Future of osx-e

A sad development but I guess something that was going to happen at some stage. In truth, the need for Mac emulation becomes less of an issue with the Mac becoming easily available (and also with the advent of Bootcamp).

That said, I suspect that the release of Leopard will spur on a new revolution in emulation. At this point there have been too many distractions and adjustments with the release of Vista and the upcoming Leopard. In all honesty I believe there aren’t many more themes that would get the PC looking better like a (standard) Tiger based Mac. Is current development not just the fine-tuning of existing themes?

The other problem is that the emulation developers have to deal with endless changes in hardware, security updates and software glitches which can ofetn take up days and sometimes months of scarce development time. I am often amused when I read impatient comments by users demanding updates to software
- see the current furious demands on Localhost for his iTunes app!!

Personally I have developed clones of FrontRow and AppleTV - both of which work fantastically (on my numerous PC systems), but that said, the thought of trying to deal with thousands of scary user system installations, hardware quirks and angry subscribers, make me less than keen to try and release them officially.

Personally, I love this web forum and it is the first place I visit when looking for both new and old emulation apps - so I would be sad to see it go. I suspect though, that the thoughts of opening the web page to ‘real’ Mac users would be brilliant.

Perhaps the future could contain the following?:

1) A continuation of the archiving of existing and new emulation apps
2) A section that might include hi-res screencaps of each of the most prominant Mac apps - ie. Finder, Safari, ICal, etc. etc. That way, the emulation community can have a set of good visual reference files to refer to - when trying to fine-tune their emulation.
3) Screencaps of Macs showing the official app as well as the emulated PC eqivalent running skinned in ‘Parallels’ - for a comparison
3) Retaining the “news” section
4) Is there a place here for VISTA emulation here? Personally, I feel there are more than enough other resources here, but perhaps this becomes the hub of emulation for both OS-X and Vista?
5) Design wise, I would prefer a more Mac orientated layout, but that is a personal preference.

In closing, I must say that I am deeply grateful to OSX-e for this astonishing resource and whatever the future, I sincerely hope that this hard work does not go unrewarded….

great feedback. Thats what I want to see.

To respond to your comment, I’m not planning to closing the entire site, just the forum because it is currently the least active part of the website. All files in the download section will be remain there but I’m thinking to make it more easier for visitors to access and download it.

Even though I’m tempted to open a section for vista emulation but it will make the site looks focus. osx-e known as a resource for mac emulation and even the name contain OSX so it won’t be suitable if I put vista emulated stuff here. What I’m thinking is to have one section for windows user to emulate mac, and one section for mac user to get files to customize their os x.

Regarding the news section, I don’t have time to update it regularly and I plan to change it to blog style and paying someone to update it.

[quote]What I’m thinking is to have one section for windows user to emulate mac, and one section for mac user to get files to customize their os x.[/quote]

I think that’s a great idea;)

@Mark: your idea of screenshots is also a very good idea.

I agree with DJMusic about having two sections. I come back here once a week to see what’s new. I still love this site and recommend it to everyone who wants to make their Windows look like Mac.

I think this site has come along way, and I’d hate to see it go. Alang, you gave me the opportunity to post my Mac OS X screensavers on here. It’s nice to see that people were able to download them, thanks to you.

Keep up with the great work.

- vertigo173

This site, combined with my extensive use of Flyakite OS X 3 allowed me to train and get ready for my mac. When I opened my mac, as new as it felt, even though I had never used a mac in my life, I felt very familiar with the UI because I had been using nearly the same UI on my XP machine because of the apps that were made available in the downloads section. I would hate to see this site go. I come back here often. A great addition to the site would be a downloads section for OS X users. It’s what nearly all of todays mac user forums/websites are missing. The only website to get a multitude of downloads for Macs in the same place is Apple’s OS X downloads pages, and even then many of those are shareware and demo downloads. They have a large amount of freeware, but the shareware/demos portion of it largely outnumbers the freeware. An OSX-E download section for Mac users would be nothing less than genius.

Thanks for convincing me to go Mac!

-Adam-

@adam - downloads section for mac user that contain a freeware only is a good idea. Even though I only plan to add software that related to customizing mac desktop, but still I could expand to add all of mac freeware as well.

I feel as if you need forums as a sort of ” reference station.” Say if you want to see what people say about certain programs, how will you know without the forums? Also it is a help desk just in case you have trouble installing or using something.

i suggest that the forum section can be merge with the download section or gallery section…so that people can ask question there when they face any difficulty…

forum already merge with the gallery and download section already have comment feature.

I believe that forums is a good alternative where to consult answers to the questions that we have when we installed a program or we do not know since to do something… they would have to stay. Thanks for your aid and sacrifice, I am sure that thousands of people we have found what we looked for thanks to your website

I’m french, so sorry for my bad english …

I often go to osx-e.com, and yes It’s just for the news archive and for the gallery to see what other people do … but I’m in 2 french (and english) forum about custom, so I don’t go too these one …
But it’s ths best website I know for what I’ve say before … so please keep alive !!!

Good luck !

I often go to your website since several years because your website is really easy to surf.

So first I want to congratulate you for your good job.

I often go in the gallery to download wallpapers, or in the download section to get some tools which are kept from MAC environnemnt.

At this time I don’t know an other website where I can get the same tools than yours.

Congratulations for your great job, I hope you will keep alive the section which group all small tools which simplify my life every day.

Good luck!!

Just got another nice idea. Maybe you can make the forum, the same as the idea for the site, both Mac and Windows?

I have benn lurking around this site since the past few months. Now that there is talk of closing it, I’ll just say that there are about 4500 people daily who visit this site and use it’s awesome resources (though in the capacity of lurkers, like me! :p). So don’t go yet. We need this community.

P.S: I didn’t even know this site had a forum on it till fairly recently, so I used Aqua-Soft for that kind of thing. So my suggestion is to make the forum more prominent with news section on the forum home page itself. That way when people visit, they’ll get to see the forums and will hence participate.

ok I need to clear something here. I NEVER plan to close the website. I just plan to make some changes including closing the FORUM only. What I need a feedback from you is what kind of changes you think necessary for this site and should I close the forum or not.

Hey Alang, sorry to hear about the possibility of the forums closing, I personally have not really been about on the emulation scene, since getting on the Mac scene a few years back, but I do still pop back here from time to time. On wether the forums should close or not is a tricky subject.

It probably looks dead due to the fact that this site seems to cover quite a lot of material, in terms of apps, skins, etc etc.. but I feel that people would miss the forums if they were to go. As even I have found it a very useful place to go and read up on things, in a place that was quieter than A-S, etc. which I personally liked. Is it still only a few guys with you that moderate it? I remember back when it was just us, it was quite hectic then.

Maybe the forums just need jazzing up and to be pushed more, so people know it’s there and again make it a place for the sharing of information as it used to be. How? This, unfortunatly, I am unable to brainstorm a half decent idea on how to achieve. But, people have already voiced that the forums hold relevance and they do use them, if only to browse and read.

What I ask is for you all to make more use of it, post, share the wealth of knowledge. make your prescence known! Link to new and exciting things, and let us all progress onwards together. Otherwise the forums will be consigned to history.

It’s your call.

You said “I’d plan a major changes for osx-e and one of them is by closing the forum”.

Can you describe some more changes?

other changes that I have in mind is

1. Have section for mac user in downloads and forums

2. Change the entire design including forum to give new images

3. Develop system that visitors can interact more with the website likes contribute news, articles

4. Have a proper link page, something like a directory for a resource of every computer related websites.

Ok my thoughts about your changes

1. I like that idea, as long as you don’t close the download section for Windows users as well as the forums.

2. I like the design but it needs to get out of beta. But maybe a new design is even better.

3. Well, you must be careful, because of the spam. But I really like the idea

4. Yeah that would be great!

I’m new to the site and do not know much about computers, but I love this site. The transformation of my xp to mac was awesome, perhaps the best thing i’ve done in ‘07. I’m not sure what else to say, but Thanks, Thanks, and Thanks again.