Slashdot Mirror
Apple and Independent Developers
Corleone writes "We've seen a realization recently that Microsoft isn't standing still with Longhorn, and countering Longhorn has been pushed to the forefront. That is why I found the concept of Apple being the larger danger in Rhapsody in Yellow so ironic. The author skirts the scary question: would Apple porting their frameworks to Linux give them undue influence over the direction of the free operating system movement? This is after recent reports saying missing programs are the biggest thing holding Linux back on the desktop. Macromedia has interest in their tools on Linux, surely many others are too. This would seem to allow thousands of companies a simple path to the Linux market but with Apple as the gateway. If not Apple, what of Microsoft porting their engine?"
I just perused the majority of that blog entry and...
.NIB compatibility. Apple never released the specs for their NIB (NeXTStep Interface Builder) format in which Cocoa interfaces are saved. Thus GNUstep had to create their own (first .gmodel, and then .gorm), neither of which are compatible with Apple's, which requires developers to reimplement interface files on each platform (trust me, this is a royal pain in the ass). However, a framework called Renaissance, which builds on OS X and GNUstep and allows you to specify your interfaces in XML, is starting to take hold. All it lacks is a graphical interface builder, and word on the grapevine is that such a thing is coming soon.
;)
No mention of GNUstep?
GNUstep is a complete reimplementation of the OPENSTEP (i. e. Cocoa) frameworks which works on GNU/Linux, BSD, and several other *NIX platforms... it already provides the portability necessary and an environment to develop apps against that framework for free.
What it's missing is a few crucial pieces which are slowly starting to fall together:
1)
2). $$$. GNUstep has no major corporate backer. Most of the people who work on it work on it because they love it. KDE, Gnome, and Mono all have the Novell monstrosity behind them. GNUstep has nothing.
3). Lack of distributed objects compatibility. See (1)
4). Outdated interface. The OPENSTEP look is, needless to say, passe. Apple did well redesigning their interface completely. GNUstep still looks like OPENSTEP did 10 years ago. This needs to change.
If Apple were to throw their weight behind GNUstep ( a tough decision, but an interesting one which could potentially bode well for both Apple and the free software community ) we could have the outcome the author asks for... Apple pushing a disruptive technology based on their own frameworks into free software, and taking hold of the market. Pipe dream? Maybe. But we can dream
They won't even port Quicktime!
I would love to see Apple Port i-Tunes, and such to linux. With OS-X being basically BSD, Their wouldn't be much work to do so. I know it would give them a leg up. I would purchase a copy of Quicktime, if it was for linux.
SimonTek
this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
seriously, linux is already a larger presence than apple in the market, there are major players that have just entered, and haven't even begun to reach their full capacity (novell in particular) and in general - linux could definitely learn a thing or two from apple, particularly in the interface and ease of use department.
i don't see how apple could become any more of a threat than it is currently, and if anything, it becomes a powerful marketing force to help promote linux/opensource in general - we want them on our side after all...
Gekido's Lair
the important thing is the applications, not the underlying toolkits and frameworks. Macromedia's plan is to make sure their products run via CodeWeavers/Wine, and then port if the user demand is there. Now, on the otherhand, I would buy a Mac Desktop Environment to run on Linux and then run Mac and Linux apps. -TekZen
Except the biggest thing holding Linux back is that it's not easy enough for the average user that isn't particularly computer literate.
Linux needs to be easier to setup, be easier to use, and have less trouble with various devices (e.g. audio).
Vonal Declosion
NO!!! ROFFLE
I am looking to write some software for a project of mine. Being a Mac user, I will write a Mac version. Understanding market realities, I will have to write a Windows version. I'd love to have a Linux version which would be a straight recompile, but that's not possible yet. I'm aware of and considering GNUStep, but I really would like a straight recompile. Apple hardware would likely sell itself if it didn't have fewer available software titles, and having excellent cross-platform development tools would result in greater software availability.
Apple DOES help the open source community. Both Konqueror and FreeBSD are much improved thanks to Apple's contributions.
That CSS file that blocks ads
ROFFLE MEOW LAWL LAWL
Personally i believe that Apple owes alot of it's success to linux and the rest of the open source community. I personally use my Mac now than my PC for the simple fact that I have the ease of use of Windows ( and better security than Windows), and the power of Unix. I have used linux before, and frankly it still has a long way to go before i consider it my OS of choice, however with my Mac, i can just as easily use the commercial software i need while at the same time still getting an education in the unix enviornment.
To me Apple has been my gateway to opensource projects, and a greater understanding of 'nix line of OSes, i've been able to understand the structure better and faster than i could while using linux directly. Most of the software i run on my Mac is opensource.
Actually it is a reapeat. Here.
Last time I read a drunken rant by a blogger EVAR!!!!
.NET camp on over to CoCoa/Objective C.
I read and read and read...
but still don't quite get it all.
I think he's whinging about the lack of developer exodus from the wintell
Well durrr... I think it comes down to wanting to fill your pocket with something more than lint.
Not intending to troll, and I'm typing this on one of my 2 powerbooks, it's just that not many a 3rd party have gotten rich developing for Apple platforms. And when people do have a successfull product, Apple has tended to come up with their own version in house that kills the 3rd party app. On occasion, Apple has been known to be nice and just acquire said tech, but lately, they've taken no prisoners. Most the big apple apps these days are apps that used to be made by third parties. Most are rather raw at this time such as Garage Bad (Acid Wannabe) while Final Cut has slaughtered Premier.
When looking at Apples treatment of 3rd party apps and developers, their monolithic approach and the fact that in the last 5 years they've gone through a MAJOR OS change and have now migrated their processor architecture to 64-bit I'd expect most people to be keenly interested but taking a wait and see tact.
Surely, OS X is a beautiful OS and Apple puts out some sexy hardware, but with ~5% marketshare, not many are exactly looking at OS X as *the* platform to be developing for when it comes to reaching the masses and driving your sales figures.
Hopefully the G5 will catch on when they release the die-shrink to 90nm and the speed boosts to both 2.5ghz and 3.0ghz over the course of the summer. Personally, I've been waiting for that boost myself and plan on buying one when the 3ghz comes out.
But when it comes to 3rd party development for OS X desktop software? I'm not holding my breath waiting for a glut of new 3rd party apps anytime soon.
Gnustepweb is a framework that is supposedly compatible with WebObjects.
The parent post has a really, really good point. GNUStep has oh, so much potential and it's getting close to ready.
Like it or lump it, Apple has produced the most cohesive *nix environment out there. They've got support from the important corporate software vendors. Vendors want to port to Linux, but damn, the myriad gui toolkits and serious lack of complete frameworks is daunting for commercial entities.
I know choice is good, but is Cocoa/Aqua that unexpressive to code in? The proliferation of apps for the Mac would seem to point to the contrary. Why must we reinvent the boring stuff (i.e. toolkits and frameworks) over and over? Couldn't we just adopt a proven successful model, run with it, then tweak where needed?
I just built GNUStep from NetBSD's excellent cross-platform package management/build system, pkgsrc. GNUStep is pretty cool. It's like a slightly primative, somewhat ugly Mac. Other than that, it's very, very similar. It's clear people are starting to write useful apps with it. It's got a finder-like app called GWorkspace. It's got a pretty decent mail application that runs on both MacOS and GNUStep.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
This eventually meandered (alcohol was involved) into a much larger topic:
What the hell is going on with independent development & the Mac?
ONLY geeks talk about Macs and technology when they are drunk!
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I'm surprised he didn't mention Darwin even once. Darwin, the open source core of OS X, can run on x86. I've got a powerbook, but I'd love to have OS X on my x86 boxes.
as a java/perl/php/web developer, and linux screwer arounder in C, using linux since '97 (honestly) and a recovering VB luser, i noticed that apple deveopment sits in between the two big models. one, the pure commercial, big shop model with apps like dreamweaver, photoshop, and the movie stuff, and the open source and *nix model. look around at some mac apps from small developers. they all wnat $5 or $10 and they're not very good. since they won't be boxed item software, they could but don't take advantage fo the open source model. while macs have probably more pure desktop share than linux (it's close at least), there ar 100X more linux developers, and the real movement in OS X dev is on the BSD front, the fink and darwin projects. i came to the conclusion that small mac developers don't "get it". i have played with cocoa/obj-c a it is an unbelievable combo. it is truly phenomenal. anyways, the problem isn't apple's developer programs, it's mac developers. at least with linux, if i have a really shitty app, 1) it's open source and 2) there are 20 other like apps that are open source.
although windows doesn't have huge open source legions, it has 90%+ of the desktop market, so 90% + of the developers will target it, and, the tools ar not that expensive, really. plus, there has been nothing like VB to amke us all think we're uber hackers!!! the only thing that would have sustained a huge mac deevlopment process is open source, and it never happened.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Ultimately, it seems to me that the pathetic Linux community needs Apple a hell of a lot more than Apple needs Linux. And like he did to those dipshits at Real, I am sure Jobs is having a great laugh at the very idea of hooking Apple up to a useless, second-rate product.
I mean come on, Apple is the greatest hardware and software company the world has ever seen, and even the vastly overhyped "open source" community will never be a match for it. I think it is high time for Linux users to simply accept the fact that Linux is now and always will be a niche product for a niche market.
Seems to me that the article is forgetting that Apple has been, and probably will always be, a hardware company. It's certainly not going to change as long as Jobs still has influence at Apple. Any attempt to change that has failed misserably (the clone era) or died an obscure death (attempts at porting the Mac OS to x86, some of which were successful to a degree)
Even the rare bit of software that Apple has developed has been serving some other purpose, like iTunes and iTMS selling iPods. So to apple the question is going to be "What will we sell if we port the frameworks?" If it isn't overpriced hardware theres no chance in hell of it happening.
Furthermore what Apple has done with Darwin and keeping that open source has been tied down with conditions and restrictions that to barely support open source development.
Sure it would be great to see Apple throwing its weight behind *nix to form an alliance that could present a channenge to Microsoft, but in reality its never going to happen.
Many developers don't develop mac software because they down own a mac. If I had a mac I would probably start writing a bit of code here and there but as a dude who only has a PC I have zero interest in developing for the mac. It has everything to do with market share. Unless I have an application that I feel would be useful on the mac and will bring in lots of money there is no reason for me to write for the hell of it. I'm sure this applies to many small-medium sized software development houses too
did you forget to take your meds?
When OS X originally was announced, it wasn't called OS X at all, it was called Rhapsody. Carbon didn't exist under it, it was pure Cocoa. The plan called for the following 1) Rhapsody for Mac: a full fledged Rhapsody OS for Mac, 2) Rhapsody for x86, a full fledged OS for x86, 3) Yellow Box for Mac OS, a layer to run Cocoa programs under OS 9, and 4) Yellow Box for Windows, a layer to run Cocoa apps under Windows. Sadly Apple morphed Rhapsody into OS X, killing all the other versions except for the Mac version. These days you can still find Rhapsody x86 on some peer to peer servers.
Visions of linus users cloning iTune's contents for an "archive".
That Final Cut Pro supplanted Premier was by no doing of Apple. Apple didn't "kill" 3rd party competition. Adobe made their own bed with that one: Premier on the Mac was, to put it nicely, a piece of shit.
With the PC version outperforming the Mac version, not to mention no SMP support and a lack of feature parity, why the heck would anyone want to use Premier?
And that's where Apple gets into a tight spot: lose users to Windows via Premier, or lose users to Windows via Avid (yes, Avid does offer Mac solutions, but they push Windows harder and that version's better)? Their solution: Neither -- put out a solution for the Mac that doesn't suck.
So they did. And it didn't suck, so people bought it, and used it, and Adobe left the market.
Microsoft realized early on that in order for their platform to dominate, they MUST recruit as many third-party developers as possible. This is one of the main reasons, if not THE main reason, that Windows acquired its huge desktop market share. (make fun of Steve Ballmer for his "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" monkey dance if you want, but that's why he's a billionaire). Microsoft bends over backwards to help developers. They give away excellent development tools with excellent documentation and support, just so that you'll write Windows programs. They nearly kill themselves checking backwards compatibility with every Windows release, just to make sure your poorly-written Windows program doesn't break when Windows XP comes out.
.NET and Java are attracting developers, and Cocoa is not.
Apple seems to care about its users somewhat, but not at all about its developers. There just isn't the same level of outreach nor the same "developers come first" attitude as Microsoft. And not nearly as much care about compatibility. e.g. how many OSX programs broke with the OSX 1.2 and 1.3 updates?
Both companies offer excellent APIs that are specific to their platforms (e.g. DirectX on Windows and Cocoa on Mac). But Microsoft has an advantage here. If you write your program to use Windows-exclusive APIs, you still have 90% of the potential market. But if you use Apple-specific APIs, you cut yourself down to 10%. THAT is why
Any rational desktop software company will develop for Windows first, and then, if it seems worthwhile, they'll make a Mac port. There is a small market for Mac-only stuff but I don't think it's a reasonable business strategy to support ONLY the Mac. For one thing, Apple has a habit of shipping free products by surprise that demolish the market for an established Mac vendor. (how'd you like to be a Mac-only calendar/email application developer the day after iCal and Mail came out? or MetroWerks' Mac team after Xcode?). This is outright developer-hostile behavior.
But I'm most confused about what the Slashdot poster is saying....what does Longhorn have to do with this blog? I'm an experienced developer and I can't follow how any of these things are connected. It just seems like rambling buzzwords from Mac lovers.
...would like to have a Mac:
1. You open the box, plug it in, use it. End of story,
2. I know that it's built on *BSD,
3. It's not Windows.
Why I don't have a Mac:
1. Too expensive, can't afford it.
Why I would like to be using Linux:
1. It's free,
2. It's not MS Windows (therefore stable and secure).
Why I don't use Linux:
1. My must-have applications won't run on it (or at least not without some geek-tweak),
2. Experienced Linux users seem to be more interested in pissing-contests than helping new users.
Why I wish I didn't have to use MS Windows:
1. It sucks, it really does, no matter what MCSEs might shriek in its defence. I'm so sick of having to dance naked in the virus and spyware minefield every time I boot it up.
Why I use MS Windows:
1. What else am I gonna use? Refer previous sections.
When Apple drops their prices then I'll buy a Mac; or when Linux developers stop trying to be so damn 133t and focus on user-friendliness; and the must-use applications (or equivalents) I need become available for that OS, I'll give Linux another try.
You can sneer at me and all the others like me for being n00b luser whatevers (and most of you apparently think you have to), but not everybody has the free time necessary to learn all the arcane rules of the High Priest's OS.
Umm thats why I don't use Apple, because there are more/better programs for Windows PCs.
The stated assumption of this rant is:
"But as far as big, high-quality apps... there just aren't many, and those that are being released are from the usual suspects. Nothing much new."
My question is, couldn't this could really be said for any platform (except maybe Linux, and even then mostly via porting)? What major, big, commercial, ground breaking applications have been release on Windows in the last 3 years that weren't there before? The Mac has lost Framemaker and Premiere, but what successful new applications has Windows gained? Is this really an effect of a larger fallout in the software development world?
We would love to port the products of the company I work for to OS X and Linux. Mainly so we can leverage whatever the best processor available at any time is. Unfortunately without compatibility products in certain areas it won't happen. If GNUstep and cocoa were in sync this would take care of a lot of issue. OpenSource products already solve most of the other cross compatibility issues. The overarching set of frameworks is the big hurdle.
Apple could swing a lot of converts with a write once, compile everywhere system. I'm not interested in Aqua on windows or Linux, in fact I'd prefer the interface to be OS consistent, (one of the big swing gui and X11 on OS X issue). Being able to produce an app for which ever platform the customer wants or has the best processors.
If we'd had an OS X based solution for our core product (a broadcast playout system) we could shift a lot of Macs and a lot of copies of final cut pro. The all Mac workflow isn't necessary but it looks attractive, especially with XSan, XServes, Motion, even iMovie thrown into the mix (it may seem hard to believe but there are some people using iMovie to edit for broadcast and for cuts only editing why the hell not). However the activation energy hump to port to OS X is too high at the moment, we can't afford to develop for two platforms unless we get a little help. We can't afford to move to OS X exclusively, what if another processor bottleneck happens as happened before the arrival of the G5, we'd feel much safer if we had Xeon, Opteron and PPC as options in case one stalls.
So come on Apple, you will sell more hardware, more crown jewels software if you make cross platform a doddle.
But you may be right. I think of the Amiga. When that computer was hot, the Amiga-world seemed forever triumphant. Or at least to the Amiga heads. But now we look back on it fondly and with some sadness at its passing. We might well be doing the same to the Apple PC one day soon, which is a crying shame because they are very nice machines.
Long ago, when operating systems were primitive, it was all about applications. And in many ways, that is still important. But it's more than that in the modern technological world we live in.
You can put all the applications in the world you want on Linux and it will still suck the sweat off rhinocerious testicles as a desktop system because the GUI is still very primitive. Sure, you have have a lot of flash with Gnome and KDE, but they still lack the detail of Windows, OS X or the old Mac OS.
Linux HAS come a long way with Plug and Play, but it still has a long way to go. I'd love to play with Linux on a laptop, but I know I just can't go buy any laptop and have a hope of it actually working. And then wireless would be problemative, not to mention the inferior power management. A good part of this is Catch 22. There are often no drivers, or inferior ones, for a product because little attention is given to Linux drivers. That is slowly changing, but not fast enough.
When Linux can handle a USB memory card reader with ease, multiple types of digital cameras, desktop integration of CD and DVD burning (which I don't use, but many ppl like this), effortless setup of audio cards (which is still a nightmare) and similar modern ease of use features, it will be close to being a desktop competitor. But for now, it sits as a workstation and server OS with limited appeal.
Not as a company. I think their products are very nice, and they retain a fanatical niche market. But they've certainly failed to gain a far wider market share, if that was ever their intention. To fail when you have the nicest product in the market mainly because you think everybody should pay a massive premium for that niceness is kind of sad. I don't lack a Mac because there are superior products available to me. It's because I can't afford a Mac. It's that simple. Can they drop the price, sell heaps more, and thereby not need to cut costs by lowering quality? Dunno.
Actually, once upon a time, Lamborghini only made tractors. And mister ferrari lived nearby.
Then one day, mister Ferrari said something rude about mister lamborghini and the quality of his tractors.
Mister Lamborghini took it personally.
Nowadays, of course, Lamborghini and Ferrari still live within a couple of miles of each other.
But mister Lamborghini makes better cars.
--
I develop with Cocoa on OS X, and while it's is remarkably easy to program in once you're used to it, it's more than a little, shall we say, messy.
The classes contain endless numbers of "convenience" functions that don't really belong where they are. Witness that the STRING class has methods like stringByAppendingPathComponent, and similar other functions that should be in a separate class for paths. Meanwhile, Attributed strings do not respond to any of the standard string methods, although they do respond to methods to do things like load RTF files.
The problem is that Cocoa is not straightforward enough to be easy to program in without an intimate familiarity with the API. It's just too different from anything else out there. Now that I'm used to programming in it, I can develop an application faster than I ever could with windows APIs, but the learning curve makes it difficult.
The other thing about Cocoa, which the article doesn't quite get to saying explicitly, is that the design of the API itself actually makes it very difficult to get apps to the mac from other platforms.
Cocoa is designed to be easy for porting applications to other platforms. But you can't port applications to other platforms because Cocoa isn't available for other platforms. What Apple needs for their existing strategy to work is an API that is easy to port existing programs to. They sort of have this with carbon (hence why most applications that get ported from windows are written using carbon APIs), but they don't take advantage of a lot of features (like system services, and automatic spell checking) that only work with Cocoa programs.
It would be nice if Apple would port their APIs (or at least support something like GNUStep), but if they won't, then they need to make their "strong" API something that can easily be ported to. There are oddities in Cocoa that make incorporating code from anywhere else almost impossible.
In short, Apple's programming tools and their corporate strategy are incompatible. The article frames this as a problem with Apple's strategy, but it could just as easily be seen as the tools not fit for the job. Apple started out with Rhapsody to try and make the mac the premier program for development but somewhere in between changed their focus to getting existing software to the mac. Unfortunately, they didn't change the tools to match.
I should start a toilet paper company and pay Ferrari to allow me to put their name on the TP.
"Wipe better, take curves faster, and have a smoother finish than with any of the other leading brands. "
Since Ferrari already has their name on a Laptop, why not?
That type of setup has been available for a long, long time (I seem to recall Redhat 4.x or 5.x had that, and SuSE 5.x definitely did as well). Setup as a measurement of success is completely pointless and totally overrated. How often do you setup new machines or redeploy existing ones? If you're an IT person, then you may do it fairly often (if you're smart, you have images already set aside to do this for you). If you're a distro reviewer, you apparently do it every single day, because setup seems to be one of the main review points. If you're a normal user (power or otherwise), you might do it once every year or two, if even that often. That's a miniscule portion of a distro's usage profile, and as long as it's "good enough" then it's a solved problem.
As far as I'm concerned, setup is a solved problem for nearly every distribution of linux out there (Debian's initial installer sucked last time I used it, but I haven't had to touch it in 3+ years). Stop focusing on putting tetris and web browsers and all the other bullshit into the setup process. Nobody cares. Focus on the important stuff like a usable, consistent interface across major applications, or device compatibility and ease of use. For example, I plug my digital camera into my XP box via USB, XP automatically recognizes what it is and gives me a choice of actions I can take to extract and manipulate the images contained therein. I'm not saying Linux doesn't have that, but that's the type of stuff that Linux should be focusing on to gain more widespread desktop acceptance.
For those interested, here are GNUstep links:
Official GNUstep web site
'Live' wiki pages
Or you can talk directly to the GNUstep people at
the GNUstep IRC channel #gnustep at irc.freenode.net
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Slashdot: Where t-r-u-t-h is spelled t-r-o-l-l.
On a lighter-but-still-bad-for-Apple note, DeDRMS can be patched to decode the new FairPlay version 2 songs by removing the following code:
if( Encoding.ASCII.GetString( adPRIV, 0, 4 ) != "itun" )
{
throw new Exception( "Decryption of 'priv' atom failed" );
}
You still need your DRM keys, but you can get them with VLC by copying your songs to a computer running an older version of iTunes.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
...in addition to porting development frameworks is lend guidance on the user interface front. Maybe create a base of minimum usability standards to which window managers, toolkits, distribution installation screens, etc. could refer. Not just the lack of programs, but the lack of consistent program interfaces (e.g. see the recent article on Slashdot about GIMP contrasted with Photoshop) is another thing holding Linux back from the desktop.
Last time I checked, FreeBSD had got a few test cases out of it, a few minor bugfixes and that's it
A predecessor to Cocoa, OpenStep Enterprise, was available on Windows NT. There's a lot more to Cocoa than we ever had in any version of OpenStep.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Firstly, that blog was intense. Bordering, due to it's length, on the edge of unreadability, it was fascinating-not due to it's indepth-ness, but that it lightly touched on so many interrelated threads. (the wideness of the wide is the "depth" of the superficial)
He dared mention Rhapsody, for the love of gawd, HE DARED to MENTION it. Dazed,confused and oft bitterly disilussioned developers and dreamers bitten once by that dream never really have recovered- I loved her, she was so beautiful, but she was a....lie. Has enough time passed to heal the wounds of betrayal, could it be her beauty was just premature(ie. not 16 yet)
Rhapsody promised more than any other computing project worth mentioning in the last 20 years. It was friggin incredible. The entire landscape of desktop computing would be markedly different today if Rhapsody had ever materialized. But no. Apple killed it, killed the best project that they ever actually came up with.
The author of the blog appears to not have a clue about Linux-land. Neither did he mention GNUstep, nor did he acknowledge what is now being developed at X.org-ie.cairo+opengl+xdamages+xfixes+xcomposite. in other words the tech that will bring the GUI desktop of the Linux world into the 21st century-farther along that trajectory in fact than either Acqua or Longhorn.
If Apple would just open up their API's new apps could be developed for a combined market-Apple + Linux. Now is the time to overcome the desire for attaining windows compatibility-if app developers could count on a market of Apple and Linux users this would push both Apple and Linux beyond the effects of the chicken-egg dilemna which both have been struggling with
The propietary parts of Aqua are being realized now, in an opensource form, in cairo, which is in a state of very active development. If the GNUstep coders use cairo as the basis of their new developments they finally have an answer to the display postcript issues which have dogged them.There is already a great deal of convergence going on between the MACOSX and Linux world-if nothing more than the GNU utilities which compose our common toolkits.
Now is the time for Apple to heal wounds with the development community. They should open up their API's, provide exact documentation as to the point where cocoa and OpenStep meet and where the specific differences lie and they should support GNUstep as the basis for developing cross platform apps. With the developments at X.org ongoing GNUstep could be made very viable for such purposes in short order,ie GNUstep + cairo >= cocoa
I'm sure this is all just pipe-dream stuff, but combining the markets for Apple and desktop Linux just make sense for both Apple and Linux users....
Now someone with more of a clue about these issues-go ahead shoot this idea down...
Apple's marketshare is similar to Linux currently. I can see Linux growing further over the next few years at the expense of Windows. This makes Linux a more appealing target for application developers.
If Apple provided/opened their APIs for use on Linux, it leverages the Linux market for Apple. Developers no longer have to choose between Linux and Apple - they can use this an have both. Potentially, KDE and Gnome can provide wrappers to implement many of the same calls on their desktops too. It's win-win.
I don't see it taking sales from Apple, because most of the apps are already available for Windows. However, I can see bringing more commercial software and more developers to the Apple world - and to Linux.
Maybe Novell should have a word with Apple some time soon...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
3% market share: Yes, if we repeat it enough then it must be true.
Developers don't trust Apple or Jobs: I'll admit developers might be squirmish due to past history, but the point of the article was getting NEW developers people who have yet to work with Apple and can't develop any of these distrusts.
Too Many APIs: Only an idiot would claim this as a problem. If you think everything is held together with duct tape you need to be introduced to a little document called SystemOverview.pdf trust me OS X is held together by much more sophisticated glues than duct tape. If the glue that held OS C together was duct tape, them that which holds Linux together would be happy thoughts and good wishes, Almost all those APIs interact with each other of one relies on the other. There is no MacOS API, nor NeXTStep, only Carbon and Cocoa.
As for appliances, that same argument must hold for Compaq/HP then as they now sell A LOT more types of media players than computers.
Thanks again for trolling.
-"I'm one of those Mac people that will break a bottle on the bar and hold it to your throat for bad-mouthing my system"
3% market share?
Based solely on bottom-end Dells shipped and stuck in people's cupboards. Where I work (as a Windows developer) we have a few thousand PCs and I have a 'free' Dell laptop a few feet away from me. Great for the stats (and Dell's bottom line) but I, like a suprising number of developers, have chosen to spend our own money on PowerBooks etc.
Windows is fine for the people who use the stuff we write but only because they don't know any better.
Windows does have a much larger market share but in any sector other than games 3% is completely misleading.
Developers don't trust Apple or Jobs?
Never having been a professional Apple developer I couldn't comment.
Too many APIs?
No. I'd say the APIs are more obviously targetted and just as long lived as under Windows. (MFC, anybody?).
As for the duct tape jibe; have you used OS X 10.3? Apple have achieved a seriously impressive level of integration.
Finally the margins are lower on the iPod than on their Macs (and decreasing with the Mini). What Apple want to do is sell lots of laptops which, relatively, they do, (7% market share, I believe).
Carbon is emphatically *NOT* a stepping-stone API.
Apple continues to improve and evolve the Carbon API, dropping a lot of their legacy cruft and encouraging developers to move their applications forwards. While it does ease porting, if you just do the minimum so your old apps compile and run on OS X, you do not really have a Mac OS X application - it probably won't look and feel completely right.
Carbon also works completely differently under the hood. As time goes on, Apple exposes these improvements through entirely new API, for example the HIView stuff that appeared in 10.2. Things like QuickDraw are largely going away for a lot of uses, with more modern alternatives like Quartz 2D or OpenGL recommended depending on your needs.
It's also important to note that Cocoa is actually implemented using Carbon in some cases, and we're starting to see the reverse also be true.
You can't say that Carbon, at its heart, is a "horrible, messy kludge". It's actually a fully-featured modern procedural API for creating native applications that provide a full Mac OS X look and feel.
Having said that, it's highly unlikely that Carbon will see the light of day on other platforms, purely because of the effort involved in writing something comparable and the sheer size of the API.
Apple seems to be pushing Carbon as its lower-level application development API, and Cocoa as its application framework (as a replacement to MacApp, the former C++ framework that was based on Carbon).
DBM has really hit a new low with this "article". It is almost painful to read through with the gaping holes in logic and diction that would make a SMS junkie teenager blush.
According to DBM's logic Apple might have a real nice developer platform on their hands if they'd only port the base API to other platforms. I find this assertion to be pretty ridiculous. OpenStep already lost this battle a decade ago. The problem NeXT ran into with OpenStep was developers were already entrenched with native and proprietary APIs on their platforms of choice. Few developers were willing to drop all of their current code in order to develop OpenStep applications.
There's also the small problem of Apple's OpenStep derived frameworks (AppKit & Foundation Kit) being a tiny (though important) fraction of the frameworks available in OSX. If only Cocoa were ported to other platforms developers would have to write their own frameworks for advanced functionality. Instead of being able to leverage Apple's DiscRecording framework a developer would have to write, maintain, and package their own in order for their app to be as cross platform as Cocoa. Then the argument would be Apple ought to port their more advanced frameworks in order to draw in more developers.
If Cocoa were to be ported to Windows and Linux tomorrow it wouldn't magically bring oodles of developer talent to the Mac. Think of how many KDE and GNOME apps run on Linux, FreeBSD, Darwin/PPC, and Windows with no platform specific patches despite their common API usage. Only the simplest of Cocoa apps would run with only a recompile (or fat compile) on multiple platforms.
DBM doesn't pay nearly enough attention to Java in his little rant as he should. With Java Apple's already got a nice cross platform development environment to work with. Apple ships two J2EE environments, WebObjects and JBoss, as well as J2SE on their client systems. MacOS X is also bundled with a Java/Obj-C bridge which DBM almost totally ignores. The Java bridge gives OSX a serious advantage as a development and deployment platform for Java applications. With the Java bridge a developer can write a single cross platform application model and then stick a native Objective-C/Cocoa based GUI on top of it. Java's huge cross platform development base with a native Aqua GUI.
There's a few languages such as Python, Perl, and Ruby that can be bridged to Objective-C and can access Cocoa. That is not to mention C++ code can easily access Objective-C classes and thus Cocoa just as well as anything else. I don't really see Objective-C to be much of a hurdle in the development of Mac applications.
What it really comes down to is developers who don't want to abandon the APIs they are used to. All porting Cocoa would do is let Linux and Windows users run Mac applications. If everyone could run Mac applications on non-Mac computers the Mac would become a commodity item and Apple would be little more than an iPod manufacturer that happened to write some software. If Macs ran Windows there'd be no difference between a Mac and an HP. If PCs ran MacOS they'd be no different from Macs. In either case Apple would no longer have a whole product to sell. Without a whole product to sell Apple would either just be yet another software company or yet another hardware company. There's hundreds of each of those. Apple makes money by selling a whole computer product.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
May be you should do a bit of research.
The ancestor to Carbon is the port environment that was developper by Apple for QuickTime. and is still used today. This is never said but when you install QT on Windows you install Carbon as a side effect. You can even compile against it!! Take the include file on a Mac and compile link against the QT lib you will get a working application.
Just to say that Carbon already exist on Windows what is missing is the support.
Joining the discussion about GNUStep that has evolved here. Despite what the proponents say, GNUStep has a LONG way to go. It seems that the OpenStep API implementation is fairly complete, but that's far from all there is to it. What we need is:
- Eye candy/themes. The interface is very usable but also very ugly. You cannot please everyone with one interface, so I say themes are the way to go.
- Compatibility with Cocoa. Seriously, they are both implementations of the OpenStep API, but hardly compatible. Each has its own extensions, interface files are completely incompatible (and let's face it - it's all about the GUI; that's what distinguishes OpenStep from the rest)
- Stability - I can't speak for everyone, but GNUStep has never worked reliably for me. I tested GWorkspace about a week ago, and it crashed or went catatonic every few minutes. It also didn't at all nicely integrate with WindoMaker. I would have expected much better from such a central app.
I don't know _what_ is wrong with GNUStep. OpenStep is great, alledgedly much nicer than GTK, so how come GTK has lots of developers and is very robust and complete, whereas GNUStep remains in alpha after all this time?
When Apple released OS X and started touting Cocoa, I expected developers to rally behind GNUStep en masse. As far as I can see, that hasn't happened. How come? It's not like there aren't obvious benefits. So where is the action?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I love all this discussion about GNUstep and such. Personally I'm partial to WindowMaker which I believe is or can be a part of GNUstep. Not sure, it's early
But this talk of Microsoft porting their framework to Linux... Why? Seriously... Why? I just don't see why anyone with an eye on technical factors give this any consideration at all.
It's Over because Linux and Apple have clearly broken the beach heads to Fortress Microsoft and now it's time to prepare for their big defensive resistence push as we eat their market share and profit margins.
What got me to originally consider Linux wasn't the interoperability or ease of use or feature rich desktops. It was the freedom from Microsoft and the freedom from Corporate PHB's trying to run the show. Do you have any idea how much Marketing Hype is integrated into every software manual?
What's going to keep me there is the same thing. Microsoft could release Office XP for Linux tomorrow morning in both RPM and DEB packages and I simply would not touch it. Too my Hype and too many Hooks to use safely. So if Microsoft isn't really involved in the article, don't give them any airtime. Their current direction shows they are Loosers. If they can honestly change their tune then maybe the won't be Loosers.
And don't give me that "Corporations have to make money and that's all Microsoft does" crap. RedHat and SuSE makes money and they haven't been convicted multiple times in multiple countries.
It's sad to see that such major efforts are being made porting Windows.forms to Mono - a crock of shit API on top of a Java imitation (though admittedly better than the original), while at the same time noone seems to have time implementing an API that is widely perceived as brilliant on top of an existing language which retains full compatability with legacy applications.
.NET is mostly improved and incompatible Java. Anyway, getting off topic.
It happens so much in this industry. LISP already had it all - garbage collection, object orientation, overloading, run-time debugging, reflection, modularity, efficiency, portability. Everything. And all this is being reinvented and reimplemented. C++'s main feature is object orientation. Java was designed to be portable, and eases the programmer's job by providing garbage collection.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Now does that mean they get to decide the future of Linux? Of course not. But calling it "undue" is bit harsh. I mean, they embraced an open source OS, and made it palatable to Joe User (I'm not insulting FreeBSD, but really, no one can say that it was something to recommend to newbies) without reducing functionality or adding security holes (c.f. Lindows). They helped push an obscure rendering engine (again, not bashing KDE, but more people had heard of Mozilla/Gecko than Konqueror/KHTML) forward and made a lightning fast world-class browser. I think that entitles them to some input in where things are going. And even then, it's just input - it's free to be ignored.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I suspect Apple doesn't want to give *nix users a reason to not switch to Apple. They are forced to support QT on windows because if they don't, it won't stay relevent.
Plus, I believe several companies license QT from Apple for use on embedded systems running Linux, so porting it is not cost prohibitive.
But who gives a "flying fuck" anyway? I believe the Xine developers already reverse-engineered the codec and have a native version for Linux. Oh, right... Patents... *sigh*
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Oddly enough, I reckon the disruptive technology on Mac OS X won't come from Apple - it will be C# and Mono... more specifically the PPC JIT. Give it another year and you'll start noticing quite a few .NET apps running on Mac OS X.
.NET framework blurs the boundary between client and server, or native app vs. sandboxed web app. vs ASP.NET web pages. Furthermore the C# developer base is growing rapidly.
Cocoa is a great technology, but it isn't agile enough. By that I mean that it's more monolithic application/client oriented, wheras the
Not this old sock again.
Macs are pretty competitively priced for the hardware and software that you get.
Sure, they can't compete with Dell for the "3Ghz PC with 17" TFT for $400! Theres nothing wrong with it, honest! We didn't use the cheapest, crappiest parts we could find to offset the cost of the CPU and LCD panel, really!"
You'll be hard pressed to find a better value laptop than an iBook (or even a Powerbook, excluding the 17" which is a bit overkill).
The dekstops vary more, but an eMac is as close as you'll get to budget - and it's pretty good value for money.
More, I'm using iTunes on Windows. I only use it as an MP3 player, so I don't really know whether it's comprarable to iTunes on OS X overall, but as an MP3 player it certainly is.
Unfortunately there are many pieces of Mac OS functionality that aren't available through Cocoa. For example, "aliases". Aliases are the Mac's answer to symbolic links. I not going to go into whether they're good or bad - if you're working with the Mac you will probably have to deal with them at some point. You can't create or resolve aliases without invoking Carbon. OS X has been out for years now and we don't see a lot of functionality migrating out of Carbon and into Cocoa.
What ive read about Longhorn, i see it as Microsofts last attempt to put fences across their current installed base.
No sane person i know is willing and prepared to "completely trust microsoft" and allow shackles on its PC.
Robert
Well, seeing how you are involved in the GNUStep effort, I would like to thank you for the great work that has been done. I think GNUStep is a great idea and - bring on the flames - much preferable over reinventing the wheel like GNOME and KDE have been doing. This makes me all the more bitter that GNUStep is so widely neglected, whereas other projects are flourishing. That said, I can only admit guilt, since I don't contribute to GNUStep either. The reason for that is mostly my aversion of Objective C, which may not be justifiable, but is undeniably there. So, I just wish you guys good luck and go back to writing text adventures in LISP.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
So to shepherd developers over to an operating system, what do you need?
.NET? C++?
a) The system to be out there. (large enough user base)
b) To make the developer-person feel at home. Not too many new words or ideas.
c)No new "this is how we do it here" languages, paradigms, or what-nits - use the skill that is out there. I tutor two classes of first-year university students C. Bamola- There's 40 more developers than know C in the world now.
d)For the system to be better than the existing system. Better interface, being free, or both.
Got those, and you've got a disruptive Operating System.
Hey, imagine an open-source OS that had 20-year-olds developing quality applications and games, was genuinely similar looking and feeling to windows, was easy to port to from todays systems (.NET CLR and win32 etc), and was free. Thar goes the Microsoft tax. Yes, it is too bad the effort required is beyond considerable.
What other points do you need to herd you guys over?
I would be interested in seeing what the most common useful base skill set is for windows developers. C? MSVC++ IDE? MFC? WIN32?
Well, I use Xcode to write standard C/C++ GLUT OpenGL apps. What do you mean "It also does not support any other language"? Geesh, go read some stuff.
Xcode takes a little getting used to, but once you learn it (and I am only part-way there) it is quite nice and has (in my case) made life a little easier in some respects, and yes also harder in some others.
Troll.
NetNewsWire into Yojimbo!
First thing, Apple already has an open source link, FreeBSD, BSD whichever one. Why would it port itself to Linux when most things will compile with very little or no changes. The only thing that is a problem is binary releases. But just give the source and you needn't worry about those things. Apple has no need to switch to linux. Why switch from Unix to a Unix clone?
Microsoft, bring themselves to Linux, I highly doubt that. Microsoft might make a move on the PPC architechture. But this is speculation because of the XBOX 2 hardware specs include PPC 970 derivatives, if not actual 970's. But that is just speculation.
This is pointing in too many directions, and none of them are terribly useful for Apple. You have Java, you have .NET and C#, you have KDE, Apple can follow these, but where's the win?
The thing is, there's a third desktop on Linux that's got potential. It's not doing very well right now, because it's not as cool as KDE and Gnome, but it should be very interesting to Apple. And that's GNUstep.
Apple could throw a little of the old NeXT code they're not using any more, like the NeXT file manager, over the Open Source wall into GNUstep land... and all of a sudden the third Linux desktop will be OS X junior, *and* a viable framework for people to develop for Linux and Windows for on their Powerbooks... without the bad press of Java...
Yes, GNUstep is good. However a lot of the distro's have outdated versions (I got through compiling yesterday for MDK 10). However some apps work (GORM, Cenon), but a lot don't (GWorkspace). And for some reason it ask for a dependency that shouldn't exist (the library is already in the package). And yes I read the build guide. Oh well.
Yup. Playfair comes to mind. But wasn't that really an Apple user? And how much of the Linux userbase has such an attitude?
Heh, what do you think of desktop Linux passing Apple in marketshare? Then there's the server market, where Linux is creaming Apple. Don't tell me Apple doesn't want the server market, why else put all the effort into XServes, RAID and SAN?
It seems to me that Apple has a lot to gain by courting the Linux community (as does everyone else, possibly including Microsoft). The best way to do it is as yet to be determined... (BTW, if Java 1.5 can finally lick the 'no good for desktop apps' mantra, possibly in conjunction with SWT, this whole issue will be moot...Windows+Mac+Linux in one fell swoop...)
I like Apple and Apple stuff...I want a G5 even though they're expensive...but if Apple's attitude is anything like yours regarding Linux it'll hurt it. Mark my words...
I mean come on, Apple is the greatest hardware and software company the world has ever seen, and even the vastly overhyped "open source" community will never be a match for it. I think it is high time for Linux users to simply accept the fact that Linux is now and always will be a niche product for a niche market.
ROFLMAO. Apple is the definition of the word "niche" at this point. It has 2% marketshare, and falling. Pot, kettle, black... ;-)
Apple had best continue (yes, continue) to court the Open Source community, if nothing else than on the "enemy of my enemy" principle.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
About trust - that must be earned. Apple has the unfortunate tendency to do their own products in case a third party developer products came to some success, effectively killing the market for the small guys. Not the way to make friends...
There's a sucker born every minute.
They aren't going to make cross-platform easy, unless they want you to buy your machines from Dell. (Or they can get you to pay $500+ for their cross-platform development kit. ;-)
If you want cross-platform, check out wxWidgets. It works. Apple *definitely* isn't going to go through all the work to get GNUStep synched with Cocoa and working with native APIs on Windows AND Linux.
I stopped reading when I got to the first "prolly". I hate to be a spelling/grammar nazi, since I make my own fair share of mistakes, but the overuse of certain non-words like "prolly" really, truly grates on my nervers.
What would have happened if Apple had released Mac OS X for x86?
They'd've been pilloried for lack of driver support and problematic installs on hardware --- Darwin does run on x86, and the list of supported hardware is quite short.
Take a look back through the usenet:comp.sys.next.* archives for my travails trying to get OPENSTEP 4.2 up and running on a ThinkPad 755C --- failed miserably because I couldn't get Apple tech support to inform me that I had to manually plug in the memsize to the boot arguments (and no, it wasn't in the readme or the install manual --- finally found it in a usenet post _years_ later)
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I have no idea how the poster got to their conclusion that Apple would be a gateway OS to Linux. There is no reason to run Linux on the Desktop if OS X runs it's libraries. And that's a good thing. OS X is a polished OS with critical applications available to it. If anything, the ability to capture that stragglers from the Linux camp would help Apple immensely.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
What would be more interesting, is not porting the framework to linux. That doesnt make a lot of sense since there is darwin. Of course stuff like cocoa might be useful for open source developers wanting to write applications for different platforms. However other frameworks existing for the open source *nixes. And besides I suspect there is a lot of dependancies with aqua and what else.
...
What would be far more interesting would be if they were to port the whole kaboodle to x86 hardware. They had a bash with rhapsody. Apple have got themselves some respect in the past few years despite some dodgy *iPod* battery practices from time to time. With long wait for longhorn, and microsoft getting such bad practices. It could be a good time to think about this, the main problem of course being cross architecture. If someone were to solve the cross architecture binary incompatibility issue it would surely put quite a large spannner in the works.
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Rumor has it that deep within Apple they continued Rhapsody for x86 when it morphed into OS X, essentially keeping an OS X build for x86. However, I can't get my friends at Apple to confirm or Deny. :)
that was perfectly worded as to make it sound as if Carbon was crap (not that Carbon's not horrible, i mean like shit, poo, things that come from animal behinds).
Except for single applications like QuickTime Player for Windows and iTunes for Windows, which *do* essentially contain large chunks of Carbon.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
"But now you've described a lot of Apple's value-add, and frankly why they're a 10 billion dollar company. That stuff is really, really hard. Not that linux coders aren't up to the task, but to coordinate all that would be a nightmare.
And likely, if any programmers showed such facility for herding the cats and whipping up some inter-app processes, they'd be snapped up in a VC minute by Apple or MS."
I've already covered this a long time ago (as an AC naturally). That's why OS code is done the way it is. Open standards, and open API's, plus the "one thing, does one thing well" mantra makes it easier for all the disparete pieces to fit together (1). That's why you see the heavy emphasis on modularity, like plugins, and "buses" (DCOP, CORBA, etc), as well as language bindings. Plus the new push for XML this (GConf), and XML that e.g. XUL(2), XAML, FLEX means that change (always a constant) is accomidated more easily without breaking things.
(1) Note the power of OSS is in it's distributed nature. That by necessity means that it will not be built the same way as proprietary (everyone in the same room) code.
(2) Note the development process.
OBjective C may be a fine language but it is also a dead language.
This guy make some points but he really undermines most of them by using "words" like "prolly".
If you are *writing* then *write*. Don't try and use some stupid misspellings because it makes you look illiterate and won't get your point across.
I'm sure there are far more than 10,000 developers "earning their crust" developing for the Mac. In a good year, Apple can scrape 4,000 attendees to WWDC. Even if only a quarter of those actually make a living on the Mac, I still can't believe that that represents a tenth of the Mac development community. I work for a company that has a major Mac application. We sure as hell don't send a tenth of our Mac developers to WWDC. We send two or three out of about 60 engineers.
-S
> I suspect Apple doesn't want to give *nix users a reason to not switch to Apple. They are
... ah... 'comprehensive' item, what with it basically being an entire programming API, plus applications. So everyone who makes a change in the codebase has to test it on both Mac and Windows before they check it in. Now, that's a hassle right now. Imagine everyone having a Linux box on their desk too, and having to test it there? And maybe having to hire another QA team to test on, say, six flavors of Linux? (And which six?)
> forced to support QT on windows because if they don't, it won't stay relevent.
I can speak to this personally.
Two problems with Linux: code and support.
First off, Apple (for obvious reasons -- you may not agree with them, but they are obvious) most certainly doesn't want to ship QuickTime as a set of source files and let Jack Jones compile it on his machine. Thus, they'd have to ship binary versions for all the major Linuxes. And on MacOS X and Windows QuickTime isn't a normal application: it interacts with the kernel in peculiar ways, most notibly in the area of thread priority (pseudo-realtime-ness). On Linux, at least a few years ago, there was really a choice between having that kind of integration or putting up a product that skipped and jerked and didn't really work. (Processors being faster now, it might be okay, I have no idea.) If they wanted to do this on Linux, they'd have to ship an update with every kernel, or make people compile some 'driver' portion of QuickTime each time they updated their kernel. Yes, THAT would really speed adoption of desktop Linux.
Second: the entire QuickTime team, to varying degrees, works with two OSes already: Windows and MacOS X. For a while it was three: Windows, MacOS X/Carbon, and MacOS 9/Classic. There are people who know more about Windows and there are people who know less about Windows but everyone has a Windows machine on their desks and everyone tests their software on Windows. They tried, many years ago, to have a Windows 'team' to port QuickTime, but QuickTime is a very
Don't underestimate the difficulty of this. QuickTime isn't just some app that you can download and compile anywhere, nor is it something that is being withheld from you for marketing reasons. If someone else were to underwrite the development and testing of QuickTime, I'll bet Apple would be delighted to do it. However, if it's not going to increase their revenues AT ALL (those Linux people, they aren't known for being big spenders on crippleware, and most of the ones I know would never consider paying for a Mac when they can get Linux for free) and it's going to increase their costs by (whatever) a million per year, it's kind of a no-brainer as far as I (and apparently they) are concerned.
> Plus, I believe several companies license QT from Apple for use on
> embedded systems running Linux, so porting it is not cost prohibitive.
I hadn'd heard, but I could believe this... but do you see how your first statement doesn't at all lead to your second? Embedded system: one version of Linux, one kernel, no testing costs (the client picks most of them up), *AND* the development is underwritten by someone else.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
It's been a while, but Apple did announce that they'd ported QuickTime to, let's see, I think it was SGI/Irix (?), Solaris, and someone else's OS. It never saw the light of day because 'priorities shifted' and, as I recall, two of the three UNIX backers backed out. Damned if I can remember why. (This was in the mid-1990s.)
One might assume that that port is still floating around in there somewhere. (It's not like big companies ever delete anything.) One might assume, therefore, that it isn't the big initial cost that is the problem, it is the continuing costs of support and code updates for a program that depends on tight (driver-level) access to the kernel, and that could only be shipped as a binary. Or perhaps you can blame it on something else.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
And I compile my own.
:-)
Perhaps you mean 'lazy UNIX folk' or 'people who don't know how to compile their own programs but still think of themselves as UNIX folk'?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Second, I still play games from Loki that are 5 years old, on a fully up-to-date Gentoo box. I have never had a problem with binary compatability with any commercial binary-only Linux program. IBM, Sun, Loki, CodeWeavers, Garage-Games, Linux Games Publishing, ID, Epic, Ryan "Icculus" Gordon etc., etc. all ship binary-only software in a generic manner that works fine on all the major distros. Fuck, I'm a goddam idiot, and I have put together generic, binary packages for Linux that have had no problems working across all major distros.
You are completely full of shit. Pure, unadulterated, goddam fucking bullshit.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
...prolly wanna cracker.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
That is patently ridiculous. Apple supports QT on Windows. They have free downloads for Windows. It wouldn't cost any more to have free downloads for a couple *nixes.
Wha?
You are saying that developing from the ground up a port of a very complicated and optimized set of libraries and GUI applications onto a platform which not only does Apple have zero infrastructure for in terms of personell which know how to develop for it, not only is this platform the single most diverse in terms of hardware and software configurations in the world, but also you can't assume the presence of a usable GUI widget toolkit and there isn't even really a single totally universally accepted method of sound playback... would be something that would be zero cost to Apple?
I'm sorry... it would be lovely to have QuickTime on Linux. And there is no really justified reason why Apple doesn't just let the MPlayer people go under NDA and add support for the unsupported quicktime codecs, or provide those Xine people you mentioned with a limited license to use the relevant patents on UNIX. But the fact is that porting quicktime itself to UNIX in any form would be an absolutely huge undertaking. Did you notice how many *months* it took them just to port iTunes to Windows? And look at all the problems they've had with getting QT/iTunes to act like a "normal" Windows application (file associations, minimize to taskbar, etc). Just think of how much trouble they'd have trying to get Quicktime, a closed-source app, to be a good userland "citizen" on UNIX, which is not merely slightly different from MacOS as Windows is, but relatively totally alien?
Yeah, Real managed UNIX ports, but RealPlayer is at least an order of magnitude less complexity than the complicated multimedia management API that is QuickTime, and Real doesn't have to drag around a significant portion of their operating system API with them every time they port. QuickTime is much more complicated than just "open up a movie and play it".
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
you can get something similar in java here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jtunes4/ It's in Java, but it it looks astonishingly similar to iTunes. Java's the way to go. That's what allowed me to buy a mac. I do think supporting gnu step would be a good thing to do too.
No, Apple steps in when other companies provide lack luster products that cost them users if it is either a fundamental need or other products exist for another platform that make the Mac platform seem foolish for that niche.
In short, if you make garbage, don't expect Apple to owe you anything and not provide a superior product for users. However, if you make good software that users enjoy using you have nothign to worry about, ie. Ambrosia, and Panic software.
-"I'm one of those Mac people that will break a bottle on the bar and hold it to your throat for bad-mouthing my system"
If I were starting a new software company today with plans to develop software for Windows, I'd develop software to run dentists' offices. Why? In an interview that I read a while back, a Microsoft official (sorry, I forget the name) said something to the effect of, "We're not going to develop software for dentist's offices" with the implication of "but everything else is fair game."
>> there was really a choice between having that kind of integration or putting up a product that skipped and jerked and didn't really work
I run Panther on a Powerbook G4 1.25GHz, and Quicktime STILL skips and jerks and doesn't really work.
Quicktime was pretty nice in the old days, though it had fewer features. The old "MoviePlayer" app let you edit movies, too, until they came up with the crippleware player and "Pro Registration" bullshit.
I was pretty happy with QT3, but from version 4 on, it started to suck huge donkey balls. Now I consider Quicktime to be one of the most bloated pieces of crapware on my machine. And this is Apple's premiere multimedia product.
Since I haven't programmed in C in over a decade I must have overlooked that feature of xcode.
I am interested in support for python, ruby, perl and java. The java supports sucks donkey balls, it does not even have code completion for gods sake, even jedit has that.
evil is as evil does
There will be a nice migration path from Longhorn/Avalon/XAML to Linux/Mono/Cairo. Where's the migration path to Mac? The point is: While Apple has a nice environment now, this will change in 2005/2006 when Longhorn, RedHat EL4 and Novell Linux Desktops are available. There's no sign that Apple can provide a similar technology to XAML/XUL or Avalon/Cairo or .NET/Mono in 2005/2006.
...
.. OS.
:> -- while both OS X and XP are really confusing.
If apple just sits there and does nothing, an apple (l)user might not be able to access a simple WEB page in 2010 because everyone has migrated to XAML or XUL.
Understand me correctly, these technologies are developed on Linux and Windows *now*, they *will* be deployed in 2006 and *will* change the IT landscape of the next decade. And yes, both Linux and Windows *will* interoperate. Sorry, but I don't see Apple anywhere in that picture.
> OpenOffice still lacks feature parity with Word
Yes, it lacks several features that nobody cares
> What your problem is, is that you seem to think that without supporting Linux
No, he was saying that without interoperability the Mac platform will vanish. I think this was pretty clear from the article.
> You already made the point that Linux is primarily a server OS
Nonsense. He said that Linux is also a server, PDA, Supercomputer
> BSD has long outshined Linux in the server space
Nonsense. Not one of the 1100 BSD forks, not FREE BSD, not OpenBSD, neither NET BSD or OS X can handle a SMP box with 128 processors as Linux does. See Silicon Graphics Altrix systems for example.
> OS X does not use the GNU toolset,
Nonsense. It uses bash and other GNU tools. -- The BSD toolset is not nearly usable; BTW, if you want an example where open source programs are better than the commercial equivalents, look at the GNU programs.
> Lastly, OSS software rarely ever creates anything original,
Nonsense. TeX, LyX, MicroLinux, Scheme, Perl, to name a few are all genuine open source programs, you don't find any matching commercial equivalents.
Just compare GNOME's spartial nautilus with the file manager that ships with OSX or with WIN XP. An 800 Linux/GNOME laptop is something that even my grandmother can handle -- after an expert has set it up
You mean Quicktime player. QuickTime, the media layer, works great.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One thing I have to applaud Apple for is the awesome integration of Java and Objective C. For example, you can easily write one class in Objective C and the other in Java. Cocoa typically handles things like the translation of a java.lang.String to a (Cocoa) NSString and visa versa. Just awesome.
XCode also happens to be very modular, so adding additional "support" to XCode for additional languages should be something third parties are perfectly capable of.
Yes, this is true. However, it is far from trivial. Beside the documentation, there will be issues on integration with the Cocoa API, and with integration with the XCode and Interface Builder (IB) tools. All of these three will be hard, IMHO.
For example, as a former Pascal programmer, I am interested in attempts to add support for gpc to Xcode. However, this hasn't been picked up yet. Issues that I am vaguely aware of are:
For Apple, internally, for machines which Darwin runs on, this is merely switching a flag in the source and recompiling.
That doesn't make it a ready for market commercial product or anywhere near such though.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
You know, I would honestly have tried to defend my position here, but it's clearly not worth it. When 10% of the language is, ah, 'idiomatic English', it doesn't really make me want to respond. Except maybe to agree that you are, in fact, a 'goddam' idiot.
As for it running on WINE, I'm surprised. Not to hear that it does, but that you say it runs 'just fine' when I've never heard a single other person who didn't complain about QuickTime on WINE.
Basically, you come off like a sophomore in college who has four programming courses under his belt and is eager to show off. Be civil and maybe I'll explain things to you.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Well, they give several of the developers a job. I think that should count :)
Why won't slashdot let me change my terrible username
I'd far prefer to use a popular GUI toolkit and a binding for a scripting language instead. :-P
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...