Cool Mac Apps and such
This really is a bit of a fluff piece but us Mac users have to find something to cheer about in out tiny Mac-o-sphere. I don’t know much of it’s history or origin, but I stumbled upon a great mac app rating site today, CoolMacApps.com. All I could really get from it was this:
CoolMacApps.com was born out of frustration… and out of an addiction; An addiction to cool software, and a frustration with the current top-ten lists and file repositories out there.
This was little more than a fun way to waist a few minutes in the day, and only served to confirm my feelings about a great number of apps I was aware of. One thing that came as a surprise on this app voting site was RapidWeavers placement in the number 1 spot. Not that I ever doubted RapidWeavers strength and ability, but what shocked me is that it has beet out some of the more generic, globally used apps like FireFox or Adium.
Recent polls have shown that only 8% of North Americans have engaged in deep internet activities like building web sites. On the flip side, nearly everyone has used a web browser or IM client. I find it hard to imagine that RapidWeaver, a web building tool, would beat out such staples to mac computing as a web browser and an IM client. It’s just not in the numbers.
What’s really at play? Well… Web 2.0, meet Community 2.0! I happen to have a bit of an insiders knowledge of the whole RapidWeaver machine. If I was a betting man, I would always put my investment dollars on the company with the ravenous, blood thirsty, go-to-battle-and-die-for-your-app kind of community backing that RapidWeaver has behind it. If you want to see what I mean sometime, go to the RapidWeaver support forum and just arbitrarily flame the app in any old thread and watch the blood bath that ensues. You’ll want to change your mailing address before embarking on such suicidal endeavors, mind you (and let it be known that I don’t actually condone forum trolling).
This isn’t to say that the ratings are rigged in anyway; I really do believe that RapidWeaver is an excellent app. But I do think that RapidWeaver does have an unfair advantage when the owners simply need to put out a single call to the one gathering place that you will likely find 90% of all RapidWeaver users and the hordes will flock by the thousands to pledge their allegiance to their beloved RapidWeaver.
Who did I vote for? Here is just a few: RapidWeaver (of course), Quicksilver, Sticky Windows, Parallels, TextMate, iClip, Inquisitor and NewsFire.