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Comment by kaladin-jasnah | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand why this has to be heavily marketed as Mac-only. As an open-source product, restricting the application to the most restricted of consumer operating systems (namely that any consumer hardware can run Linux or Windows, either bare metal or through a VM, whereas only Macs can easily run macOS) seems a bit sad. I had to read through the comments here to realize that as someone who doesn't own a Mac, I _could_ theoretically purchase this and use it, even if it meant sacrificing some UX.

Reading the comments, it would be trivial to even at minimum state that there could exist community support for Linux, in the form of a command-line tool, even if it's not as polished as a Mac app, considering how open this product is about its limitations, and would likely bring in more customers.

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I'm not sure I follow the criticism here. Is the issue that a paid product only supports Mac, or an open source project didn't build for multiple OSs?

If it's the first; I've seen tons of Mac only software due to the perception that it's a more lucrative platform. (Users are price tolerant for good products).

If it's the last; scratch your own itch. Since it's open source you can write the softer yourself. I'm not sure if this outlook is the diy zeitgeist I grew up in, or just being old. I'm curious if this is still a common belief.

Looking back, I could have phrased my original comment better, but my criticism is neither of those things. I'm just saying that as an open-source project that has an open-source specification, the author could make it clearer that an interested customer could buy one of these and write their own open-source Linux/Windows implementations as opposed to making it sound like "if you don't own a Mac, this product isn't for you."

Reading the comments, it looks like the author already made a command-line tool that might let the camera work on Linux; why not say that it's Mac-only but community support for other platforms based on the open nature of this camera is appreciated (and provide whatever links [eg. that command-line tool] that were mentioned in this forum)?

Appreciate your thoughts.

In case it helps explain the wording: I went with "exclusively for Mac" because I intended it to be an in-group signal to Mac folks that the product is high quality and conforms to the norms of the Mac platform. In my experience, cross-platform GUI software usually doesn't conform to Mac software conventions (and IMO just kinda sucks by Mac software standards). So my wording is trying to convey that the software isn't your typical cross-platform Electron/QT/GTK app.

Anyway, would love to add Linux support, just trying to figure out if that's what I want to do with my life right now.

This is top comment for a reason.

What a weird bone to pick. You could say “would support for other platforms be on the horizon?” but instead you take it almost maliciously. This take is very compatible with what I’ve read about why people stop writing Linux commercial software: 95% of the support, 2% of the sales.

If it’s open and you want to create Linux / windows support, just do that versus complain that the creator of a $200 small scale device hasn’t.

When I read the page, it was implied that it's not possible to support other platforms or wouldn't be appreciated by the heavy Mac marketing. Now that I know more of the technical details of the product and seeing that it would definitely be possible to add Windows/Linux support, I am more inclined to buy it and write software for it myself, and I think it would be good to include that on the page more.

Something like "Open hardware/software means that the community could write Linux/Windows support" and a link to the tool that the author said could be used to transfer files on Linux: https://github.com/toasterllc/MDCCode/blob/rev10/Tools/MDCUt... somewhere more prominent on the page would be helpful, as this was not clear to me until I read the comments here.

I did not interpret their post in as rude a manner as you portray it (their feedback is on point, so thanks kaladin-jasnah), but your characterization of their post as "weird" and 'a bone to pick' and 'almost malicious' and 'complaining' is itself multiple-times rude.

Is there a connection between you and the subject matter that might have caused you to interpret the post in a less charitable way than others?

I never said rude, and maybe I was less charitable than I should have been with malicious. But reading that comment and all of the others here that mirror it there is a kind of almost malicious assumption, or at least a very non understanding dismissal of the choice.

There is a pretty big gap between the narrative in the post here: "only supports macOS currently", and what the website says: "Exclusively for Mac" in a Just Girly Things cursive font. The latter makes it sound like they'd reject support if someone handed to them on a silver MR shaped platter.

> in a Just Girly Things cursive font.

The font isn’t cursive. It’s exactly the same as every other section.

ctrl+f "Exclusively for Mac". There is one hit (though there is another similar message that is not cursive).

Thank you for the correction, I missed that one. At first I thought maybe the one I saw might’ve changed, but a quick trip to the Internet Archive showed it looked like that in April.

I would guess you saw the other message:

> Photon Transfer is designed with love exclusively for your Mac

Which isn't cursive

It just sounds like they’re turning the single plat aspect into the selling point that it was built for the audience’s platform as opposed to some crappy multi-plat app.

I’d say that’s a good call for a $200 app. The HNers showing up here to announce that they closed the browser tab couldn’t run the app anyways lol.

Support is not a one time thing. It's perpetual. Bugs will happen, feature requests will come, especially with Linux, cause there is no such thing as standard Linux. Nobody has to support your things for free. Support it yourself. Wait, that is hard work? Well...

This entittled atittude is how open source maintainers get burned out. If you care about OSS, stop it. Get your hands dirty.

This is just a toxic attitude from Linux people you see on everything. They're always finding a way to be slighted by software not being made for their niche platform, as though it's trivial to support multiple platforms properly.

> toxic attitude

If everything you see is toxic maybe the problem is you.

> as though it's trivial to support multiple platforms properly

It is trivial compared to creating something useful in the first place.

If it's so trivial then why hasn't the author done it? Do you really think there is some kind of malicious motivation here?

I, without looking at the comments here, immediately returned to homepage to unvote after seeing this on the homepage. Weird flex by creator; ironic that the OS community will happily ignore his creative intentions to use as needed if the value prop fits. I get that Dave is a boss of a dev/designer, and the product isn't unimpressive in its own ways. I'd like to see data on how 'mac only' products do out there in the wild.

Strongly agreed. I started scrolling through the website, was somewhat interested, and might have considered it, but just closed the tab when I saw mac only.

Sounds like this guy is a Mac programmer, and couldn’t afford to hire folks to write for other platforms.

I feel that pain. I write native Apple software, and the torrents of hate that I get, for not spending tens of thousands of my own dollars on multi-platform development (for a free app), is ridiculous.

It sucks to be hated for something I love to do.

It appears as if he’s opened the communication architecture, so it’s probably possible for someone to throw up their own drivers.

Yea I get that it's no BT/Wifi so probably USB. But I don't get why USB would require a mac. I personally like the hardware but don't care about the rebase or whatever software addons he strapped to it. If I just plugged in a USB cord and used any OS to copy off the photos, it would make sense. This is basically the same usage as a thumbdrive or point-and-click camera from early 2000s and shouldn't be limited to a particular OS.... if I'm understanding it correctly

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