How should we handle Mac users visiting winehq.org? - wine-devel

4 Aug 2009


      Something interesting I noticed today: our wiki page on Mac OSX is
ranked 7th when doing a simple search for "Wine" (the main page and the
download page of winehq are 1st and 2nd).
This means that a _large_ number of people are linking directly to the
wiki page from external sites.  Presumably, this is due to demand,
however it's also largely due to the fact that the OSX experience on the
main website is so poor.
For instance, if I am a Mac user and I go to the website, I may learn
what Wine is, get excited about it, and even read that it's for the Mac.
 But then I go to the download page and I'm completely lost - we don't
put an OSX icon there, and we don't even explain that Crossover is for
the Mac as well.
My suggestion is we do our best to explain the current situation to Mac
users.  Provide an Apple "download" that actually links to the wiki
page, and have the wiki be up front about how it's harder to install
Wine on OS X than Linux because we don't have a volunteer making binary
packages.  Maybe some will take the hint and go buy Crossover, maybe
some will go ahead and try the instructions but get less frustrated, and
maybe someone will step forward and provide packages.
At the moment, though, we leave them confused until Google tells them to
go to the wiki page.
Thanks,
Scott Ritchie