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Snow - Classic Macintosh emulator

(snowemu.com)
281 points ColinWright | 1 comments | 26 Jun 25 09:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.254s | source

GitHub repo: https://github.com/twvd/snow, Announcement from creator: https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12509, Originally-submitted source with further details: https://oldbytes.space/@smallsco/114747196289375530
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thristian ◴[26 Jun 25 11:09 UTC] No.44386193[source]▶
For some context about why a portable, user-friendly, hardware-level emulator for classic Mac systems is such a big deal, see this blog post from 2020: https://invisibleup.com/articles/30/

For game consoles, we've had emulators like Nestopia and bsnes and Dolphin and Duckstation for years.

For PCs, virtualisation systems like VMWare and VirtualBox have covered most people's needs, and recently there's been high-fidelity emulators like 86Box and MartyPC.

The C64 has VICE, the Amiga has WinUAE, even the Apple II has had high-quality emulators like KEGS and AppleWin, but the Mac has mostly been limited to high-level and approximate emulators like Basilisk II.

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xdfgh1112 ◴[26 Jun 25 11:30 UTC] No.44386339[source]▶
That article is objectively true but .. I've never seen such a grotesque dismissal of the hard work people have done for free.
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InvisibleUp ◴[26 Jun 25 18:32 UTC] No.44390020[source]▶
I feel like that’s a bit harsh, but I’ll admit that it is needlessly inflammatory. I wasn’t in the best state mentally when I wrote that. (I do sometimes worry that I’m responsible for the disappearance of Paul C. Pratt…) At some point I need to either rewrite it to be less hostile or just yank it entirely.
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troad ◴[27 Jun 25 01:05 UTC] No.44392957[source]▶
I stopped reading when we got to sarcastic hate-compiling. That whole part could be a thoughtful and compassionate discussion of the state of Mac emulators, and would be much more persuasive if it were, and instead it reads like a blog-length dunk tweet.

> I feel like that’s a bit harsh, but I’ll admit that it is needlessly inflammatory.

You're asking for a courtesy here that you failed to extend to others.

When you write a hit piece on someone's hobby volunteer code, and then you get called out for being unduly mean, I don't think you get to complain people are being harsh to you. You chose to devote hours of your time to dismantling something someone put years of effort in, entirely as a fun hobby. (Antique Mac emulation is certainly not the highway to riches.) You say 'inflammatory', like the issue here is that you're slightly heated and passionate. No, the issue here is that the piece boils down to bullying other people because their fun hobby projects don't meet your esoteric standards ('no Github releases!').

> I wasn’t in the best state mentally when I wrote that. (I do sometimes worry that I’m responsible for the disappearance of Paul C. Pratt…)

Nothing about your mental state gives you licence to bully others. Their emotional states are no less important than yours.

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InvisibleUp ◴[27 Jun 25 05:02 UTC] No.44393827[source]▶
To clarify, at the time I was aiming for the tone of Tantacrul's popular and well-received videos about poor software UX. (In particular, the MuseScore video is a good comparison; that was also an open source passion project.) Light-hearted ribbing / frustration venting mixed with genuine compassion toward the project's creator and his remarkable effort. Clearly I wildly missed the mark there. I'll try my best to avoid things like this happening again in the future.
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1. troad ◴[29 Jun 25 01:32 UTC] No.44409658[source]▶
Look, yes, you did wildly miss the mark. But I respect you owning that.

I think the MuseScore video is reasonably good reference for doing that sort of critique right. I'd gently point out two things. One, the MS video takes time to first explain what good UX is and why it's good, gently winning the viewer over with positive examples. Then it contrasts MS against best practice, relying on that earlier set-up work to ensure the viewer can follow along and see how MS is not quite hitting that mark. Two, it never denigrates MS; instead, it repeatedly affirms the author's enthusiasm for the product. It comes across as fairly compassionate and constructive criticism. Your piece, irrespective of its intent, didn't come off that way.

If you do want to do more criticism in the future, the MS video is a good point of reference. But I would hasten to add that good criticism is genuinely very hard. It takes work to do it right. It's not enough to simply be compassionate, you also have to demonstrate that compassion by weaving it into the final work of criticism. It must be a constant thread from start to finish, not a box one ticks off at the start or end.

A second option is to avoid criticism as such. Your piece could have easily been reframed as 'Mac emulation is really cool, built by these absolute legends, but none of these tools are quite right for me, so I made this fork that scratches my itches, and you might like it too!'. It gets the exact same points across, but does so much more gently.

That's not to say there isn't, at times, place for criticism strictu sensu. There is. But criticism is most effective when it is most constructive. Less cathartic, maybe, but catharsis at the expense of others is hardly something to aspire to.

I've taken the time to browse some more of your site and I think there's some really cool stuff on there. Don't be discouraged, or fall into the trap of being defensive, you have worthwhile things to say. Just do it with the same thought, patience, and compassion you'd want others to extend to you.