You first. We mean it.

From the beginning, iPragma approach to software design is centered on the user needs and in task-oriented objectives. The user is the central point of our development process.

We are always open to listen from our users, and to integrate their suggestions in future releases of iPragma software. We believe that software development must be a collaborative process between the software designers and the users. After all, we are working to achieve the same goal: to build products that are capable of streamlining our day-to-day workflow.

Our intention is to produce powerful software that enables the users to satisfy their needs in the most simple and intuitive form.

Gustavo Pimenta, iPragma Partner and User Experience Designer

The magic of the Macintosh

The big question. Why Mac? What's so special about the Mac platform? Some days before writing this text, I went to have dinner at my grandparents house. They have an old Mac SE (actually, my old Mac SE) and an Apple ImageWritter. For those who don't know, the computer has a Motorola 68000 CPU running at blazing-fast 8 Mhz, with 2.5 MBytes RAM, and a black and white 512*384 monitor.

He asked me to write a letter for him, as he didn't turn on the computer for more than a year, so he would have to remember all over again how to open a word processor and format text. Well, I did it, and I was amazed.

There I was, in a saturday evening of 2005, looking at System 6, running on a machine introduced in 1987, and I was amazed. I remembered my cool 1-bit startup screen I installed when I was a kid. I remembered Finder Sounds, and it's incredible 8 bits, 22 Khz jet-engine sound while you dragged an icon over the desktop. Most of all, I remembered how simple, easy and straightforward everything was. I didn't stay long, but when I went back home I stayed awake until 4am browsing the internet for old software and screenshots.

I think that's the magic of the Macintosh. It's not the new 64 bit CPUs. It's not the industrial strength UNIX core that keeps your machine running for weeks without crashes. It's not the cool aluminum panel or the stylish shining logo on the back of the TFT. It's the FUN. It's the PLEASURE you obtain while you work. It's the simplicity of how everything is done. It's the feeling that you have a very fast and competent colleague under your keyboard instead of a machine. It's the sensation that things were made by a human being, for a human being, and not for an anonymous computer user.

That's the most important part of the answer for the "why mac" question. For us, people that produce software, it's the same thing. It's fun to build applications on Mac OS X. It's easy to build application on Mac OS X. Above all, the way a Mac application is done (in Cocoa) is simple, elegant and intelligent. Cocoa is a beautiful framework made by NeXT, and then integrated on Mac OS X. It's the most advanced and the most elegant framework for building desktop applications anyone can get. And it's Mac only.

Miguel Arroz, iPragma Partner and Developer