My Dream App

Stephen Christopher is an unabashed technophile, philosopher, and dedicated student of life. He is a servant leader by day, and manages the personal blog, A Random Pattern by night. He doesn't like cows, but does not endorse cow-tipping.

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.

Blossom is another great idea, that has the disadvantage of being a very hard sell. There are two reasons. First, the app seems like it will have a high starting curve unless there’s a really good way to have a strong starting curve for good and bad that works for most people. Even though the contestant has come up with a clever and quick way of customizing good and bad settings, i think it’s still probably be too much work for most people. This could probably be overcome. However, the second problem is that even with ray-tracing and dedicated processing it’s really difficult to get a good-looking plant, much less one that’s growing or changing every day. If the final Blossom looks like one of the procedural plants I’ve seen in various places, I just don’t think people are going to buy it. If it’s made by custom artwork, that’s a more viable option but then you have to have drawings of the plant in each stage and you can’t really animate it. The twin challenges of requiring a really good looking plant as the key to selling Blossom, along with a higher setup curve, compared to the immediate satisfaction or payoff that many people look for? That knocks Blossom out of my top three.

Cookbook excites me because, as a recent Mac switcher, it seems to me to be what the Mac is all about. Taking an app that’s obviously a good idea, but has never been done right, and doing it right. Not designing the app that is easy for developers, or that makes sense from a programming point of view or a technical person’s point of view, but making the app that does what the end user needs to do. For Cookbook that means letting me schedule my meals on a calendar, letting me schedule parties, letting me schedule holiday events. Then Cookbook automatically makes my shopping list the week before, with everything I need for my party, or everything I’ll need for meals that week. How obvious is that?! Yet nobody has done it before.

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.

This is easily the most exciting idea in the contest. Whistler is for everybody, though I didn’t “get it” at first. Just think of that song you’ve written, or that melody you came up with and forgot, or Garageband that you keep opening and wanting to use but are unable to get a melody line or something in there to start with. Whistler will be the missing piece of Garageband and iLife. You can make your movie soundtrack or your song melody with your voice, and Whistler will convert it to the instrument or instruments you want. There’s no better tool for letting the average iLife user get more out of their system than Whistler. Why hasn’t this been done already?