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?"

Comments

no dev model

[b17bmbr]

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.