Copland/Gershwin vs. NeXT

Etcetera writes "David K. Every (of MacKiDo fame) has written an interesting article at iGeek about Copland vs. NeXT and the decisions that Apple made back in '95-96. Although most agree that bringing Steve Jobs back was a Good Thing, a lot of cool Apple-invented technologies got left by the wayside without a fair shot at proving themselves once NeXT came in. Was it always the right call? Functions as a cautionary tale about management vs. engineering as well."

Comments

Re:Inaccurate in places

[rgraham]

The reasons why the "real" Mac OS X took longer were that Apple had to implement Carbon for developers unwilling to convert to Cocoa, and write a brand new display system (Quartz) after Adobe dropped Display PostScript.

Almost true. Adobe didn't drop support for Display PostScript, Apple decided they didn't want to pay a royalty to Adobe for every copy of the MacOS that would ship that used Display PostScript.

Subjective Article

[Spencerian]

I would remind people that David, in my mind, is a Mac zealot. His old Mackido website was full of vitrole and over-advocacy. (Mind you, it was a great place to find a computer joke, but I took little of the site very seriously.)

As I mentioned in other topics, Mac OS 9 users are among the most stubborn to change their way of doing things on a Macintosh. That's understandable--the original Mac OS was easier to use than most operating systems and developed quite a fan following. This resistance to change, however, causes finger-pointing and blame-making over a matter that, now, isn't really a point of conversation anymore. I think David falls in this trap of "Apple's changed with OS X and I don't like anymore." I also give this problem a name: whining. I'm a Macintosh advocate by trade but I've never been fond of zealotry--its a blinding thing in helping a customer.

I disagree with David about his being "sick of hearing that Copland project failed because of engineering. From what I know of engineering and people inside of Apple, it was mostly because of bad management decisions inside of Apple." He makes the incorrect assumption that the technology was sound enough and needed only enough money and time to push it through. Apple creates the environment that R&D works in, true. But faulty engineering is faulty engineering. Steve Jobs likely killed many projects not only because he didn't find them practical but because they just plain didn't work or didn't follow the business plan. Seedless corn or instant water sounds like a cool idea, but a bad idea is a bad idea.

Apple nearly died because they didn't have a business plan. Does David want Apple to revive old projects at the cost of the company's existence? Makes no sense to me. I think David is grousing over spilled milk.

We were all uncertain about what became OS X, and, thanks to a strong business plan, focused R&D, and listening to customers and developers (things that Apple did very badly in the '90s), Apple has a sound product with a good future.

Re:nostalgia

[BitGeek]

There is nothing important that Smalltalk has, that Objective-C lacks.

In fact, Objective-C is superior to small talk for its given market: compiled applications that can be shipped in shrink wrapped form.

Call C++ a pale shadow of smalltalk and I agree with you, but don't knock Objective C. Its wonderful, and has no problems or poor aspects that from what I see.

There's a lot of whining about OS X and I just don't get it-- it is far and away the best OS I've ever worked with as a user, or developed for as a developer. Far better than Classic Mac OS, better than windows, better than Unix.

I think people want to complain about some idealized impossibly perfect idea of what something could be... but in terms of reality-- shipping products-- its the best there is right now, and well ahead of everything else out there.

Apple's "develop" article on Copland

[Etcetera]

For those of who weren't programming Macs back in the Day (remember APDA?), Apple had an award-winning quarterly technical journal called "develop" which had lots of neat articles in it with a fun and offbeat tone. Sort of like O'Reilly and Associates has now. They stopped putting it out in '97 amid all the hemoraging, but all the issues are available here.

Anyway, there's a pretty informative article explaining all about Copland here.