Apple Developer Profile Changing?

rocketjam writes "According to InternetNews.com, Apple Computer is seeing large numbers of UNIX, Java and Open Source developers moving to its Mac OS X platform. Apple Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations Ron Okamoto mentions that, in the three years since the introduction of OS X, 'people who have experience in those areas are showing a great interest in our OS. We're seeing a lot of first timers. It's really impressive.' The company said it has recently surpassed the 300,000 member threshold of registered developers. Apparently, the increase in enterprise code writers has prompted Apple to add more sessions focusing on enterprise and IT to its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference."

Comments

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

iThink it is.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe he uses teh i like in teh ipot hehe istn he funnay?? Go gentoo, goooo!! hehe!! w000t!!!

Re:Yes

[the_thunderbird]

Does that mean we are not going to be fat anymore because we are eating healthy apples?

I've said it before...

[razmaspaz]

and I'll say it again. Apple could own the enterprise if they would take their head out of their ass.

Re:I've said it before...

[razmaspaz]

Will someone explain to me how this is a troll?

I am being very serious. Apple has created a viable platform for developing enterprise applications. They have the XServe now and they are starting to attract a large crowd of developers. This article is proof however that they have no clue that they are sitting on a gold mine.
We're seeing a lot of first timers. It's really impressive
I mean seriously. Apple didn't even think they would attract this many people.

Re:I've said it before...

[1000101]

True, if by "take their head out of their ass" you are referring to substantially lowering their prices. The Xserve is priced fairly competitively, but a G5 starts at $1800 and you can get a IBM ThinkCentre S50 for around $900. When ACME Corporation has to purchase 1000 new pc's, which do you think they will choose?

Re:I've said it before...

[razmaspaz]

I'm not talking about work stations, Im talking about servers. And try finding a windows server anywhere for under 2500. One with an OS that is.

Re:I've said it before...

[grimace1969]

The G5 is not the equivalent of a ThinkCentre, when you think "General Business Workstation" think iMac. If you want an IBM machine that compares to the G5, look at the IntelliStation A Pro, which costs $2600 dollars. Comparing Apples to Oranges (no pun intended)

-G

Re:I've said it before...

[DrDNA]

a G5 starts at $1800 and you can get a IBM ThinkCentre S50 for around $900.

If the G5 is so overpriced, why then does the cheapest, most powerful supercomputer consist of G5s? The third most powerful supercomputer in the world is an array of G5s that was much cheaper than many of the supercomputers slower than it.

The fact is, the IBM ThinkCentre S50 is not comparable to the G5. A good, fast Mac that businesses should be looking at is the iMac.

Re:I've said it before...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the s50 is also substantially slower and with much crappier components like: ethernet, video card, DVR, CDRW. It does, however, come with a floppy drive. Come on already, Apple has high end offerings and consumer offerings, they are price competative on all of them. The problem you and people like you seem to have, is that they don't offer systems made with cheap, bottom of the line components. It is true, they don't have a low-end offering, they specialize in high end gear for people willing to pay. Get over it.

Re:I've said it before...

[diamondsw]

However, Apple has pretty much always had a superior OS and hardware to the competition (i.e. Windows), yet that didn't bring them the gold mine and platform dominance that by many measures it should have. I think they've lost some of that old arrogance and are being more realistic. This is a good thing.

Re:I've said it before...

[MBCook]

I think capturing the home market is more important to Apple. By doing that they get more hardware and software from 3rd parties. This, among other things, increases the number of competent developers on your platform.

How can Apple do this? There are two problems, as I see it. First is advertising. They haven't had ads targeting you basic consumer since the iMac days (since most Joe Sixpacks aren't going to buy a G5, and they didn't advertise the LCD iMac long). If someone who doesn't have a computer wants one, what do they think of? They think "I can buy one at Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, or from Dell, or Compaq." Unless the happen to walk into a store like Microcenter or CompUSA and see the Mac section, they probably won't give buying a Mac any real thought.

The other problem is prices. Now, before you go calling me a troll, hear me out. I agree that a Mac is most of the time a better value than a PC. But when people see ads on TV for $500 Dells and they found out that Macs start at $700 or so, you're in trouble. If they could lower the price of the lowest one (say to $600) that would help. They should also ADVERTISE their lowest model and it's price (the eMac). Point out in the ads that it comes with iTunes, movie editing software, photo editing software, video conferenceing software, DVD burning software, and such. Compare the price of that $500 Dell once you include the monitor, that software above, and such. Maybe include a nice office suite (Open Office or anything else) so it will be a "complete computer" with anything most people would need. This will sell some real computers. Advertise how they are practically immune to viruses and hackers (compared to Windows) so you don't have to worry when you're on the internet. Show the cool features like expose (eye candy is always good). Show that Macs can play games too.

And get them back into schools. That plus the above should really help apple out. Schools will love the Unix core (secure, easy to centereally manage), low virus problems, etc. Macs can read and write disks/etc from students with PCs or Macs so no one will run into that "but I have a Mac and so my disk won't work here" problem.

I love Macs, but they aren't going to grow (at any noticeable rate) in market share without some advertising. Grassroots is nice, but it's only keeping Apple sustained. They've got some of the best computers on the market (along with, IMHO, the best OS). Tell the world!

As for the business market, if the boss has a Mac at home (even if he got it for his kids, or he's seen the one at a friend's house) and he's had little trouble with it (compared to his PC) then he's going to be much more likely to entertian the idea of getting Macs. Businesses will like Macs too for many of the reasons stated above in the "school" paragraph.

Re:I've said it before...

[eddy]

However, Apple has pretty much always had a superior OS [..]

C'mon! By "pretty much" you mean "except for every release of MacOS and the original OS X?". If so, yes, I guess they've "always" had a superior OS.

That slow-as-molass cooperative-multitasking non-MMU OS where "multitasking" was more like "select a program to run up front", that was kicked up and down the street by AmigaOS, is just a figment of my imagination I guess.

Re:I've said it before...

[larry bagina]

They had a superior OS back in 1984, if only by default.

Re:I've said it before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's math didn't work at all. Nobody on Slashdot ever checked it out (being that you've all got your heads shoved up Steveo's ass), but if you multiply out the numbers, they don't jibe with what we're paying from the Apple Store. So unless you all want to get together and buy 1100 G5's and split the reduced cost, the deal Apple gave them doesn't help US much.

Re:I've said it before...

[thatguywhoiam]

The other problem is prices. Now, before you go calling me a troll, hear me out. I agree that a Mac is most of the time a better value than a PC. But when people see ads on TV for $500 Dells and they found out that Macs start at $700 or so, you're in trouble. If they could lower the price of the lowest one (say to $600) that would help. They should also ADVERTISE their lowest model and it's price (the eMac). Point out in the ads that it comes with iTunes, movie editing software, photo editing software, video conferenceing software, DVD burning software, and such. Compare the price of that $500 Dell once you include the monitor, that software above, and such. Maybe include a nice office suite (Open Office or anything else) so it will be a "complete computer" with anything most people would need. This will sell some real computers. Advertise how they are practically immune to viruses and hackers (compared to Windows) so you don't have to worry when you're on the internet. Show the cool features like expose (eye candy is always good). Show that Macs can play games too.

There's only one problem with this, but its a big problem:
The low-end computer market is no fun.

I don't think Apple wants to be there, and I don't really blame them. You've got tiny little margins. You need to strip out quality parts for 3rd-rate crap that doesn't last as long. And most importantly, you won't make a hell of a lot of money at it unless you are the only game in town... like Dell.

Think about it. Dell has successfully bludgeoned the other once-promising clone makers into fine powder; Gateway is closing its stores, IBM got out of PCs entirely, Compaq is a smudge under HP's ass... am I missing anyone?

The users who are willing to shop around and build (or commission) a custom PC using the cheapest parts are not a large market, nor are they a market that's willing to spend a lot of money.

Just like Palm computers, its a cutthroat business and doesn't really leave you time to innovate or do new, interesting things (like 23" displays for instance). Especially when you are Apple, and you manage (pay for) both the platform and OS development.

Re:I've said it before...

[fdobbie]

Apple *does* have ads targeting consumers. You can hardly miss the iPod adverts splattered all across cities and television these days. These adverts are clearly targeting consumers and it's paying off - the net result is the iPod is the market leader in portable digital music players.

The thinking goes like this: Joe Bloggs sees iPod advert and notices all his friends have iPods. Joe buys iPod. Joe likes iPod. Joe's Dell is a bit long in the tooth, so he decides to stop by the newly opened local Apple Retail Store. Apple people demonstrate the benefits of owning a Mac to Joe and he leaves with a shiny new machine.

The same thinking applies to the iTunes Music Store (and also just the iTunes software as a free MP3 jukebox for Windows), in that it will fuel iPod purchases which will in turn fuel Mac purchases.

You said that customers will walk into one of the major retail stores and probably not see Macs. As a result of having a small market share, it's been the case that the retail stores just can't be bothered to give Macs any resources in terms of pushing them onto consumers. The obvious solution is to make them more obvious on the high street, and after years of trying to do that with the store-within-a-stores and all that kerfuffle they finally gave up and are doing it themselves, and it seems to be working.

Personally, I think for a long time advertising wouldn't have solved the problem. Now there's so much else going on, a really well targeted ad campaign for consumer desktops (perhaps shortly after they release a G5-based consumer machine?) would really hit hard.

Having said all that, the management have repeatedly proven that they move in strange and wondrous ways, so who knows what'll happen.

Re:I've said it before...

[Rebar]

As for the business market, if the boss has a Mac at home (even if he got it for his kids, or he's seen the one at a friend's house) and he's had little trouble with it (compared to his PC) then he's going to be much more likely to entertian the idea of getting Macs.

On the other hand, if those of us who make vendor evaluations have truly bad experiences with our home Apple hardware, we will be less likely to consider the Xserve line for our next big project. I've been tempted by Xserve-RAID, but my recent experiences with Apple Support regarding my 15" powerbook have made it so it will be a LONG time before I can recommend Apple to anyone. The OS is truly nifty and the hardware sexy when it works, but after dealing with Summer in Apple Support for a couple weeks, I would warn anyone to stay far, far away from the current generation of Apple hardware based on the shifty, disingenuous nature of their hardware support alone.

They can make inroads in the schools and the home market where the boss gets experience, but they truly have no notion of the future value of an Apple customer once they have them in the fold, so to speak. What's the use of gaining a convert if you blow it on lousy tech help?

Re:I've said it before...

[w3weasel]

Apple could own the enterprise if they would take their head out of their ass

How amazingly short sighted of you... and at least substatiate such an inflamitory statement.

Apple is still recovering (nicely) from the handiwork of Gil Ameleo, who almost single handedly killed the company. Now, lets say that you were the big boss of a company with a rabid, but declining fan base, with an outdated, underpowered, and overpriced product (a la Apple in the late 90's). How would you cash in on your gold mine? Would you bet the entire company treasury on a single round of massive R&D on hardware, software and advertising simultaneously? If so, how would you sustain the effort?

The kind of changes taking place at Apple are nothing short of revolutionary... Unix that anyone can use, and that hardcore bearded developers drool over. Hardware that easily matches the competition... NO! Shut up with your "overpriced" ranting... Go ahead and buy that dual opteron setup for $400 dollars cheaper... when you start having to replace components in 3 years, ask a mac user how long he has been using his machine trouble-free.

Man, I could write a book about what x-grid, x-code, and stellar hardware mean for the average enterprise.
When you learn that the latest upgrade of Powermacs has been held up due to massive purchases by the U.S. government and little companies like Google, you might begin to get the picture that Apple played its losing hand like a Vegas pro, and continues to do so.

Re:I've said it before...

[hesiod]

> The kind of changes taking place at Apple are nothing short of revolutionary... Unix that anyone can use

Umm... There already IS a UNIX that anyone can use. It's called Linux. I think what you mean to say is "a UNIX that any braindead hamster can use." Now THAT'S impressive.

Re:I've said it before...

[razmaspaz]

Whats impressive is that the linux community still doesn't get it. You think Linux is user friendly. ITS NOT. Its nowhere near user friendly. its getting better for sure, but it is not a viable desktop option for the average user. it just isn't polished enough to comptete with windows. If you guys would stop adding little bells and whistles to the kernel and put some real effort nto a unified polished desktop, there would be something to talk about here.

Re:I've said it before...

[razmaspaz]

This is exactly what I look at and see as them not getting it. Here they are targeting the end user. Microsoft won in the 80's by targeting the business user. Apple lost because they were anti-corporate (1984 ad) in a decade of Gordon Gecko and Michael Milken. Sure they had the superior product, but they made themselves out to be hippies and tried to sell their product to yuppies.
Now they are back with a superior product (software and hardware) a rock solid enterprise platform, and a real opportunity. What are they doing? marketing iTunes and the iPod.
Come on!

Re:I've said it before...

[hesiod]

> You think Linux is user friendly.

Hold on there, buckaroo. I didn't say it was user-friendly or easy, I just said "There already is a UNIX that anyone can use." Anyone can use it, it doesn't mean they don't have to learn to do it.

I agree with you. I've been using computers for a good 10 years (granted, 10 years is not that much time), and UNIX was one of the first OSes I used, but there are still things in Linux I scream about because they Just don't Work (!tm).

Re:I've said it before...

[w3weasel]

In order to keep developing the (not yet very profitable) enterprise side of their business, Apple needs to keep making money. If Apple were to downplay iTunes and the iPod because enterprise buyers might percieve Apple as not being dedicated to the enterprise market, the result would be this:
1. Windows based MP3 players would rapidly overtake the iPod.
2. Apple would fall back into mediocre or even declining financial status.
3. Stock prices would plummet.
4. Buyer confidence would fall due to falling stock prices and speculation that Apple is (once again) "about to go belly-up".

This is how business works... succeed in one market, maintain that success at all costs, and then move into other markets as resources allow.

It's all good and fine to speculate on what they 'should' do, just keep an eye on what they 'CAN' do!

Re:I've said it before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh WAH you fucking baby. Want a bottle?

Re:I've said it before...

[razmaspaz]

Good point

Re:I've said it before...

[razmaspaz]

I think what I was trying to say was "The linux community" rather than "you", I just think there is a misconeption and a disconnect between linux users and the general computing masses, and that linux users have a misguided opinion that linux is ready as a viable desktop option. Im saying its not!

Re:I've said it before...

[Rebar]

Oh WAH you fucking baby. Want a bottle?

Hey look! Apple Support posts to Slashdot!

Re:I've said it before...

[geschild]

Well, actually it should probably have been rated 'flamebait' but that's a mere detail.

The reason why, you ask? Because you make an inflamatory statement without any arguments as to why you have your opinion formed this way. Such posts don't fuel discussion, they fuel divisionism, flaming and anger.

I've therefore metamodded the mod as fair.

May make up for past losses.

[Kenja]

This may make up for the number of long time Apple devlopers that left after buying 9600 PowerMacs when we where told they would be the devlopment platform of choice for Apples next gen OS.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[THotze]

The 9600's WERE the developer platform of choice for their next-gen OS. They ran Rhapsody (OS X in its infancy) really well, and they're what Apple used to show off Rhapsody in the "early days". That was in 1997. The 9600 had a 50MHz bus, used 70ns RAM, and, realistically, never ran above 350MHz, or 300MHz (realistically, not ocunting the paper-release of the 350's) at launch.

The 9600 was the preferred way of preparing to do devlopment on Rhapsody for several years after its release (and it had many more expansion slots than the PowerMac G3, which probably made it a better choice for doing driver development on Rhapsody).

OS X wasn't released until 2000, and really, it wasn't till the end of 2001 that any sane person would consider using it. By that point, the 9600 was four years old, TWO processor generations out of the lead, and didn't have hte kind of graphics processor that OS X wanted.

If Apple HAD made OS X work on the 9600, either OS X would have had to have shipped with many fewer features, or it would have CRAWLED to thep oint of a standstill (Remember how slow 10.0 was? Now, imagine that on a computer that had a 50MHz bus). Those who bought a 9600 could use it for about 3 years of software development before it was outdated, and it is still a decent development machine for OS 8.x and 9.x applications.

In short, in 1997, when developers were asking for development machines for Rhapsody, the 9600 was the best Apple could do. The comptuers available by OS X's actual release were SO MUCH faster that you'd be insane to say that the 9600 should have stayed compatible.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[Kenja]

Too bad very few apps made for Rhapsody ran on OS X. My company and others I knew blew a LOT of cash while Apple was promising to release Rhapsody "any day now". From where I sat, Apple was clearing out their warehouses of old computers by fostering them off on developers. Knowing full well that they where door stops.

Bottom line is that Apple used up a lot of "good faith" it had with the development community, regardless of if you agree with the reasons or not. They lost developers that they sorely needed and need.

Don't even get me started on Yellow Box.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, why'd you buy so many? That's a lot of PowerMacs!

Re:May make up for past losses.

[Frymaster]

right... and my 9600/233 makes a fine router now. 6 pci slots, 12 slots for ram, two scsi drive bays.

and a copy of yellow dog.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears you're wrong that they could not have gotten them to run on those machines or that it would have been overly difficult.

Link: http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/XPostFacto/

There is software out there that allows very old machines to run Mac OS X. Many people on the 'net are running it on simply ancient machines like PowerComputer and UMAX clones that were pre-OS 8.

It just takes a simple software fix. Go figure.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact Apple makes its money by selling hardware not software.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure you can MAKE OS-X run on a 9600, using an "enabler" freeware app.

The app tricks OS X into believing you actually DO have modern hardware.

Yeah, I know there was a rough transition especially for "1 system" shops, but Apple is better for it now don't you think? OSX is unbelievably sweet these day, and once again Apple is way ahead of Microsoft (and Linux, for that matter)

Re:May make up for past losses.

[MoneyT]

Just becasue you can get it to run doesn't mean it's a good idea. I was able to get OS 9 running on an LC III, but it ran like shit.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[rocketjam]

10.2 or 10.3 with XPostFaco requires a G3 or G4 processor so the old machines must have an upgrade card in addition to a software fix. There are people using thoses old machines for real work in OS X though.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[megan_of_wutai]

I find the concept astonishingly unlikely.

Considering OS9 was mostly PPC code and no-one ever made a PPC accelerator for the LCIII (or infact *any* 030 machine).
And presuming you made your own bizarre PDS slot accelerator I should expect it *would* run like shit, what with 36MB of RAM being possible.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[MoneyT]

Eh, sorry it was OS 8 not 9, and we used one of these:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/presto_plus.ht ml

Re:May make up for past losses.

[badsede]

With the right upgrades, the 9600 runs OS X great. I loaded one up with a G4, 512 MB ram (the thing will go to 1.5 GB) and an IDE card and drive and it runs 10.3 great. It also has firewire, USB, and upgraded (but not Quartz Extreme compatible) video card, 100BaseT .. overall a handy machine.

So, my 8 year-old machine runs the latest OS well.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[Pope]

Yellow Box is Cocoa, so I don't know where you were trying to go with that. Unless you meant Yellow Box for x86, the same as fat binaries for OpenStep.

Re:May make up for past losses.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you've got a G4 to me. Just because it's in an ugly 9600 case doesn't make it a 9600.

:O

[SaintDogbert]

What are these people doing?! Linux is free.. and you dont need to buy completely new hardware!

Re::O

[Timesprout]

Some people have no problem paying for quality products

Re::O

[avalys]

OS X has all the power of Linux coupled with a better UI and greater availability of commercial applications.

I know lots of people (including myself) who are looking to replace their aging PC systems with Apples. Since we'd be buying completely new hardware anyway, the platform difference isn't a good reason not to buy a Mac.

Re::O

[jwthompson2]

And others blindly buy total crap cause everyone else uses it...

And then there are the Linux desktop folks...no idea what to say about them....

-
Mac on the desktop, Linux in the server room and Windows in the dupster...ahh Utopia.

Re::O

[Oculus Habent]

Darwin is free, and doesn't require new hardware, either. However, the robust, consistent GUI is a big draw for people developing interfaces.

And Darwin will integrate nicely between your old, busted and your completely new hardware. (j/k)

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows in the dupster...ahh Utopia.

Pity that the spellchecker was on the Windows machine, though...

Re::O

[jwthompson2]

Too bad I happen to be using a windows box to read and post right now, otherwise your comment might have had merit.

Re::O

[prockcore]

OS X has all the power of Linux coupled with a better UI and greater availability of commercial applications.

Depends on your definition of power. OS X is nice but XNU is a piece of crap. XNU's poor scheduler and extremely poor IO means I would never use OS X as a server. The kernel just can't make full use of the hardware.

Re::O

[AuMatar]

Wow, the mac lovers are out in force today.

An reasoned opinion is not flamebait, no matter how much it may disparage your favorite toy.

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

> Some people have no problem paying for quality products

Some people believe a high priced product must be of high quality.

Re::O

[4of12]

OS X has all the power of Linux coupled with

Microsoft Office.

That single advantage is worth a lot to UNIX geeks forced to communicate frequently with management droids but don't want to give up on having root access on a UNIX box - by comparison, cygwin on win32 just doesn't feel as deep, nor does OpenOffice.org on Linux quite reach the heights it needs to.

Re::O

[master_p]

Mac OS X combines Microsoft Office and other Windows apps with the Unix way and with the best UI around, running on best general purpose CPU (now that Alpha is gone) and on one of the nicest platforms aesthetically. It is quite a tempting proposition.

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, nothing says "Quality" like remainder bin hardware such as 1Ghz CPU, 133Mhz SDRAM and a GeForce2.

PS: The moderators on this story are aids-ridden fanboys.

Re::O

[Maserati]

I'm posting from my PC too - it has the bigger monitor. And until there are Insanely Great flight-sims on the Mac, my fastest machine and videocard will be running Windows. At least it's an AMD CPU. And has Cygwin installed...

I feel kinda bad about it, but I have an addiction to feed.

Seriously, try the IL-2 demo if you have a PC handy.

Hmmm. WINE. A thought...

Re::O

[neuroklinik]

RE: Flight sims on the Mac. Have you tried X-Plane? http://www.x-plane.com/

Re::O

[Frums]

Scarily enough, MS Office running on Crossover works as well or better than MS Office v.X on OS X. I still prefer OS X, but Crossover works *really* well.

Re::O

[wchin]

Care to quantify your remarks here? Extremely poor I/O?

I find Mac OS X Server to be every bit as good as stable commercial Linux offerings on roughly equivalent hardware in real world situations. As far as the scheduler is concerned, I've seen far worse starvation issues with 2.4.x kernels than on Mac OS X. I/O throughput on Fibre Channel is also better (not to mention Mac OS X Server supports probing more then 1 LUN and sparse LUNs out of the box).

Now, there are some performance issues - like the time it takes to fork a process and other things that show up in synthetic benchmarks. But for real world performance? I haven't seen anything that demonstrates that RHEL3 or equivalent is substantially superior from a client's view across the network.

Re::O

[nathanh]

Some people have no problem paying for quality products

I have no problem paying for quality products, which is why I purchase Linux distributions.

I will pay _more_ for Free Software.

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

He's obviously looking for a combat sim, not a real flight sim (which X-Plane is pretty much undisputedly the best PC sim ever)

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude that's quite funny because OS X text entry boxes support system wide live spell checking (eg within Safari).

Doesn't work in IE on my XP box though...

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

Their UI is so bad its unusable (1 menu bar for all apps? EWWWWW!)

And their GUI reminds me of Fischer Price- all big and shiny and a great toy for a 3 year old, but it gets in the way of actually using their software.

Not to mention their annoying habbit of setting directives from on high. This is the way all apps should look, the way they should behave, etc. No thanks, I want to do things my way, because its better for me. If people disagree, they'll complain and I'll reconsider. But enough with the father knows best attitude.

An reasoned opinion is not flamebait

True, let me know when you come up with one.

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the bigest reason are the god dam apple fagots who never leaves steeves ass.

Spelling miss count: 4 Grammar miss count: 1 Estimated age of poster: 11

Re::O

[Anonymous Coward]

You point out the spelling and grammar errors and guess his age, but you don't disagree with his message.

Any reason for this?

In other news, it's confirmed, the sky is blue

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone really think this wouldn't happen? Those who are surprised need to stay after school and study their 'get a clue' guides in more depth.

Re:In other news, it's confirmed, the sky is blue

[grub]

When I read "Developer Profile Changing", my first thought is "Shit, I hope they don't want me to start wearing a suit to work!"

Correct me if I am wrong, but

[kemapa]

Does this not make perfect sense? I mean... how large can the learning curve be for Unix developers moving to MacOS X?

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[HeghmoH]

It depends on what you're writing.

If you're writing command-line tools, servers, or X11 apps, it's basically a slightly-strange BSD. A lot of code compiles and runs with no modification, and a lot more just requires some small tweaks.

However, if you're writing a GUI application, the APIs are totally different. Mac OS X doesn't use X11 for "normal" apps. You can use standard Java APIs, and some toolkits like Qt have been ported, but for the most part they don't produce an app that feels like a native application. If you're writing programs for the desktop, there's a big difference. But even then, unix experience can come in handy for the non-GUI parts of the application.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[cheide]

It depends on what kind of Mac developer you want to be.

It's easy enough to run the X11 server, install all your familiar old packages via Fink, and use it pretty much like you would have used your previous UNIX setup.

On the other end, if you want to be a 'true' Mac OS X developer, there are a few barriers to overcome:
- Switching from GTK/Qt to the Cocoa or Carbon frameworks
- Learning Objective-C (assuming you use the Cocoa framework)
- Bundling applications and libraries properly
- Following the Aqua UI guidelines
- Integrating with other components like AppleScript nicely

The advantage is that you can at least start out in the old, familiar environment while you work towards learning the new, preferred methods.

(I've recently switched, though I'm still near the 'old-school' end of the spectrum for now.)

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Anonymous Coward]

However, if you're writing a GUI application, the APIs are totally different.

And demonstrably better. Don't make me haul out the fact that a fella named Tim wrote the world's first web browser in just a few weeks on a NeXT cube using an API that's basically identical to the Cocoa API family for Mac OS X.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[gilrain]

You don't have to use Obj-C to use Cocoa. Feel free to use Java and Python, and I think some others I'm forgetting. Python for me, thanks. :)

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[pHDNgell]

However, if you're writing a GUI application, the APIs are totally different.

Is GNUstep really *that* much different from Cocoa?

If so, fix that problem. The NeXT people knew how to make it fast and easy to make fast and easy GUI apps that are easy to maintain. Forget all of this graphically generate some code and wedge it in your app crap.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of this, you can use your C++ objects with Obj-C (as of 10.2), allowing you to only sorta-kinda learn the language and let Interface Builder fill the gaps for you.

Yes, it sounds like a plan for disaster, but it isn't as bad as it sounds ;-)

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[jcr]

I wouldn't really describe NeXTSTEP as basically identical to Cocoa. It's Cocoa's ancestor, and many things are carried over, but Cocoa has an awful lot that NeXTSTEP never did.

-jcr

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[jcr]

Is GNUstep really *that* much different from Cocoa?

They're trying really hard to track features with Cocoa, but yes. GNUStep's still using Display Postscript, for one thing.

-jcr

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[jcr]

Right now, you can write Cocoa apps using Obj-C, Java, Python, Ruby, F-Script, and LISP (!)

-jcr

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Cocoa is the son of OpenStep. OpenStep is the brother of NeXTStep. You can use the NeXTStep to OpenStep code converter and recompile most apps for OS X with very few changes.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Is GNUstep really *that* much different from Cocoa?

GNUstep is slow, buggy, and crashes like a woman driver. Also, it doesn't have stable GUI RAD tools.

Yes, they are *that* much different.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[javaxman]

Right now I'm talking to a coworker who, in the past month has written a *very* fancy jigsaw puzzle application using Cocoa. In his spare time.

He did not know ANY programming language besides C a month ago. No OO programming, nothing, he'd just written C-code shell apps for years prior.

Sure, he's a smart cookie, but... if you're a good C programmer, you might be able to do the same type of thing, though.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[killjoe]

Python? Really? That's cool. Do you have a link?

I wonder whatever happened to apple's love affair with dylan.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[commander salamander]

http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[11223]

Learning Cocoa is not a barrier. It's a liberation.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Anonymous Coward]

One particular difference: With the new Cocoa WebKit API, you can write a web browser in two lines.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[AstroDrabb]

you might be able to do the same type of thing

Oh boy, can I, can I? How I would love to be able to write a ****very**** fancy jigsaw puzzle.

Jigsaw puzzle guru: Mr CEO, you should hire me
Mr. CEO: Why is that young man?
Jigsaw puzzle guru: Because I can program a *very* fancy jigsaw puzzle in Cocoa.
Mr. CEO: Well, in that case, your hired. $100,000 a year starting salary.

Jigsaw puzzle guru: Mr Game company manager, you should hire me
Mr Game company manager: Why is that young man?
Jigsaw puzzle guru: Because I can program a *very* fancy jigsaw puzzle in Cocoa.
Mr Game company manager: Well, in that case, your hired. $80,000 a year starting salary.

Jigsaw puzzle guru: Soup Nazi, you should hire me.
Soup Nazi: Why is that young man?
Jigsaw puzzle guru: Because I can program a *very* fancy jigsaw puzzle in Cocoa.
Soup Nazi: No soup for you, come back, two year.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[jinushaun]

What? You still have to know Obj-C to code for OS X?

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[rthille]

Another poster has replied that Cocoa > NeXTStep, but I'd just like to point out that the main thing that Cocoa has that NeXTStep was lacking that might have made it easier for Tim is WebCore(tm) :-)

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Anonymous Coward]

GNUstep is slow, buggy, and crashes like a woman driver.

I felt like an asshole when I laughed at this.

Of course, I still laughed.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[bsartist]

And Perl, and AppleScript. (John, how could you of all people forget to mention ASK???)

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Durandal64]

No sane developer writes Cocoa in AppleScript Studio. For the record, I am insane.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[rixstep]

It depends.

Writing console mode: it's still Unix, so there's really no 'migration' involved. Writing 'Carbon' is tangled, as it involves all those legacy APIs - and concepts - Apple became bogged down with so many years ago. Writing 'Cocoa' - essentially NeXTSTEP - involves an 'API' which many estimate is about four times as complex as Win32 - and how many programmers still write hard-core Windows code (ie w/o the MFC, ATL et al)?

I've had students a few years back migrating from Unix to NT and aghast at how extensive the Win32 API was. 'I've had only seventeen system calls all told!' blurted one.

So the learning curve can be steep indeed.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[salimma]

Don't forget C++ too.. well, Objective-C++ :)

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[HeghmoH]

GNUStep is very marginalized and difficult to install. If you can convince your Linux users to install GNUStep just to use your application, great, but otherwise having a GNUStep version doesn't get you much in the way of additional users. Unfortunately it's just not a serious contender for the Linux desktop at the moment.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[HeghmoH]

Yeah, seriously. It took weeks to write a browser? I can make one in about ten seconds just using Interface Builder!

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[jamesmrankinjr]

I would just like to point out that even when writing GUI apps, non-GUI C, C++ and Java libraries can be compiled and called from Cocoa pretty much as is. So if you have most of your business logic (Model) already in one of these languages, and factored out of the GUI, you pretty much just need to build the GUI in Interface Builder (View) and write a thin layer of Objective C "glue" code to connect it to your library (Controller). The new Controller classes in Panther mean even less glue code is necessary.

So even when building a Cocoa GUI app, you can still get a lot of reuse from existing libraries.

Peace be with you,
-jimbo

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Cocoa in LISP? That's the most bizzare marriage of APIs and languages I've seen since Microsoft slapped a GUI on BASIC.

I have GOT to try this.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[jcr]

Well, we don't really advocate writing Cocoa apps in AppleScript. AppleScript is more for controlling apps than implementing them, as it were.

Of course, if you want to get a GUI around some CLI app, AppleScript is a very fast, easy way to do that.

-jcr

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[jcr]

I'm curious how you can come up with a measure of relative complexity between Cocoa and the Win32 API.

I know that for my part, when I switched from using the Mac toolbox to NeXTSTEP back in '89, it took me about a month to be as productive in NeXTSTEP as I had been with the Mac, and three months later, I could probably do any given task in about one third of the time.

Since then, Cocoa's improvements over NeXTSTEP mean that I have a document framework, bindings, undo, and many other things that I used to have to write myself.

-jcr

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[weatherboy]

Obviously Tim screwed up, and should have used the WebKit API.

Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but

[legolas_a20]

It's case-insensitive unix. Once you get over that... everything else should be easy! Yeah, right.

Personally...

[avalys]

While I can't speak for anyone else, this certainly makes sense to me.

I've been a Windows user / Linux tinkerer ever since I first started using computers, but when I go to college (MIT!) this fall it'll be with a new Powerbook. Aside from the great hardware design, OS X is the perfect blend of usability and power for my purposes.

Re:Personally...

[Anonymous Coward]

bastard...

Re:Personally...

[avalys]

Huh? My parents aren't paying for the Powerbook, if that's what you're irked about.

Re:Personally...

[rnd()]

As a college Freshman I made the mistake of buying a brand new Apple PowerBook 5300. At the time it was the first PPC laptop and was touted as being really great.

It was a total piece of junk and the worst $2300 I have ever spent. There ended up being a product recall (twice) on 5300s, but mine had already gone back and forth to Apple twice and they'd claimed both times that everything was 100% perfect. Obviously it crashed all the time for no reason which was why I had sent it to them.

Apple has gotten its act together a bit since then, but I still think you'd be better off with an x86 running linux or Windows.

Re:Personally...

[abzorb]

If you have the money go for it! Most people going into school would be fine with linux or Windows.

Re:Personally...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I hear good things about Milwaukee Industrial & Tech!

Re:Personally...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know a terminal is a terminal no matter what OS you use.

Most coursework in engineering disciples is best done on the centralized server so it is consistent with the environment it will be graded in. You don't want your workaround for a bug in PPC GCC to conflict with a bug in Sparc Solaris GCC or even simply different builds.

Just a word of advice.

Re:Personally...

[Reverberant]

but when I go to college (MIT!)

My condolences.

Seriously thought, good luck.

(S.B. Course II, '95)

Re:Personally...

[wchin]

Yeah, I spent all this money on OS/2 1.0, and Microsoft touted it as the future. It was so awful, and Microsoft released a really buggy 1.1 and then basically abandoned it. Microsoft has gotten its act together a bit since then, but I think you'd be better off with an Alpha running OpenVMS.

WTF??!?

"Apple has gotten its act together a bit since then"

Ah... today's Apple isn't the same Apple you know from before. After all, NeXT took over Apple in 1998. You are talking about ancient history.

Developer Profile Changing?

[lukewarmfusion]

"Apple Developer Profile Changing?"

What, like - no more single, fat, balding, Mountain Dew drinkers?*

Oh wait, that's not just Apple Developers...

*I'm a developer, too. Yes, it's self-deprecating humor. Thanks, I know.

Re:Developer Profile Changing?

[UserAlreadyExists]

I think what they mean is a different kind of single, fat, balding, Mountain Dew drinker.

Re:Developer Profile Changing?

[Jim Hall]

"Apple Developer Profile Changing?"

By "Profile", I think Apple means that more Mac developers will look like this.

Hell, if more Mac developers/users had a profile like that, I'd switch to MacOS! :-)

Re:Developer Profile Changing?

[cptgrudge]

What, like - no more single, fat, balding, Mountain Dew drinkers?

HEY! It isn't fair to stereotype that way!

I drink Diet Dew!

Re:Developer Profile Changing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they mean a different kind of single, fat, balding, Mountain Dew drinkers who wear berets ...

New focus

[abzorb]

"Apple to add more sessions focusing on enterprise and IT"

I hope it comes in PINK!

Re:New focus

[lukewarmfusion]

"Every time I leave my house I get screwed!"

So does your wife.

Zing!

Re:New focus

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Ahahaha! Beautiful :)

Re:New focus

[Suburbanpride]

Another new focus: scientists. Here at UC San Diego, you see a lot of professors and researchers running around with PowerBooks, and not just in the art department. At the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, [ucsd.edu] almost everyone has a PowerBook. A bunch of the legacy scientific software has been ported to OS X and everyone loves that they can get work done and then give a lecture using the same computer. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the old UNIX servers that they track weather and ocean currents on migrate to xServe.

A Good Product

[Lewis Daggart]

Apple has a good product, its that simple. Its not a product I personally use, but it has its good points, and people are noticing it. And OSX really adds to the whole appeal.

Re:A Good Product

[mider]

I would have to agree, from what I have seen OSX is the best of both worlds. It has a beautiful interface and real power under the hood. I would also think the learning curve from a *nix platform to OSX would be minuscule. I could really see Apple taking hold in the enterprise world, assuming they lower prices of hardware and get a two/three buttom mouse.

Re:A Good Product

[Oculus Habent]

Still stuck on the mouse button issue? Just go buy one... any generic two-button USB mouse will work. One of my co-workers prefers the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical on his Mac. It works fine. Scroll wheel, too. If you want one, go buy the kind you like. You'll be even happier with that than the $2 branded Logitech rip-off that Dell gives you.

Re:A Good Product

[osxuser-02]

Another option is a program called SideTrack. It lets you map the corner of your trackpad to be the right-click. Works great.

Re:A Good Product

[1010011010]

I have a five-button scroll-wheel optical mouse (MSFT brand!) hooked to my Mac, and it works just fine. When I use it w/o the mouse (it's a laptop), I really have no problems with that either; it's not even slow or annoying the get a context menu to appear. I can hold down a keyboard key, which is right under my fingers anyway, or I can press and hold.

My wife got an iBook last month, after using a PC (HP/WinXP) laptop for years, and you know what? She's NEVER asked "where is the second mouse button." Zero training on my part, and she's doing everything she needs to do on the laptop, without two buttons. She actualyl complained about the second mouse button on the HP laptop from time to time, because it's easy to hit the wrong one (laptop trackpads can be awkward to use, especially for the left-handed).

Re:A Good Product

[IntlHarvester]

I have a Powerbook, but I'll disagree with the other posters.

If you are an experienced PC user, you'll probably hate the single mouse button and having to play keyboard gymnastics in order to get the context menu to appear. It really is an annoyance that one should strongly consider before dropping a few grand for new laptop. Most Mac users aren't used to "right-clicking", so I believe they tend to downplay the issue.

(I nearly always use an external mouse, but that's not always possible. Another issue is the lack of cursor keys on the Powerbook keyboard, but that can be sorta solved with some add-ons.)

Re:A Good Product

[Oculus Habent]

It's a fair statement. PS users are accustomed to right-clicking. As a long-time Mac user, especially a long-time PowerBook user, I prefer key commands. Most options available on a context menu can be performed from the keyboard on a Macintosh. Familiarity with the key commands puts me at a big advantage over Joe PC-User. I almost never use the context menus.

On Windows, it's an entirely different story. The longtime availability - even dependance - on the context menu has made using a PC an experience in right-clicking. From the half-dozen system-embedded functions that programs like WinZip tack onto the context menu to the near impossible to guess locations of functions in menus in Office, the context menu doesn't just make sense, sometiems it's the only thing that does. I'm being a little harsh, but I find it generally true that Windows is built around the context menu. Just look at people's auto-collapse menus sometime.

That's almost an admission that Windows never really made proper use of the standard menus, preferring to focus on the context menu - there are so many crammed options in the menus they hide them to make your life easier.

Nevertheless, I use my key commands whenever possible; Mac or PC. For me, the Mac requires less mousing work. Windows just works better with one hand on the mouse, finger firmly placed over the right button.
----
Moving on, "keyboard gynmastics" is a little harsh. Control is always a pinky away, no matter with which hand you hold the mouse. You don't even have to press Control, you can simply wait the fraction of a second - but that is an annoying delay, especially for PC users.

And PowerBooks have had cursor keys for quite some time. Page Up/Down, Home, End are accessed by pressing "Function" - on the arrows. Delete gets the same thing on the Delete key - backspace for PCs... I couldn't say about Insert - never really needed it.

Re:A Good Product

[IntlHarvester]

> And PowerBooks have had cursor keys for quite some time .. by pressing "Function"

No, that means it has cursor functions, not cursor keys. My specific complaint is about having to press Fn.

Out-of-box, the PowerBook has a totally ass keyboard -- it's missing standard keys (PgUp, PgDn, Forward Delete, etc.), but then it has a bunch of dead keys that do nothing in the function key row (unless you press Fn). Oh, but at least there's an "Enter" key :P

Fortunately, 10.3 finally allows one to "turn on" the F-Key row, which then allows one to 3rd party stuff to remap otherwise useless buttons to something useful. Apple usually gets basic design features right -- but whoever designed the PowerBook keyboard was a retard.

Re:A Good Product

[Anonymous Coward]

Another issue is the lack of cursor keys on the Powerbook keyboard, but that can be sorta solved with some add-ons.

Whaaaa? My 12" PowerBook most definitely has cursor keys, in the lower right-hand corner of the keyboard. Take a look at Apple's PowerBook page and observe the from-above picture of the PowerBook. The cursor keys are there, in the standard inverted-T layout.

Re:A Good Product

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it much better to not have defined Fucntion keys. It's pathetic that so many Windows' apps still need a refresh button. Refresh is completely useless on the Mac, and when it is necessary, it is available as cmd-R. Same with Print Screen. There is no reason to have a function key for Help or Find when they are invariably mapped to the smae key combo on the Mac and within any Mac software.

On a Mac, the function keys are more often used by sophisticated media apps for application specific functions. Otherwise, they can be mapped to whatever functions you desire. That, to me, sounds like the best of both worlds.

Re:A Good Product

[IntlHarvester]

No AC, you entirely missed the point -- Powerbooks come with dead keys that can't even be read by software unless the user holds down Fn (or installs 10.3 and twiddles a setting).

I can see why

[CharAznable]

I can see why. I used Macs for years but I didn't write a line of code for them (except java) until Mac OS X came out.

Re:I can see why

[lacrymology.com]

"I used Macs for years but I didn't write a line of code for them (except java) until Mac OS X came out."

Well, OSX proved to be the first time that Apple truly embraced the developer community by packaging professional grade tools with the OS.
-m

Re:I can see why

[Rick and Roll]

Well, Apple programming hasn't always sucked. There's been some great products, such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior. And the Apple GUI toolbox was way ahead of its time.

It's pretty easy to see why.

[Sheetrock]

Despite the unfortunate price/performance ratio of their hardware (as compared to PC equipment), the operating environment is quite conducive to programming. Add to that the general reliability of its operating system and programs as well as the general feeling of superiority that once accompanied Linux use and you've got a winner.

The only thing I can't understand is why iTunes and QuickTime seem so inferior on Windows. If that's a byproduct of crossplatform programming, I don't know that I'd be that eager to switch (no matter how nice the development environment is, it's the final product that counts.) But other than that, I think they're on to something.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[computerme]

>Despite the unfortunate price/performance ratio of their hardware (as compared to PC equipment),

You mean that same price / performance "disparity" that BLEW AWAY Dell and any and all other intel based supercompter clusters?

That must be the reason why VT choose G5s and OSX... :)
In some areas that may be true, but in others, say Supercomputing Clusters, its just not the case...

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[MBCook]

I understand what you mean. Apple hardware seems as good or (often) better than PC hardware, and their OS is amazing. When I buy a new computer it will be a Mac. It's too bad they don't get more customers (which they deserve considering their OS has, among other things, basically no viruses) but when you can buy a new PC from Dell for $500 and the lowest end mac is $700 or so, they'll have a hard time (despite the fact that a $700 Mac is better than basically any $700 PC if you consider what's included in software and such). Also, where are the ads? A few for the iPod, a few for the G5 when it first came out, otherwise there is NO advertising for Macs that I see (compared to Dell, HP, Best Buy, and tons of other places advertising PCs).

As for iTunes/QuickTime being slower on windows, I think that they are probably doing everything themselves (even low-level stuff like "did the user click this button" because then they can make things look exactly like they want) and that's what's causing the slowness. That's my only complaint about iTunes and QT, because otherwise they (especially iTunes) are great pieces of software.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[plumby]

Add to that the general reliability of its operating system

I've just got a loan of my first Mac (an eMac), as I am planning on doing some development for a friend on it. I tried to download the XCode dev environment from the Apple dev site on it, but got so sick of the copy operation locking up, requiring me to "force quit" on Finder (must have had 30 attempts that resulted in a lock up), that I gave up and used Windows to download it, and then copied it over from there - worked first time.

I really wanted to like it, but so far, I've got to say, I've found the interface unbelievably slow, clunky, and difficult to navigate. It has got some pretty features such as the animation when minimising a window though, and I've been quite impressed with the couple of hours play I've had with XCode.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[hackstraw]

The only thing I can't understand is why iTunes and QuickTime seem so inferior on Windows.

I don't use Office, but I've heard that its inferior on Windows as well. Hmm.

Despite the unfortunate price/performance ratio of their hardware.

Who needs performance? Any new computer can do 99% of what 99% of people need to do. Although I have plenty of gripes with OSX, I'll say that its hands down the nicest OS I've ever used. I'm a UNIX admin, I've been a Windows developer, I thought MacOS 7-9 was about the worst that there was. OSX has only crashed on me because of a bug in the wireless driver that has been fixed (that sucked). Sometimes I find window management a pain, but I always have that issue. I would give my 1st born son if the clipboard worked between X and the OS. That would about triple the available software to me.

Back on topic, I'm new to OSX and I've been looking at buying a development book (any suggestions?). I don't know the difference between carbon, cocoa, or whatever. I havn't really had the time to look into it yet. But I'm looking forward to developing some GUI apps for OSX. Again, I havn't done it but if its as easy as creating windows apps, then I'm all there.

One thing I would really like to do is write a better download manager for Safari. The one that comes with it is OK, but it has many limitations. I really like the look and feel of OSX. Very clean and professional looking. I love the little sidebar tablike things that come out from the sides of windows.

I see OSX going places. It attracts many more people than previous MacOSes. I do think that there would be much more development on the platform if X was more transparent.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[computerme]

Agreed. More real world advertising would be fantastic.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

The top end of Apple's product line is generally less expensive (though in some cases only slightly) than equivalent products from competitors.

The mid-range of Apple's product line is pretty much the same.

The low-end of Apple's product line... well, the simple fact is that there is no low end of Apple's product line. Every Mac comes with FireWire, accelerated graphics, a kick-ass OS, et cetera. These are not entry-level machines. These are mid-range machines. So comparing them to entry-level PC's is kinda silly.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[CoolGuySteve]

You mean that same price / performance "disparity" that BLEW AWAY Dell and any and all other intel based supercompter clusters?

That must be the reason why VT choose G5s and OSX... :)

The kind of computing used in scientific applications is very different than your average desktop. Matrix calculations use very little branching but love the Altivec vector stuff.

Code that branches a lot (like compiles) seem to fair better on hyperthreading P4s. A 'make -j 4 bzImage' seems to get a 10-30% performance increase. Whereas hyperthreading has no benefit for science stuff, it even confuses the linux kernel a bit because it's hard to tell which cpus are logical, so that jobs actually run a bit slower.

So anyways, the needs of a computing cluster are not the needs of a desktop user. IE: you probably wouldn't want the PS2's weak 300MHz 128-bit cpu for a desktop even though there's a cluster built out of those too.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

A programmer needs FireWire just as a graphics designer needs gcc.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[the_rev_matt]

Sigh. To reiterate. Macs are not more expensive than PCs by more than about $100 for any given model. Compare like to like. Don't look at some cheapie eMachines rip-off for $400 at Wal-Mart and complain that a nice dual G5 tower is $2500. Instead look at something like a high end IBM or HP box that is going to have components of comparable quality to those of the Mac, and suddenly the prices are almost identical. I've done casual comparisons of Macs, Dells, and IBMs every quarter for the last 3 years and in some instances the Macs are even cheaper than the PCs.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[MBCook]

I agree completely. But as I've pointed out in two other replies in this thread, when consumers get bombarded with ads on TV and such for $400 and $500 dollar PCs and they see that Macs start at like $700, they are going to look at the PC. Now if Apple were to run commercials showing them how the Mac is a much better value, they'd be doing much better. But if you only look at price (as consumers are apt to do if you don't teach them better) Apple will have a hard time.

See my other posts in this thread for more commentary on how/why the above is true (IMHO).

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[cptgrudge]

I would give my 1st born son if the clipboard worked between X and the OS.

I'm sterile. You'll be hearing from me shortly, after I can afford a Mac, of course.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Backov]

I am not sure I agree. They are not competitive at all in the desktop space. In the notebook space they are closer.

However, that said - my current laptop is a PC.. An Athlon 2.4, 1gig.. I WANTED a Powerbook, quite badly. But the equivelant powerbook was $1000 (CDN) more than this machine.

I just couldn't justify that.

On the desktop side, they don't even try to make it cost-competitive.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[computerme]

Ummm... You did read the part of my message that said this:

In some areas that may be true, but in others, say Supercomputing Clusters, its just not the case...

Thanks for reading....

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs are not more expensive than PCs by more than about $100 for any given model

Maybe this is true, but Apple simple does not offer midrange systems.

Yes, the g5 is priced competitively with very high-end PC workstations, but where is the midrange desktop? You have to buy an iMac, which not only has sucky specs, is obviously not for everyone due to the formfactor.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[tb3]

Back on topic, I'm new to OSX and I've been looking at buying a development book (any suggestions?).
Install XCode and learn Objective C and Cocoa. Objective C is easy if you know C, and a good book will teach you the Cocoa framework.
Try either "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass, or "Building Cocoa Applications : A Step by Step Guide" by Simson Garfinkel and Michael K. Mahoney. I have both and I think they're very good. There's also a book by Scott Anguish, and one by Bill Cheeseman, but I haven't read either of those.
Cocoa programming is much easier and more elegant that C++ and MFC. Have fun!

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Molz]

I've been looking at buying a development book (any suggestions?)

I would suggest Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass. Its not the newest book out there on OS X development using Cocoa, but Aaron knows his stuff and wrote one hell of a good book.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[MooseByte]

"I've just got a loan of my first Mac (an eMac)"

Two words: Clean Install.

A loaner machine of any kind (MacOS, Win, Linux) is likely to be a legacy of problems, unless you really trust the previous owner. Ask and I doubt they'll say no to a fresh install of Panther.

What version of OS X are you running? Clean install of Panther plus the Dev Tools should hum along happily even on older hardware. Panther included tweaks to noticeably improve performance on older machines.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Coryoth]

It is worth noting that Macs can be considerably more expensive depending where you are due to exclusive distributor contracts. A good example is New Zealand where a decent high spec PC will run you in the order of $NZ1000 - $NZ2000, but iMacs start at $NZ2500 and run up to $4500. G5s, with no monitor run from $NZ3500 to $NZ6000.

That really is considerably more expensive (and no, the lowest spec iMac, and a $NZ2000 PC are not really comparable - the PC is well ahead on spec).

I do agree, however, that in the US the price differences are minmal. Just be aware that for some people (outside the US) the perceived expense of Apple is a very real phenomenon.

Jedidiah.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[jcr]

There's also a book by Scott Anguish, and one by Bill Cheeseman, but I haven't read either of those.

I have.

Bill's book is excellent for people who learn well from a task-based, cookbook approach.

Anguish, Buck & Yactman is a pretty comprehensive "best practices" tome, which is worth reading no matter how much Cocoa experience you already have.

I will also give a thumbs up to the new Stephen Cochan book on the Obj-C language, which AFAIK is the first book to teach the language as a whole as opposed to its delta from ANSI-C.

-jcr

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

A programmer needs FireWire just as a graphics designer needs gcc.

Nope. More like, "A programmer needs FireWire just as a graphics designer needs FireWire." That is, it's not absolutely essential for anybody, but it's incredibly useful for everybody.

You might as well say, "Programmers don't need USB," or "Programmers don't need hardware-accelerated graphics," or, for that matter, "Programmers don't need color screens." Speaking as a programmer, we want these things anyway.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[CoolMoDee]

I learned Cocoa with an Oreilly book "Cocoa with Objective-C". And that sidebar tablike thing that comes out of the side of the windows is called a "Drawer" :-)

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[alan_dershowitz]

The eMac is an upgrade dead-end. That's the number-one reason I haven't bought a macintosh to replace my G3-400. I simply cannot afford a power mac at this time, so the mac is out.

On the other hand, if I wanted to go that route, I could buy that Dell, and over time upgrade some parts here and there. Two years later, I could have spent less than the 200 dollars extra the eMac cost and upgraded my machine to a state that's now BETTER than the eMac.

So basically, if you use your computer for basic tasks, the 200 dollar cheaper machine is a better value. If you are concerned about upgradability, you may as well get the Dell, since it will pay off in the next two years you own the machine, during which of course, the eMac owner will not have replaced it.

In my mind, the eMac is overpriced to compete directly with low end dells, and is underextensible to compete with a comparably priced PC, so it kind of defies characterization as a "midrange" when people say that there are no "low-end" Macintoshes.

There's an entire market of users out there that Apple isn't even courting, and its the people who tinker, which consist of a significant portion of PC (Windows AND Linux) users. They can buy a machine cheaper, and over time cobble their way up or past the performance of a basically non-upgradable eMac that they couldn't afford at the time.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[MBCook]

Agreed, that's why I haven't bought one.

That said, many people don't upgrade their computers. These days so many of the things one might buy you can get externally. If you want a DVD writer or a new CD drive or something, you can get it firewire. You could also get a new hard drive externally, or you could upgrade the internal one. You can also upgrade the memory in the eMac. With the exception of the graphics card, that's all most people ever do.

So many things that you used to need to be able to upgrade to you don't need anymore. You don't need a DVD decoder card. The computer already has Ethernet (and you could do that through USB). Wireless could be done through USB or I think eMacs can take Airport cards. Most people don't need the upgradeability that a Dell or other PC provides. Very few upgrade their processors, they just buy a new computer. For most people, an eMac is more than enough machine for them.

I don't expect Apple to start selling $500 eMacs, but they could at least advertise them and the benefits so someone who's looking for a computer to do e-mail and maybe photo editing and maybe put some family movies on DVD knows they even have the option.

And besides, salesmen can do some of the work! If people come in to look at that low end eMac but they need more of a computer, the sales people can show them better models as would happen if the Dell didn't fit their needs. The point is to get them in there and looking at Macs.

As for the "people who tinker", that's not Apple's market and the way they operate it never will be (their choice, a good thing). I really don't think it's a significant part of the market. And the other fact is that tinkerers are in the know, so they probably already know that an Apple isn't for them. It's not worth advertising to them, but as I said I don't think it's that significant of a portion of the market. Even if it IS and it's 50% of the PC market (I don't believe that by a long shot), that still leaves Apple with 50% of the PC market (which is like 40% of all computers sold) that they can aim at, an compared to their small percentage (5%?) that's significant.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Apple doesn't look as bad if you only compare overpriced Macs to overpriced PCs, but nothing they offer even comes close to the bang/buck of a beige box PC.

And when eMachines sells a box at a reasonable markup over the cost of its components, who is being ripped off?

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

External drives. Great. Okay, so they're slower, louder, and waste more space, but hey--they cost more, and that's important to Apple customers.

Most people are 'tards. They'd laugh at anyone who notices their car is running low on oil and decides to buy a new engine block, but damn if they aren't doing the same thing with their computers.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[zhenlin]

Apple's own documentation might be just as good:

Reference Library
Cocoa
Getting Started
Fundamentals
API reference

Must read:
The Objective-C language
Overview of a SimpleCocoaApp
Developing Cocoa Objective-C Applications: A Tutorial

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

That kept happening to you because FTP in the Finder, well, sucks donkey balls. Read only access, slow, crashes the Finder, bah!

I just downloaded all the Xcode segments the other night using ftp and a quick mget in the Terminal with no problems at all.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[calica]

Don't forget the parity only really began with the G5. If the G5 scales as quickly as the Intel/AMD world then the trickle down to mid and maybe eventually low end will match.

In the end, Apple uses that curve to encourage consumers to buy up, which is good for earnings.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[plumby]

Two words: Clean Install.

Two more words. Brand new.

He bought 5 eMacs for his office, and dropped one of them over to my place on his way back from the shop. It's running OSX 10.3.3.

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[Pope]

So upgrade your G3/400. It's a Yosemite, right? How would 1 Gigahertz do ya?

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[MooseByte]

"Two more words. Brand new."

Three more words: Something's seriously wrong. ;-)

Honestly. Xcode and Panther on my iBook run great. The only thing I can think of is RAM. How much is in your eMac? MacOS X is a RAM hog, 512MB seems to be the critical point for good performance. (640MB in my iBook.)

Note however that Xcode builds of my project aren't exactly blinding, but then a sub-1GHz G4 isn't exactly a DP G5 either. ;-)

Re:It's pretty easy to see why.

[plumby]

Only 256mb. I'll look at adding some more.

Does it take the same chips as a PC?

300,000 developers for under 5 % of market share

[giaguara]

300,000 registered developers (and a number of unregistered developers for their own use) for a platform that has under 5 % of market share is a pretty good number.
I can't at least imagine windows having a similar relationship of developers/users.

Yes, I'm in that boat

[bigberk]

I'm a long time software developer who codes predominantly for Windows and UNIX, but because Macs have embraced the UNIX architecture I would now like to start coding for OS X. I personally feel that Mac OS has a much brighter future than Windows (still not sure about Linux desktop).

It would not be a stretch to say that I'm willing to ditch Windows in favour of Linux and Mac OS.

So far, I have found wxWidgets which is a C++ toolset that allows the creation of cross-platform GUIs (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS) that uses native GUI elements on each platform (unlike GTK+ or Qt which end up looking non-native). To me this seems like the best way for a programmer to get into cross-platform, including Mac, programming. You don't sacrifice Windows compatibility.

Re:Yes, I'm in that boat

[afidel]

Sorry but there is NO cross platform toolkit that is going to look native across those plaftforms. Using native elements doesn't make it native, it just makes it less foreign looking. The functionality and GUI design elements for those OS's are so far from each other that simply changing window dressing isn't going to make the functionality of an app apear native.

Re:Yes, I'm in that boat

[Mantorp]

"I personally feel that Mac OS has a much brighter future than Windows"

Yeah, at only 98% marketshare I think they should throw in the towel.

Re:Yes, I'm in that boat

[Electrum]

Sorry but there is NO cross platform toolkit that is going to look native across those plaftforms. Using native elements doesn't make it native, it just makes it less foreign looking.

Correct, but using native widgets is a lot better than using emulated native widgets. Compare a native app on Win32 or OS X to one using Qt. There is a noticable difference in the way the widgets behave.

Re:Yes, I'm in that boat

[TheRaven64]

Actually, from a usability perspective it's usually better not to use native widgets when developing cross platform code. The ideal way to write a cross platform graphical application is to completely separate out the GUI from the application logic, and write a separate one for each supported platform, conforming to that platform's human interface guidelines. This is not always possible, but making a user interface which looks native and does't feel native is really not a good idea, because it removes a visual clue from the user that the application is not going to behave as expected.

the whole picture

[cmdr_forge]

I think alot of people are starting to make the move over to somehting that is more usable that strikes a very safe balance between a easy to use desktop and unix. It also shows the level of effort that apple has gone to make development and skill even easier.

Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[abischof]

With all these Unix & Open Source developers flocking our way, I can only hope that one of them might develop a decent ftp client for OS X :). Granted, there are some decent payware clients (like Transit), but is an ftp client really worth $25? On the free side, RBrowser Lite comes close, except that it can't change permissions on the remote host :-/.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that wget and ncftp have not been ported to Macs?

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[mcwop]

Have you tried any FTP clients built for X11? Of course, if you know UNIX commands then the terminal app in OS X is a good place to work.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[cyfer2000]

There is a captainFTP with a free version, at least for educational purpose. And I am using Axy FTP via Fink

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[JackRuby43]

I made a sizeable donation to the FileZilla guys for the Win32 version and I'd donate again for an OS X version!!

Hint Hint

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to change permissions you have to be logged in as root anyway. you shouldn't be connecting to an ftp site as root. it is just a bad idea, especially because the password is sent plain text

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[jo_ham]

NcFTP is all you need.

There's even a precompiled OS X installer now, so you don't have to build it from source any more.

Ok, it's command line only, but it beats the hell out of pretty much every GUI based ftp client I've ever used.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[HeghmoH]

FTP is evil, because it's all crusty and old and ugly, and also because it sends your password in the clear. Use SFTP if at all possible. Fugu is a great SFTP client. Combined with SubEthaEdit, you can transparently edit files on the server, which is really nice.

(Yeah, I know, sometimes you can't use SFTP. IMO, you should ditch whoever doesn't allow it and find someplace that does!)

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[pjt33]

The OS X console ftp is nice enough for me. The progress bar and tab completion are luxuries compared to the ftp clients I was used to.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fugu sucks. It frequently crashes and mungs up downloads. After trying Transmit, I never went back to Fugu. Its definitely worth the $25 and does both FTP *and* SFTP.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[mindbooger]

Bah. ncftp, wget, and curl run just fine from Terminal.app. :-)

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't? It did for me last night.

Highlight a file or folder that's on the remote host, get info, the third pane (I forget what it's labled) is where I check or uncheck permissions and then hit "Apply"

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[megabulk3000]

Huh. I can change permissions on files on a remote host using RBrowser Lite. (That'd be Command-3.) Not owners or groups, but permissions, yes. Methinks that's a typo on the RBrowser page?

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

xterm -e ftp &

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just use the Finder for ftp? You just pull down the ``Go'' menu, select ``Connect to Server'' and enter something like ``ftp://user@server'' (leaving the ``user@'' part out for anonymous ftp).

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft! Real men use netcat and the FTP RFC for reference.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? ftp works just fine on OS X.
GUI? Who needs a stinking GUI?

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also FTPeel, which is not free, but is less expensive than Transmit and Captain FTP and has a nice UI.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Lexicon]

Have you tried CyberDuck? It supports sftp and ftp, auto-detects servers with Rendevous, and lets you drag and drop files from the finder.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[BobWeiner]

I use Transmit all the time. It's simple and elegant, and does exactly what I need. I use FTP all the time, and I need something that's easy to use. For me, it's easily worth the $25. Sure, I can use the terminal, if I want to. In the end, I prefer to use Transmit -- the software is top-notch and Panic's support is world-class.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[abischof]

Cyberduck comes close, but it doens't have the option to automatically switch between binary & ASCII transfer modes (at least the last version I checked).

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[BandwidthHog]

Because regretably, the Finder is *still* broken when it comes to FTP. It's buggy and crashy, and I believe still download-only as of 10.3.whatever. That's one area where Windows actually trumps the Mac, sad to say.

I use LiFTP, which hasn't been upgraded in ~forever, but meets my simple site maintenance needs and is free as in beer.

Re:Maybe we can get a decent ftp client now?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're transfering files over a local secured network, FTP is much faster than SFTP. The overhead of that S part becomes quite noticable on a good link.

But I still wouldn't dare do anything but anonymous FTP over an unsecured connection.

I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[MisanthropicProgram]

are free. Apple Developer Site
Unlike another company that I won't mention who charges up the ass for theirs.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[MBCook]

I think this is a FANTASTIC thing. I'm sure fink et al would provide them if they weren't included, but still. I think it's great that the OS comes with development stuff. I love that Linux does, and I really wish Windows did. You want to develop for Windows? You buy VC++, or CodeWarrior, or you go download something like Cygwin. You want to develop for Linux? It's installed already or is on a CD that came with the OS. You want to develop for the Mac? It's already installed or it's on a CD that came with the Mac. I love that. At least DOS used to come with QBasic.

I think that having the barries to development low is key to getting people interested in programming (especially programming your platform). Having to go out and buy (or hunt around for "hard to install" (cygwin, relative to a simple install of apt-get gcc)) makes things harder and a developer who's only curious less likely to mess around on your platform.

I like programming and not having to buy something to develop for a Mac is a reason that I like it. I can use basically the same tools pros could be using for free.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[blackmonday]

The 2 killer apps are xCode for the C-ish stuff (obj-c, c++, etc) and Eclipse for java. xCode is still not great for java development.

P.S. If IBM built Websphere for OS X, I know many people who would open their fat wallets for it. Now that IBM makes the G5, I hope they see it's in their best interest. I'm currently using Websphere Application Developer under Red Hat 7.3, and we just spent three grand for a new Pentium 4 workstation (from IBM, interesting enough). I would have asked for a G5 instead!

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Defiler]

On the other hand, Visual Studio is such an amazingly great product that those who /do/ end up buying it tend to be happy enough to stay. Due to Microsoft's market domination, I doubt they'd gain much developer mindshare by making VS.NET a free download. The Academic version is already only $90, and most businesses don't have much difficulty justifying the cost of the development environment.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[MBCook]

Of course, I agree. VS is a great product. But if you just want to get your feet wet in Windows, you have to go 3rd party because VS (or even just VC++) is VERY expensive. Because Apple includes development tools for free (and you could buy better stuff if you get really serious) it's easier (and cheaper) than getting into Windows development.

I understand what you're saying about if they made VS free, but what if things were switched? What if MS had the OS with 5% market share? Don't you think making a version of VS free would help them out?

And acedemic is nice for students, but it's not as good as free. And again, if it was MS with the 5% it would still be hard for businesses to "take the plunge" into the "Microsoft world" becasue they couldn't use the Acedemic edition because you can't sell what you make with it. With the tools free (as Apple has) a programmer or two could be given the task of investigating putting their stuff on Apple without the massive cash outlay required to investigate that on a Windows box (thanks to the price of VS or CodeWarrior).

But I agree. That they include development stuff is nice, but many developers would switch to a more professional environment (like CodeWarrior). But for the amature, hobbiest, or small company, or educational institution, it's a great thing.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Anonymous Coward]

You and me both dude! Where the hell are these

2k-for-2-G5-CPU systems that were much hyped months ago? And put Fedora or RHES3 on them, standard config that you can order, while you are at it.

Enough already! Get these puppies to market!

I really don't want to buy any more x86 hardware.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[MasonMcD]

And while you're there, don't forget to take a stroll through Apple's kick ass reference library with a search powered by Google.

Run some queries, look for obscure methods and see what you find. Looks great to me!

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Anonymous Coward]

There was certainly a time when CodeWarrior was unquestionably superior to Apple's free development tools (like back in the days of MPW which, while quite cool, was barely more than a text editor and shell), but that time is long past imho.

ProjectBuilder was a bit rough at first, but by the time 10.2 was out it had matured nicely, and XCode is pretty damn impressive from what I've seen. Unless you're working with alot of legacy CodeWarrior projects, there's not reason not to use Apple's dev tools for professional development.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike another company that I won't mention who charges up the ass for theirs.

Yeah, it's a shame Sun insist on charging for their C++ compiler, but at least they give Java away free.

(Don't try to persuade me you meant Microsoft, you know as well as I do that you can download their compilers, headers, and libraries for free - it's only the IDE they charge for.)

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Anonymous Coward]

"hard to install" (cygwin, relative to a simple install of apt-get gcc)

Hard to install? Go to cygwin.com. Click on the link that says "INSTALL CYGWIN NOW". Click "next" a few times. It's installed.

(Note that this is a full package installation tool. The Debian equivalent is dselect, which is noticably more complicated than Cygwin's setup.exe.)

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[MBCook]

I know, I run cygwin, but it's still a bunch of steps and if you bother to read what's going on and mess with the defaults, you can get into so weird and confusing stuff. I'm just saying it's not as easy as having it pre-installed or get to install it with one click on the "Yes" button.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Pahroza]

I agree on all counts.

I believe that having a free development environment opens the door for many of the people out there with incredible ideas that do not work for a company that can afford to pay for the dev environment.

These are the same people that tinker around in their free time and come up with great ideas.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when does Microsoft offer a C++ compiler for zero cost, much less Free? As far as I can tell, the closest they come is the "academic" edition of Visual C++, which is $90 and doesn't even have an optimizer.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Anonymous Coward]

MS's C++ compiler is a free download (NET SDK) -- "Visual C++" is an IDE.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[cubic6]

Longhorn is planned to include development tools out of the box for .NET, The tools look to be pretty sweet, even if they are mostly clones of things like ant for .NET.

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[vectra14]

side note: in many universities MSVS, along with pretty much every major MS product except office are availible for free (legally) (COMPLETELY free dl) through MSDNAA

Re:I'm just impressed that Apple develper tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, the Platform SDK doesn't include a C++ compiler and I didn't know the .NET SDK does.

cocoa

[devonbowen]

I'm writing my first MacOS app now after decades with UNIX and X windows. I have to say I'm impressed with the Interface Builder and with the use of Objective-C as the main Cocoa language.

But on the other hand, I think their class library leaves a lot to be desired. When I'm coding in Java and I'm working with, say, a collection class, I usually think "gee it would be nice if a method to do blah existed". And when I look it up, it's almost always there. The Java designers seem to think the way I do. But in Cocoa, it seems like the methods are rarely what I expect and I have to spent a lot of time figuring out how they want me to do it. Things that I feel should take me 5 minutes to code can actually take hours. It can be rather frustrating. Has anyone had similar experiences?

That said, a lot of the core of this system was developed with the NeXT machine a long time ago. So I guess I have to cut them some slack there. Still, would be nice to have things modernized a bit. Just my experience...

Devon

What about Darwin?

[Oculus Habent]

It strikes me that Darwin could be much bigger than it is...

Darwin comes with all the OS underpinnings of Mac OS X, right? Sure, no GUI, but what about the significant features - CUPS, CIFS, AFP, webDAV - aren't they there? If your company is looking at Linux but is facing those integration problems, isn't this an ideal solution? OS X on the desktop, Darwin on the servers that don't need a GUI.

Re:What about Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does have a GUI - if you count X11. I believe KDE and Gnome work. If you are satisfied with Linux GUIs, Darwin should be OK too.

Re:What about Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Darwin has lots of issues, outside the cosy Mac OS X environment... Such as failing to recognize non-SCSI disks and even some Mac hardware.

Re:What about Darwin?

[cremes]

You are wrong on both details.

It works just fine with IDE drives (what I assume you mean by non-SCSI disks). Perhaps you are referring to darwin-x86. It is true to say it has some weak hardware support, but x86 != ppc.

Also, it has *better* Mac hardware compatibility than OSX does. Er, at least opendarwin does (www.opendarwin.org) via the XPostFacto utility. This utility brings back some older hardware support that Apple is no longer interested in maintaining in the mainline trunk codebase.

cr

Re:What about Darwin?

[moosesocks]

No. It's really insignificant.

If you're using Apple's hardware (which is pretty nice, and VERY cost-efffective, especially when compared to PC/Sun hardware), you get a free copy of OS X Server for an unlimited number of users -- free. So, $3,000 gets you a quality-made kick-ass 64-bit server on par with the higher-end stuff from the big PC vendors, and you don't have to pay for software.

What's more, you don't have to pay for software, but you also don't have to pay for someone to administer them. Regardless of weather or not they need a GUI, the GUIs Apple has designed for the server apps are top-notch. While I only had a little bit of time to play with them, I walked away being VERY impressed, especially that you can remotely administer a server through the standard GUI interface without any sort of remote-desktop interface, making managing multiple servers a breeze.

Ok. Enough for the advocacy. It's pretty obvious that i'm a big fan of the Xserves. But, if you're not using Mac hardware on your server, which is perfectly acceptable, and even required in some industries, you might as well use some sort of BSD or Linux. Using darwin gives you no major advantage. It's obscurity is a defintie DISADVANTAGE. If you're having trouble running a self-compiled MySQL on top of X86-darwin, there aren't going to be lots of people out there that can help you.

Re:What about Darwin?

[drinkypoo]

The problem with darwin is that to date it does about 1/10 as much as Linux does in terms of hardware support, software support, etc. So unless you are tied to apple hardware, you're much better off with Linux as a server for most applications (except maybe serving macs certain types of data) because you can replace the system and do nothing but recompile all your apps and everything works.

Re:What about Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are arguing a stupid point -- nobody is going to run Darwin on an XServe instead of OS X Server.

Re:What about Darwin?

[RAMMS EIN]

Darwin has an interesting design, but it lacks hardware support. And not in the sense that it would be nice if it supported some more toys. I assume it runs on modern macs, but it doesn't on older ones, and my experiences with Darwin on x86 are horrible. It couldn't boot from hard drive (only from CD), and after it booted, it ran horribly slow.

Software compatibility isn't all it could be, either. A lot of software written for GNU, Linux, or even POSIX needs small changes to run on Darwin. Software written for BSDs will generally work better. Drivers, though, are completely out of the window, as Darwin's driver API is completely different from common OSes'.

Of course, since it's open-source, it can and will be improved, but for now, you don't want to be running it. Unless you own a Mac, and then you will also want (and be allowed) to run the rest of OS X.

good for them

[happyfrogcow]

I for one do not welcome our sugar coated OSX overlords.

Re:good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one do not welcome our sugar coated OSX overlords.

Actually it's too "fruity" for my taste.

Makes sense...

[TheMadRedHatter]

It makes a lot of sense.
Apple has made it easier to program for OS X. The integration of Interface Builder and XCode certainly makes it easier than programming in Mac OS 'Classic'. You don't have to mess with Carbon or resource forks either. And since it's built on Unix, Unix developers don't have to do much work to get it to work under X.

TheMadRedHatter

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Dolly_Llama]

Considering there is a hardware discount for developers, many of that number aren't necessarily active coders, but simply signed up as developers for the discount.

another explanation

[cacheMan]

Becoming a registered developer is the easiest way to download the development tools (standard gnu stuff that is missing from OS X). I am a registered developer, but I don't want to develop on OS X. I just want gcc when I'm there to fool around with.

Re:another explanation

[PCM2]

Note that besides "standard GNU stuff," the Developer Tools also includes all the standard system header files. Basically, if you want to build any open source projects on OS X, you'll want to download this stuff -- even if you never write a line of code yourself.

Re:another explanation

[Senjaz]

Er, the easiest way to get the developer tools is to look in the bundle of CDs that came with your computer, or in your Mac OS X Upgrade box. Pull out the CD labelled "Developer Tools" and install that :P

Seriously beats a couple o' hundred MB download.

Sure if you want to patch XCode up to date to fix various IDE bugs and add a couple of new features then you'll need to get an ADC account. But if all you want is GCC to play around with then you really don't need to bother.

Re:another explanation

[0x0d0a]

You know, I've probably registered about eighty-six times at any place that requires me to register to download software just to get updates. I wonder how much "multiple registration inflation" is involved there?

Re:another explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Both 10.1 and 10.2 had major development tool updates along the way -- and they only way to get them was to sign up for the developer program & download.

Re:another explanation

[Maserati]

True. Not even gcc is present on a default install of 10.3, so fink won't do you nearly as much good without the dev tools installed.

Incidentally, be sure and check Apple's site for stable binaries of major FOSS packages - they have a lot of them in .pkg form. I specifically mention this because Apple's 4.00.x MySQL works on Client whereas OS X packages from other developers (4.10.x notably) have trouble creating their lock files. I may have been doing (or not doing) something stupid about permissions, but too much of my time goes to desktop and Other Peoples Servers issues for me to be happy sorting that out. I may be just a goofball when it comes to this stuff, but anyone wanting a 'safe' route can just grab stuff from Apple directly.

Then there's the whole issue of optimized compiler flags for the binaries, Apple may have tweaked things a bit.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[proj_2501]

well, part of the key thing is that apple allows you to register as a developer for free, and they give away all their tools and docs, unlike microsoft who charges you a few grand for the privilege of developing windows software.

Depends on what they're planning to develop

[PlatinumInitiate]

Does this not make perfect sense? I mean... how large can the learning curve be for Unix developers moving to MacOS X?

The core of OS X is Darwin, which is based on FreeBSD, but the upper layers of the OS are based on Apple's own APIs (such as Cocoa, Carbon, etc) and NeXT framework. So, depending on what the Unix developers are planning to write (lower level stuff will undoubtedly be very similar, but higher level stuff will probably be quite different, unless they use X11 on OS X, which is also possible), the degree of difficulty in adapting will vary.

However, Unix developers, usually being quite descerning, will probably find OS X to be an extremely well designed and put together development platform. It's great to see support for this OS increasing, Apple certainly deserves it.

Re:Depends on what they're planning to develop

[xenoandroid]

I thought I read somewhere that the OS X Core, Darwin is actually based off of the mach kernal from NeXT with FreeBSD as an extension to it. I read this from a Cocoa programming book in the part discussing the structure of OS X. However I might be wrong.

Re: Depends on what they're planning to develop

[gidds]

Sort of. As far as I can tell, Mac OS X is made up as follows. The kernel:

• The Mach microkernel, derived from 4.2BSD
• BSD kernel, based on 4.4BSD and FreeBSD 3.2. (This runs in kernel space, so it's not a true microkernel.)
• IOKit, a new I/O driver architecture

Unix utilities:

• some derived from FreeBSD
• and some from NetBSD.

That lot together is open-sourced under the name Darwin.
On top of it are:

• Aqua, the user interface.
• Quartz, the 2D graphics subsystem (based on PDF, derived from NeXT's Display PostScript).
• QuickTime, for playing multmedia.

And the APIs:

• Classic, Mac OS 9 running as a stand-alone app within OS X.
• Carbon, an API extracted from the older Mac OS's Toolbox.
• Cocoa, an OO API based on OpenStep (a port of part of the NeXTStep API).
• Java
• AppleScript

HTH...

Re:Depends on what they're planning to develop

[PygmySurfer]

OS X is basically the latest version of NextStep/OpenStep. NextStep always had a BSD core (I believe it started with 4.4 BSD). This article provides a history of Apple's operating systems, including the transition from NextStep to Rhapsody to Mac OS X.

Re:Depends on what they're planning to develop

[Anonymous Coward]

However, Unix developers, usually being quite descerning, will probably find OS X to be an
extremely well designed and put together development platform.

OS X is one of only two operating systems on the planet that doesn't support LP64 on 64-bit hardware.

Can you guess what the other one is? That's right, Microsoft Windows.

Re: Depends on what they're planning to develop

[tyrione]

The Mach Microkernel is a Kernel and the Berkeley Software Distribution of UNIX was 4.3 and how that means that the Mach Microkernel is derived from BSD is a bit odd. NeXT took the BSD 4.3 distribution and modified it by adding their own kernel to it.

Oversimplifying what NEXTSTEP/NeXTStep/Openstep was and what OS X is regarding the underpinnings is a bit odd.

You could have added that Openstep had a modified UFS filesystem partition and now OS X, by default has its own HFS+ native file system as well as UFS, and so on and so forth.

Openstep APIs weren't just a "port" of NeXTSTEP APIs. It wasn't a simple NXHost to NSHost port. Most folks had quite a few headaches going from NS 3.3 to Openstep 4.0 and it wasn't until Openstep 4.2 before it was complete, as far as the meaning of "complete" is concerned.

Personally, I'm looking forward to Classic being dumped and Carbon taking its rightful place and ultimately being phased out by Cocoa.

With all the Language choices now accessible to Cocoa it just makes sense.

Re:Depends on what they're planning to develop

[Anonymous Coward]

NeXSTEP was 4.3 BSD, MacOS X updated that to 4.4 BSD via FreeBSD.

All current BSDs are essentially derivatives of 4.4 BSD.

Re: Depends on what they're planning to develop

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd like a brief overview from Apple that explains what components came from where, check here.

Fugu

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Fugu is a fantastic open source SFTP client.

Personally, I think Transmit was worth the $25.

Indirectly, this benefits Windows too

[parvenu74]

The trend of Unix and enterprise programmers moving to or "showing great interest" in MacOS X is something that could be a "tide that lifts all boats." Given that MacOS X is built on BSD and therefore a secure and nearly-bulletproof operating system), an upsurge in high quality, secure, robust enterprise calibre apps on the MacOS X platform will be great for business at large.

And rest assured that Microsoft will do something to respond to the competitive threat. If the threat of Java gave us .NET, then maybe the threat of MacOS X will bring a truly secure and robust Windows platform...

Re:Indirectly, this benefits Windows too

[Anonymous Coward]

And rest assured that Microsoft will do something to respond to the competitive threat. If the threat of Java gave us .NET, then maybe the threat of MacOS X will bring a truly secure and robust Windows platform...

The JVM has a security model, and Sun took the issue of making it secure seriously. The .NET security model seems to consist of "This makes money for Microsoft, so it enhances Microsoft's security." Microsoft has responded to Netscape, Java and Linux by designing in more security holes at every turn. I think we can assume they will do the same in response to MacOS X.

Re:Indirectly, this benefits Windows too

[cipher chort]

As if MS has been deliberately holding back on making Win* "secure and robust" all along? I personally think Windows security sucks, but it's no longer because they just don't care, now it's because a) the have massive code bases on a magnitude no one can really grasp and b) they have to maintain backwards compatibility.

If the new features of W2K3 don't convince you that MS is really trying to be more secure and robust, then I guess you've been covering your eyes and ears. Oh, and the MS server platform has been more or less stable since a few SPs into W2K.

once?

[Anonymous Coward]

the general feeling of superiority that once accompanied Linux


You must be new here.

"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[EQ]

[Open Source/Unix/Linux] "Developers are moving to OSX"

This tries to imply that they are leaving those environments and changing over to the OSX environment. Bad Spinmeistering by an Apple Rep. Its more like "Now that you have a BSD substrate I can add OSX to the list of ports I support for my apps".

The developers are no more "moving to" OSX than they are "moving to" FreeBSD when they port an app there. He should have said something more like ... developers are adding OSX to their target OS's... Why do Apple types have to spin so hard all the time? They have a good OS and a decent hardware platform.

(Personal feelings: I wish they would port OSX to Athlon64 or Intel architecture and more open/non-proprietary hardware components.)

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[jo_ham]

The only proprietary hardware components in a Mac are the motherboard (logic board) and the CPU.

Everything else is standard - hard drives, memory, expansion ports (firewire, ethernet, usb) graphics cards (with slight ROM modification to work with open firmware), optical drives, PCI cards...

You can pretty much stick anything from awhitebox PC vendor in to a Mac. I buy all my memory from Crucial.com and it's the same stuff that goes in PCs.

I bought my iBook's new internal HD from a PC vendor and it works with no problems.

The Mac is no more proprietary than an Intel or AMD system - you can't interchange CPU/motherboards between the two manufacturers, but you can transfer everything else inside the case.

The only difference is that you can't run Apple's OS on anything other than Apple. You can, however, run other ones if you so choose - Linux, Darwin etc.

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[bonch]

Can you prove they're not moving to OS X? Clearly, they must have had a reason for saying ssuch...it was probably due to all the registered developers who are grabbing their Apple Developer Tools. They do keep tabs on this stuff, you know.

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[Atmchicago]

And as far as I know, Apple/IBM aren't including "trusted computing" any time soon. So they are going to be even more open in some ways.

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. I wish I could stick any PCI card in and have it work, but graphics cards, audio card, serial ATA, or IDE cards WILL NOT work. I wish they would, because I would love to get more than 3 hard drives in my G4 without having to blow 100 bucks on a mac specific PATA card, when PC ATA cards are practically free.

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[jurv!s]

Is the POWER/PowerPC platform not open? There are other companies that make (slow!) Apple processors as well. So just what the hell does it mean when /.ers say something is propietary? Maybe this age old jibe is just geek for- "I can't build it from scratch." Just how bad of a thing is that?

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

"Proprietary" means "undocumented and only available from one vendor". Unlike IA32 and x86-64 systems, I will never be able to drive down the street and buy a Mac motherboard. I realize PowerPC processors technically aren't proprietary, but I've never seen one for sale....

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[wchin]

The issue is the firmware on the PCI card. For the Mac, it has to has to work with Apple's flavor of OpenFirmware (which, btw, is less proprietary than common x86 BIOS'es). This is really only an issue with PCI devices that need to support booting. An network card, for example, doesn't need that kind of support.

Some cards have both - x86 and OpenFirmware. For example, most ATTO SCSI cards can work in either. Apple's Fibre Channel cards are LSI Logic FC HBAs and will work in x86's, Sun UltraSPARCs, etc. Most of the stuff you see at CompUSA only has x86 specific firmware - so for booting, they're not going to work.

If you were going to design a system that work with multiple processor architectures, OpenFirmware is about as open, cross platform, and diverse as it gets. It's actually the x86 side which is proprietary.

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr Troll -- The PC BIOS might be under-documented, poorly-designed, and only informally standardized; but it is not in the least bit "proprietary". In fact there's many more PC BIOS implemenentations out there than there are OpenFirmware.

Furthermore, whenever Apple comes out with a new system, some percentage of the cards on the market stop working. That rarely happens in the PC world.

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[jurv!s]

You've never seen a PowerPC proc for sale because you've never looked. Granted, this isn't quite what you mean when you speak of buying from another manufacturer. (I wonder how difficult it would be to get this box to run OS X? Darwin? It wouldn't even be worth it to try though, as notoriously expensive Apple hardware would be cheaper in this instance.)

However, this still doesn't mean we can go out and buy that motherboard with that sweet bus, but does give an indication of the blurred lines that currently exist when people call Apple hardware proprietary. The most important thing to remember about why proprietary has such negative connotations is that it generally translates into more expensive hardware. [pipe_dream]And with the spate of new customers lined up for POWER-derived processors, Apple may finally be able to offer a powerful and cheap low-end computer[/pipe_dream]

Re:"Moving To"? Bad Marketroid Phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood why people think intel is "open" and apple hardware is "closed". Intel chip designs are proprietary, and protected. AMD is their only major competitior, and their designs are also protected. The motherboard designs are all proprietary, and the chipsets used are typically proprietary as well. On the apple side, they usually own their own motherboard designs, but use off-the-shelf chipsets. What's more, PPC is relatively open, IBM considers themself to be "open sourcing" the hardware. Apple also sports fewer combinations of hardware, making it easier to support in other operating systems.

except..

[CoolMoDee]

I too am in the boat, however, I thought the same as well (about wxWidgets), until I started programming with Cocoa and Objective-C. Once I got the hang of the syntax and using Interface Builder w/ Project Builder / XCode, I find it a pain to develop any other way. Sure I don't have crossplatform as much (gnustep?) but, I guess it is once you go NeXT you never go back.

Re:except..

[killjoe]

Too bad Xcode is only good for objective C. When using java it's a total piece of crap.

If apple was serious about developers they would write a first class eclipse plug in instead of sitting idly by while the wolips project limps along.

While I am at it how about a decent package system? Darwinports does not even resolve dependencies. Fink and pkgsrc both live in their own hierarchies and don't hold a candle in terms of number of packages to their counterparts in debian and freebsd.

Apple is doing some things great but they are missing the boat on others. Unfortunately they have a culture of not really listening to their developers or customers.

Apple does things their way, they'll get along with you just fine as soon as you realize they are god.

Re:except..

[drinkypoo]

It's true that in Apple's eyes, it's their way or the highway, and so that is their answer to your issue about a package system. A proper MacOS X application doesn't need package management because it's entirely self-contained.

Re:except..

[killjoe]

All fine and dandy but where do I get php with freetds? Certainly not from apple. Apparently not from darwinports, fink, or pkgsrc either.

Apple is ignoring packages and decent development IDEs hoping that other people do the work for them. So far it's not working all that great.

I just don't think they care all that much. Not about the developers and not about their customers.

Re:except..

[drinkypoo]

Apple's core customer base continues to be the eye-candy users. As many developers as there are out there, they are surely eclipsed dramatically by the clueless luser segment. As those people are not really prone to downloading "weird" software like that, and would prefer to click and drool or are unable to do anything more complex (hell, they won't even make it to fink) really the market is not telling them to do anything about it.

Unix is only a selling point for MacOSX as far as concerns the unwashed masses because it means stability. Well, ostensibly. History has shown us that this is not true, though in comparison to MacOS 0, it's certainly a peach. But, it's not like no one ever panic'd a commercial unix (i.e. solaris) because of a kernel bug. By publicizing the fact that MacOSX is Unix-based, they're trying to rope in the geeks who formerly sat at an Ultra 2, or who have big honkin' Linux or BSD workstations. They're really not after the PC market, except those they've recently lost because Windows 2000 kicks the crap out of MacOS9.

I'm one of those developers

[Anonymous Coward]

My main workstation used to be Linux, but about a year ago I moved to a dual-CPU PowerMac running OS X, and I love it. I develop in Java and C++, and C (and am toying with C# -- I know, heresy), support and deploy to Linux servers, and need to interoperate with lots of Windows users in my company.

The Mac has been been rock-solid, has the best GUI on the market, excellent Java integration, and runs everything I want.

Eclipse, iTunes, Firefox, Cisco VPN, VNC, ssh, bash, gcc, emacs, X11, samba, MS Office, et cetera. I'm even running Mono on it. If I need to support a Linux server I ssh into it; with the -X option I can even run Linux GUI apps from the server, if I need to. If I need to open an Office document, I just open it (yeah, yeah, I know Open Office is coming along...). The Fink project gives me access to tons of ported Unix and Linux applications and libraries. I like it. I still like Linux, too, but for my main workstation, Make Mine Mac.

im primarily

[Anonymous Coward]

A Windows and Linux user, but both have been getting a bit annoying lately, Windows makes me want to cry and Linux sometimes needs too much hand-holding, so I'd like to try OS X but it's simply too expensive, and I'm not willing to pay that much to try an operating system. I don't want to have to buy a new computer, and certainly won't until they release a cheaper version. They're pricing themselves out of the competition.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[foo12]

IANAD (..not a developer) but the hardware discount doesn't kick-in at the free sign-up level --- you have to be a paid member. Even then, it's still worth it if you're planning a major hardware purchase.

90% of messages

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of the replies to this story will be.

Zah Zah beutiful GUI Uinx Wah Wah of course people are finally coming around. Blah Blah MS sucks flah flah linux to hard Mah Mah Unix something.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[prockcore]

300,000 registered developers (and a number of unregistered developers for their own use) for a platform that has under 5 % of market share is a pretty good number.

I'm a registered developer on OSX, yet I don't develop on OSX.. You need to be a registered developer just to download GCC. Just because I wanted to compile an app on OSX doesn't mean I'm an OSX developer.

You need to be a registered developer to download the source for Darwin Streaming Server (so even if you run it on Linux you're still considered an "OSX developer")

So that 300,000 number is grossly inflated.

5300/190 issues

[Oculus Habent]

Yeah, I bought the 190, which suffered from many of the same problems - not the burning batteries of the first release, though.

The power connector was crap I snapped and re-soldered mine three times, and have seen another 190 and two 5300's with the same problem.

Apple did offer a trade-in on all 190 and 5300 models - get a PowerBook G3 (Pismo) for $1900. It was a good trade, for my $900 190, and I still use my Pismo.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[Morganth]

First of all, I'm not sure if this post's purpose was to brag about MIT or if it was to brag about a Powerbook. But anyway, I'll leave that alone.

I don't see why it's modded Insightful. I'm in a CS department of a less prestigious school (but still a good one) and in the advanced courses running OS X makes life difficult. It's not because there aren't Mac dev tools available (which there are), but because some courses dive into assembly to understand machine architecture (there is a distinct x86 bias for obvious reasons) and if you're running Mac OS you have to do all this work through Virtual PC, which can be a pain.

Of course, I just realized parent might not even be majoring in CS, since MIT has other majors (with higher enrollment nowadays, I bet!...)

Attracting Developers

[pavon]

I remember when our midschool first got some Macintoshs. I was really excited. They were so much more advanced than computers I had used before. I imediatly jumped on them and started exploring and learning as much as I could about the system. And then a week later I was done. There was nothing more I could explore (shame we didn't have HyperCard). It was a black box, and the privilege of getting inside that black box cost hundreds of dollars in compilers and documentation.

So I got bored, played through some of games, and went back to my Apple IIe at home because it had a basic interpretor, hex editor and assembler and there were still things for me to explore. Latter went on to learn more free development QBasic, Java, C and Perl, which was all in DOS and then Linux. It wasn't until this last year that I used a Mac again.

The original Mac was a great machine for people who just wanted to get stuff done - draw pictures and type report. But I didn't want to that, I wanted to create. I wonder how many potential developers were lost to it like I was. I also wonder what effect good or bad that had on the quality and consistency of the programs. The Mac was always praised for how closely the applications stuck to a consistant guideline, and wonder how much of that was due to the fact that the developers had to be part of an exclusive club to participate.

Re:Attracting Developers

[diamondsw]

I believe the point of this post is that now you have that - OS X is a developer's (and other creative types') paradise. All those tools and documentation (and basic multimedia development) comes free in the box.

No suprise to me.

[C.Batt]

I "switched" last summer because of the combination of Unix power + Apple User Experience.

There's simply no fussing around. The environment fades into the background letting me concentrate on getting work done. XCode is a wonderful, comprehensive IDE and lets me develop OS X or Java apps (which I like) with the same set of great features.

My only beef with this arrangement is that a 1ghz G4 PB is no longer a speed demon. I'd really like to get a G5 PB... c'mon Steve, show us the love.

Is this a typical Apple Programmer?

[Anonymous Coward]

A typical Apple Programmer can be found in this website, OR IS IT?

It is a mystery, OR IS IT?

I was working on source code on my dad's PC...

[Fortunato_NC]

And all of a sudden, visual studio was like BEEP BEEP BEEP, and my source code was, like GONE. The PC totally ate my source code!

And it was GOOD source code, too.

I had to retype my source code from scratch, like, REALLY FAST, and my boss thought it was really lousy and so my job got, like, outsourced to like, India.

But my dad got me a new iBook G4 with Xcode, now I never get outsourced!

My name is Ellen Feiss, and I'm a software developer.

http://www.apple.com/switch

Re:I was working on source code on my dad's PC...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you aren't one of those Apple users that after figuring out how to get out a stuck zip disk starts to think that they're a programming god? You sure sound like it.

Re:I was working on source code on my dad's PC...

[Anonymous Coward]

But my dad got me a new iBook G4 with Xcode, now I never get outsourced!

You have to be hired first to be outsourced.

Re:I was working on source code on my dad's PC...

[Ricin]

"My name is Ellen Feiss, and I'm a software developer."

And I authorized this mssage :)

Re:I was working on source code on my dad's PC...

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviosly don't get the joke. Get a clue.

Re:I was working on source code on my dad's PC...

[novellengineer]

I don't know what's funnier... The post or the fact that when I clicked the link from the MacCentral newsletter a Visual Studio.Net banner ad happened to be the top of the Slashdot page.

Re:cocoa

[guet]

Care to give some examples? I haven't done any Java development (yeah, I know, I'm a bit late on that bandwagon : ). Was wondering what sort of things you miss? Having come from C++ the delegation and bindings stuff are the things I like about Cocoa/Objective-C. I quite like the Collection classes in cocoa BTW, NSArray (or EDSortedArray if you want a sorted version), NSDictionary and NSSet. They are quite basic though I guess.

Re:cocoa

[CoolMoDee]

I was the same way, until I learned my way around the api, a great resource, if you don't already know about it is the Cocoa Mailing lists. http://cocoa.mamasam.com/ is a nice archive. I do agree it would be nice it some parts of it were more modernized (e.g. a nice Quicktime API) but im not sure when/if that will ever happen.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[prockcore]

unlike microsoft who charges you a few grand for the privilege of developing windows software.

Actually, .net comes with csc (the C# compiler) for free. Add SharpDevelop and you have a very high class IDE for free.

But you're obviously talking about Visual Studio, which, if MS started giving away for free, people would start screaming antitrust.

Re:2/3 button mice

[Enucite]

The thing is--with Mac software--you don't need multiple mouse buttons any more than you need multiple letter keys.

Why don't we see anyone shouting for multiple X, C, V, or Z keys because it's too hard to cut, copy, paste and undo the way things are now?

Should Help Apple's Slow Java Implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

... to have thousands of engineers now telling you what they really think of graphics performance on Mac OS X with Java, which is slower than a Sinclair ZX-80.

Simple reason

[bonch]

Cocoa kicks ass to develop with. Most people who use it can't imagine having not used it before. It's up there with .NET as far as positive developer reaction, but I think Cocoa is probably even more elegant

Re:Simple reason

[Kenja]

Indeed, Cocoa kicks much ass. I like OS X a lot as both a end user and a devloper. The problem I have is with how Apple acted prior to its release.

Re:Simple reason

[tupps]

I am both a .net developer (work) and a mac developer at home for my own projects. On the whole the two frameworks are reasonably similar, and if anything .net is a little more polished and has fewer quirks (for someone with a Java background).

However cocoa has 2 things that make it really shine:

1) Interface builder, to build similar UI's on a PC is very tedious. You want text boxes that expand with the window, tie a text box to one corner, place a button so it is always in the bottom right hand corner of a window. All of these things are a simple click away. No complex code to get all these things moving around.

2) The Document Architecture. The support both frameworks have to build a simple utility style application (only 1 window, the window is the app) is pretty simple. The cocoa frameworks are simply *brilliant* when it comes to a document based architecture. You build the basics, and you get the following for free: open, save, new, recently opened, revert to saved, application automatically associates with its documents, window menus.

With a bit of extra work undo/redo is supported and the ability to support applescript.

In my mind to build all of this into a windows app would take a lot more time. I believe that a MacOSX developer can spend more time concentrating on what there app does rather than the extraneous issues such as a recently opened documents menu and the sort.

This also means that on the Mac when a user opens a application and it saves/opens documents they can be pretty sure that in the file menu the recently opened items list will be right there. For a developer it would take them extra effort to remove this feature.

Re:Simple reason

[AstroDrabb]

1) Interface builder, to build similar UI's on a PC is very tedious. You want text boxes that expand with the window, tie a text box to one corner, place a button so it is always in the bottom right hand corner of a window. All of these things are a simple click away. No complex code to get all these things moving around.

You should change this to read: "to build similar UI's under _MS WINDOWS_". Under Linux there is no silliness about managing every stinking widget/control. I have been developing for over 10 years now under varied platforms and I could never stand all the tedious coding needed under MS Windows to make a stupid control/widget scale when the windows is resized. It was very brain dead on the part of MS to not include this. I cannot count how many hours I have wasted while doing MS Windows development just to get the damn GUI to look nice and consistent. Under Linux and Mac the widgets/controls are much smarter about scaling with the GUI without tons of lines of code to move 100 widgets around everytime the window is resized.

Re:Simple reason

[davegust]

to build similar UI's on a PC is very tedious. You want text boxes that expand with the window, tie a text box to one corner, place a button so it is always in the bottom right hand corner of a window. All of these things are a simple click away. No complex code to get all these things moving around.

While this used to be tedious in VB6, and certainly in dialogs, .NET has two new features, docking and anchoring, that solve the problem. Give 'em a try.

Re:Simple reason

[tupps]

I must admit I hadn't seen them, have a look at the way it works in Cocoa which is still a step ahead.

Re:Simple reason

[Viol8]

Widgets moving around when the window is resized is down to low level movement of child windows in the X windows system. I can't remember exactly how its done since its been a few
years since I looked at it but you can fix a child window to always remain in the same relative place in its parent window no matter what the parent windows size.
In other words you get this functionality for free on ALL systems that use X windows , not just Linux.

Re:Simple reason

[fredrik70]

think it depends a bit on what development platform you use on Windows. Both QT (Designer) and Borland Delphi does scale widgets IIRC.

Re:Simple reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, use .NET.

Or, if you must, use QT for Windows.

Re:Simple reason

[jcr]

I believe that a MacOSX developer can spend more time concentrating on what there app does rather than the extraneous issues such as a recently opened documents menu and the sort.

Well, that of course is the goal: Anything that's common to many apps really should reside in the frameworks, so that all you have to do as the developer is write the part that makes your app unique. That's why we have a general-purpose undo manager, a document framework, a web kit, a user preferences database, and so forth.

Whenever we spot something that developers have to do over and over, we're looking for the way to put a general solution into the frameworks.

Cocoa bindings were the latest step in this direction that we introduced in Panther. I converted my Polygons sample code project to use bindings, and my whole Controller class just went away; it became completely redundant.

-jcr

Powerbooks rule indeed

[theefer]

Same for me (alright, not the MIT, but still the best I could manage and afford), except I bought the Powerbook to run Gentoo GNU/Linux on it. It runs smoothly, and probably more even than on most of the x86 laptops out there. The hardware is great too.

I was actually amazed to see how polished and clean Mac OS X was. As my experience of proprietary desktop OSes was mainly windows, I was suddenly wondering why so many people wouldn't use Mac OS X instead of that old, buggy ms crap. Yes, games, maybe ...

I will keep Mac OS X just in case, but GNU/Linux on Apple laptops is definitely a bliss.

GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Cocoa

[jkheit]

I wrote an article on this a while back. Someone else in this thread asked why would anyone lock themselves into a proprietary development platform when Linux is available. Well, it ain't necessarily so proprietary.

Beyond the obvious allure, i.e., OS X is the only easy to use desktop Unix that natively supports the major productivity applications (i.e., Microsoft Office). That combination is just not available. Yea, OpenOffice is nice, but for those that *need* 100% compatibility, it's not ready for prime time. Just like linux for the desktop.

Anyway, ever since NeXT opened the developer spec for OPENSTEP, GNUstep has been doing a great job of recreating a compile compatible version. What this means is that Cocoa really isn't as proprietary as you might think because it sticks to the OPENSTEP spec. The result is apps developed for GNUstep can be compiled for OS X's cocoa with relatively little fuss or muss. In essence GNUstep is someone Mac compatible.

Personally, I wish people would dump GNOME and KDE and adopt GNUstep with display ghostscript, a unified class structure, a great GUI, and Linux underpinnings; it is OS X for Linux. Ok, it's more like NeXTSTEP for Linux. Anyway, if anyone takes it mainstream it could mean big problems for Apple.

My next purchase

[bonch]

My next purchase is going to be a PowerBook. Why? One word--quality.

It's a level of quality that can't be found in Linux or Windows right now.

Re:My next purchase

[CrackedButter]

Yeah the quality is there, the power isn't. I had one, the 15" 1.25Ghz model, had it 2 months before i sold it for a 1Ghz eMac, hardly any difference other than the huge price difference (and weight, 2.5kgs to 30kgs). I even paid developer price for the damn PowerBook (10% cheaper than edu price). However, once the G5 hits the PB, i'm buying the 12" one, the G4 is fucking dead already.

Re:My next purchase

[CrackedButter]

How can your comment be flamebait? Sometimes those mods have a hard-on for mac users or are mac users with hard-ons!

Re:My next purchase

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmph. And this coming from someone who's drooling over the next iteration of Operating System from MS.

It's the toolkit, dummy

[parvenu74]

Simply because MacOS is suddenly more like Unix doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to attract developers. Having the right set of tools available for developers to use will make MUCH MORE of a difference. Consider a product like RealBasic (http://www.realbasic.com/) that opens up the world of Apple (and now Linux) development to the MILLIONS of VB developers who until now could only program on Windows because that was the only option in their chosen language.

Re:It's the toolkit, dummy

[Pahroza]

Until now? RealBasic has been around since 1998!

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[avalys]

Sorry, I didn't mean to brag, I'm just still excited that I'm actually going there. :)

I'm planning to bring my old Inspiron along with me, for exactly the reasons you described. I think I'll major in CS, but who knows...

Screw Apple.

[Anonymous Coward]

... and Microsoft and Sun and whatever proprietary "delopment environment is out there".

Developer should code for a portability?

Is Cocoa portable?

Is Microsoft Visual Dot Whatver you call portable?

(and I mean REALLY portable).

Java's sort of portable but dog slow. (chill! that's just my opinion. I'm sure it bechmarks just fine calling assembly coded math functions all day).

If you are developing, use these tools:
1) WxWidgets, 2) Qt or 3) GTK.

They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Try 'em all or stick with one of them.

And if you need a database use MySQL or postgres.

And make sure you thin client app works on Mozilla.

Use open source. Don't get straighjacketed into a proprietary solution.

Student Developers

[OmniVector]

I'm in that boat. I got a WWDC scholarship to go to Apple's developer conference, and my application was basically "UNIX UNIX UNIX". I think they see this as a major new market: We can't get all the Windows users to switch, why not take a stab at the already-busy niche market? If you took a look in the OS 9 days just about everything popular that was a hobby OS is a close UNIX or direct UNIX deritivative. BeOS, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. If all these hobbiests are willing to do it for free and fun, why not take advantage of that and make it even better?

I just started my mac os x programming. I wrote a lengthy objective-c tutorial to get familiar with the language, and I'm going to write similar tutorials for AppKit and AppleScript. (I like to write tutorials as part of my learning. Helps me and others at the same time I think). It's a great language and environment based on what i know so far. Much much nicer than C++ coding.

Re:Student Developers

[omicronish]

One of the barriers is hardware compatibility. I've invested a lot of money on x86 hardware that works with Windows. I'll instantly give Mac OS X a try if it'll ever run on my hardware.

Re:Student Developers

[OmniVector]

i agree completely. it was a big risk when i took the plung to buy my powerbook. i basically sold my old laptop and had to spend and extra 900 to get the powerbook. however the switch was so worth it in my opinion, that i would have given $2000 easily if i had the opportunity again. the best thing you can do if you're interested in the mac platform but can't afford the hardware is to buy a used mac on ebay, a nice old 333 that can run jaguar or something, and just play with it! it's not that much and you get most of the latest software available to you.

Re:Student Developers

[ordinarius]

I just started my mac os x programming. I wrote a lengthy objective-c tutorial to get familiar with the language, and I'm going to write similar tutorials for AppKit and AppleScript. (I like to write tutorials as part of my learning. Helps me and others at the same time I think).

You wrote a lengthy objective-c tutorial? You've got nerve I'll give you that. The thing reads like a crib sheet to Stephen Kochan's Programming in Objective-C. At least credit the guy when you lift example code from him. Shesh.

Re:Student Developers

[OmniVector]

i did reference his book at the bottom, and much of the code is modified from his examples.

I think Apple can describe their userbase as...

[Jerk City Troll]

Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

Re:Egalitarian Computing

[Anonymous Coward]

But "everyone" has proven they are too stupid to compute no matter how 'usable'. And "elegance" is a luxury of effort, and Apple happens to want to be paid for their effort. Everyone should be licensed to compute because it is dangerous to have people who don't know how trying to "wing-it" just the same way as it would be if we didn't license drivers.

Re:cocoa

[Maxwell42]

Don't you think this is due to the fact that you know for a long time how to find the right package/class/method in java, whereas in Objective you have to learn a new way of organizing the "collection class" (frameworks) ?

I mean, I have been told that the frameworks available with OS X are really complete, so i'm wondering if it's you or not :)

Note that I am neither a Java programmer neither an Objective-C developper.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[yotaku]

I think that this says something about how usable OS X really is. If such a large percentage of the users are developers than maybe it is only usable by developers and other tech savy people?

Admitadly I am not an Apple person. I've dropped by the Apply store and tried messing around with the computers in the store but not much else. But I found the systems not much better than the popular linux distributions.

WIDOWS XD SI TEH FAGORTS OPERATIAN SYTSEM

[Anonymous Coward]

WIDOWS XD SI TEH FAGORTS OPERATIAN SYTSEM Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Join The Club

[The Slashdolt]

I've been a software developer for about 7 years nows. Ranging from embedded work, windows, to linux/unix. More recently I've been a java developer and oracle dba. About a year ago I purchased a dual G4 powermac. I installed oracle and jbuilder8 on it within a couple of days and was developing software as easily as on any other system. I have been very happy with my purchases(though I wish I had a G5).

Though I must admit, that I recently needed to purchase a laptop for doing some work on the road and chose not to go with a powerbook. Most notably because I felt the current offerings would not offer me the power I could get with the equivalent intel based system(where's the G5 powerbook???). Sad to admit, but possibly a more important factor to not choosing a powerbook was the single button touch pad. I use a two button w/scroll usb mouse on my powermac and I couldn't imagine using a single button touchpad on a powerbook. Yeah, yeah, I could use an external mouse, but on a plane its not so easy to do, so you must use the touchpad. I didn't want to suffer with that single button, ugh!

Re:Join The Club

[pjt33]

where's the G5 powerbook???

Have you seen the size of the cooling system for a G5? Be a while before you see them in laptops.

Re:Join The Club

[NaugaHunter]

the single button touch pad

Ask, and thou shalt receive.

Re:Join The Club

[metalligoth]

I was scared about the lack of right-clicking on the touchpad when I switched from Windows. Then I figured out that all you have to do is hold down the control key while clicking. Try it on your PowerMac. Click the left mouse button while holding the control key on the keyboard. I actually prefer this method now to having two mouse buttons, but I would still like a scroll wheel on the Apple Pro Mouse.

Re:Join The Club

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, yeah, I could use an external mouse, but on a plane its not so easy to do, so you must use the touchpad. I didn't want to suffer with that single button, ugh!

what the hell, do you commute between new york and wellington each weekend? plane flights take like three hours in the air, of which only two are you allowed to operate electronic devices. just take a nap on the plane, and when you wake up at your destination, you'll feel so refreshed you'll save three hours worth of time not waiting for your dell to reboot from another damn crash.

In other words

[bonch]

People are verifiably moving to OS X.

You: "Uh, no they're not, they're moving to OSS. I have no other reason for this statement other than I said so."

Meanwhile, what we're talking about is Cocoa and the Apple Developer Tools. :P

iTunes on Windows Inferior?

[MooseByte]

"The only thing I can't understand is why iTunes and QuickTime seem so inferior on Windows."

Not trolling, I'm geniunely curious - what makes iTunes on Windows inferior? A few weeks ago I installed iTunes on my XP box. Runs great. Copied 5GB of tunes from my iBook, made my playlists, etc. Does everything I do with it on my iBook, no crashes.

I've got a 2.4GHz P4 - is it a performance problem on older hardware?

Re:iTunes on Windows Inferior?

[xenoandroid]

Hell I've run iTunes on a 400 Mhz P2 and the performance isn't nearly as bad as some people say. Sure visualizations arn't super smooth like on macs or higher end PCs, scrolling through the list is a little jerky, and the launching time is longer than normal, but those are the only things I've noticed and they don't bother me, I've seen much worse performance in media players (such as MusicMatch).

Re:iTunes on Windows Inferior?

[bitpart]

I think the keyword there is "seems." I've played with iTunes for Windows on my roommate's PC, and it does "seem" inferior though technically it works great.

It might just be the different GUI standards between Windows and OS X. The two apps are the exact same, but in the context of the Windows desktop environment, something doesn't seem right.

The parent's quote is a curious one, and I can't understand why iTunes and Quicktime seem so inferior on Windows either. Maybe someone with a better understanding of GUI standards can clarify?

Ahh.. there it is.

[mindstrm]

I do think you are bang-on here. Macs are the luxury items of computing. It's not the most open, or the cheapest.. but damned if it's not the most enjoyable system I've ever had. And like a nice luxury car, I know I paid for that enjoyment with cash.

As it is, nothing in the open source world comes across as cleanly and nice as OSX... therefore, OSX has value to me.

As for being "Elitist".. that's a bit smug. It's quality stuff, for a price. If an equal experience were available to me for free, I wouldn't be paying money to Apple. As long as Apple keeps ahead of the game... why on earth should they not keep prices up? They are an awfully successful company for an underdog with a small marketshare compared to their competitor.

That said.. like many things... luxury is not always more expensive. A poor man buys clothing that only lasts, say, 6 months, because it's all he can afford. The rich man buying clothing for 2x the price ends up with material and quality that lasts 4x as long, or more.... more than equal to the price in the long run.

The useful life of a mac for the average mac users tends to be much longer than the useful life of a PC... less reformats, less urge to buy the latest mac, etc. IT's not for everyone, certainly not for an overclocking tweaker kid...

I'm A Unix guy by trade.. and a while back I got into osX. This little 800Mhz G3 iBook is still suiting me just fine.. I really can't find a good reason to drop a few grand on a newer mac. I can afford it, the money is set aside for it, but there is no real benefit to my computing experience to buying a new mac at this point, even though mine is quite dated.

The open source world sets a good baseline for value.. making it harder and harder to sell garbage as real product.... but highly usable and elegant computing takes a level of control over a project that most open projects do not yet have.

What we need is an inspired usability freak with the attitude of Theo de Raadt to produce an apple clone.

Too many cooks make linux less usable.

Re:Slashdot and US-ASCII

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco, PLEASE set up a filter for this crap, along with the GNAA trolls!

There are too few geeks...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to make the difference in the marketshare. but when you get the geeks on your side - the rest will follow soon after.

Never underestimate the influence of geeks when it comes to computers.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think he was talking about MSDN.

A compiler and IDE alone are not enough to do professional development.

Re:2/3 button mice

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need two or three balls either, but I like them all the same. So, thx but I'll pass...

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[prockcore]

but because some courses dive into assembly to understand machine architecture (there is a distinct x86 bias for obvious reasons)

I guess things have changed in the 10 years or so it's been since I was in college. In the courses that dealt with assembly, we all used MIPS assembly, and most of us used SPIM, the MIPS emulator, for our projects.

Re:Slashdot and US-ASCII

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shut up you fucking dog wanker.

i386 OS X

[uberTr011]

Now, if they ported OS X to i386 arch, they'd have 10 fold the developers and 100 fold the customers... but their probably too caught up in ideals to think of that. Face it Apple, i386 won.

Re:i386 OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's not that simple...

They'd have to let some 6 and 7 year old kids bang around on the source code a while so that the OS quality would be a better match for the hardware.

Re:i386 OS X

[TheInternet]

Now, if they ported OS X to i386 arch, they'd have 10 fold the developers and 100 fold the customers...

Next did exact that but it didn't actually work. Same with Be and OS/2. It's hard enough to compete for attention against Windows on desktop x86, it's even harder to actually make money doing it. There's a huge difference between potential and actual customers.

Not to mention the integration with the hardware is what makes many of the attractive features of Mac OS X possible in the first place.

- Scott

Cyberduck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyberduck?

http://icu.unizh.ch/~dkocher/cyberduck/

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[yotaku]

You can download the .NET framework SDK, with compiler for free from microsoft. And msdn.microsoft.com provides a great set of documentation. Plus microsoft provides open developer communities such as gotdotnet.net

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to be a registered developer just to download GCC.

Wrong. The developer tools, including the compiler, come with the OS, on the "Xcode Tools" CD.

You need to be a registered developer to download the source for Darwin Streaming Server

No. You only need to accept the APSL. That's a totally different thing.

YEE HAW! Open Source is DEAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Long live OS X! Showing once again, that to do it right, you have to do it CLOSED.

it's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

that Apple pays attention to the corporate IT market.....

still, too little too late

Re:Slashdot and US-ASCII

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats called censorship and that makes you a hypocrite.

Nazi.

Somewhat disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

When most hackers say they're glad they use a Mac, they mean Mac OS 9 or earlier.

Mac OS X is just FreeBSD. Now, I know you all think FreeBSD is the messiah, but it has one security weakness that Mac OS pre-X did not have: a terminal.

What does it mean to compromise a box that has no remote access or command line? It means you're pretty damn limited on what you can do if anything

What does it mean to root a UNIX box? It means you own it.

Mac OS X is a UNIX derivative, therefore it is vulnerable to all the weaknesses of UNIX as well as the strengths. Unfortunately Apple is, like all companies, not perfect. Being a desktop/usability oriented company, they will doubtlessly be behind the curve for providing security updates and therefore Mac OS X is even less secure than Linux. Linux is secure? Keep telling yourselves that Debian, Gentoo, GNOME and FSF.

Mac OS pre-X had great security for a reason and it came down to one thing: no console. Now that Mac OS X is gaining market share and mind share I highly doubt it will maintain such a pristine record.

Re:Somewhat disappointing

[fozzmeister]

Oh yes because pre OSX lots of developers were making software for the mac, WTF, your spouting absolute garbage there.

However everything after the first line does make sense and is very real.

Re:Somewhat disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

Hackers as in Kevin Mitnick hackers, not hackers as in kernel hackers.

Re:Somewhat disappointing

[kylector]

hehehe, I agree with fozzmeister (the other reply, not the AC I'm replying to). "Hackers" did not code for MacOS 9. haha, that must be a joke, I keep laughing as I type this. OS 9 had VERY limited software. You think OS X has limited software, you should've seen 9. With X, we can run most unix apps. In 9, we were totally at the mercy of the few software developers that would port to it because it was a massive effort. Now porting to MacOS X from unix requires few, if any, changes.

There were no hackers on OS 9. It didn't have a command line as you point out, and it couldn't connect to machines that used a command line. It could barely talk to anything outside http, ftp, and a few other legacy protocols. No hacker wasted their time on it.

I'm debating whether to post this because I don't want to start a flamewar with an AC. If someone replies to this, reply with your nick or I won't respond. No sense in conversing with a coward.

attempting to be insightful as I refute him and not be modded flamebait... ;-)

Re:Somewhat disappointing

[wchin]

Mac OS X ships with all remote access services turned off. You have to run something to open a hole, just like Mac OS = 9. There have been security vulnerabilities in server software for Mac OS = 9 - just like any other operating system.

The whole command line thing is a red herring. Mac OS 9 has no security model at all, so a buffer overflow style of attack can attack _any_ code in the system, including "kernel" routines.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, Criticizes Apple

Re:cocoa

[Entropy2016]

I agree to a degree (seriously, I did not intend that to rhyme).

For example; NSString has methods for getting a UTF8String, getCString, fileSystemRepresentation, etc, but there is no method for "pascalString" or "initWithPascalString".

That's why you use a cool Objective-C feature called categories. They let you add methods to any existing class (without subclassing anything). I've written a good number of convenience-methods for NSMutableString & NSFileManager.

Categories are also pretty handy for beefing up interface-object classes.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Oculus Habent]

No, that's when they start making it a default install...

"But your honor, we can't remove Visual Studio. Large parts of Windows are now compiled on the fly..." :)

Sure, Apple gets away with things that Microsoft can't. But, if Microsoft released a brand new operating system (really, not just "Oh, look, this one's blue.") and bundled - not default installed - a devkit with it, the inevitable lawsuits would go much more quickly.

Re:Egalitarian Computing

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

There's a mission statement for the Open Source movement in there somewhere. Very nice.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[Anonymous Coward]

MIT is a way overrated school.

You first couple of years are a bitch. 40+ hours of homework every week. The goal is to fail or overburden the students before they graduate.

I've been through enough bad and good MIT graduates to know that its no different than any other school that adheres to nomal academic standards. However, the people that go through there are treated like Gods and act accordingly.

Just my 2 cents from someone in management.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that this says something about how usable OS X really is. If such a large percentage of the users are developers than maybe it is only usable by developers and other tech savy people?

Admitadly I am not an Apple person. I've dropped by the Apply store and tried messing around with the computers in the store but not much else. But I found the systems not much better than the popular linux distributions.

Goddamn you are a fucking moron.

Kill yourself now, and you won't have to die a long painful death at the hands of

WE THE PEOPLE.

10% of messages

[Anonymous Coward]

The remaining 10% of the replies to this story will be.

Zah Zah 90% of messages will be wah wah predictable blah blah blah slashdot sucks thats why i spend so much time here wah wah wah

Troll. Mod down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at his URL return address (or whatever it is).

Don't mod this crap up.

Does this mean Linux dead too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Apple has demonstrated how closed source development, when done right, can kick open source development in the ass, what reason, really, is there for Linux to exist any more? I mean honestly, I guess there may be a niche for Linux to exist in academia where looking at the source code is important, but even there Darwin is a far better representative of the state of the art in operating systems than Linux, which is a relic of the 80's and 90's. This is not a troll, this is an honest question. With OS X so readily available and able to do EVERYTHING Linux does only with more ease of use, more applications, better security, etc, why does anyone use Linux (aside from the all-Linux, all-the-time zealots)?

Re:Does this mean Linux dead too?

[fozzmeister]

Well the fact its Apple hardware only is one hell of a massive reason alone. Without the side issue of the major projects like Apache, X, MySQL, Postgres, virtually every other targetting Linux. Yes Linux is a Monolithic Kernel, as apposed to a Micro Kernel, but is that really so massively important (I do love the idea of micro kernels, and I think it would be great) to remove the head of steam that Linux has built up.

ATM your seeing Linux ported to everything under the sun, not because its the best but for the simple reason that people know it, I'd be very surprised if NetBSD didn't Linux on portability.

Re:Does this mean Linux dead too?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is really no reason. Apple and Microsoft have more resources for various important projects. What we had as the open source so far is Linux Kernel, nothing much. We have a kernel where you can run traditional unix applications. That's pretty much what we have, all the other technologies, apis, important programs either come from commercial companies or that they were there before Linux itself. So the momentum behind open source is really related with the hatred for Microsoft, it has nothing to do with the quality, reality. It is pure religous arguments and always the stupid ones. That's why we have a serious credibility problem with slashdot, nobody gives a damn about Slashdot and its news except few monkies here.

As I predicted always, Slashdot and open source will lose its power as we move on. Linux will remain to be our toy operating system. If and when SCO wins, the hope of Linux on desktop will be a thing of the past. Linux terorists will further ruin the idea that we should have free operating system.

The issue with Apple here is that, most of the slashdot monkies are not in favor of Linux, they are really in favor of closed source, like Apple. They know that Linux doesn't have much chance to Windows, so they are trying to push Apple now, but they will fail there too.

Re:cocoa

[devonbowen]

Don't you think this is due to the fact that you know for a long time how to find the right package/class/method in java, whereas in Objective you have to learn a new way of organizing the "collection class" (frameworks) ?

I've thought about this. And I've thought maybe Java coming from Sun and me working with Sun made us have a similar way of thinking. But I don't think so. It's an interesting questions, though... whether there is a "naturally" correct interface to a class or whether it depends on the "culture" of the programmer...

Devon

Re:GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Coco

[IamTheRealMike]

Beyond the obvious allure, i.e., OS X is the only easy to use desktop Unix that natively supports the major productivity applications (i.e., Microsoft Office). That combination is just not available. Yea, OpenOffice is nice, but for those that *need* 100% compatibility, it's not ready for prime time. Just like linux for the desktop.

What makes you think Office for the Mac is 100% compatible with Office for Windows? Even things like different kinds of font antialiasing can be enough to break compatibility in some scenarios, let alone things like Win32 specific VBScripts (that use WSH etc). Actually, it is of course possible to use the Real Thing(tm) on Linux courtesy of CrossOver, if you need it.

Anyway, ever since NeXT opened the developer spec for OPENSTEP, GNUstep has been doing a great job of recreating a compile compatible version.

Not really - GNUstep can't read the OS X UI files for one, it's not complete, and the GNUstep team are explicitly not interested in 100% compatibility (for instance, replicating wierd/buggy semantics of Apples APIs). And of course you have the whole deal of having to redo all the artwork, nobody using the GNUstep widgets and so on ....

Re:Egalitarian Computing

[THotze]

I think that the "Mercedes or BMW of IT" label is thrown around a little bit too fast with Apple. Steve Jobs has even spread it around some, I can remember an interview where the interviewer asked him about Apple's marketshare, commenting on how small it was, and he replied by naming some luxury auto brands that had a market share smaller than Apple's.

Now, if you're a home user, yes, its harder to rationalize spending the money for a decent Apple computer, but even then, there are exceptions, like how an eMac is now $749 for univeristy students with the discount.

However, for business users, its been noted many times that computers are just a 'means to an end'. For years, many companies would buy engineers, etc. a new $10,000 Sun box because the added productivity easily covered the cost of the computer.

I _know_ that my productivity's improved greatly since switching to OS X from Windows. The environment just seems more friendly, it seems snappier to get done what I need to do.

So I think, even for the average desktop, where lots of Office stuff is used, web-surfing, etc., chances are, the improved productivity (combined with lower TCO (maybe) because of fewer viruses, greater reliability, etc.), makes the ~$1,200 investment for an iMac worthwile for many businesses.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll major in CS, but who knows...

My advice: Major in pussy. And not skanky, MIT "I am god's gift to nerds" pussy either; Cambridge and Boston have plenty of colleges around to wet yer pole. The MIT degree will get you enough interviews down the road.

Java on Mac

[fozzmeister]

Is bollocks, yes its wonderful on OS X but no one supports Java on Linux on Mac, which is a horrible, horrible shame, I only thinking about buying a mac about a week ago (I've been waiting for the end of the tax year) and was so close to puttin the money down when i was checking that everything i needed would run. Then it dawned on me. Java, oh shit there is the problem, I so wanted an iBook too, Now to buy an equally sexy system I need to go for probably a Sony Vaio (im looking for a laptop). Come on Apple get with it, you sell me the hardware and a copy of OSX (i'm quite happy paying the OSX tax) Its not like anybody other than Apple use PPC anyway.

Re:Java on Mac

[Taloon]

IBM has a 1.4 SDK/JRE available for PPC Linux. Installed the RPM on my Debian Powerbook via Alien and it runs great, although no Mozilla plugin. I had a link to an article about how to get Java to work in Mozilla but the site has been down for awhile.

Re:Java on Mac

[fozzmeister]

Troll my arse, why? Oh because its anti Apple!

Yes

[Mateito]

Apple Developer Profile Changing?

Yes. They are dying.

Too obvious.

If only they could fix their linker...

[guerby]

As mentionned on the GCC list

ld: xxx.o relocation overflow for relocation entry 587 in section (__TEXT,__text) (displacement too large)

I guess that would make at least me an happier MacOSX developper (even if with Ada :). Laurent

Re:GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Coco

[Anonymous Coward]

And I suppose Fruit of the Loom means big problems for Donna Karan. Whatever.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[prockcore]

The developer tools, including the compiler, come with the OS, on the "Xcode Tools" CD.

Now they do, but for 3 years there was no "Xcode Tools" cd.

Re:GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Coco

[jkheit]

Your point regarding GNUstep not being 100% compatible is well taken. But it is a far way along. And in some instances a developer is able to keep a single codebase and compile to the two different platforms (GNUstep and Cocoa), NIB files withstanding for now. It's likely this kind of compatibility become more the case as GNUstep continues to evolve, simply because the GNUstep team has been narrowing that gap steadily for some time.

As for your Mac Office not being 100% compatible. Well, if you're going to be pedantic about it, Office for windows is not 100% compatible with itself. First it's not compatible as between different versions (e.g., 97 vs. XP). Also, even with the same versions, because of system/font variances et. al., it will also have issues. All that being said, in my experience, which is not statistically relevant, the variances between the Mac version of Office and Windows version is not significantly greater than the variances between Windows versions. The variances in compatibility between OpenOffice and MS Office are far greater, again, in my experience.

As always, YMMV.

Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

...downloading free ones.

Re:Apple = Lock in.

[0x0d0a]

I feel sorry for those who "Switched" from Linux to OSX. You have made a big mistake.

Well, I think that they're spending too much on mostly aesthetics when it comes to hardware...but how much does it really hurt? Both Linux and OS X run on laptops, and you can use whatever.

I don't like OS X much compared to Linux (and I think that a lot of OS X hype is just that -- hype from really vocal people) but it's not as if this is Windows/Mac OS we're talking about, where switching to the Mac or to Windows entails changing platforms. You can happily use OS X and if you feel like switching to Linux, do so, and if back to OS X...go for it. Remember that Apple paid a good chunk of their engineers to work on PowerPC Linux. A lot of bug fixes are done by people using software that runs on all platforms -- look at, say, Aleph One coded to SDL and OpenGL, or some guy using grep. It's kinda like FreeBSD and Linux. Sure, we'd like to bring our less enlightened brethren into the Linux fold ;-) but really, it doesn't matter all that much.

Plus, Apple puts out those oddball PowerPC machines, and having people using machines with different integer sizes and byte ordering is a good way to find common software portability bugs. Think of it as having a bigger pool of beta testers.

I *do* think it is a little sad that OS X has a proprietary set of GUI APIs, so a lot of OS X GUI software can't be used (and developed on!) by Linux folks, but such is life.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Maserati]

Does anyone remember Metrowerks complaining about the DevTools being included ?

No.

Did Metrowerks drop their Mac product and start touting Windows as their preferred platform ?

No.

Re:Apple = Lock in.

[Anonymous Coward]

cheap mother fucking bitch. Onky peeps that would boost gay fag lunix when Apple has made teh best lunix anywhere. Vendor lock in? All arguments to bust up the fax that all loonix users are cheap fuckin bastards who would not buy Apple systems as long as they cost 1 dollar more than cheapest wal mart 199 dollar system.

Fuck all tyeh loonix fagboyz - Apple and loonix do not compete moron they complement each other. Go learn.

Re:cocoa

[devonbowen]

Care to give some examples?

I knew someone would ask that. Unfortunately, now that I've worked around everything, I don't really have any simple examples off the top of my head.

One problem that frustrated me recently, though, was the modal window concept. When you're in a modal window, you're running in a special event loop and things like timers, network events, etc, aren't delivered. This just seems like such a kludge to me. I can't handle my networking events because a non-physical abstraction like a window is blocking it? Weird. Sure, there are work-arounds like threads but the underlying model is not what I'd expect. I'd expect something like... you have to call a method that puts the app into modal mode so that only appropriate mouse events are delivered. Then you return to the the normal event loop so all events can be handled as usual. When you're done another method is called to end modal mode.

Of course, that's a big example. There were many small ones, too.

Devon

Fugu!

[Anonymous Coward]

there's a very good ftp client for OSX I've used called Fugu. can't find the URL, but a goodl search for "fugu ftp OSX" should bring it up. ....and it's free. :)

Re:Fugu!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fugu doesn't support ftp... yet. It's on the TODO, but far off iirc.

Computer speed is sufficient enough.

[Qbertino]

Now quality counts.
Steven Jobs did 2 years ago what in 5 years from now the rest of the IT corporations will notice as the way to go. Aside from the price/raw performance ratio current Macs kick any other computer up and down the street in terms of conceptual consequence.
Windows/x86 just plain sucks and Linux and Co. are a geeky weedy mess that begs serious user initiative, including all the ups and downs, a large portion of them due to general overall x86 suckage.

Macs on the other hand work. You turn them on and they work. It started with the IMac, with which you didn't even have to calibrate the screen. And was emphasized with those fully digital cinema TFT displays.

BTW: On my workstations I'm all Linux since the last 2.5 years. But I'm going to get myself a 12" IBook next week. Best and cheapest subnote available.

No, there is no use denying it: Macs rock, and with a Windows plattform growing crappier on a daily basis (Nazi registration, crappy rich media integration, viruses and all) they're going to be the next plattform for getting the job done hassle free.
Yes, it's true: Steve Jobs, the visonary, did the only right thing: taking a reference grade quality Unix and adding a kick-ass GUI. I'm glad it's paying of for him. And since I've heard my wife using the Konqueror ask 'which button shall I click with?' more than twenty times I've even quit the silly 'only one mouse button' jokes.
I tell you what: If this company does everything right, between a future economy class workhorse plattform (Linux) and a sleek hightec enduser appliance (Mac), there won't be much room for Microsuck Windows. Mark my word!

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[selderrr]

I'm gonna blow the 5 mod points I allready spent in this thread.

Dude, you're totally off. Metrowerks DID drop Mac Codewarrior. sure, they still have the product, but it took'em ages to upgrade it to decent OSX compatibility. Powerplant is nowhere. There's no decent resource editor. The docs are completely outdated as are the header files.
No, they didn't drop it, they just left it hanging where it was. Remember that Metrowerks is now owned by Motorola, who have a rather tacky relationship with Cupertino after the G4 debacle.

they did not choose Windows as new platform, but rather went for the embedded PowerPC market.

lookup your facts before spewing nonsense

nice os but...

[hitmark]

i dont like the fact that if you want to buy a computer running it you have to buy from apple. i would mutch rather have the ability to build myself a "mac" from of the shelf parts. alltho i fear this would more or less make apple's stability claims look like so mutch air...

Re:nice os but...

[foreign devil]

Yeah, using less reliable hardware sure would put big holes in their reliability claims. No one says they get their reliability for free. They get it by having very exacting standards for their hardware. It's rough, but it's not that bad. How many of us still try to skimp on hardware? An hour spent diagnosing a wonky ethernet card just multiplied the price of the card by ten for me. I'll just spend the bucks to start with.

Re:nice os but...

[hitmark]

im all for high standards on the hardware they use but what im not for is contracts that makes theyre suplyers unable to sell the same stuff to anyone else. i belvie some people have for a long time tryed to get theyre hands on "mac" motherboards but the company makeing them had a contract with apple saysing that if theyre sold to anyone else then they could no longer sell to apple. in many ways thats what microsoft is doing to stop pc makers from shipping computers with linux installed and from my point of view is anti-competitive...

Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone else reading this seeing the death of Linux unfolding before their eyes? There goes the Linux developers, the "air supply", off to write Konfabulator widgets and listen to MP3s, neither of which is apparently possible in Linux (/sarcasm).

Instead of fixing your gripes with Linux, so many of you seem to choose to abandon it and the ethic completely and sign up with Microsoft Junior. What's the difference between MS and Apple, really? Apple is just a cool Microsoft. If you're okay with Apple's business practices, you're a hypocrite to dislike Microsoft's. Pot, meet kettle. Sure, Apple's got a cool GUI and you can run Unix stuff on it, but you can theme XP to the point where the crew on Spymac can't tell the difference between a real and a fake half the time, and you can either run the Win32 versions of your Unix apps, or use Cygwin, an emulator, or dual boot. And you'd still have all those yummy closed-source apps you're so fond of. Way way more of them, in fact. Like the Adobe stuff that they just announced they were discontinuing Mac versions of. And games like Counterstrike that even poor pathetic Linux plays with WineX... And if you can't make Linux work, you're using an old version. For me, Linux Just Works (to steal an overused and largely untrue Macintosh marketing phrase). My KDE with Karamba is cooler than any Mac I've ever seen (which is about one, being that Apple has 1.7% marketshare and is dropping daily as Apple focuses more and more on becoming an MP3 player manufacturer than a computer and OS manufacturer). Can't wait for the PowerBook upgrades. MacRumors has been predicting them since December 2003. Yay! They'll be up to 1.5 Ghz soon, with slow RAM, no cache, a 4200RPM hard drive, and a price tag equivalent to a top of the line ThinkPad at 3 times the clockspeed, not to mention a Dell Inspiron *completely* loaded. But you WILL get FireWire 1 and 2 for all those FireWire devices you have, and a nifty Gigabit ethernet that you'll never get full use out of, being that it's 800 times faster than the internet. Regular ethernet speeds would be fine, but not Apple insists on putting bleeding-edge tech that costs an arm and a leg in as standard. You're paying for features YOU WILL NOT USE, but it sure does explain why Apple has the highest profit margins in the industry -- because they overcharge the most. Duh.

Ahhhh... I remember the old days before OS X, when people cared about the GPL and all that ethics stuff. All it took was a cool non-Microsoft system to get you back hooked on corporate America again. How sad. I've been flamed lots of times by former GNU/Linux freaks who I've noticed are now OS X freaks. Pathetic. Look guys, either you're on a closed system or you're not. If you're an Apple zealot, you have no right to attack Microsoft for the things they do, when Apple's list is equally long and heinous. I know you can't remember anything Apple's done except their commercials and nifty Stevenotes, and what you can recall you (of course) support Apple's reasoning for doing it, but really. You're going from Proprietary Windows to Proprietary Apple, but you don't seem to care. Reading the posts on here you sure hate Microsoft, but you eagerly forgive Apple the exact same "sins" MS commits, and race towards another vendor and another software lock-in.

And if you're using OS X as a temporary solution until Linux matures, you do realize that you're slowing Linux's maturity by giving up and becoming a consumer rather than a creator, don't you?

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[bfg9000]

You forgot that since Apple's OS X is closed source, it may have backdoors built in by the NSA. It MAY. I'm not saying it DOES, I'm saying I can't prove it doesn't. And after reading earlier today about the NSA monitoring every email that goes through an American server on its journey (which is pretty much all of them), I'm more worried about the inherent safety of my systems. All the firewalls in the world won't protect you if the paranoid theories about MS' NSAKey.dll are correct, or if the same NSA that approached MS to trojan their systems approached Apple (and why wouldn't they?). It is of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE security-wise, to be able to trust your operating system 100%. I have an Apple, I'll agree that the PowerBooks NEED an update (I'm still hanging onto my TiBook, years after I wanted to upgrade), and I love the mind-numbing ease of use of OSX, but if you ask me whether I can guarantee that there are no backdoors built into it, I have to respond 'no.' If IBM really is making Linux ThinkPads based on the G5 this year, I WILL be dropping OS X completely for that platform.

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[bfg9000]

Hmmp. Nice work, Mod. I highly doubt there's a single point in there that can be disputed. It's written in intelligent, rational prose, and is definitely NOT a troll. But yet again, I am struck down by angry, bitter little MacMods who spend their days and nights denying reality and trying to cause others to deny it as well. What a pathetic life you must lead.

And it just occurred to me -- the more I'm modded down for *telling the truth* (ie. censored by Apple Zealots), the more I consider that ThinkPad....

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[cubic6]

Intelligent, rational prose? I'm sorry, but you come off as a paranoid lunatic. I'm not saying you are a paranoid lunatic, but that's the impression I get when I read your post.

Also, when you bitch about the moderation you receive, you're likely to get modded down even more. It's how the system works. Deal with it, or don't even bother posting.

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see somebody's on their fourth or fifth read through of Digital Fortress

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[bfg9000]

Judging from your post, cubic, you seem to take everything on trust. That's bad.

You TRUST the moderators are always wise and good. I don't. I've seen enough bad mods to justify that belief. I'm sure you have as well. And yet you insult me for standing up for what I think is right. When I see a bad mod, I complain instead of letting the bad mod stand. If you don't complain over injustice, it will never be changed.

You TRUST that Apple and Microsoft haven't put a backdoor in their software. I don't. Why should I? IBM put a backdoor in their software AT THE REQUEST OF THE NSA. Yeah, that IBM. Big Blue. At the time a powerful monopoly unequalled in the world. Lotus being the most popular Office Suite at the time. And they caved. Think about it. You think it's IMPOSSIBLE that little 2% marketshare Apple would cave under that pressure? Even when the NSA "request" becomes a "demand"? My post didn't even say that MS and Apple definitely backdoored their software; I said they I can't prove they didn't. The *possibility* is there. For you to deny even the possibility shows that the problem is not mine, it's yours. You're not thinking rationally -- you're denying reality. The reality is that it is *certainly* possible, and judging from the current political climate in the USA, it may even be probable.

And why am I paranoid? I'm thinking of my own well-being. How is self-preservation a bad thing? If I'm paranoid, you're a naive trusting kid who hasn't got a clue as to how the world really works. If you actually *trust* the multinationals not to put code in their OSes like this, when every second app out there now is "spyware", you're a fool. To blindly reject even the possibility out of love and trust for a corporation is insane. If you haven't noticed that Apple isn't "thinking different" anymore, take a closer look. They've joined corporate America in a big way. Watch ThinkSecret, MacSurfer and other Mac news sites and study their business practices. It's not a bunch of hippies trying to "change the world" anymore.

I am perfectly willing to join you in saying "it's not even possible for OS X to be backdoored" THE SECOND YOU SHOW ME SOME PROOF. Until then, it IS a possibility, and no amount of well-designed MP3 software or hip ad campaigns can change that.

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[wchin]

First of all, buying an Apple PowerBook does not rule out Linux. Secondly, for someone that is lambasting Apple's small marketshare, it is interesting to me that you do seem to try to keep up with Apple news - even if your interpretation is oddly twisted.

3 x the clock speed of 1.5GHz is 4.5GHz. You really think that even the Pentium 4 will hit 4.5GHz before or at the same time a PowerBook hits 1.5GHz? You think that IBM would ship something like that in a ThinkPad? You should be knowledgable enough to know that clockspeed != performance, and performance != productivity. Are you buying productivity or are you buying clockspeed? Laptops/notebooks are often purchased for productivity (with pure performance as a secondary concern), and small things like wake from sleep in 2 seconds, easy switching across multiple networks and network configurations (including remembering many Wifi names and passwords), firewire target disk mode are conveniences that are definitely worth money. Further, battery life at full speed or equivalent speed tilts the value equation closer to the PowerBook. What model of Dell or IBM would you put up against a 15" or 17" PowerBook?

Microsoft actions are very different from Apple's actions - you haven't been paying attention at Microsoft's first and second anti-trust investigations/suits. The issue isn't being proprietary - that's an issue for the customer to weigh, and most customers these days don't even think twice about issues of proprietary vs. open standard or single source, or all that.

I've purchased commercial Linux (which is mighty expensive), I've purchased Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Digital, Apple, etc. products. The only way to slow Linux's maturity is to convince developers to not develop on Linux. Buying an Apple product does not do that any more than buying a x86 product that comes bundled with Microsoft Windows, even if your intention is to wipe it and put Linux on it. Just try buying a new laptop, or even better, a Tablet PC w/o Windows of any flavor.

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the link.

Now when I see them mod your post as a troll and at the same time mod up the guy who says "dont worry be happy, just trust big brother" I know theres something up.

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[cubic6]

You're putting words in my mouth. I simply told you why I thought you were being modded down, and that it doesn't do much good to complain about it. Now, on to what you've shifted the discussion to.

I don't trust the moderators individually. A lot of them make bad decisions, this is true. That's true in ANY situation where you have a large number of people making decisions. However, as a group, I've found that they do a pretty good job. I did not insult you. I offered a suggestion, and you *attacked* me in response. You called me names and attacked my intelligence based on a 2 line post.

I *never said* most of the things you accuse me of saying or thinking. I never even commented on the substance of your comment, simply on your choice of presentation. I never said that it's impossible for OS X to have an NSA backdoor. It's improbable, and I believe that it doesn't have a backdoor, but I admit that it's entirely possible. You wanna know one reason why I don't think there's a backdoor? Because eventually that backdoor would be discovered, and that would be a PR disaster for Apple, and probably for the NSA as well, if they even care. If you'd like to hear more of my reasons, read my last paragraph.

I DON'T blindly trust big corporations, as you seem to imply based on... what? I judge the evidence, decide what I think is likely the situation, and act on that. We obviously have different standards and views, and you seem to think that mine deserve to be attacked. I don't have a Mac or any Apple products, and I don't have any "love" for Apple. I run Linux on Intel.

The IBM example you gave is very interesting. They had two choices in exporting Lotus Notes: Use 40 bit encryption (Legal for export), or make a deal with the NSA to use 64 bit encryption with 24 bits of the key known by the NSA. They made the second choice for marketing decisions. I'm not a cryptanalyst, so I'm just guessing here, but both options seem to offer similar encryption, no? It's no more of a "backdoor" than any software that follows US export restrictions on cryptography.

Okay, now for the reasons why I don't think OS X has a backdoor. These reasons aren't proof - the only possible complete proof is to look at the source code. However, they make the probability small enough to be acceptable for me.

1) Nobody's ever reported OS X "phoning home" to the NSA or any other gov. agency.
2) Apple's market share is ~2%, according to your post. I don't think that the NSA would take the risk of forcing Apple to include a backdoor for that kind of potential return.
3) A backdoor is theoretically useable by 3rd parties in addition to the NSA. Given the NSA's mission to make American computers *more* secure, a backdoor in OS X would be counterproductive.

Again, these are my reasons, and they may not mean anything to you or anyone else. If you disagree, that's nice. If you require absolute protection from NSA backdoors, use an open source OS. I recommend Linux.

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[bfg9000]

Okay, I admit, I'm a butthead. Your 40 line post is a hella lot better than your 2 line post. I had two hours sleep due to massive caffeine intake. My bad.

I'm seriously considering your recommendation of Linux. Already use it, but not enough. It's getting to the point where I think I can make a go of it.

A few days ago there was an article in which Doc Searls mentions that Dan Frye, one of "IBM's leading Linux honchos", said that IBM will be offering both a Linux desktop and a Linux laptop this year. I've heard rumors that IBM wanted to use the G5 or a variant in their own gear, and this would be a perfect situation... if this happens it will be my next laptop.

By the way, did you see the article Cisco Products Have Backdoors? Jesus. You're right, I might as well not worry about backdoors, because I'll never catch them all. Between software, hardware, and the NSA monitoring all my emails anyway, there really IS no privacy. Bummer.

But anyways, sorry I'm a jerk on Slashdot.

Re:Wow. What an Ugly Exodus.

[cubic6]

It's okay, the jerk-effect seems to happen to a lot of people. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

XPostFacto

[Lycestra]

http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Fra mework.cfm?page=XPostFacto3.html

Mac OS X for the rest of us with aging machines. Even 9600s are supported, thanks to Darwin being open enough. 10.3 will run on system's apple would rather shove under the table. But that doesn't mean they're useless. Just totally, absolutely, unconditionally UNSUPPORTED. that doesn't mean anything to a wheat hacksaw like you tho.

But you already knew that.

Mmmh, Cocoa.

[Latent Heat]

Cocoa seems to have some neat ideas. The whole ActiveX deal (as well as the .NET deal on Windows Forms) is the GoF Mediator pattern: control fires event, main form handles event and figures out what controls to update in response, and it is all very simple until you start developing a real program and then your main form is a rats' nest of responses to to events and figuring out what to do with them.

Cocoa on the other hand seems to be more Observer pattern based -- you can link controls directly to each other with some kind of Controller object. And it also seems that you can define objects that express the "connections" that objects can have. I have looked at the docs and tried to make sense of it, but I guess I need to try it some time to really get the concept.

On the other hand, Cocoa is based on Objective C, and I guess I am kinda of lazy about learning yet another language (is Java Cocoa as good?). Is Cocoa reference counted (like ActiveX)? Does this mean Cocoa is not keeping up with the GC'd Java and .NET Joneses? Or does Cocoa work just fine without GC the way it is?

Can you create your own Cocoa controls (easily) (as with create your own ActiveX control -- not so easy, but not as difficult as you think these days with VS ATL, Delphi, and other tools, pretty easy with .NET)? If there is such a thing as a Cocoa control that you can develop yourself, drag and drop in a form, use with a scripting language, or place in a Web browser, does it have funky data types like with ActiveX (BSTR, VARIANT, SAFEARRAY), or can you pass arrays and object references at will like your can with Java or .NET?

Re:Mmmh, Cocoa.

[javaxman]

If you already know C, and have some experience with OO ( like in Java, for example ), you already know most of what you'll need for Objective-C. As a language, there's not a lot to learn, it'll be learning new design patterns ( like Distributed Objects for threading and Key-Value-Coding for binding and serialization ) that'll take time to learn.

If you don't already know C, you should learn it anyway, IMHO.

Objective-C does reference counting, not garbage collection. That said, it really is a pretty simple set of rules to follow for memory management, it's just annoying for folks who've become lazy under true GC, and of course a terrible source of seg faults and memory leaks.

Creating your own Cocoa control is easy as pie, though most often you start with a custom view object... data types are almost all exactly C data types.

Cocoa does indeed have 'neat ideas', always has...

Re:Mmmh, Cocoa.

[jeremyp]

Don't use Cocoa/Java. It (Cocoa) wasn't designed for it. If you know C and you know objects you can learn Objective-C in - oh - about a day. The biggest hurdle for me (who's previous GUI experience was with M$ MFC and Win32) was coming to terms with the way objects interact with the user interface: things like first responders and file owners, targets, outlets and so on. Even so, after two or three days I felt fairly confident about creating simple apps in Cocoa.

I can't tell you about custom controls - haven't tried making any yet.

Cocoa does have a Unicode string class similar to java.lang.String. There is the concept of a generic object and you can discover what kind it is at run time (I guess this is a superset of varient). It does have an object array type (one imutable and one mutable actually).

Cocoa objects are reference counted, but the concept of pools is built into the language. Personnally, I like garbage collection because it allows me to be lazy, but reference counting gives you more control over what happens when you want things to go away. For instance if you have an object wrapping an external resource e.g. a socket, in Java you need to write a method to release the resource. The idea of just deleting the object and having the destructor tidy up seems cleaner to me.

Re:Does that mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not, just less hetrosexual unix developers

Re:Apple = Lock in.

[2.246.1010.78]

yeah - "netcraft confirmes..."

Please understand: a mac theme is not equal to really using a mac. I always liked to play around with my system, I liked having os/2 for my bbs and I liked linux 1.2.8, too. And I'm sure I'm able to force any linux to do exactly as I want to. But I have to tell you this: I really grew tired of doing so. Why do I have to tinker with my settings to make all things work? Why do I have to live with either fancy, or fast, or easy desktop environments? I made the choice for osx 3 years ago and I don't regret a single day. They have some pretty smart people working at apple and if you start to admit their leadership in development you'll be happy to shell out the next 130 bucks for an even better product.

Sexy, baby....

[skidoo2]

I'm stating the obvious, and this comment is probably redundant, but /. has gotten so damned crammed-up that I feel obliged to register this thouhght, ***just to be sure***:

I think you're seeing migration because it runs on Nontel processors and OSX actually has a marginally decent UI.

The New FUD: Apple Market Share

[oscast]

Those of us that followed Apple in the mid-90s are all too familiar with the onslaught of negative publicity that the company received that ultimately predicted the company's imminent death. Of course, the claims were grossly over stated. Apple was a very healthy company at the time as it is now. Unfortunately, the publicity had such a negative affect, that these predictions almost resulted in a self fulfilled prophecy.

At the time, Apple was still a relatively new player in most people's minds. The fact that many computer companies were in fact dying didn't help the stigma Apple received. When one misleading report was coupled with misconceptions about Apple and the marketplace, more reporters inevitably latched onto it and turned the situation into something far bigger than what it actually was.

While I wouldn't classify most of that negative publicity a mass instance of "FUD" (fear uncertainty and doubt), as most instances of FUD are uniquely intentional. These were a combination of some fear uncertainty and doubt mixed with mass-confusion. Thankfully, after a lot of education, such proclamations of death are not taken seriously, no matter what the author's intent.

However, there is a new round of Apple FUD that is not unlike the first and has been propagating throughout the same news scene as before. The new FUD is just as disturbing and equally pervasive as its predecessor but relatively undetected thus far. The new FUD plays on the public's misunderstanding about "market share" and "install base." Most individuals mistakenly use these terms interchangeably without fully understanding their meaning.

Market share is a term that describes the gross number of product sold in a given time period.

Install base is a term used to describe the gross number of products sold that are in use at any given time.

The problem with using these terms interchangeably, -- at least when it comes to computers and computing platforms -- amounts to the same problem that occurred during the 90's era news reports. People are far less inclined to consider an alternative platform if there is concern that it may not be around in the future. In the case of Apple however, these claims are totally unfounded.

Here's an example to put things into perspective: Lets say two people comprise 100% of all computer users on the planet. Each of these individuals bought a new computer for themselves at the same time; one a Macintosh and the other a Windows PC. Market share and installed base dynamics would indicate 50/50 percentages.

But if after two years time, the Windows user decides to replace his computer, "market share" dynamics will show that Windows occupies 50% more of the market than that of Macintosh users... even though there are still only two individuals using a computer.

Because "market share" only gauges sales of a platform as opposed to the total number of products in use, the results are skewed -- assuming we are solely trying to determine the total number of people using that particular product and not gauging sales. Of course, if we utilize the "Install base" dynamic, the ratio of computer users in our example is still 50/50.

When a research company reports that Apple's market share has declined and is at 2%, they may very well be correct, but this is not an indicator that Mac users are defecting to Windows, nor does it in any way suggest that the total number of Mac users is at that number. Instead, it indicates that the number of Macs sold during that time period didn't grow as fast as Windows did. The market share statistic doesn't indicate the fact that the vast majority of Windows users are simply replacing their old systems or that Mac users don't typically upgrade their computers as often.

Mac users tend to get more life out of their machine than their Windows-using counterparts. Because Mac users don't replace their computers as frequently, that translates to decreased "market share" even though install base grew... though not

Re:The New FUD: Apple Market Share

[alan_dershowitz]

Please don't interpret this as an anti-Apple troll. Happy B&W G3 user here.

If people hold on to their Macs longer, AND Apple is a hardware company, doesn't this make the lower market share actually valid? People aren't buying as many machines, which is ultimately how Apple makes its money.

If people are mixing up install base with market share, then they are making a mistake, based on your explanation. But as far as Apple is concerned, does the consistent user base matter as much as the fact that Dell users purchase a new PC 2-3x times as often as Apple users? Doesn't that make Dell more valuable? I mean, Dell IS selling more computers.

Re:The New FUD: Apple Market Share

[Anonymous Coward]

You are rasing a very good point. Keep in mind that, the person who is writing that long is attacking the reporters at the end and completely forget the real issue at hand. He doesn't know whether people are actually keeping their macs. He is speculating about that. All he does is to point out something not reported in the news, because it is irrelevant. Obviously the install base may be larger, but what does it mean if the most of that install base is actually using a decade old technology. Second, Dell's selling more machines means that, Apple users are migrating to Windows machines, because it is stupid to assume that Apple-2 users are still using Apple-2. Clearly, people have to use faster machines sooner or later. Also there are many many people who are just first-time computer buyers. These people clearly prefer Windows machines, unless the idiot claim that they are actually using their mothers' macs. So in essence, he is just another bullshitter on slashdot, which I refer to as slashdot monkey.

Re:The New FUD: Apple Market Share

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that his the nail pretty much on the head -- I'm guessing your G3 runs ~300Mhz. If you were a PC user, you'd probably just spend the $800 or whatever and upgrade to a 2.8Ghz P4 system that's superior in every way.

However, a Mac user with a 5-year-old machine is sitting there looking at $1200 for a 1Ghz G4 iMac -- it's not a very compelling upgrade.

If Apple put a cheap/powerful machine on the market (think original iMac), their "marketshare" would be much closer to their "installed base". Something like a G5 'xMac' for $800 w/o monitor would get a lot of those old Mac users down to the Apple store.

Re:The New FUD: Apple Market Share

[alan_dershowitz]

400 Mhz, actually. As a matter of coincidence, I posted this comment regarding why despite barely being able to afford an eMac, I will not be upgrading to one.

Basically, I can't quite afford a Power Mac, and to me the lack of extensibility devalues the 700 dollar eMac to below a 500 dollar Dell. I still won't be buying a Dell because I've fallen in love with OS X :-)

Re:The New FUD: Apple Market Share

[Graff]

Man, don't be a cut-and-paste troll. This was lifted verbatim from an article at osViews.com yet you make it sound like you came up with this yourself. You did not, you are just cutting and pasting someone else's insightful words.

Moderators, please do not reward cut-and-paste trolls. If someone looks like they deserve an upmod then take the time to do a quick Google search to see if they are taking credit for someone else's words.

Please mod the parent down accordingly...

Re:The New FUD: Apple Market Share

[thulsey]

And I always thought FUD stood for "FUX0R3D" Up Dispersions.....

ASM

[segoave]

I'm currently a CS undergrad. When we first learned assembly it was in MIPS using spim. In our Systems class we had to learn x86 for decompiling and reverse engineering, but you could always run objdump on any x86 machine and read the file where ever. Of course in compilers we used sparc assembly. I never have had the oppurtunity to use PowerPC assmebly in classes, but luckily it is a RISC lang so not to difficult to parse.

What's my point.... Anyway we don't have and x86 bias here.

Yep MIPS

[Anonymous Coward]

In my classes they would never show us x86 our professor who just won some kind of national award would do a compare and contrast and talk about how piss poor a design x86 was and why mips was much better from a design standpoint and how we should never code assembly for x86 because in most cases it is slower than good c code.

300 000 developers?

[Freedom Bug]

I love numbers like that.

I'm a registered Apple developer. I don't have a Mac, have no immediate plans to buy a Mac and am definitely not going to be doing any Mac-specific programming anytime soon.

But I had to register to download Rendezvous source. Which doesn't bother me, just don't call me an Apple Developer!

Bryan

Re:300 000 developers?

[Matt Clare]

I'm kinda in the same boat. I have a pair of Macs and a couple of Linux boxes to work on at home and work... but I only write PHP and flash.... I just needed to compile other people's code and use 'make' and 'gcc'. So I'm happy to be a member, and I'm glad to have all the tools I got (Rendezvous can be sooo useful when trying to manage an ad-hoc network,) but a developer, I don't know.

Re:300 000 developers?

[FredFnord]

So you wouldn't consider, for example, sharing your changes to Rendezvous back into the code tree?

If you would, then you're an Apple developer... you're developing something that's going to (potentially) run on the Mac.

-fred

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you are one of the hundrends of slashdot monkies who don't know what they are talking about. As the other guy mentioned, codewarrior is nowhere near being a decent development tool for macos x. You guys are totally stupid.

FileZilla is going wxWidgets / Cross-platform

[kollivier]

By far my favorite FTP client has been FileZilla, but as a Mac user I've always been disappointed that I couldn't use it on my Mac. However, FileZilla 3 will be written in wxWidgets, and I'll even help package it for OS X if that is what it takes to get FileZilla on my Mac! =)

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod down this idiot, he is a total idiot. Microsoft does give away tools for you to develop for .net. You can install one of the available IDEs which is free and easily develop for windows without a penny. The compiler is for free. Another slashdot monkey spreading FUD against Microsoft without substance.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[Juanvaldes]

My assembly class was Mot (HC11), and in Comp Org we are doing MIPS with SPIM. But I do have to deal with bugs in SPIM between the X11 & Windows verion. Only x86 based class I've had to deal with was a 3D programming that was based on DirectX, so I just did my work in the lab.

Re:cocoa

[javaxman]

Cocoa's APIs are growing with every OS release. There are tons of Cocoa APIs and classes that are '10.3' only. Probably the most important of these are the APIs that support Bindings, although there are also a lot of silly new convenience APIs like one to automatically do iTunes-like table stripes.

Also, there's something to be said for simplicity in APIs... Java's tendency ( especially in Swing ) to have two different API which do similar things "except", and convenience methods which duplicate functionality elsewhere, have caused myself and other Java developers some considerable trouble and add to slowness and general code bloat.

Part of the reason for the "missing" API is that it isn't generally needed, as the "missing" functionality is often available in C. IHMO, Objective-C's greatest feature and worst problem is that it's a superset of C... so nobody spent the time needed to put together a true Objective-C XML parsing-API until relatively recently, because you could get the job done just fine using C calls. As you seem to almost say, there's usually a good way to do what you want in Objective-C, often using tricks of the dynamic runtime, which you wouldn't think of in something strongly-typed like Java.

Myself, I'm surprised ( and happy ) to be *back* writing Objective-C after years of writing C and Java apps following my first-ever post-college gig at NeXT...

By the way, Cocoa Bindings is maybe the coolest thing I've seen programming-wise in years. Check it out. I'm sure it's copied from elsewhere ( I think I saw something similar mentioned in Python or something? ) but it's still cool as hell.

+1 Funny as Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I started the whole political propaganda trolling on Slashdot and related forums back when most trolls were still about gay fantasies and gratuituous nerd baiting.

Now that both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have gotten on board, the political propaganda trolling industry is in a high growth phase, and changing rapidly. My next project is a B2B troll marketing campaign, to lessen the political risks of outsourcing and offshoring, and morphings into a full B2C web service in 2006.

And, yes, I COULD have done it without you lazy, shiftless, ugly employees. Keep voting Republican. Suckers! :)

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Electrum]

Wrong. The developer tools, including the compiler, come with the OS, on the "Xcode Tools" CD.

My PowerBook only came with a restore CD.

Re:GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Coco

[root 66]

Not really - GNUstep can't read the OS X UI files for one, it's not complete,

Actually, this might change in the near future: I've read on the gnustep discussion list that someone is working on making OS X NIB files work on GNUstep. (iirc)

and the GNUstep team are explicitly not interested in 100% compatibility (for instance, replicating wierd/buggy semantics of Apples APIs).

There are a lot of people in the GNUstep community who are interested in near-100% compatibility. Most of the time, new features from OS X are added to GNUstep.

WRT the few times of not adopting buggy behaviour, you can always use #IFDEF _GNUSTEP_...

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Reverberant]

Now they do, but for 3 years there was no "Xcode Tools" cd.

But there was a "Developer CD" that came with retail versions of OS X.0 and X.2. It didn't come with preloaded versions however.

.

Re:Apple = Lock in.

[Krik Johnson]

Three years is a long time! A lot has happened in Linuxland since then. You will like what you will see with KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.6! No tinkering necessary with Modern distributions such as Mandrake 10. It may be $129 now, but what if apple raises it to $299, $999, $5000! How much are you willing to pay? With Linux you have the choice, you either pay for a distribution or you can have the free one. You see linux as the linux of three years ago, I see Linux as the linux of today! When you update your view you will see that I am correct.

Re:GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Coco

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read your article, and am wondering if it isn't just a bunch of techno-mumbojumbo of the sort that the Mac community is famous for inventing. Furthermore, your byline says that you are lawyer, not a programmer.

So, the question is, do you have any personal experience building GNUStep/Cocoa 'fat binaries' or is your entire article partially-informed hearsay?

Huh? You have to own a Mac first...

[kollivier]

While what you are saying holds some truth, it's really very far from explaining the total situation. For the "developer" status to be of any use, a registered developer has to *own* a Mac first. So this rapid growth in the number of registered developers also shows a trend in people buying Macs as well. Some companies or organizations may do this to "port" their app, but I doubt a lot of OSS developers are shelling out their hard-earned cash just to "port" their app.

As a "switcher", I can say it's like Linux/Unix without the hassle, and with commercial apps available. It is my preferred platform, though I had only cursory experience with Macs before OS X. I develop open source apps then do my homework in Microsoft Office (because I have to), and it all just works. =) And I'm not the only one, there are many, many others out there like this. (Apple laptops, which were hardly seen 3-4 years ago, are becoming common sights at conferences by all accounts.) So I don't think there is very much 'spin' to this. Apple IS getting developer mindshare, and like the article says, probably a considerable amount too.

Re:cocoa

[bnenning]

When you're in a modal window, you're running in a special event loop and things like timers, network events, etc, aren't delivered.

Timers still fire if you add them to the appropriate run loop mode (NSModalPanelRunLoopMode in the case of modal windows). I agree that this is inelegant and the default should be to continue processing events.

/usr/bin/gcc-3.3 part of 10.3.3 ?

[anon coward]

I'm not a developer. Originally picked developer pkg off install CD for 10.3.0; then found gcc after upgraded to 10.3.3 ...

So they're just as overpriced as IBM and HP?

[poptones]

Then you just pounded that final nail in the argument they're too damn expensive. I didn't BUY my computer - or any others for the lat several years - nor will I, because I demand the ability to modify and upgrade at will.

When I can buy a reasonably new tech motherboard for 100 bucks, a decent cpu for two thirds that, stick'em all in a box of MY choosing with any other peripherals I want (ie tv tuner card, etc) then we can talk.

Honestly, I hope IBM is able to pull off that "open platform" push they were talking about last week. No matter what Apple says in their stupid shrinkwrap license, if IBM can start selling competetively priced system components that will allow folks to run OSX on machines put together by mom and pop computer stores, I'd be all over that.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Many graduate schools are like that too in weeding out people their first year.

Anyhow, if you look at the MIT CS professors, there are a lot of names you'll recognize. But 90% of them don't teach a class at all (research/grad student work only), or if they do, it'll probably be a TA (from India or China) that does most of the work.

To answer your questions

[CoolMoDee]

To answer your questions, Cocoa Java is pretty good, not as good as Cocoa w/ ObjC, but still damn good. Cocoa is refrence counted and can also be "GC'ed" (via autoreleasing). Comming from Java, I actually prefer the refrence counting over GC but that is just me. You can create your own cocoa 'controls' (called Views in Cocoa speak), and they damn pretty damn easy just need to implement the drawRect: method. As for the web browser stuff, not that I know of, and funky datatypes, nope, just stuff like, NSImage, NSString (remember Cocoa came from NeXTSTEP), and yes, you can pass object references.

Re:cocoa

[Juanvaldes]

Java has everything plus the kitchen sink in it. Cocoa is not quite so "full featured". But as others have said, it's simple to add functionality to any class using Categories.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[Anonymous Coward]

Majoring in pussy means the CS degree is no longer an option. CS Degree = no pussy.

Sorry, I always hate being the realist...

Programmers don't need computers

[Rares Marian]

Just hire an extra guy and call him the Lieutenant Compiler.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[ChristTrekker]

Exactly. I bought a new Mac recently at a retail outlet. No Developer CD. I called the Apple tech support number, and they put it in the mail to me. I'm hoping it's there when I get home tonight. I've got a tracking number, just in case.

Bad enough that I didn't get a basic office suite like everybody else ("Our Pro users didn't use AppleWorks anyway, so we only include it on the Consumer models." Grrr.) but to not get the Developer tools on a Pro machine was outrageous! Especially since that without X11.app, I can't run OpenOffice either. (No way I'm paying for MS Office X.) I'm trying the Abiword preview right now, but it's not the same.

Re:GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Coco

[jkheit]

In a former life I used to develop under NeXTstep and then OPENSTEP. I freely grant that I do not have great and deep experience in GNUstep development. I have some understand of what is going on simply because it remains so similar to OPENSTEP and OS X development. Also, I still play around developing little things here and there under OS X just as a hobby.

All that being said, for that mumbo jumbo article, yes, I compiled several of the GNUstep applications (that are linked in the article) without incident under OSX.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Juanvaldes]

Look in /Applications/Installers (from memory). Can't remember if it was the eMac or iMac or such, but there was a dev tools CD image in there along with AOL or some such. You very well might have it on your system and not even know it.

Usable *nix

[Jestrzcap]

I havent switched over to Mac (been using linux since '96), but I did help my sister, whos going into college this year, buy a Mac. She doesnt know a thing about computers, but having played around with my friends Mac I do feel confident that someone like her with very little computer experience will enjoy a Mac. I very much like the fact that I helped her by a *nix system that she is very happy with. :)

Re:Usable *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfriend got an ibook after a couple of years of snarfing my debian thinkpad, after a month she asked me nicely if I could set it up dual boot osx/linux; the girl can't live without fluxbox!

try java and swing

[roskakori]

However, if you're writing a GUI application, the APIs are totally different.

if you can live with java and swing, it's not that difficult to write applications that for the most part feel like native Mac OS X applications and still run without modifications on other platform.

some guy wrote an article (pdf) how to basically do it. apple's MRJ toolkit is a pain, but fortunately there also is MRJ Adapter.

sure, you have to learn the structure of application bundles and how to write in an Info.plist. still, you can stay away from xcode and cocoa without much trouble.

Re:Apple = Lock in.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a long time Linux user who switched to OSX about 6 months ago. Never look back. A lot of people say that everything on the Macs "just work", while it may not be everything it's a heck of a lot more than ever just worked on Linux. Want new software? On Mac it's almost always super easy to install, no dealing with emerge trashing some obscure file, searching RPM archives forever, or having make crash because your environment is the same as the developers.

Want a driver? If it says it works with mac it's trivial to install. right now I'm fighting with a Gigabit ethernet card on my linux system(used for server tasks, since I don't leave my mac on all the time (sleep actually works, unlike any PC I've seen)) since the drivers from the manufacture only work with certain kernels. Sure D-link gives me the source, but I don't want to muck around with it for hours/days.

X-windows is slow as dirt on nearly any hardware, slow ugly 2-d graphics are annoying.

The price of a Mac is more than a bottom of the line PC, but very comparable to midline PCs. I'm sick of people comparing G5 prices to some stripped P4 celeron. compare apples to apples(so to speak)

Panther had a lot more than just those 2 features, they are all well documented, no one makes you buy the OS upgrade, everything still works just fine on 10.2 or for the most part 10.1.

Go out, spend the few extra bucks on a mac, if you still want to come back to all the hassles of Linux after 6 months you'd be about the first.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't post things that aren't true. Apple has never sold a computer that didn't include a complete, installable operating system CD or CD set. You also got one or more restore CD's.

YDL just announced new Linux version for PowerPCs

[Nice2Cats]

And with that news just in, it is good to hear that Yellow Dog Linux has just announced a new version of Linux for the PowerPC line for the end of May, including kernel 2.6 and support for 64 bit machines.

Why is this important? Some of us really, really like Apple's hardware -- my iBook G4 was worth the money just because it is silent even under heavy loads, goes to sleep (and wakes) like a charm, and has a pretty impressive battery life compared to most x86 laptops. But OS X comes with a certain closed-system, choice-is-bad philosophy that just drives me nuts. Also, some of the programs included even in 10.3.3 are downright primitive -- Mail doesn't even have TLS in Panther -- and there is no cleanly integrated office package outside of MS Office.

This is where Linux (or dual-boot) comes in: Virtual screens, Kmail, OpenOffice 1.1 without having to boot a second window system, and if you still want to run OS X applications, well, you just do it from Linux with Mac-on-Linux. Hey, have your cake and eat it, too!

I can see lots of people moving to iBooks and PowerBooks and G5s -- heck, in that sense, I'm a switcher -- but keep in mind that just because there is a glowing Apple on the cover, it doesn't mean that there isn't a penguin on the inside. Mac OS X is good if you can stomach its closed-world, Steve-knows-best philosophy, but a lot of people will want the best of both worlds.

Re:The New FUD: Apple Revisionism

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple was a very healthy company

Try "near death experience".

Gee. Who's spreading FUD now?

wxWidgets is slooooooww.....

[GrahamCox]

...at least apps that use it appear to be - Audacity for example is dog slow. Using native widgets in OS X whether Carbon or Cocoa is a cinch. provided you keep your GUI and "engine" code well factored making cross-platform applications shouldn't be too hard.

Huh?

[griffitts]

The only thing I can't understand is why iTunes and QuickTime seem so inferior on Windows. If that's a byproduct of crossplatform programming, I don't know that I'd be that eager to switch (no matter how nice the development environment is, it's the final product that counts.) But other than that, I think they're on to something.

Why, exactly, would a perceived inferiority of iTunes and QuickTime on Windows make you hesitant to switch from Windows?

Re:YDL just announced new Linux version for PowerP

[ainsoph]

Did they get the no- Flash plug in on Linux PPC thing fixed yet?

Real news - "Supported Apple OS better than linux"

[Anonymous Coward]

It never fails to amaze me that no one here on /. sees that open source advocates/users are dropping linux for a supported commerical quality platform.

Let's see, a single company putting together a well documented, usability tested, cohesive set of applications and user interface inside which end user applications can be installed and run....

Comparted to Linux - an uncohesive set of applications with non-uniform user interface and setup procedures, and poorly documented.

Yes, poor documentation includes applications which require tens or hundreds of pages to be read before the application program can be used even at the most basic level.

International language support

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Mac OS X, it has great international language support. You can use multiple languages at the same time, set your favorite order and easily translate cocoa apps.

I hate Mac OS X, the developer has to actively support multiple languages if you want your translation to survive a minor update. Even though all the ingredients are there to support automated updating with strings files, much like pot files on KDE, these are not automatically generated or even kept inside the application bundle, forcing users to become one of the 300.000 developers just to change some strings.

I wish Mac OS X would create decent strings files as a default automatic proces during development. And read these text / strings files at execution just like it reads changed picture and Interfacebuilder files. Allowing any user to just translate this text file for there mother with a simple text editor and then send it to the developer who has to do nothing but distribute it and get free access to larger markets. The translator would not have to be kept in the loop, another user from the same language can spot a untranslated string in an updated application and add the single translation, then send the strings file to the developer.

Already you can decide if you think a translation is bad and just turn it off in the info window and use the language of the developer. Come on Apple take that extra step and give powerusers easy access to the text of an application. Discover the world market.

Re:International language support

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? All the cocoa apps I've seen have Localizable.strings files within them, and a few other string files usually too inside the bundle for each localization. I'm not sure what you're complaining about. They have a tool to autogenerate strings from source too called AppleGlot (caveat, never used it).

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[inburito]

The nice thing about MIT is that most of their computing system is unix based. There are some windows machines and some macs in the administrative offices etc. but practically as a rule (except for the microsoft funded teal-laboratories) everything runs on athena (which is a customized solaris/linux). This means that running a unix-variant can actually be an advantage.

From experience I can say that at least for the first two years it really doesn't matter what kind of a computer you have (as long as it does web browsing and word processing) and even after that you're likely to not have to worry about it. Matlab and maple might be nice to have but everything is available in the public clusters that are practically everywhere.

Also, mit definitely does not emphasize microsoft tools. Your programming classes are either on scheme or java and those run on just about everything. I have neighbours who are running everything from linux to mac to solaris to windows to no computers and are doing just fine. What's more, as much as possible is done with open tools. You're likely to be using gnu tools a lot of time. As a matter of fact openoffice is the standard office environment, netscape the web-browser and the use of emacs/latex is much liked, and you're likely to be running all this on a linux box(or solaris).

In general, people pretty much get to use the tools they are comfortable with and there are as little restrictions imposed by the school as possible.

And majors vary too.. There is a lot more than just technology. I came to mit thinking about majoring in cs now doing mathematics (with some cs) and thinking of concentrating in economics and finance... So far it hasn't really matter what kind of a computer I have had (well, business school tends to have ms-bias, which is understandable).

Re:Real news - "Supported Apple OS better than lin

[Anonymous Coward]

The important parts of MacOS are proprietary. Anyone eager to use it was never really an open source advocate.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[uunh haun]

sooooooooo..... sign up for the free developer account and download them.

There goes Apple application usability

[c0d3h4x0r]

With all these OSS/FS/*NIX developers moving over to Mac OS X, you can expect the general usability of Mac OS X applications to start degrading terribly. Those kinds of developers will just start polluting the Apple platform with their user-hostile attitudes about computing, ignoring the carefully-crafted approach to software design for which Apple has always stood.

Typical OSS/FS/*NIX developer attitude: If you aren't smart enough to hack a .conf file with vi over a parallel port, that's your fault for being a n00b, and we have no interest in writing software that's actually well-architected, handles error conditions well, or is easy to install, configure, or use. It's not our job to care about you. If you don't like it, fix it yourself!

Do you really want that kind of developer writing Mac software? Seriously? I think they should stay in Linux-land; at least they can't make that platform much worse than it already is.

Re:There goes Apple application usability

[tbien]

Well, actually it's the serial port...

Re:There goes Apple application usability

[Anonymous Coward]

fscking young n00b upstarts using serial ports. Back in my day....

Re:There goes Apple application usability

[c0d3h4x0r]

Talk about completely missing the point!

Re:There goes Apple application usability

[tbien]

Well, talk about *humor*

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Mr. Frilly]

They do ship a "Developer's" or "Xcode" CD with the retail boxed version of the OS. But if you have a preloaded version of OS X, or if you would rather be using the latest tools (patches come out all the time), you gotta sign up as a developer and download it from the Apple Developer's web site.

So yes, I would concur that 300,000 number is grossly inflated. Including me, I know at least 3 "Apple Developers" who only signed up so that they could get gcc and get fink to work. And I know precisely 0 other "Apple Developers". Doing a little math, (0/3)*300,000 = 0 real Apple developers.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[wchin]

You can always run Bochs. It's free, and if you are messing around with the machine, it's probably better than real x86 hardware. When real x86 hardware crashes, you have to have messy debuggers or a two machine setup... when a virtual machine "crashes", you can probably step back through and see what happened.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[ChristTrekker]

w00t! Thank you very much! I will have development tools! Hmm, no X11 installer though - just X11SDK.

(Ten minutes later...)

I can't find that any of these apps were installed, except gcc. Doesn't the installer put them in /Applications?

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[MarcQuadra]

Well there's a lot of the darwin stuff you have to register as a developer to get access to. I'm by no means a developer, but I do like to pull darwin kernels/compilers/tools from Apple CVS and install them every now'n'then to see get a feel for upcoming stuff. I'm VERY down with Apple's modifications to GCC, they really have it tweaked to all hell for the PowerPC.

I'm actually trying now to see if I can pull Apple's tweaked GCC-3.3 to build my next Gentoo/PPC system, that would be a feat.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it puts them in /Developer.

That could be clearer, especially with OS X 10.3's Finder views.

BC

Calgon, take me away!

[AstroDrabb]

This maybe be modded troll in 2.35 seconds by all the apple fanboys, however. I know exactly how this Apple fanboy topic will go.

My wife was dying until I bought here a Powerbook.

I had no job until I learnd to use Mac OSX

My wife left me, my children were killed by toxic gas, I was on the verge of suicide, until my new G5 came in.

I could not figure out how to use _any_ other OS, until I used Mac OS X.

I was a virgin, until I used Mac OS X

Every other programming API is SOOOOO hard, Cocoa, is SOOOOOO easy

I use Mac, I don't know why the rest of the world does not use Mac?

MS Windows sucks

Linux is OK for a server but sucks as a desktop

Mac OS X rulz

I slept with Steve Jobs

Re:Calgon, take me away!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a virgin, until I used Mac OS X

I was a virgin until I used Mac OS X. Hmm.... well, you know what they say--post hoc ergo propter hoc! Thank you Apple!!!

What about plain ol' Java?

[r.jimenezz]

I've been doing Java for nearly five years, mostly under Windows but a bit under Linux as well. With all the recent changes in the Mac world, I've been seriously thinking to break the bank and get myself a PowerBook to alternate with my Toshiba laptop (I know, chances are the Toshiba would soon end up on Ebay :))

The thing is, I'm not really too interested in doing anything else. I am perfectly happy using Eclipse to develop Java-based server side (Web) apps. I could learn Cocoa et al for curiosity, of course, but I don't feel a compelling need. I just think the fact that all my tools run under Mac OS and the OS is supposed to let you be highly productive and it's highly useable, plus maybe less virus-prone, etc., makes it very attractive over the alternatives. Anyone care to comment on this?

Re:What about plain ol' Java?

[ScottEllsworth]

Java is what I do for a living, and I use a TiBook/667 to do it. It is a pretty good place to work.

I find Circus Ponies Notebook and BareBones BBEdit to be real helps to Eclipse/IDEA and the command line tools I use for most work.

Do be aware that releases often lag a bit, though, so if you absolutely need to use Java 1.5 as soon as the beta hits the street, you will need a PC or VPC. I choose to run VPC to test my 1.5 beta apps, and to run the rest under MacOS X.

Scott

Re:What about plain ol' Java?

[r.jimenezz]

Interesting. Thank you very much, Scott!

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

X11 installer for Panther is here:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/downloa d/

All Developer apps are in: /Developer

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[aastanna]

I signed up as a developer over a year ago (unpaid) just to get the email...and I think so I could download something...forget what. Never actually developed anything, but if I ever think of something I want and can't find....

I'm sure there are a fair number of people like me on that list, unless that's the paid developer number...guess I should RTFA.

Oh, I am a programmer in real life, just not for OSX.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Electrum]

Apple has never sold a computer that didn't include a complete, installable operating system CD or CD set. You also got one or more restore CD's.

Well, then perhaps they forgot to put them in the box. Mine only came with the restore CD (and an iLife CD). Should I be calling Apple about my missing CDs?

Developer perspective

[ynotds]

Why, exactly, would a perceived inferiority of iTunes and QuickTime on Windows make you hesitant to switch from Windows?

I can only guess that the parent poster is a developer and concerned that if they develop something that works well on OS X it won't port nicely to their perceived main target market.

Personally I expect only a Mac user would be likely to notice the difference.

I try to tell non-IT clients who need/want to present an image of quality through their own product/service offerings that switching their inhouse computing to Mac is a good starting point for promoting a quality mindset internally. But that doesn't help those who have bought the lie that cheaper means more profit.

Dear mods

[Anonymous Coward]

How was it flamebait? Jeesh. Everyone agrees Apple's GUI has a level of quality Windows and Linux don't. It's not like I'm the only one, read all the comments here.

My time isn't worth nothing.

[Beer_Smurf]

Every time I see the "I can build it myself for cheaper" post it makes me laugh.
Sure you can, but only because your time is worth nothing.
For me, my time valuable to me on a personal level and in dollars and cents.
So I just can't see spending thousands of dollars worth of my time to save a few hundred.
So you go scrounging for a motherboard and I'll finish this post and then go spend some time with my son.
Bye

Your time should be spent learning grammar

[poptones]

Every time I hear people say "my time is worth too much to build a computer" THAT makes ME laugh. You see, because my time IS worth something to me I would rather have the option of just spending an hour (or less, usually) swapping a new part into a box that has failed than have to spend HOURS fucking around with warranty support or (better still) just dragging the goddamn thing to the shop so I can have the pleasure of paying someone else taking three days to do an hour's worth of work.

I hope your son turns out brighter than you.

BTW I also rebuild laptops. I do it because it's fun. Glad you spend time with your kid... maybe he'll introduce you to the concept of hobbies.

Crossed wires

[TheInternet]

and in the case of Eric, direct fascists: Eric moderates the Cocoa-dev mailing list, and anyone he doesn't like gets the boot. [...] The worst of it is that all of this is taking place with the implicit nod of Cupertino: for example, Cocoa-dev is run by Apple themselves.

I think you've got your lists mixed up. Erik doesn't moderate cocoa-dev. He did moderate cocoa-pro, but that list was decomissioned when I took over Cocoa Dev Central from him. He's been a friend of me for a while, so he can't be too bad. :)

I trade emails with Scott Anguish occasionally and have met Aaron once. Neither strike me as rude. Aaron was extremely friendly, in fact. Scott A. has always gone out of his way to help people on the lists I've been on.

- Scott

Totally true....

[serverleader]

Yes is true.. we are changing our profile.. but we still code for Unix or linux!

But the point here is that we are getting more away from Micro$oft... With the out intension to go back

Pd: I'm a EX-windows programmer, ACTUAL linux coder and newbie programming on OS X, which I consider VERY GOOD compared to other previews versions and even other OS's

Apple must indeed have many student developers...

[Anonymous Coward]

... because I signed up for the Apple Student Developer Scholarship in hopes of free WWDC tickets and got put on the waiting list.

Congratulations to any who did get it !!!
(you lousy frelling piles of dren)

The differance between work and a hobby

[Beer_Smurf]

If a computer is a tool, you want it to get work done with minimum downtime.
Buying quality equipment is often cost effective to this end.
If a computer is a hobby, well, the point of a hobby is to waste time.
Clearly the computer is not my hobby.
If the computer was my hobby, buying junk to play with sounds like a good plan.
One of is "bright" enough to know the differance between work and a hobby.

Re:The differance between work and a hobby

[poptones]

So your assertion then would be one has less chance of having a failure if one buys an Apple? Maybe that's true if one compares it to an underfed emachine - but then again, since they both use many of the same commodity parts like RAM and hard drives - maybe it don't mean anything at all.

Messing with laptops is my hobby - rebuilding my work system is not. My desktop computer is always 6-12 months behind the upgrade curve (enough to be cost effective). And I never have to worry about migrating shit because I use the same hard drives until they're ready to crap out, then "upgrade" on the replacement. Basically, I've not had a major failure (or even a minor one that prevented my getting work done for more than an hour) in at least two years.

That's one hour in two years. And how much time do you "waste" buying a new computer, setting it up, migrating all your data over a lan...

And don't hand us any more of that high and mighty bullshit about how valuable your time is. You've spent at least two hours of your wednesday evening reading and replying to meaningless shit in a web forum, for chrissake.

Re:Only If...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for nothing, but I know Aaron and Erik personally. I've known them for years, and calling them nasty, rude, etc... is insane. (I don't know Scott Anguish personally, just his work).

They are very nice guys and helpful to the max.

I have no idea what your talking about, and I think, neither do you.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, most Macs now come with one restore DVD that has the OS and a little app called Software Restore. After putting the OS on you use Software Restore to re-install Classic, the bundled apps, and the Developer Tools (Xcode).

Re:Free tools

[davegust]

apple allows you to register as a developer for free, and they give away all their tools and docs, unlike microsoft who charges you a few grand for the privilege of developing windows software.

Microsoft does give away a fairly complete set of tools including compilers and debuggers, and docs. It's just the premuim IDE (Visual Studio) that they charge for, and that runs about $800, not "a few grand."

Re:GNUstep is Mac OS X compatible, i.e., free Coco

[thatguywhoiam]

What makes you think Office for the Mac is 100% compatible with Office for Windows? Even things like different kinds of font antialiasing can be enough to break compatibility in some scenarios, let alone things like Win32 specific VBScripts (that use WSH etc). Actually, it is of course possible to use the Real Thing(tm) on Linux courtesy of CrossOver, if you need it.

Just to pick nits - I don't think the antialiasing thing is true. That is a function of the drawing layer in whatever respective OS you are using. Word/Office can't really mess with that other than calling it. (Bad fonts are bad fonts however and will mess up lots of things, but thats neither here nor there.) I've certainly never seen that problem, and I've moved literally hundreds of Word and Excel files through my Mac and back to Windows, with nary an issue. PowerPoint, on the other hand....

VBScripts aren't just incompatible, they won't work at all - I don't think there is any kind of VB engine in the Mac version. Which is fine by me.

This is what separates Free from easy

[labradore]

OSX is a cool platform. It's pretty and it seems to be powerful, well-designed and easy to use for both users and developers. It's just not Free. You must pay a lot of money to use it and you don't get to see all of what's inside. In practical terms, maybe it's better that way for some people.

For many of us, Free is better. Do what you want to do, but I'll keep my freedom.

In theory, I'm nearly a Linux-Mac convert

[cowbutt]

A couple of members of my LUG are big Mac fans, and they've done a fine job of showing us how well modern Macs work - traditional Apple attention-to-detail and UI niceness combined with the power and stability of UNIX; what more could a user want?

Even price isn't a major stumbling block these days; myself and one of the Mac guys compared the laptops we'd bought about a year previously; the Mac was equal or better in every respect, looked prettier, and only cost about 100GBP more (which IMHO, is pretty good VFM considering Apple's customer service, and how well the OS and the hardware work together compared with PC hardware and either Windows or Linux).

Unfortunately, there are a couple of showstoppers for me. These are:

Availability of Free source code for the entire OS stack (i.e. not just Darwin). Sorry, but even though I don't use the source code for some OS components at all at the moment, I've become hooked on havinng it available - a security blanket if you like.

Availability of Mac hardware from multiple vendors. I'm not keen on being tied to a single hardware vendor. Of course, if this was the case, chances are we'd begin to see the same hardware/OS incompatibilities the PC world is plagued with. :(

Rapidly diminishing: availability of some applications only as x86 binaries (e.g. closed multimedia CoDecs). The status of OpenOffice.org/MacOS X was a showstopper when I was buying my laptop, but this is no longer a problem.

--

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[Megane]

When you do get the discount, it basically pays for the $500 developer subscription IF you actually use it. It's also nice to have Apple mail the latest version of OS X to you, and have access to download pre-release versions too.

Error in tutorial

[200_success]

There's an error in your tutorial. In the "Dynamic Types" section, the main.m has misleading comments. The three [sq isKindOfClass: ...] checks all return YES, but the code comments claim that they are true, false, and false.

Thanks for the overview; I enjoyed it. I don't understand how the autorelease pools work, though. You create and destroy the pool like this:

NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
// Allocate some stuff...
NSString *str2 = [NSString stringWithString: @"string managed by the pool"];
[pool release];

But you never explicitly say that the objects you create belong to the pool. My question is, how does pool know that it owns str2? Or, how does str2 know that it belongs to pool and not to some other autorelease pool that might exist?

Re:Error in tutorial

[OmniVector]

There's an error in your tutorial. In the "Dynamic Types" section, the main.m has misleading comments. The three [sq isKindOfClass: ...] checks all return YES, but the code comments claim that they are true, false, and false. oops! thanks. that's fixed now.

i'm still kinda new to obj-c, so i can't answer this with a lot of certainty. however what i believe happens is calling init on nsautoreleasepool creates a stack of release pools. so if i did this:

NSAutoreleasePool *pool1 = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
NSString *str1 = [NSString stringWithString: @"belongs to pool1"];
NSAutoreleasePool *pool2 = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
NSString *str2 = [NSString stringWithString: @"belongs to pool2"];
[pool2 release]; // this releases everything created and owned by an autorelease pool inbetween the last created pool, i.e. pool2
[pool1 release]; // this releases everything created and owned by the first release pool, i.e. pool1

however, i'm not sure. the best way of course is to test this yourself! (i'll have to do that just to make sure i understand it better. perhaps i'll add it to the tutorial).

Re:Error in tutorial

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?AutoReleasePool

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2001/07/27/c ocoa.html

Biggest Apple laptop issue: weight

[Khelder]

This isn't exactly on-topic, but I thought I'd chime in here with my biggest gripe about Apple laptops: they're too heavy.

The lightest Apple laptop I could find is the Powerbook G4 with a 12: screen, which weighs 4.6 lbs. The latest in the IBM Thinkpad X series (X40), in contrast, only weighs 2.6 lbs, 43% less!

I'm probably buying a new laptop later this year, and I was strongly considering making it my first Mac, but I don't want a laptop that heavy.

Re:Biggest Apple laptop issue: weight

[Anonymous Coward]

If 4 lbs. is heavy to you, you've got bigger problems than what laptop you should choose. Fucking greasy weakling nerd.

Re:Biggest Apple laptop issue: weight

[metamatic]

They also don't have anything to compare to the ultra-small laptops like the Sony VAIOs with the 10" screens.

Re:Biggest Apple laptop issue: weight

[Khelder]

The size isn't as big an issue for me as the weight. The lightest VAIO I could find was 3.11 lbs (the TR series), which is pretty light but not as light as the Thinkpad X40.

Re:Biggest Apple laptop issue: weight

[metamatic]

The issue with the X40, for me, is that I don't want Windows.

Nitpick

[pianophile]

by fostering them off on developers.

I think the term you're looking for here is "fobbing them off" rather than "fostering them off".

Dear karma whore

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad, the mods saw through your pathetic attempt at whoring some karma. Nice try, though.

Re:Personally... - will be modded flamebait, mah

[Anonymous Coward]

It might have changed a lot (since 91), but 6.004 was the main class where you 'dive into assembly to understand machine architecture', and you build the machine your self before you get to program it. No intel dependency there.

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[FredFnord]

An insightful comment. Er, or something.

See, right now Visual Studio doesn't have any real competitors, its market share being over 80% last I looked. However, .net and csc are still *sort* *of* competing with other technologies, or at least MS thinks they are. So look, they're free!

-fred

Re:YDL just announced new Linux version for PowerP

[whjwhj]

So, to summarize, you'd rather use 100% crappy free stuff than decent proprietary stuff.

Keep on smokin' whatever is you're smokin' then!

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[metamatic]

Yes. The OS X image is two CDs, plus a developer tools CD. If your machine has a DVD drive, you might get one DVD instead, but it should have a full OS install, applications restore, and the developer tools. Plus, when you get the machine, the developer tools should be on the hard drive in a disk image you can double-click to install.

Ignorant or trolling?

[metamatic]

In Cocoa, to support localization all you need to do is wrap each natural language string from your program in a single function call.

A supplied tool will then extract the necessary information into strings files, which are stored in the application bundle. Any user can edit the strings file and send the result to the developer to incorporate.

Similarly, the nib file containing the UI elements can be localized by any user who has a copy of interface builder, and sent back to the developer, who can just drop it into the project.

I know this because someone was kind enough to localize one of my programs into Japanese.

Re:Only If...

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*. Did you read the other stuff here? You're posting drivel: a cold reality old chum.

Unemployed Mac Developer Here!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

PLEASE! There has to be at least one Mac firm out here on the west coast that is willing to take on a very dedicated, young Mac software engineer who has EXPERIENCE with:

• Programming in Carbon (core foundation), Cocoa, and -when absolutely necessary- Java.
• I was taught Assembly Language programming specifically on the PowerPC architecture!
• Working with alpha testers at remote sites.
• Writing compatibility software for Directory Service protocols such as NIS, LDAP, and OpenDirectory.
  I know a lot about Kerberos too.
• Integrating MacOS X machines into Solaris and Windows network environments.
• Writing user documentation that users can actually understand, as well as technical writing.
• MacOS X System Administration, as well as managing Macs in computing labs and offices.
• Mac Hardware support, service and repair.
• Presently studying to take the CCNA exam.
• Has worked in the entertainment industry and has a vast knowledge of: Special Effects (digital and optical), Post Production and Editing, and Digital Audio Production including music.

I hold a B.S. in Computer Science; my résumé is available in PDF format here.
I am eager, and willing to accept even an unpaid internship provided that such a position is specifically Mac-centered and deals with software development. More information is also available on my main web page:http://home.earthlink.net/~dwbrowne

Thank you,

-D. Browne

Re:cocoa

[jcr]

By the way, Cocoa Bindings is maybe the coolest thing I've seen programming-wise in years. Check it out. I'm sure it's copied from elsewhere ( I think I saw something similar mentioned in Python or something? ) but it's still cool as hell.

Cocoa bindings are similar to the EOInterface layer of NeXT's Enterprise Objects Framework, but they are written with the experience of ten years of EO experience taken into account.

-jcr

Re:Only If...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know what you're talking about. Eri*k* has no ability to mess with mamasam, nor does he have anything to do with cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com. Win32 is far larger than Cocoa (just thinking of the thick book I used to have that describes the win32 api). Just because you don't like one person or one api doesn't mean you have to go around making up stories and rants.

In theory, I agree

[TheInternet]

Availability of Mac hardware from multiple vendors

On one hand, I completely understand the idea of not being tied down to one vendor. On the other, what good is multiple vendors if none of them offer the OS I want? It's a pretty easy decision for me.

Best Regards,

- Scott

More than one way to look at it.

[Monx]

I think I changed. I started out programming in HyperTalk and AppleSoft Basic. Then I started doing Mac Toolbox programming in Pascal and C++.

During the .com boom I started with Java and JavaScript and moved to perl on *nix. Now I do C++ on *nix (and others). I've still been developing for Macs all the way through. So I'm an "old school" Mac programmer who is now a *nix programmer who loves OS X.

OS X is the one thing that kept me from making my Linux machine my primary computer.

I don't know if I'm indicative of other Mac programmers; but could it be that rather than just more *nix developers moving to Apple, some Apple developers are changing into *nix developers too?

Re:300,000 developers for under 5 % of market shar

[ChristTrekker]

I'm not guaranteed a fat pipe in the future. If I move and have to reinstall, I want a CD, not a 10-hour ordeal.

Re:It's pretty eahttp://apple.slashdsy to see why.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best docs are at developer.apple.com. The organization could be improved, but I found good resources and sample programs for Objective-C. Once you know the few Obj-C basics, the next step is to look at the Obj-C Class docs, also online.