The new version 3.9 looks great and has lots of features. But I do have one criticism to offer... the dependence on Raven Lite is really bad news.
So you won't completely discount me, I've been in the computer industry since the early 1970's and have worked as a software engineer, systems analyst, manager, and vice president of software. I've also worked as liason between many scientific groups and a software department in a national laboratory, and as consultant to the software/hardware support groups of that laboratory and several other facilities. Lastly, I'm a retired professor of computer science.
On my desk I have a PC, a Mac, and a Unix system. I need to stay fluent in these three systems so commonly used at our facilities.
I'm incognito now because what I'm about to say will most certainly raise the hackles of most Mac users, not because I'm being cruel, but because they can be very brand-centric, and generally harbor intense distastes for anything not Apple.
In my experience, most programs developed primarily for Mac computers do not transport well to other OS's. This was much more the case in the old days, but it is still an unfortunate problem, and I can give you plenty of examples.
So Raven's dependence on Quicktime is a big problem for me. That's because Quicktime itself is a big problem. It's designed to maximize revenue while providing a service that should be (and generally is) a normal part of most OS's.
We generally use a Quicktime substitute that works just fine to display QT and other files, and is much smaller without all the Apple proprietary modules and checks. It's faster, safer, and doesn't interfere with other PC OS processes because it uses the normal OS calls and is properly designed to do so.
I don't mind so much having one program, eBird, be dependent on another, Raven, for histogram viewing support. But then I find that Raven is completely dependent on Apple Quicktime for its function.
All the program videos play just fine with Raven disabled. As do all the MP3 files. All Raven is needed for is the spectrogram display and analysis yet it can't open an MP3 file like most other media programs. There are other free spectral analysis programs out there, but don't integrate into the program. Perhaps that's where my suggestion is going -- in it's next incarnation, please allow for integration with a program other than Raven.
Also, it would be nice to have a small graph of the spectrogram in the guide page, just like we see in a number of field guides. I've disabled Raven and now I have to have a paper field guide handy when I use it. This is a step backwards, and I hope nobody watching me will ask why it's not included in the program .
I'm sorry if I sound cynical and angry; it's just symptoms of frustration. You have a great program, but it's very dependent on others. You need .NET framework just to work, then Raven, run-time Java, and Quicktime. I personally know a large number of system that won't work with all those programs installed and running at the same time. And I've seen a couple of pop-up errors during installation of the GTBNA, and who knows which program they came from? In my case, I can say they weren't from Raven or QT, since I've uninstalled both of them here.
Thank you for letting me vent here, I hope some of this sticks and isn't completely discounted as the ravings of a lunatic old man who has possible dealt with a few too many programs and computers.
Regards,
Mwew |