I’m trying to revamp the Happy Apps site and I was thinking about technical Mac terms. Things like “Core Data”, “Cocoa”, “Tiger”, “Spotlight”, “Dashboard”, etc. I guess the last 3 are actually used by Apple in consumer advertising and in the Apple Stores.
That is, do people care if you write something in Cocoa? If you use Core Data? Does it make people think “that must be modern”?
Backing away from the Mac world, do people really care about “Hemi”s? Or “side air bags”? Or “5.1 surround”? Er – that is – do people understand what those mean? Or does it require commercials that clearly associate the benefits with those technical terms? Maybe that’s the secret to those Volkswagon commercials. Side air bags might seem unnecessary until you see someone get into a nasty accident and you see the benefit they give you.
If you’re talking about ‘average’ mac user, it depends on the hype surrounding these terms. A lot of people think a cocoa app is better even if they don’t know what this mean.
On the other side, I think that “mac users = people who just want things to work and don’t care about the technical side” is not true anymore, a lot of geeks use macs, and mac users can spare the time trying to fix drivers and whatnot, so they have the time to learn new things and become geeks. ;)
The five terms you mention are attractive to most people, I guess.
Yeah, if you want to casually mention something is built with Cocoa and Core Data thats fine — some people will like to know — but you really need to highlight the ways in which your apps helps people kick ass first. Make sure that is what everyone reads.
Good luck.
One thing that I definitely wouldn’t do is tell the people what type of technology is used in the short 1 sentence blurb on version tracker. I think if a user sees a listing that says “A cocoa core data application that makes your life easier”. This is going to appeal to a core data and cocoa nutter (both of us) but everyone else is going to figure the application is not for them.
At the end of the day 98% of Mac users want to know what operating system the app will run on and anything else that they need to run it. Apart from that I would avoid talking about your underlying technologies and would worry about the high level fluffy stuff like how it will the end user time and money.
Thanks
Luke
If you really want to talk about the underlying technology, try putting it in terms of why your customers would care to know these details. In other words, how it benefits them that you’re using these technologies (a better user experience, faster performance, whatever). If there isn’t an end-user benefit, then don’t bother, in my opinion.