Advanced SearchUser Name Markus Winter
Member Since 2002-01-13
Total number of Feedback Posts: 90
Total number of comments: 21
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Markus Winter [ Search for All ]
Papers 1.7 (Mac OS X)
and I got them. I purchased a license when Papers was still in beta for one simple reason - to support the two programmers who had given us some outstanding free bio software. And I have to say I wasn't disappointed - Papers has become an immensely useful program for me, and I love the fullscreen reading mode. The support has been outstanding - any problem I reported has been dealt with quickly and professionally (I wish others would do that). If I had to niggle then it would be: - sometimes the automatic recognition will misrecognise a paper, which isn't surprising when several DOI are present in the pdf - I'd love to have the ability to use several libraries (one for work, one for private use) as I have hundreds of eBooks (for SciFi fans have a look at www.baen.com) Final word would be: I'm waiting for the day when papers can replace EndNote on my Mac Well done guys [alert admin]
Wednesday, April 16 2008 @ 01:02 AM PDT
REALbasic 2008 r1 (Mac OS X)
There is a lot to like about REALbasic ... 
I think REALbasic is a great implementation of a modern object-oriented programming language. There is a lot to like about it - and I gave it a few 5 star reviews before. But not this time. And not because version 2008R1 would be worse - in all likelihood it is actually better than previous versions. It is because some features simply don't work - and haven't for ages. Example: REALbasic 2007 Release 2 introduced RTF support From the release notes: RTF Support: The EditField now supports saving and loading styled text content in the RTF format. From Wikipedia: The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated RTF) is a proprietary document file format developed by Microsoft in 1987 for cross-platform document interchange. Most word processors are able to read and write RTF documents. RTF support is added as an extension to the EditField and as such is limited to styles the EditField can handle - that's fair enough. However according to the REALbasic engineers RTF support is only meant to work between REALbasic apps - there is no guarantee that RTF files generated by an REALbasic app can be read properly by Word or that RTF files created by other apps can be read in an REALbasic app. This makes the RTF feature basically useless for data exchange and has been a major point of contention in the user community. However it gets worse: The current RTF implementation has some serious bugs - for example read/write speed is extremely slow on Macs (bug report: http://www.realsoftware.com/feedback/viewreport.php?reportid=uhzdvrvx) From Bob Keeney's Blog: Using Apple’s Shark profiler revealed that 72.9% of the program’s time was spent in StyledTextParagraphCountGetter and 25.0% in StyledTextParagraphGetter. It’s difficult to imagine the code that would produce these results, but between the point that the decision was made to add RTF support and delivering the current release to the public it’s clear the something went terribly wrong. There’s nothing in the RTF format that requires eight times more processing for twice as much data. […] Extrapolating from these numbers it would take more than 10 hours to read a 200KB file on an iMac with a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM. So even if RTFdata is only supposed to work between REALbasic apps the read and write speed makes it useless for any purpose! I certainly can't see how I can possibly use the RTF feature for my cross-platform apps (and I had spend a LOT of time replacing the StyledTextData with the RTFdata in my app just to reverse it all again) I like new features as much as the next guy - but what I like even more is for the features to work. And that bugs like this which make a feature completely unusable isn't fixed four releases later is something I find difficult to understand. [alert admin]
Friday, March 28 2008 @ 12:19 PM PDT
SeaMonkey 1.1.9 (Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows 2000)
Each time an update is installed the program looses it's mail - it is still there on the harddisk but you are being presented with an empty account and asked to enter your provider details - ridiculous! You have to find the invisible folder and copy the mail by hand to rectify the situation. [alert admin]
Wednesday, March 26 2008 @ 04:00 AM PDT
TinkerTool 3.8a (Mac OS X)
One of the first things I install
on any Mac is TinkerTool - and then the first thing I set is having the scroll arrows on both ends. I only notice how much I miss that when I sit at a Mac which uses the standard scroll arrows. [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 4 of 4 users found this helpful
Thursday, February 14 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST
Transmission 1.02 (Mac OS X)
Even with the upload set to zero Transmission still sends between 2 and 10 kB/sec - can anyone explain to me what it is sending??? [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 2 of 5 users found this helpful
Sunday, January 27 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST
Serene Saver 2 HD 2.2.5 (Mac OS X)
After installation I just got an error message that it needs to be activated from an admin account and that I should do the installation again from an admin account - I AM IN MY ADMIN ACCOUNT! I then restart and move the screensaver from the system library to my user library - if things go wrong I rather have them go wrong in just one account. Up pops the next error that it "needs to be in the system and not the user screen saver folder" - WHY? This is either bad programming (in which case I should not touch it with a barge pole) or has a reason which I do not care to find out. Uninstallation wants root access - WHY? [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 8 users found this helpful
Tuesday, November 27 2007 @ 01:44 AM PST
MPEG2 Works 4 Advanced 4.2 (Mac OS X)
I bought it, converted a little mov to mpeg as per instructions (maxed out my C2D for 15 minutes), and did not get the 3 files as per instructions despite being told everything went fine (I only get the m2v file). So I used VisualHub to make a mpeg-2 file and then tried to add subtitles as per instructions and get "the application spumux quit unexpectedly" Waste of money [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 1 of 3 users found this helpful
Monday, November 26 2007 @ 08:55 AM PST
REALbasic 2007 r5 (Mac OS X)
to the bad old days on versiontracker where idiots register with fake details and then slag everything. Extremely juvenile. As for REALbasic I highly recommend it. Is it bug free? Of course not - nothing is. But it is by far the easiest way to learn programming (if you are a beginner you might want to have a look at REALbasic University http://www.applelinks.com/rbu/archive.shtml), and for cross-platform development it's better than the rest. From time to time I hear complains that the apps are so big. That's because they include evrything - there are no dependencies. At the weekend I tried to install an open-source movieconverter program on my Windows partition. It was quite small. Except it didn't work. We needed to download and install a total of 29 (!) support files to get it running - that's ridiculous. I much prefer the REALbasic way. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Monday, November 19 2007 @ 05:11 AM PST
REALbasic 2007 Release 4 (Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows 2000)
is a tool to develop software, and as any tool it has strengths and weaknesses. Most people complaining seem to miss the point, and would probably use a screw driver to hammer in a nail and complain afterwards. So what is the truth? (1) You want to learn to program? Already you are faced with a plethora of choices: cross-platform or for Mac only? Standalone programs or ones which need a runtime? Just for fun or might it develop into something more serious? For me the requirements were: easy to learn, good graphical user interface, cross-platform, and if possible cheap (preferable free) That excluded X-Code (though I still have it on my Mac), Tcl, Python, and a few others and left me seriously looking at REALbasic, Java, SuperCard and Revolution. I tried all of them for a few weeks and REALbasic came out on top by a mile – I hadn’t previously appreciated the difference a fully object-oriented language would make. X-Code is a good alternative if you (a) program for the Mac only and (b) you can stand the C language (not everyone can). (2) Is REALbasic as fast as C? Yes and No. REALbasic is a fantastic Rapid Application Development Tool. It will usually take you far less time to write a program in REALbasic than in C, and for most programs it makes no difference if they have speed x or 2x (as the user is the slowest component in the chain and the computer waits most of the time for input from the user). Even better if you have time critical parts then just write a plugin in C/C++ and REALbasic will happily accommodate it. You can also use declares to directly access APIs. And dealing directly with memoryblocks will also give you a speed boost should you need it. That being said you can usually write a program that is faster in C than in REALbasic. Recently I was curious enough to try this, and my REALbasic program took about 650 milliseconds for the task, while the C program took 570 milliseconds. Was it worth the extra hassle to program it in C? No. But I can see situations where I might still go for a C plugin. So people complaining about REALbasic being slower than C either don’t know what they are talking about or deliberately deceive the readers. (3) Why are REALbasic programs so big? REALbasic programs contain the whole framework – that means they are completely self contained and don’t rely on other bits being installed on your computer (like C# programs). Yes, that means a program doing nothing looks pretty big – and the situation is aggravated on the Mac where Universal programs need to contain both PPC and Intel code. But the truth is that the size from then on doesn’t increase much as you add your code. And it has one advantage which beats the increased download size: I can run the program without an installer. Anyone who is on a “managed system” where IT does not let you install anything knows what I’m talking about (don’t you hate it when IT isn’t supporting your work anymore but became the masters of the house?). My REALbasic programs will run straight out of the box, no installation necessary, even from a USB stick if necessary. (4) Is REALbasic buggy? Sure it is. So is X-Code. VisualBasic. C#. MacOS X. And don’t get me started on Word and Windows. Any complex program contains bugs. But the big question is are there bugs which make the program unfit for purpose? So called show stopper bugs? And there the answer is a resounding “No” for REALbasic. Furthermore most “bugs” I’ve come across turned out to be errors in my code, so in the meanwhile I’m more carefull about mouthing off and ask politely first. (5) Can I do everything with REALbasic? No. No matter how hard you try you can’t make a decent coffee with it. Sorry, but the question is too general to be meaningful. You could ask “Can I do everything with X-Code” and the answer would still be “No” - for example you can’t compile for Windows or Linux. But REALbasic can – and as such there are some compromises that must be made. Not everything is supported on all platforms – mainly because there is no equivalent on the other platforms. But the same applies to Java to a much greater extend, and strangely enough you don’t hear people complaining that Java can’t do everything. Basically anything you want to do can be done, and REALbasic even supports a large amount of platform specific items (like AppleEvents or Spotlight on the Mac or RegistryItems and TrayItems on Windows) - but then using them defeats the purpose of a cross-platform development tool somewhat. (6) What’s the greatest strength of REALbasic? Definitely the support both from the developers and the user community – where else do you have the CEO answering questions directly, the developers pinching in with advice on the forums and mailing lists, and an immense number of users eager to help you with your problems? The only other community where I experienced similar support (but not quite as good) is the RapidWeaver forums. Especially Joe Strout and Aaron Ballman deserve mentioning. The one thing which constantly baffles me though is the politeness of the REALbasic developers – following some exchanges in the newsgroup by a certain individual I would have already been fuming at his personal attacks and unjustified comments, and ready to throw some four letter words in his face, but they still kept their cool. That is simply AMAZING. (7) What’s the greatest weaknesses of REALbasic? For me it is the lack of a better EditField control – the current one supports styled text (bold, italic, underlign, alignment, colour, fonts, size) but super/subscript are missing. And it is slow when using large texts. But then I rarely use more than 100,000 characters in a text ... actually, once a week I need to clean up a text with about 160,000 characters which then takes about 3 seconds. I can live with that. All in all I can heartily recommend REALbasic. I did some Basic and C at University, quite a bit in HyperCard afterwards, but REALbasic is the one which really enabled me to do more than just a few simple demo programs. [alert admin]
Thursday, November 15 2007 @ 03:09 PM PST
REALbasic 2007 Release 4 (Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows 2000)
is that it is a tool to develop software, and as any tool it has strengths and weaknesses. Most people complaining seem to miss the point, and would probably use a screw driver to hammer in a nail and complain afterwards. So what is the truth? <b>(1) You want to learn to program?</b> Already you are faced with a plethora of choices: cross-platform or for Mac only? Standalone programs or ones which need a runtime? Just for fun or might it develop into something more serious? For me the requirements were: easy to learn, good graphical user interface, cross-platform, and if possible cheap (preferable free) That excluded X-Code (though I still have it on my Mac), Tcl, Python, and a few others and left me seriously looking at REALbasic, Java, SuperCard and Revolution. I tried all of them for a few weeks and REALbasic came out on top by a mile – I hadn’t previously appreciated the difference a fully object-oriented language would make. X-Code is a good alternative if you (a) program for the Mac only and (b) you can stand the C language (not everyone can). <b>(2) Is REALbasic as fast as C? </b> Yes and No. REALbasic is a fantastic Rapid Application Development Tool. It will usually take you far less time to write a program in REALbasic than in C, and for most programs it makes no difference if they have speed x or 2x (as the user is the slowest component in the chain and the computer waits most of the time for input from the user). Even better if you have time critical parts then just write a plugin in C/C++ and REALbasic will happily accommodate it. You can also use declares to directly access APIs. And dealing directly with memoryblocks will also give you a speed boost should you need it. That being said you can usually write a program that is faster in C than in REALbasic. Recently I was curious enough to try this, and my REALbasic program took about 650 milliseconds for the task, while the C program took 570 milliseconds. Was it worth the extra hassle to program it in C? No. But I can see situations where I might still go for a C plugin. So people complaining about REALbasic being slower than C either don’t know what they are talking about or deliberately deceive the readers. <b>(3) Why are REALbasic programs so big?</b> REALbasic programs contain the whole framework – that means they are completely self contained and don’t rely on other bits being installed on your computer (like C# programs). Yes, that means a program doing nothing looks pretty big – and the situation is aggravated on the Mac where Universal programs need to contain both PPC and Intel code. But the truth is that the size from then on doesn’t increase much as you add your code. And it has one advantage which beats the increased download size: I can run the program without an installer. Anyone who is on a “managed system” where IT does not let you install anything knows what I’m talking about (don’t you hate it when IT isn’t supporting your work anymore but became the masters of the house?). My REALbasic programs will run straight out of the box, no installation necessary, even from a USB stick if necessary. <b>(4) Is REALbasic buggy?</b> Sure it is. So is X-Code. VisualBasic. C#. MacOS X. And don’t get me started on Word and Windows. Any complex program contains bugs. But the big question is are there bugs which make the program unfit for purpose? So called show stopper bugs? And there the answer is a resounding <b>“No” </b> for REALbasic. Furthermore most “bugs” I’ve come across turned out to be errors in my code, so in the meanwhile I’m more carefull about mouthing off and ask politely first. <b>(5) Can I do everything with REALbasic?</b> No. No matter how hard you try you can’t make a decent coffee with it. Sorry, but the question is too general to be meaningful. You could ask “Can I do everything with X-Code” and the answer would still be “No” - for example you can’t compile for Windows or Linux. But REALbasic can – and as such there are some compromises that must be made. Not everything is supported on all platforms – mainly because there is no equivalent on the other platforms. But the same applies to Java to a much greater extend, and strangely enough you don’t hear people complaining that Java can’t do everything. Basically anything you want to do can be done, and REALbasic even supports a large amount of platform specific items (like AppleEvents or Spotlight on the Mac or RegistryItems and TrayItems on Windows) - but then using them defeats the purpose of a cross-platform development tool somewhat. <b>(6) What’s the greatest strength of REALbasic?</b> Definitely the support both from the developers and the user community – where else do you have the CEO answering questions directly, the developers pinching in with advice on the forums and mailing lists, and an immense number of users eager to help you with your problems? The only other community where I experienced similar support (but not quite as good) is the RapidWeaver forums. Especially Joe Strout and Aaron Ballman deserve mentioning. The one thing which constantly baffles me though is the politeness of the REALbasic developers – following some exchanges in the newsgroup by a certain individual I would have already been fuming at his personal attacks and unjustified comments, and ready to throw some four letter words in his face, but they still kept their cool. That is simply AMAZING. <b>(7) What’s the greatest weaknesses of REALbasic?</b> For me it is the lack of a better EditField control – the current one supports styled text (bold, italic, underlign, alignment, colour, fonts, size) but super/subscript are missing. And it is slow when using large texts. But then I rarely use more than 100,000 characters in a text ... actually, once a week I need to clean up a text with about 160,000 characters which then takes about 3 seconds. I can live with that. <b>All in all I can heartily recommend REALbasic. I did some Basic and C at University, quite a bit in HyperCard afterwards, but REALbasic is the one which really enabled me to do more than just a few simple demo programs. </b> [alert admin]
Thursday, November 15 2007 @ 03:06 PM PST
Last 10 Comments by Markus Winter [ Search for All ]
I think the main reason for my foul mood is that there is simply no way to test the app with the demo - the demo is utterly useless as most functions are disabled so all you can do is look at the interface. So I felt pretty much forced into paying for something that I couldn't even test - will certainly not do that again. I will take up the offer for a refund and…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, November 26 2007 @ 12:27 PM PST
20 in iMac (white) 2.16 GHz Core2Duo
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Saturday, November 24 2007 @ 12:04 PM PST
Your company does not exist, your website is non-existent either.
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Wednesday, November 14 2007 @ 02:37 AM PST
Your company does not exist
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Wednesday, November 14 2007 @ 12:24 AM PST
Interface Builder has undergone its first major update in over a decade
That's what the Xcode 3 release notes say
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Tuesday, November 13 2007 @ 09:50 AM PST
nor on some G4. Why o why would you embarrass yourself like this????
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Tuesday, November 13 2007 @ 09:21 AM PST
P.S. Xcode 3 doesn't even run on
Panther or Tiger like REALbasic does as it requires Leopard, and it officially requires a 867 MHz G4 whereas REALbasic will happily run on a 400 MHz G4 and a 500 MHz G3 (haven't tried anything lower lately as I don't have hardware that old anymore)
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Tuesday, November 13 2007 @ 09:11 AM PST
then don't make it so obvious
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Tuesday, November 13 2007 @ 08:35 AM PST
then at least don't make it so obvious.
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Tuesday, November 13 2007 @ 08:33 AM PST
I'm a Mac man myself (and helped migrate dozens of people) but as a lot of our students used to have Windows machines and I wanted to make the programs available to them as well I needed a cross-platform solution. In hindsight I would propably have ended up using REALbasic even if I would only program for the Mac. I like my code to be easily readable, similar to reading english. C is just too cryptic…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, October 04 2007 @ 01:23 AM PDT
