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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."
Does this not make perfect sense? I mean... how large can the learning curve be for Unix developers moving to MacOS X?
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.
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.
are free. Apple Developer Site
Unlike another company that I won't mention who charges up the ass for theirs.
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.
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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.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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.
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.
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.
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.
.NET, then maybe the threat of MacOS X will bring a truly secure and robust Windows platform...
And rest assured that Microsoft will do something to respond to the competitive threat. If the threat of Java gave us
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
(Personal feelings: I wish they would port OSX to Athlon64 or Intel architecture and more open/non-proprietary hardware components.)
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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.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
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.
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.
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.
-- All views expressed in this post are mine and do not
-- reflect those of my employer or their clients
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.
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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
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
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.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
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...
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.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison