Ben and Tyler pushed Copilot OneClick for Mac to our production servers late yesterday. It took us longer than expected to get this release out the door. We have been working on several new features at once, but decided to take a break from that and get OneClick out of the way. It turns out that single-minded focus leads to more rapid software releases; who knew?
Just head over to Copilot.com if you want to give it a try.
This is the Copilot team's first time writing an installed application for the Mac, and we learned a bunch of new stuff about the Mac install/uninstall/upgrade process. We had started out wanting to write our own installer (the app is really so simple that it doesn't need much in terms of setup). We even went through the process of doing that. It was two screens and extremely simple. The problem? It wasn't "Mac" enough.
It was actually disconcerting as a frequent Mac user to have the OneClick installer not look like a regular Mac installer. No gum-droppy progress bar. No cathartic installer complete ding noise. It made the setup process feel abrupt and a bit too magical. Ultimately, it left me skeptical that the custom installer had actually done anything. We decided that it was time to try the installer resources that Apple provides. A few hours later we had our website generating basic installers, and even though it didn't actually work correctly, it felt like it was doing something. The familiarity was comforting in all the right ways. It is just one example of the way that Apple makes good on the promise of a consistent rich UI experience.
Our second "Not Mac enough" moment came when creating the Copilot icon that appears in the menu bar to let you know that OneClick is running and whether or not it is connected to our servers. The first incarnation of the icon filled the bar from top to bottom, but it looked crisp. It's not written anywhere that menu bar icons shouldn't use up all of that space, but not one of the icons I have does it.
"No problem. That's easy." I was told.
But those bitmaps are pretty small, and scaling a compressed image like that causes some interesting artifacting. The scaled icon lost all of its rounded edges and became noticeably blurry. So it was back to the original vector logos for a complete redo. We're happy with the result now. That rounded edge is just a trick really (it's about one pixel), but it looks polished and feels Mac-ish. It fits right in next to my Adium duck and cardboard box from DropBox. I was impressed by the pressure that the polish of Mac OS put on us to pay attention to a few details that we might have otherwise ignored. The end result is a product that feels like it fits into the landscape of Mac apps in a clean way.
As always, if you have comments or feedback, let us know!
Typo heads up:
"This the Copilot team's first time writing an..."
should read "This is the Copilot..."
"Not mac enough"
should read "Not Mac enough."
... and I'm done being pedantic.
Posted by: Jake | January 07, 2009 at 07:47 PM
Why would you need an installer in the first place? I _hate_ it when applications insist on using an installer when the simple "drag this bundle where ever you like" method would suffice. That's one of the best things about (most) Mac software -- you don't have to "install" it. You simply put it in the location you want.
Posted by: James Sumners | January 07, 2009 at 08:19 PM
I agree with James (and Jake for that matter) ...
Installers suck! Make it a dmg, put in a pretty background and add a shortcut to the Applications folder ... Drag n Drop ... Done!
That's what makes a Mac enough installer :-)
Posted by: Robert French | January 07, 2009 at 11:05 PM
What's the advantage of CoPilot vs using
http://www.teamviewer.com
? Their software is free for non-commercial use and their Mac client doesn't need an installer. Simply drag and drop. As it should be.
Posted by: Nils Kassube | January 08, 2009 at 07:06 AM
You can't please most of the people ever. ;)
Posted by: Kyle | January 08, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Thanks for the feedback thus far (you will see the typos were corrected).
Just wanted to clarify that you don't need an installer for Copilot classic, the ad-hoc support tool that lets you connect to anyone with just an invitation code.
We needed the installer for the OneClick feature which sets up a process that runs in the background and "listens" for inbound connections. The person being helped doesn't even need to find the application in the Applications folder. They just need to email or call you and you can connect by clicking the computer's name from the Copilot.com website.
Just to be clear, Teamviewer is free for personal and non-commercial use only. The vast majority of our customers are using Copilot as a support tool for their businesses. In addition, Copilot Day Passes are free every weekend for anyone who needs a really simple way to do a one-off connection to a friend or family member. OneClick is more like a combination of their Host and Manager software which is for-pay only and not available on the Mac at all.
Posted by: Jason Rosoff | January 08, 2009 at 10:11 AM
"We needed the installer for the OneClick feature which sets up a process that runs in the background and "listens" for inbound connections."
In case you don't already know this... launchd is the preferred way to do this on Tiger and above. It can listen on a port for an incoming connection and then launch your process, without the overhead of the process running all the time.
Posted by: Andrew Wooster | January 08, 2009 at 03:12 PM
What I don't understand is why you guys don't release a linux version for this. You can even target for a couple of distros.
And why?? Well... linux users have like a loooot of trouble. I think that they might use it a lot :P
The problem is whether those damn cheap bastards will pay for the service or not.
But well... guess that you already studied the market.
Keep it up!
Posted by: Nicolás Miyasato (miya) | January 10, 2009 at 05:11 PM
Can you upload some screen shots of the old and new menu bar icons?
Posted by: Matt | January 13, 2009 at 02:42 AM
Let me see about digging up a few screen shots.
Posted by: Jason Rosoff | January 13, 2009 at 09:09 AM
"In case you don't already know this... launchd is the preferred way to do this on Tiger and above. It can listen on a port for an incoming connection and then launch your process, without the overhead of the process running all the time."
+1
Oh, you don't need an installer to install a Daemon and do all sorts of tricks. You can do that inside .PKG Files.
Posted by: Glass | January 14, 2009 at 02:19 PM
Our second "Not Mac enough" moment came when creating the Copilot icon that appears in the menu bar to let you know that OneClick is good blod and i am satisfied
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