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[gdutton]

I love MC for managing and playing my classical music collection, and appreciate the fact that there is a Mac version. But, I would love to see the UI both look and act a bit more "Mac-like." For now, it would be great if the menus would respond like they do in other Mac apps - namely click once to show the menu, and click again to hide it. Currently the menu only goes away when you click elsewhere. As a Mac user I'd prefer a continuity of menu responses to clicking across all applications, including MC-21. So I'm hoping this might be a small fix that could be included somewhere in a future build of MC-21.

Thanks for considering this.

George Dutton

[glynor]

For now, it would be great if the menus would respond like they do in other Mac apps - namely click once to show the menu, and click again to hide it. Currently the menu only goes away when you click elsewhere.

+1

[bMinor]

For now, it would be great if the menus would respond like they do in other Mac apps - namely click once to show the menu, and click again to hide it. Currently the menu only goes away when you click elsewhere.
George Dutton

+5


A mac specific manual would be great too. I know there is the Wiki, a nightmare for the typical mac user. a lot is pc specific and a lot is outdated. I'm pretty sure a LOT of ppl would appreciate this.

[dfortney]

+2 don't need the manual which i would never read anyway even though i always find myself scratching my head how to do basic stuff but simply having the menus act like every other app on my mac would be greatly appreciated.  my most hopeful requests are simply allowing the ability to set the target volume of volume leveling and making sure the keyboard media keys just always work no matter if you have clicked on the MC21 window yet or not.

[mwheelerk]

This has been my single displeasure since starting with v18 and I don't see where any significant effort has been done to address this. I'm sure there are fewer Mac licenses sold but I would imagine it's a significant percentage of the customer base to address the same concern voiced with every version for Mac.

[dfortney]

I would guess they might sell more Mac licenses if it were so.

[blgentry]

This is one of those things that's hard to quantify.  In my estimation, changing the look and feel of the menus so that they are just like the rest of OS X won't make a bit of functional difference.  You won't be able to do anything with the new menus that you couldn't already do with the old menus.  So is it a waste of time?

This is the hard to quantify part.  I was initially put off by the non-standard menus.  I thought they were ugly and looked "wrong", and certainly behaved "wrong" (they don't stay fixed in one place; rather they move slightly based on where you click).  It was one of several reasons that I did NOT want to LIKE MC.  But the more I used, the more I liked it.  It took me a while:  30 days trial, plus an extension.  Now I'm a very enthusiastic fan of MC on the Mac.

That initial impression is important.  I think the mental attitude of potential customers would be better if they saw more native looking and feeling menus.  Instead of an automatic negative reaction (huh?  What's up with these weird menus?  Did the guys that wrote this even understand Macs?  Maybe I shouldn't be using this...), you'd get the familiar mental reaction of "It looks just like I expect it to".

I'm not sure if this is making sense or not.  More importantly, I don't know what kind of engineering effort this would require.  Would it help first impressions?  Undoubtedly YES.  Help convert those demoing MC for Mac to paying customers?  Probably yes.  Improve actual functionality?  I don't think so. 

So is it worth doing?  Hard to say.  I lean towards YES, but again, I don't know the time, effort, and money side of making this change.

Just my opinion.

Brian.

[glynor]

I basically agree with Brian's analysis here.

It would not help any of us who are already "sold" on MC, which is probably why it feels to JRiver folks like a waste of time.  But, IMHO, fixing many of the UI inconsistencies that make MC on Mac feel non-native, and the menu bar look and behavior is probably the most glaring of these, would help to sell MC licenses on Mac OSX.

I know many Mac users who would open it once, see it, and then close it again never to return.  They're poorer for it, but that's what would happen.  Now, of those people, how many are in the market for a $50 "pro-sumer" media player application?

I don't know for sure. I do know Apple keeps ticking people off with iTunes. I also know that LOTS of people want a good solution for many of the "problems" that MC solves right now.

[pschelbert]

As I am using MC on Mac and Win, for me its good that the UI is working the same on both. So MC is MC, not  depending on the machine I am working.

[bobkatz]

Other Mac Apps, you can move the cursor from menu bar item to item, but in MC you have to click on the next menu bar item to get to it. This is quite annoying...

For example, click on File, and you want to move to Edit. You have to click before you can get to it. Can you fix that?

[glynor]

Bob, I merged your thread into another thread that had been going on the same topic.

[bobkatz]

It's not that the menus are non-standard. That wouldn't annoy me, but Macs are all about ergonomics and if I have to do an extra click when the movement should be fluid, then I'm going to complain.

Since JRiver signed on to produce a Mac program, then it should behave to a great extent like a Mac program. For the most part it does, but needing an extra click to slide horizontally between menus in the menu bar will not fly. It is annoying. Not just for a Mac user but for a PC user who switches over to Mac and wants a smooth user experience.

Sorry JRiver. Ergonomics of basic menu operation should be a priority. Ergonomics in general should be a priority. You have this fluidity working on the PC side. In fact, it amazes me to see that the PC side is easier to use than the Mac. That's shocking to a Mac fan like me... 

Before I used DOS or Mac I knew CP/M very well. I am a Mac user since 1986. I have 14 computers in the house, and four NAS's. I have a strong understanding of how to use Linux and have programmed a script for RSync in Linux. I have 8 Pcs and 6 Macs and know the strengths and weaknesses of each OS very well. So I know both GUI and text entry very well and I live with a lot of ergonomic weakness every day.

Even so, even though most of the day I use a PC-based DAW for mastering, I'm still more fond of OSX than Windows, so it burns me to find an application that doesn't perform up to Mac's ergonomic standards.

[flying dutchman]

Completely agree with “bobkatz”! I use MC for years and love it, and pay for it, but to be honest every time I use it, it bothers me that the menu is different to my other Mac apps. And everytime a new version comes, just like the 21, first thing I look at is if the menue is fixed. And everytime I am dissappointed. I am sure you are doing very smart technical stuff in every version, but I just use the sw for listening to music. I don’t use Windows anymore now for many years, so I really can not compare to the Windows version, and also really don’t understand why the comparison is relevant, old world thing?

[flying dutchman]

Did I actually read that you are evaluating if the effort to adjust the menu to Mac standards would attract additional paying customers? I am a dum paying customer who was expecting that this would of course be coming soon after I bought the v18 on June 7 in 2013. I just paid again for v21 but will not be dum anough to do that again if this menu thing is not adjusted. How about customer sat, I thought that was the basis of every business.

[glynor]

There have been no comments on this from JRiver staff in this thread. Just a bunch of us users speculating.  I don't work for or speak for them, to be clear.

They read these posts, but don't always answer for a whole host of reasons.

[JimH]

They read these posts, but don't always answer for a whole host of reasons.

[xtraktz]

It is very strange to sell MC in 2015 with Windows XP's design. Maybe it is normal for Windows users but not for Mac.
This is not conducive to good sales for new users.
we are all waiting for the big update =)

[JimH]

It is very strange to sell MC in 2015 with Windows XP's design.

I'd bet $2 that there are more copies of XP in use world wide than all versions of OSX combined.

I acknowledge your concern, and we may do it sometime, but it's not at or near the top of our list.

As someone else said in this thread, for some people, it's nice that the two versions of MC act alike.  So that means we'd need to make the menu style optional and that complicates things.

[jlyness]

+1 for making the menus behave like, basically, ever other mac app with a visible menu bar. Seems like a basic thing that could/should have been done some time ago.

[Awesome Donkey]

It is very strange to sell MC in 2015 with Windows XP's design. Maybe it is normal for Windows users but not for Mac.
This is not conducive to good sales for new users.
we are all waiting for the big update =)

There are skins, for a Mac-esk look I'd suggest ModernCards.

I agree that the app menus should adapt a more Mac-esk behaviour like the first post suggests, which is pretty straightforward it seems. However the subject regarding MC supporting Apple's native app menus has been discussed multiple times before over the last couple years. This may be seemingly difficult as MC uses its own system for the menus, skins, etc. and not Apple's native app menus.

However, would it be possible to fake the look of the native Mac menus without actually using them? Think about it, all it'd require changing the background of the menus to the semi-transparent color (white-ish and/or black-ish depending whether dark mode is enabled) and change the size, font, color, etc. of the words. Along with that move About Media Center... to the first "main" menu where Quit is located and finally add a way to detect whether or not dark mode is enabled. This all could be aided by the OS detection that's used for the skins too.

In a nutshell I'm talking about full-blown MC menu skinning support.

[Awesome Donkey]

+1 for making the menus behave like, basically, ever other mac app with a visible menu bar. Seems like a basic thing that could/should have been done some time ago.

Media Center doesn't use Apple's app native menus (it uses its own system). That's why it doesn't work.

[hoyt]

I'd bet $2 that there are more copies of XP in use world wide than all versions of OSX combined.

I acknowledge your concern, and we may do it sometime, but it's not at or near the top of our list.

As someone else said in this thread, for some people, it's nice that the two versions of MC act alike.  So that means we'd need to make the menu style optional and that complicates things.

$2 is a low bet for something that is statistically possible to validate with Google   You should also look at future growth though.  Windows sales in 2015 were down over 20% in the first half of this year.  That's somewhat normal for a new OS release year, but far more than most expect.  Meanwhile, Mac sales in Q1 and Q2 of 2015 were up 13% over 2014 - and Q3 is expected to be similar.  Now, that pales in comparison for OS usage for Windows, but it's no stepchild.

However, I totally disagree on the statement  that "both versions should look alike."  Even Microsoft doesn't make Office on the Mac look exactly like Office on Windows.  It has similarities, but it still feels like a Mac app...  And that's what's missing from MC for Mac.

How about this hypothetical, JRiver is said to be working on a native Android version.  Will it look like the Windows version?  I hope not.

[JimH]

However, I totally disagree on the statement  that "both versions should look alike." 

OK, but I didn't say that.

[glynor]

To be clear so this doesn't get off-track.  The OP's post here, and Bob Katz's follow-up, were very specific about one particular bit of non-Mac-like behavior of the Menus (and I agree completely). Yes, generally there are other places where MC's behavior diverges from a standard AppKit application, including how the menus look.  In a perfect world it would be nice to improve a bunch of those things.

However, we're not asking for all of that right now.  All we're looking for, right now in this thread, is this one change:

Other Mac Apps, you can move the cursor from menu bar item to item, but in MC you have to click on the next menu bar item to get to it.

That is all.  Please don't let this slide into a "it needs to be AppKit-native or I hate it discussion" or it won't accomplish anything.

[hoyt]

OK, but I didn't say that.

True.  Paraphrasing the comment I've read in a few of these threads, didn't mean to attribute it as a direct quote from you.

[bobkatz]

To be clear so this doesn't get off-track.  The OP's post here, and Bob Katz's follow-up, were very specific about one particular bit of non-Mac-like behavior of the Menus (and I agree completely). Yes, generally there are other places where MC's behavior diverges from a standard AppKit application, including how the menus look.  In a perfect world it would be nice to improve a bunch of those things.

However, we're not asking for all of that right now.  All we're looking for, right now in this thread, is this one change:

That is all.  Please don't let this slide into a "it needs to be AppKit-native or I hate it discussion" or it won't accomplish anything.

Agree 100% with Glynor. I personally am not annoyed by the look and feel of JRiver on Mac... only the particular ergonomic blockade mentioned above.

[blgentry]

OS usage numbers are interesting and relevant to the discussion.  But IMHO, the numbers that are probably more important are numbers that none of us will probably ever get to see.  Namely the number of units of MC sold for Mac in the last year.  You'd have to try to fudge in some of the master license numbers too, since some Mac users bought those.  When I bought my license for MC20, for example, the Master License was on sale and I got that instead of a Mac license.

Of course all of this analysis is fuzzy at best though.  You can't predict anything from past performance or statistics.  Nor can you tell how many users you will attract with a new feature.  I can tell you FOR SURE, that some people don't buy MC for Mac because of the menus and the general non-native feel.  The corollary then is that more people would buy MC for Mac if it had a more native feel.  Are menu enough?  They are a good start for SURE.  I obviously can't guarantee anything, but my gut feeling is that more people would buy MC for Mac with native looking and feeling menus.

Frankly, I don't really care about the menus for my own use.  I'm SOLD on MC either way.  Though it would be nice to have more people join the party, discover the magic, and put more money in JRiver's pockets. 

Brian.

[JimH]

OS usage numbers are interesting and relevant to the discussion.  But IMHO, the numbers that are probably more important are numbers that none of us will probably ever get to see.  Namely the number of units of MC sold for Mac in the last year. 

I think our sales are about 5:1 in favor of Windows.  That's probably not far from the ratio of machines in service.

I think it's very common that people have both in the home.  We sell a lot of Master Licenses.