And in a better spot. I'm not that thrilled about Reeder for Mac even though I love it on my iPhone and iPad, and a lot of it is due to the awkward position of the share button and such. The UI is really good looking but not usable enough.
That’s what I didn’t understand. NetNewWire has buttons on the exact same position (http://netnewswireapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/mac_scr... – please note that NetNewsWire doesn’t even show an Unread or Flag button by default), why then is Reeder’s placement especially bad?
It’s also not like the edges of the App help you a lot. Mac apps are at least by default not fullscreen, putting buttons in the corners doesn’t make sure that your mouse will be stopped by the edge of the screen right above or in close proximity to the button.
> That’s what I didn’t understand. NetNewWire has buttons on the exact same position (http://netnewswireapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/mac_scr.... – please note that NetNewsWire doesn’t even show an Unread or Flag button by default), why then is Reeder’s placement especially bad?
NetNewsWire has the window titlebar above the toolbar. Reeder has those two combined in one bar (so there is less vertical space).
It seems that this is why the next OS X will feature special full-screen application UI, to take advantage of things like Fitt's law, instead of encouraging people to maximize windows.
Yeah, I can't really get with that analysis since I've dropped both NetNewsWire and the Google Reader web interface in favor of Reeder. It's short a few keyboard shortcuts but otherwise it's a lovely app to use.
I’m not sure you should put beta software on such lists, either, but the analysis seems very superficial, even after reading it again. Fitt’s law is important but he seems to be barking up the wrong tree. Small buttons are not at all uncommon on the Mac. It’s not an iOS thing.
Safari’s default toolbar buttons (Back, Add Bookmark, …) have actually a smaller clickable area than Reeder’s buttons (about 800 square pixels vs. about 1300 square pixels) and if you overshoot the utterly unimportant Back button your mouse is right above the Close button. Depending on the size of the text label, Mail’s and Preview’s default toolbar buttons have about the same area as Reeder’s. OS X relic TextEdit has just as small toolbar buttons as Safari.
The minimum size for standard toolbar buttons on OS X is about 800 square pixels, the maximum (and default) is about 1800 square pixels. Reeder falls somewhere between those two and is certainly not some weird outlier because of that, if only because so many apps for the Mac, whether they are from Apple or other developers, have had the smallest toolbar buttons (smaller than Reeder’s default buttons) as a default for a long time.
I’m not saying that small buttons are a good idea, I don’t know that. All I’m saying that picking out Reeder and identifying iOS as the culprit seems misguided.
