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

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 Those who bought a 9600 could use it for about 3 years of software development before it was outdated, and it is still a decent development machine for OS 8.x and 9.x applications.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.

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

[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

[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

[commander salamander]

http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/

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

[bsartist]

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

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

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.

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! :-)

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!

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

[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::O

[Timesprout]

Some people have no problem paying for quality products

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

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

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.

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?

[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

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

[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::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.

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?

[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: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: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: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.

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)

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

[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

[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.

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...

"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

[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.

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..

[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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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

[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: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

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.

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!"

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.

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

[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: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.

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

[NaugaHunter]

the single button touch pad

Ask, and thou shalt receive.

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

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: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: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::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: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 ....

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

[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.

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...

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: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.

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

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: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.

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.

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: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. :)

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: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.

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: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: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.

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: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::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.

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

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

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

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.

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: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.