🚀 go-pugleaf

Jeff,
 
I agree with your points about the resources required to support MacApp, and
would like to add a few of my own.
 
This most recent epistolary tempest once again demonstrates the diversity of
MacApp users and our needs and wishes. Some of us cry for stability and
guaranteed fixes (Bernadette's link about 8 person-weeks to do a test surprised
my only by being lower than I would have suspected). Others want performance
modifications, incorporation of new OS features (GX, OCE, etc.), and still
others are breathing down the throat of cross-platform support.
 
MADA is not an appropriate organization to support MacApp. What MADA is
appropriate for is formalizing our requests/complaints/wishes, etc. I would
like to see MADA collect our wishes, complaints, etc. on a routine basis, and
send out a ballot on which all members could vote for their favorites. Given
the limited resources available for MacApp support (and those resources would
be limited even if Apple committed 50 people full-time to the project), Apple
would have some idea of the relative value of each change. (And, of course,
nothing would prevent Apple from posing a few items for the ballot -- like GX,
OCE, etc. -- to gauge their popularity.)
 
In this way, MADA could do what it does best (i.e., funneling our sometimes
discordant voices into a mellifluous tune) and representing its members before
the powers that be at Apple. In addition, such a process could be expanded to
other platforms, giving MADA a leading role in the coordinating of user
requests, and using our joint clout to request Apple, Symantec, etc. to do what
they do best.
 
MADAcon would be an obvious place at which to discuss such a plan and at which
to take some preliminary votes. On behalf of those of us with critical
production deadlines in March who will NOT be in San Diego, may I humbly
request that if anything like this is done, it allow for input via AppleLink.
 
Jesse