2008-05-28, 04:24
Gamester17 Wrote:Two things that have to be noted though:
1. XBMC is now a cross-platform software and Team-XBMC aim to keep it that way, XBMC should always look and feel the same no matter on which underlying operating-system you are running it on, (sure skins/themes can make XBMC look differently but any skin/theme will look exactly the same on all platforms). If one design or layout improvement is brought to XBMC on one of the platforms then that same improvement will be ported to all XBMC platforms.
The thing is this is exactly the opposite of what platanito21 is saying (if i understand correctly), and I agree with him. Now I am just a humble user, however IMO the best cross platform software is not one that 'looks the same' on all platforms, but one that leverages each platform's unique GUI technology, whilst staying true to the features of the underlying app.
Take Firefox for example. FF3 has recently changed its GUI on the Mac to use native widgets (as well as utilizing other Mac OS X features) which gives the app a much more appealing 'look and feel' on the Mac platform. The same has been done for the Vista version and linux versions (I think). Before this, Firefox looked the same on all platforms, and frankly, this was a major disadvantage, at least in the eyes of Mac users, who want the app to integrate as well as possible.
Another example would be to compare the bittorrent clients Azureus and Transmission. Where Azureus aims to offer the same user interface on all platforms, Transmission maintains separate guis for each platform (Cocoa for OS X, GTK+ for Linux), whilst sharing the underlying libTransmission core.
Mac OS X has some fantastics graphics/GUI APIs which could really make XBMC on the Mac into something special. This doesn't mean you have to lose underlying functionality (ie be the best media centre software bar none), but rather just adapt it to the Mac 'way'.
I hope all this makes sense, and I haven't sounded like a complete idiot.