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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."
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.
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.
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.
- tristan
People are verifiably moving to OS X.
:P
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.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Right now, you can write Cocoa apps using Obj-C, Java, Python, Ruby, F-Script, and LISP (!)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
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.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
- 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...Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
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.