The reason I ask is because I've been wondering about why the Mac seems to have a fairly healthy market for small software. It surprises me that Windows, being a much larger market, seems to have fewer opportunities for indie devs.
I think it comes down to the target audience. Of course both Mac and Windows have their fair share of users across all categories. However, it seems that, in the US, most devs and enthusiasts prefer to use Mac/Linux, while Windows is used a lot by gamers/office workers/etc. (not alleging that enthusiasts and devs don't use Windows, far from it, just talking comparatively). Given the price of an average Mac being higher than a Windows machine, it would also be fair to suggest that Mac users, on average, tend to have more disposable income as well.
With this in mind, it makes sense that the platform with more devs with more disposable income would be a better target to sell niche indie software as well.
For a similar phenomenon, look up the breakdown of earnings from apps on iOS vs. Android. There are plenty of analysis on this over the years, so here is a recent article I just found as an example[0]. Not even diving into the actual revenue per user or per app, iOS apps generated overall almost twice the revenue of Android apps in Q3 of 2019 (using numbers from the article I found), despite there being more of both Android users in the world and Android apps on the store. My reasoning as to "why" boils down to a simple guess that whichever device has more users with higher disposable income is the one that is gonna bring the developer more revenue.
0.https://www.techaheadcorp.com/blog/android-vs-ios/#:~:text=A....
https://discuss.haiku-os.org/uploads/default/original/1X/abb...
It's surprisingly powerful. As an example, I once had a cobbled together WM version of emacs' `ace-window` way of jumping between windows going. It wasn't even that much code…
There also supposedly is a Wayland based "successor" for it called `way-cooler`. I've never used that one, though.
Edit: OTOH, I've come to find the `i3` model of just allocating 10 virtual work spaces to work better for me, since that works way better with just a keyboard than tabs. But I guess this is a matter of personal preference.
Edit2: It looks like `way-cooler` was discontinued last year: http://way-cooler.org/blog/2020/01/09/way-cooler-post-mortem...
Today it seems forgotten, though.
https://insider.windows.com/en-us/articles/introducing-sets
Looks like it was removed from Windows preview due to feedback, they may be reworking it in the background.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/history-of-the-windows-st...
---
For instance, one study subject took twenty minutes of staring at a Windows 3.1 desktop before being able to open a text editing program. Finally, a programmer spoke up that this was unacceptable, to Oran’s relief. But that relief would be short lived: “Our customers are morons!” exclaimed the programmer.
This was frustrating enough, Oran says. But then they talked to that user, and it turns out that he was actually a propulsion engineer for Boeing.
“He was literally a rocket scientist,” Oran says. “And even he couldn’t figure out Windows.”
---
IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain more mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier for non-technical users to use. Which is hard when most of your userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit for realizing they had a usability problem, and having made major improvements to that over the years.
Microsoft could learn a lot from what they’re doing, as for the most part I still prefer not using 3rd-party utilities to mess with things.
In particular, the ability to create a view on the desktop onto another folder. This lets me split my desktop into 'local' and 'cloud' areas by having a fence containing a view onto a Google Drive-hosted folder.
(there is a bug report about it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343690
)
A similar app is TidyTabs: https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/tidytabs
Has anyone tried it? It's not open source, but "free for personal use".
I use Stardock's Groupy, and it does this well (and is inexpensive). I'm not sure why I'd want to switch to this when I already have Groupy, although the general idea is one that I think should gain more traction.
https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/
I think Microsoft must have abandoned sets when they moved to Edgium; their engineers were somehow under the impression that Sets was 100% dependent on Edge, and I think they must have been planning the feature as a cudgel against other browsers. IDK, I wish the Windows PMs were like 40% less user hostile and didn’t treat us like children to be manipulated.
Tldr, Groupy is pretty cool and at least appears to fit in with the windows 10 desktop better than the open source utility, for a price.
At risk of seeming like a shill (I just like Groupy!) there seems to be a 50% discount code here, making it the price of a coffee: https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/groupy
The only problem is that (at least in Fluxbox's case) it suffers from poor discoverability, since it's a modifier to the window drag action that has no corresponding buttons or "landing zones" like what you get if you try to tear tabs out of a Firefox window.
I have run such a setup before on work machines that were required to run Windows.
Beyond that, it is entirely valid to compare features across OSes.
If you want tabs in Windows Explorer, I've been using QTTabBar for years and it's pretty good.
Your example is of tabs within a single application. While software in the OP is for tabs for your entire workspace that can contain any application (or multiple application). Basically, it is one meta level above.
... I don't know. On the one hand, I applaud the sentiment. On the other hand, general computing needs of technical users are already becoming a niche too small for the market to serve. If Open Source community gets into their heads that they should optimize for non-technical users, I fear we'll have a dearth of tools...
After I moved to Linux and 16:9 monitors became mandatory I moved my gnome/mate taskbar to the left side, where it has stayed for about a decade. It is a bit clumsy in the vertical position, but does the job.
But Android I believe has all of the above like Mac and iOS do. Yet as you say, Android lags behind.
I need to check the article. Wouldn’t the sheer number of Android users mean there are enough of them with high disposable income? I’d think there’d be more (outside the US, UK, Canada markets)
I don't think it means much to talk about averages when the Windows market is so much larger. There are plenty of Windows gamers who spend thousands on their machines. There are also plenty of highly paid developers and white collar workers who primarily use Windows. So I don't think there's a shortage of Windows users who could buy indie software, but for some reason they don't.
So I don't think it's a financial reason. Maybe it's cultural? Maybe Mac users enjoy their computers more than Windows users and aren't afraid to pay a little bit more to make it even better. Mac users picked the minority platform whereas Windows is the default and people who don't care about computers end up on the default platform.
there are few window managers/ wayland compositors that do that right. enlightenment is one, but i couldn't get used to it. wayfire is a new compiz style wayland compositor that does it right too. loved that one, as i was a fan of compiz before (and i got wobbly windows with kde now too :-) but unfortunately not stable enough for daily use.
