[Development] Puzzled by desktop development priorities, Mac OS specifically [Warning: Rant]

[Jan Farø]

On 26/08/2013, at 01.36, Robert Knight <robertknight at gmail.com> wrote:

>> The time has come to focus on UI details, and this is where Qt gives me grey hairs. I started out developing in Qt 4.8, and experienced several issues
>> that didn’t work on the Mac (From the top of my head: Overlays on video widgets), or just looked plain wrong in
>> Mac OS context (For example: Table rows with alternate row colors does not extend to the bottom if only containing a few rows;
>> list view items does not scroll properly if setting an item widget).
> 
> Qt went through a period (during Nokia ownership) where focus on the
> desktop side of things did drop off. To be fair to Digia, since they
> took over, there has been much more active work on the desktop
> platform. The internals of the Mac platform integration are certainly
> in a much cleaner state now.
> 
> If you have specific problems that you need fixed, you should talk to
> Digia about a support contract. Your comments are welcome but really,
> Digia's first duty is to their paying customers.
> 
> I work on a Mac app that uses Qt and I think we've done a decent job
> of polishing the Mac look and feel but it has required attention to
> detail, input from professional UI designers and direct use of native
> widgets and APIs in a few places. Qt does save time over the
> alternatives for a multi-platform app but there is no free ride I'm
> afraid.

I can understand why a company whose business is about mobile technology would focus on that. I am glad that things has changed since Digia took over.

I do agree that there's no such thing as a free ride; and personally I actually enjoy dealing with the nitty gritty UI details. I do however wish it would be closer to what is expected from a native application both in looks and behaviour.  

What I'm ranting about are the things that doesn't work. I don't think it should be necessary with a support contract for an open source framework if it delivers what it promises _on_all_platforms_, consistently, without broken features on platform x or y.