My Dream App For the Mac

Steve Streza writes "My Dream App, a Mac contest in search of the next killer app, features Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and Xbox and zune creator J. Allard as guest judges for its final round. Visitors can vote for their 3 favorite app ideas, and receive free licenses to both Overflow 2 and the Apple Design Award winning PhotoPresenter. Voting is open until Tuesday at 8:00 PM EDT, at which point the three winners will be announced. The winners, who will have emerged from an initial pool of more than 2,700 entrants, will see their app idea realized as a Mac shareware application and earn royalties on sales. "

Comments

No teledildonics?

[bobalu]

Sheesh, you call those choices? Give the people what they really want!

Hmm

[darkchubs]

exchange a trillion dollar software idea for a legal copy of those other trillion dollar apps? Do I at least get a bumper sticker?

Re:Hmm

[i_should_be_working]

Yes, and it says:

I made Jobs (more) rich and all I got was a program and this lousy bumper sticker.

Re:Hmm

[s20451]

I hate to point out the obvious, but if you have a trillion dollar idea, why aren't you working on it right now? And if you're just sitting on such an idea because you're lazy, risk averse, or not a good enough programmer, you may as well give it to Steve Jobs. It's doing no good rattling around in your head.

Re:Hmm

[CokeBear]

I have to agree here. I have lots of great ideas, but no programming skillz.

Any young Woz types around here? I'll be the Jobs to your Woz. (but without all the yelling, I promise)

Come to think of it.

[darkchubs]

Im willing to offer up licensed copies of Linux. IF you can provide me with the next killer app.

Re:Come to think of it.

[Rob T Firefly]

Im willing to offer up licensed copies of Linux. IF you can provide me with the next killer app.

Haha, you're just making the Linux company rich, you n00b! I just get the 0-day Linux w4r3z off Pirate Bay. They are even patched to get rid of Linux Genuine Advantage, so you'll never get caught!

Killer app?

[Aladrin]

Maybe if they have a contest for a 'killer app', one of the choices should actually BE a 'killer app'.

The only ones that come close to useful is file sync and the music maker. And they're far from 'killer app' status. Nobody is going to convert from PC to Mac because it has some sync software or music, especially when other software already exists for that platform and others.

The others are all in the 'ooh eyecandy' category.

already taken care of

[krell]

No doubt Apple's new cell phone offering will include vibrate mode.

Almost edible

[krell]

"its Indian spam"

The curry-sauce makes it a lot easier to choke down.

Re:Woz is out there, man!

[Dun Malg]

know he's never been the CEO type, but for the inventor of the MAC and a former teacher, I thought this was a bit crass. I wouldn't want to publish an app with someone who thought this was an appropriate public pronouncement.

Sorry, I don't see the crassness. Someone suggests a good app might be a "virtual plant" and, while other judges patronizingly say "Mac users would love this", he points out that a virtual plant is just plain stupid on its face. Seriously, it's a damn productivity meter that "rewards" you for being a good little worker bee by looking like a healthy plant! THe idea is that it'd encourage the slothful to work harder, but in reality only the already productive will keep the thing around, and the slothful (like me) will delete it after getting tired of looking at a dying plant reminding us that we're lazy. I think Steve was just being blunt and offering amusing ways in which such a concept might actually be appealing.

A virtual plant? That's about as pointless as a virtual bicycle.

(Also, it's "Mac" not "MAC", and Woz didn't create it, he created the original Apple/Apple II systems-- singlehandedly)

Shareware vs Freeware

[sYn pHrEAk]

I think you're confusing shareware with freeware.

Shareware means there is a demo version that you're encouraged to share, but there is also a full version that you have to pay for.

Freeware is just that: free (as in beer).

Re:Nice thinking

[admactanium]

Sounds like a great way to get some free ideas for applications. A lot of companies have been doing this lately. Nothing like giving away your intellectual property for free!

except that you get a share of the revenues from shareware licenses. obviously on slashdot the idea seems completely daft since there's such a high percentage of coders here. but most people can't code an application. so if you can give up your idea (which costs you nothing in the form of labor or materials) and realize a possible profit from someone else's programming labor, then where's the bad deal? it's certainly easier than researching and hiring a programmer when you have no expertise in the field at all while taking a financial risk in the form of payment for that programmer. maybe you should look at it from the perspective of the people for whom the contest was designed. no decent programmer in their right might would submit an application to this process because they could do it themselves.

if there was a contest where you were asked to give up an idea for, say, a chance to win a year's worth of professional retouching, it would be a great idea for people who would value that service. for me, as a graphic designer and retoucher, it's obviously not worth it to give up IP to gain something i could easily do on my own to a higher standard. but i'd at least recognize that it's a useful prize to some people.

Re:The assimilation of Apple users is near complet

[Rational]

Nah, that's pretty weak. Read John Dvorak's columns to learn to troll Mac users successfully.

My take on the choices...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Atmosphere
Put the weather on your desktop.A virtual window to the outdoors for your desktop. View a virtual representation of your area's weather when too busy to go outside.

Too bust to go outside? WTF? Look out the window you lazy sow! NOT a killer app - more of a stupid idea, along the lines of Segway

Blossom
A virtual plant that responds to productivity, not sunlight and water. Had a good session in Excel? Your plant will thrive. Play too much Warcraft? Expect some withering.

Suck great steaming tourdes out of the boss's ass? Instant rainforest. Write 3000 lines of code? A garden of flowers? But what if all the code is crap? Does Blossom do QA? A REALLY bad idea, and impossible to properly implement. Blossom is fascism with a happy face - "here come the suede denim secret police! ... California! Uber Alles!"

Whistler
Music creation has never been this easy or fun. Ever had the urge to create a song until you realized it was harder than it was worth? With Whistler, just whistle, hum, or tap out your creation into music app importable form.

Now THIS is a cool thing - a REAL application that empowers people to do something they never could before. Albeit, if you're a tone deaf couch potato with no sense of rhythm, you will have a somewhat tougher time. But basically, this idea has actual use value compared to the previous ideas.

Cookbook
The ultimate cookbook application, with online grocery shopping, thousands of recipes, Leopard voiceover technology integration, shopping list sharing, and more.

This is a sort-of-cool idea. I don't think it has quite the scope and brilliant of Whistler, but this is something I could actually almost use... IF I were stupid enough to put a computer in the kitchen... DOH!

Portal
File syncing from the future. Sync folders and documents between Macs effortlessly and watch transfer progress through a cool, highly visual wormhole user interface.

If I needed to sync a bunch of macs together, I guess this would be useful. However, most Mac owners I know have ONE (perhaps 2) macs. Heck - I have two. But I also have three or four PCs floating around chez Spoilsport. If it could co-ordinate them too, then I'd be impressed... as it is, this comes under "A Really Good Idea" but not "Killer App".

so, I would rank them as follows:

1. Whistler - good stuff! A - A-
2. Portal - not bad - useful! B+
3. Cookbook - Pretty good, as soon as I get the olive oil cleaned out of my powerbook. B-
4. Atmosphere - stupid idea with marginal use for quadraplegics who wonder what they're missing. C
5. Blossom - an actively Bad Idea. F

RS