Dear WRAL Marketing Team:

I saw your desktop weather application running on my stepbrother’s computer last night, and thought it was pretty nicely done. I thought that it would be really useful to run at work since I don’t have any windows in my office.

I visited your weather application’s site for more information. There, you had put up pretty pictures of your application running on various devices: a cell phone, a Palm V, an old-school clamshell iBook, and a pager.

Whoa, Nelly. An iBook? I got my hopes up. Perhaps, in addition to writing a PC version, you also bothered to write a version for the Mac as well! That would be nice for my iBook at home.

Anyways, I proceeded to the download page, filled out the form, pulled down the list of supported systems and… no Macintosh option. Nothing.

Upon hitting my back button, I looked closer at the picture:

Ugh. You Photoshopped the iBook’s screen to make it look like it’s running your weather application. Not only that, but it’s not even a convincing screenshot from a Mac; notice the Windows-like application running behind your weather application. It’s like someone took a screenshot off their PC and plopped it onto the iBook’s screen.

Had any other Macintosh notebook been used in this manner, I probably wouldn’t have noticed at first glance. However, the clamshell-style iBook is hard to mistake for any knockoff PC notebook.

Worse, your site makes no explicit mention of the system requirements to run your application. It’s always a good idea to outline the minimum system requirements before allowing a user to download your software. Having an optional dropdown for “Operating System” listed after other optional questions on a form (Income, Education) is not sufficient. A user shouldn’t have to find out that the program is incompatible by trial and error.

Do the right thing, WRAL. Either:

• develop a Mac version of your application or
• change your website to a more realistic picture (i.e. a PC desktop or notebook running your weather application) and state your system requirements clearly (i.e. that your application will only work on a PC running Microsoft Windows).

Oh well. I suppose that when I need to know the current weather conditions, I’ll just get up from the computer and go outside.

Regards,
Scott Parkerson

(Update: This AM, got an short apology from Michelle Singer at WRAL stating that the Mac version isn’t done, and that the iBook image was supposed to have been pulled months ago.)