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I'm curious why somebody would start with a machinetosh? Windows is used way more than machinetosh on developer machines. Is it because: 1) Authors don't know

I'm curious why somebody would start with a machinetosh? Windows is used way more than machinetosh on developer machines. Is it because: 1) Authors don't know the demographics? or 2) They think that Windows users wouldn't pay? (Not true I think) or some other reason?

billconan 7y ago
it might be a technical reason sometimes. Does windows provide an API for you to capture a window, instead of a desktop on a specific screen?
- coscreen 7y ago
  True, just in this case we just went with Mac because we used it personally. Windows might actually have been easier because macOS gets increasingly restrictive (e.g. with Catalina). Nevertheless, glad we made it and we'll do our best to support all major OSes.
- googleisevil6 7y ago
  I don't want to make this a game of one upmanship but I'd be surprised if there are GUI things you could do on a machinetosh that you cannot do on Windows.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Agreed, hopefully Windows will be easier though. Getting mac done well gets harder with every macOS update...
    - LeonB 7y ago
      Windows APIs give great info about size and position of windows. Challenging part is really the per monitor scaling, but it’s not impossible either. Great product, top work
      - coscreen 7y ago
        Thanks for confirming & your feedback!
AtomicOrbital 7y ago
looking forward to using this once it rolls to linux
- coscreen 7y ago
  Stay tuned!
- coscreen 7y ago
  Btw, we've just set up this quick survey to help us prioritize operating systems. Feel free to sign up & we'll keep you in the loop...
coscreen 7y ago
Thanks for the question. It was honestly a close call and we knew we couldn't do both at the same time (this is a side project). The reasons where: 1. Our personal devices were Macs at the time we started. 2. We felt that the first use case for CoScreen would be agile developers who collaborate with UX designers. The latter seemed to mainly use Macs (https://austinknight.com/writing/designers-prefer-macs https://austinknight.com/writing/designers-prefer-macs) while the former are mixed e.g. also depending on the region. In the SF Bay Area Macs quite popular among developers so we ran with it. In any case, we hope to be able to support all 3 OSes soon. For that reason CoScreen was built 95% in a platform-agnostic way (nwjs) so we're optimistic.
- aloer 7y ago
  Does that mean you use the JS Screen capture api to capture each and every window separately? I would’ve thought that’s too much for typical (laptop) cpus but have to admit I never tried this
  - coscreen 7y ago
    We're capturing them natively and are working on another major performance improvement which should make it at least as efficient as other major solutions.
    - aloer 7y ago
      Are there other solutions that capture multiple windows at once? I’m only familiar with typical screensharing where the use case is either full screen or a single window. The way I understand you, coscreen captures each window shown individually. Doesn’t that also mean that overlapping windows are captured in full? I can’t try it out atm so perhaps if you could leave a comment on cpu usage for encoding as well as bandwidth (upload) compared to a typical Screen Sharing solution with a single screen that would be great. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a MacBook with cores > 4 for precisely that idea: capturing every single window, streaming them out to a separate machine for analysis of what’s happening in them and possibly making them accessible for collaboration as well, all without losing too much performance I believe somewhere in this area is a lot of productivity waiting to be unlocked with better tools, not just for typical remote use cases but for any kind of office work
armadsen 7y ago
It's not called a "machinetosh". It's Macintosh, or Mac for short. Named after the McIntosh variety of apple (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_(apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_(apple)). "Windows is used way more than [Macintosh] on developer machines." - Citation needed. Macs are extremely popular among web developers, and are required for iOS developers, both pretty major categories of "developer".
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks for the historic context ;) Edit: + Stats from the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019 Windows: 47.5% MacOS: 26.8% Linux-based: 25.6% Source: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...
  - googleisevil6 7y ago
    You seem pretty grounded in facts, I hope you and your product go a long way. That said, this number isn't representative. Lots of enterprise devs (using Windows) are the kind of people who don't go to SO or fill surveys. I'd bet survey age group would be skewed towards younger crowd. In fact, I'd wager it's something like 75 15 10 Windows Mac Linux.

billconan 7y ago

it might be a technical reason sometimes. Does windows provide an API for you to capture a window, instead of a desktop on a specific screen?

coscreen 7y ago
True, just in this case we just went with Mac because we used it personally. Windows might actually have been easier because macOS gets increasingly restrictive (e.g. with Catalina). Nevertheless, glad we made it and we'll do our best to support all major OSes.
googleisevil6 7y ago
I don't want to make this a game of one upmanship but I'd be surprised if there are GUI things you could do on a machinetosh that you cannot do on Windows.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Agreed, hopefully Windows will be easier though. Getting mac done well gets harder with every macOS update...
  - LeonB 7y ago
    Windows APIs give great info about size and position of windows. Challenging part is really the per monitor scaling, but it’s not impossible either. Great product, top work
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Thanks for confirming & your feedback!

AtomicOrbital 7y ago

looking forward to using this once it rolls to linux

coscreen 7y ago
Stay tuned!
coscreen 7y ago
Btw, we've just set up this quick survey to help us prioritize operating systems. Feel free to sign up & we'll keep you in the loop...

coscreen 7y ago

Thanks for the question. It was honestly a close call and we knew we couldn't do both at the same time (this is a side project). The reasons where: 1. Our personal devices were Macs at the time we started. 2. We felt that the first use case for CoScreen would be agile developers who collaborate with UX designers. The latter seemed to mainly use Macs (https://austinknight.com/writing/designers-prefer-macs https://austinknight.com/writing/designers-prefer-macs) while the former are mixed e.g. also depending on the region. In the SF Bay Area Macs quite popular among developers so we ran with it. In any case, we hope to be able to support all 3 OSes soon. For that reason CoScreen was built 95% in a platform-agnostic way (nwjs) so we're optimistic.

aloer 7y ago
Does that mean you use the JS Screen capture api to capture each and every window separately? I would’ve thought that’s too much for typical (laptop) cpus but have to admit I never tried this
- coscreen 7y ago
  We're capturing them natively and are working on another major performance improvement which should make it at least as efficient as other major solutions.
  - aloer 7y ago
    Are there other solutions that capture multiple windows at once? I’m only familiar with typical screensharing where the use case is either full screen or a single window. The way I understand you, coscreen captures each window shown individually. Doesn’t that also mean that overlapping windows are captured in full? I can’t try it out atm so perhaps if you could leave a comment on cpu usage for encoding as well as bandwidth (upload) compared to a typical Screen Sharing solution with a single screen that would be great. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a MacBook with cores > 4 for precisely that idea: capturing every single window, streaming them out to a separate machine for analysis of what’s happening in them and possibly making them accessible for collaboration as well, all without losing too much performance I believe somewhere in this area is a lot of productivity waiting to be unlocked with better tools, not just for typical remote use cases but for any kind of office work

armadsen 7y ago

It's not called a "machinetosh". It's Macintosh, or Mac for short. Named after the McIntosh variety of apple (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_(apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_(apple)). "Windows is used way more than [Macintosh] on developer machines." - Citation needed. Macs are extremely popular among web developers, and are required for iOS developers, both pretty major categories of "developer".

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks for the historic context ;) Edit: + Stats from the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019 Windows: 47.5% MacOS: 26.8% Linux-based: 25.6% Source: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...
- googleisevil6 7y ago
  You seem pretty grounded in facts, I hope you and your product go a long way. That said, this number isn't representative. Lots of enterprise devs (using Windows) are the kind of people who don't go to SO or fill surveys. I'd bet survey age group would be skewed towards younger crowd. In fact, I'd wager it's something like 75 15 10 Windows Mac Linux.