past and would be very grateful if someone else would take the idea and run with it! .Mac syncing is cool, but man- 99 bucks a year is a major turn-off for lots of people.

The different syncing profiles is a very cool idea, but I wouldn’t implement all four of them for Portal 1.0. I’d pick one or two, and develop the app around that and see how well it works. Since file syncing is a very hard problem to solve (as we’ve seen over the years by the various attempts), my suggestion for Portal is to have a basic 1.0 with a solid foundation to grow from. I also like the idea of animations depicting the transfer, and I say go with the stargate / wormhole idea instead of tornados (which tend to destroy things, don’t they?). Plus, I’m just a fan of Stargate.

A very useful concept, but since file syncing is something that probably should be built into the OS, it needs to be on guard against being pilfered or obseleted by future stuff at Apple.

Man, I need a cool file synching application so much. Portal is a cool idea but not new though. There are several applications out there offering synchronization but none of them really turns me on. Portal could be file synching done right. I need this for synching my home on my PowerBook with the home on my Mac at work. The “Wow factor” of this idea is definitely the wormhole metaphor for the synchronization process. Imagine a vortex where your files get sucked in and then spit out at the other side. I totally like the metaphor for this kind of action. It’s probably not a mass-market product because it pays off only if you work with multiple Macs or at least work some friend or colleagues on the network. But the cool interface would have mass-appeal.

As described in Farzad’s blog — the wow factor with different syncing animations could be great. I find it hard to believe that file syncing is still a major issue. Besides being able to move over preferences and other settings, I’m not sure what the point is for having a large app to handle it.

Again, a neat idea that is REALLY hard. Apple’s been slowly trying to do exactly this for years now, and they’ve had to back off several times as they inch closer to it. (And, notably, you can already sync iCal calendars — minus points for not paying attention.) Here are some problems with syncing files:

1) Where do you store the file so that the other machine can get to it? It has to be on a machine that’s accessible to both machines, which means you need a server somewhere, unless you want to force the user to bring the machines into physical contact to sync.

2) If you store this ‘master’ file on the net, you’d better have a darn good net connection, because lots of files that users typically use are several megabytes. Consider the average Photoshop or OmniGraffle document.

3) Trying to do file syncing of an app’s data files without an app’s knowledge is tricky at best, because you could launch the application on a machine when the file on that machine is NOT in sync (imagine the network is down, or slow) and proceed to innocently make changes, not realizing you are changing an older version of the file.

4) If you do make changes to both versions of the file, there’s no way for “Portal” to know how to sync up the changes for EVERY type of app in the world. With Apple’s syncing, they have certain well-defined types of files and have a protocol for resolving conflicts in them. But they can’t resolve, say, two Photoshop files or even two text files.

In general, Sync Services can pretty much do what this app is intended to do, except individual application developers are going to have to extend their applications to support it. There’s really not much of a way around this on a system where data files aren’t all structured.