WebObjects Now Free With Tiger

Reverberant writes "Macworld reports that has Apple released WebObjects as a free application. From $50,000 to free, the software used to build the iTunes Music Store and Dell's original online store is now available for free to Tiger users via Xcode 2.1." From the article: " The software has historical importance to Apple-watchers: it was originally released in March 1996 - but not by Apple. In fact, WebObjects was developed by NeXT Computer and became Apple's software only when that company acquired Steve Jobs' second computer company later that year. While not software on the tip of every Mac users tongue, WebObjects sits behind several significant implementations - the most famous current example being Apple's iTunes Music Store."

Comments

OK, I gotta say it

[udderly]

Free as in beer no doubt.

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[TheRaven64]

This is true, although there are a couple of open source projects (GNUstepWeb begin one, I can't remember the name of the other) which are open source versions of WebObjects 4.5, the last version to use Objective-C instead of Java. To me, they are more interesting, since they allow me to write Web, GNUstep and Cocoa front-ends to exactly the same back-end code.

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[DenDave]

Free beer? Where?

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[koi88]

Free as in beer no doubt.

More like in: Buy a sixpack of beer (Tiger), get one tanker full of wine free.

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[arose]

Didn't you hear? Beer is free as in speech now!

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[aristotle-dude]

FYI. Beer is not "free" outside of academia a.k.a the "real world".

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[0racle]

I've never seen free beer.

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[Joshua53077]

It looks like they're giving away the store

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[geoffspear]

They're most certainly not the first people to tell people how they make their beer and allow them to make their own beer the same way.

They're just the first wankers to call it "open source" because they do so.

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[arose]

The interesting thing about them is that you can also use the artwork and brand. Either way I just don't like that particular analogy and the link as just at hand.

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[soupdevil]

You must be a dude. Some girls never pay for their beer.

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[BitGeek]

Uh, have you actually done this? Have you made a serious App using GnustepWeb?

I believe serious apps have been made with Cayenne and Tapestry, but last I looked they lacked something I needed (though I think those projects probably have a good future.)

But GnustepWeb is not a WO replacement. (Again, last I looked).... its a long long way off.

Ok, I looked again and it looks like GnustepWeb died in 2003, which was about when I last looked at it.

Seriously, though, if you have a deployed web app and you built it with OSS that is comperable to WO, lets see it... I'd LOVE to be shown to be wrong here!

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[mguesdon]

GNUstepWeb is not dead. Please see GNUstep/GNUstepWeb mailing lists for recent improvements.

About serious application, you can look at https://www.cyberdvdx.com/ and https://www.cyberdvdfilm.com/
This application handle >70000 visits/month(more than 16 millions of hits / month). The database contain more than 16000 products...

Manuel

Re:OK, I gotta say it

[BitGeek]

Thanks for the pointer to those sites.

Gnustep and gnustepweb needs to do a better job of getting the word out- when you go to the website and you can't figure out the state of the product, there's a problem.

link to Apple's page

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.apple.com/webobjects/

Re:Apple learns fast?

[Jarnis]

Doesn't that 999$ include a (lease) of a computer system? It's not just the price of the software...

Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[MurrayTodd]

I haven't actually developed with WebObjects; my web-programming background has been either LAMP or JSP/J2EE, but I've noticed that many of the worst, most non-responsive web-pages are designed with WebObjects. (You can tell by the URLs.) I don't know if that means that people programming with WebObjects have on average less training and architectural design experience, or if it's ultimately a more broken architecture, but personally it would take a lot for me to ever consider it as an architectural choice.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[newdamage]

What, you mean like Apple.com and the Itunes music store? Yes, those highly visited sites are just non-responsive and clunkly.

That's like saying because somebody's first attempt at website that uses JSPs and Tomcat is slow and clunkly must mean that J2EE is a broken architecture.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[roard]

WebObjects was (and still is) one of the most powerful web application system. Much more sensible than a lot of stuff :-)

EOF -- an object relational mapper, providing isolation from the database and from the database model -- in particular is very, very nice. Not the final answer to everything, but still quite cool :-)

The sad thing with Apple's current WebObjects is that it's only java (it's even a J2EE environment), while originally (at NeXT) it was Objective-C based (plus WebScript, an ObjC-like script language). They dropped the Objective-C bit with WebObjects 5, sadly (4.5 had ObjC and Java). Well, ok, beeing a J2EE env has its own advantages, but still...

The documentation of WO 4.5 is here, the documentation for the current WO is here.

There is a free software implementation of WebObjects 4.5 from the GNUstep project, GNUstepWeb, which work well. OpenGroupware.org also has its own WO 4.5 implementation, NGObjWeb, which works very well too (it's the foundation of SOPE). I wrote an article showing how to do simple (html) components, but it's in french ;-)

Though, if you want to discover a really interesting project, have a look to Seaside. It's inspired by WebObjects, with an excellent component model, but is even better (support of continuations, etc). And it's completely dynamic, letting you change things at runtime easily (Smalltalk rulez ;-). It's one of the best thing I know :-)

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[bstarrfield]

And some of the best Web sites have been done using WebObjects, including the Apple Store (http://www.apple.com/store) and the entire infrastructure for iTunes. Don't blame the tool for lousy site workflow.

However, I would say that the people who program in WO tend to understand a great deal about software architecture and theoretical IT issues - but in truth, many WO programmers are former NeXT GUI programmers who always will look on the Web as a bastard UI.

WebObjects is a fantastic development environment, a hell of a lot nicer than JSP/J2EE, but requires substantially more training than the lamp stack.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[new500]

many of the worst, most non-responsive web-pages are designed with WebObjects. etc.

another example:

No longer the case, but the original Dell.com was a webobjects project.

This changed, i believe, due to FrogDesign handling a makeover and their developer preferences / skillset (over and above their UI engineering, which was why they won the pitch), not for any technical reasons.

Didn't do Dell any harm to use webobjects, now did it? :)

Someone may be able to correct or refine my Dell/FrogDesign history. Please do if you can.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[chris_martin]

As I remember it, Dell _had_ to switch when Apple bought NeXT. They have an internal company policy that they don't buy competitors products. Once Apple bought NeXT, WebObjects was owned by a competing computer company, no more WebObjects for the Dell store. There was also a side story that the original Dell store was online in something like two weeks and it took a team of Microsoft developers 3-6 months to re-create the site in ASP, but I can't remember the exact details. Good story at the time though.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[Anonymous Coward]

From an article at Twin Forces:

David Neumann at Apple had some comments on my numbers for implementing the original Dell online store:

The first store was built in WO 1.0. I built the demo core in 4 calendar weeks. Not all that times was spent on Dell. I still had SE duties. But April, May, and 1/2 of June went by before they deployed it. I spent a week and a half each month after April just tweaking when it became obvious they were going to actually deploy the demo app. I was the only developer. there was an HTML guy and DBA guy and a manager guy. So it's hard to quantify but 6 weeks seems accurate. You can see that no more than 2.5 calendar months went by between start and deployment. Starting on Halloween night we rewrote the app in WO 3.0/EOF 2.0. That deployed on December 7th (a month and a week later). This time a developer, Kevin Koym also worked on it. I did the Configurator, Shopping Cart, speed tuning, and reporting pages; Kevin did the check out pages. But there were 2 people that time working for those 38 days. Kevin stayed on and added further stuff such as multiple store fronts for different customers and performance enhancements in the leak dept. About $750million went through that store from June96 to November97 when they finally pulled the plug./

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[fdobbie]

WebObjects stuff has been used in lots of extremely high-traffic sites. Of course there are the high-profile Apple deployments, but probably the most visited WebObjects-powered site is BBC News Online. Actually, I don't know if they do any more, but they certainly did until fairly recently - they just never publicised it in their URLs.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[PacoCheezdom]

Dell was still using their homebrew DOMS (Dell Order Management System) on Tandem mainframes for several years after Tandem was bought by Compaq, so I really doubt parent's statement about supposed 'internal company policy'.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[hchaput]

WebObjects was (and still is) one of the most powerful web application system. Much more sensible than a lot of stuff :-)

EOF

Sorry, I didn't read past this.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[chris_martin]

Are they still using Tandem mainframes today or did they move to Dell servers running, say SAP or something? Did Dell even have enterprise servers like they do now when Tandem was bought by Compaq (in 1997)

Do you know how long it takes to move that type of system and software to something else? I've helped implement an ERP system before and even fast-tracked it can take 1-2 years (even longer if you add in other modules like HR, payroll, manufacturing, etc)

I obviously have no knowledge of what Dell has or does, other than I have heard it mentioned several times (even by Dell employees) and also that they can and do make exceptions when they don't have a product that fills a need (For example, they are moving to corporate cellular phones like the Treo because they don't yet have an Axim with a phone in it) Palm is an obvious comepetitor, but to get the biz done they would have to choose the Treo until they have a product to fill that need. Again, that is just speaking from what I've heard.

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[chris_martin]

Also see page 30 of Dell feb 2000 migration

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[PacoCheezdom]

Dell was still migrating DOMS onto Dell machines at the turn of the last century, IIRC. That's about the time my father retired from them (He'd worked there since late 1984 (!)). I do remember one of his subordinate field sales using a DOS client to interface with the order management, and about how it had proved difficult to make anything better. Sorry if I sounded catty or anything, I just did want to point out that Dell has in the past used outside stuff, and might still.

Deployment license, development license, or both

[fhmiv]

A few questions that are unanswered by the article and Apple's store. Does Mac OS X client include a deployment license? What about Mac OS X server? What about deployment licenses for other platforms, like Solaris or Linux? I think a fair number of existing WebObjects deployments are on platforms other than Mac OS X.

Database

[backslashdot]

Is there a database that comes with it too?

Re:Database

[Andy_R]

Is there a database that comes with it too?

Well, here's what the WebObjects home page has this to say on the subject:

"..extends your reach by ensuring flexible, maintainable design... build or use standards-based web services.. enable code-free generation, configuration and testing... standards-based web services... opening up enterprise development ... on a classic three-tier architecture with intrinsic clustering support... deliver maintainable, scalable applications... create enterprise-level web services backed by robust business logic ...object-oriented frameworks to transparently use the automated data persistence..."

Having read that, I can quite confidently say that I have NFI.

Re:Database

[stang7423]

Well, the short answer is yes.

It uses JDBC database connectivity and OS X Server ships with MySQL installed.

Re:Database

[chochos]

It uses JDBC. However, last time I used it, you needed a database plugin to make it work better. The provided adaptors were for Oracle and SQLServer. And I saw somewhere a PostgreSQL adaptor for WebObjects, I guess it's the plugin (the adaptors were used back when WO was an ObjC tool; a database adaptor was the implementation of a common API that connected to a particular database).

Re:Database

[theid0]

"You can create enterprise-level web services backed by robust business logic and relational databases -- using visual tools to reverse-engineer your JDBC or JNDI data sources and object-oriented frameworks to transparently handle data persistence."

"* Reverse-engineers your database, modeling all tables, columns and relationships
* Generates Java objects from JDBC and JNDI data sources, transparently handling data persistence
* Offers database independence and simultaneous access to multiple databases"

In other words, yes, it supports most databases that you have, and it also provides access to different data handling frameworks and non-traditional data sources.

Re:Database

[MacDork]

By default, a trial version of Openbase. You can also get a free license for development.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[mccoyspace]

you do know that the $999 includes the computer that the development software runs on, so how is that a rip off?

Re:Apple learns fast?

[dysprosia]

Does it? I was unaware.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[dysprosia]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=153046&cid=128 40390

Though my point still remains, regardless.

Re:free as in ???

[dreamchaser]

Maybe you'd rather they buy you a Mac and give you all the software, including the source, for free? Or better yet, they should give you a Mac, PAY you to use it, and give you all the software for free. That will really help Apple thrive...

Re:Why?

[porcupine8]

. . . Well, the average Tiger user will also never use the developer toolkit that came with the OS, but that doesn't stop Apple from including it, does it? Why does something have to be useful to every user to be released?

Damn it!

[Hyksos]

I bought WebObjects yesterday!

Re:Damn it!

[DavidLeblond]

Thats pretty sad since it was free like 2 weeks ago. :)

Re:Damn it!

[verdot]

Well, you still need another license for deployment, which is currently only available as part of Tiger Server. Thus, if you want to use WO seriously, you haven't wasted any money! (At least until the deployment parts will be available for free.)

Re:Damn it!

[Ilgaz]

If you check mac newsgroups, there are people who purchased quicktime pro 6.5 2 days before Quicktime 7 shipped.

Apple doesn't give a free license to them or give their money back so your joke would be real!

Re:Damn it!

[agiduda]

I bought it a couple months ago when it was ~$700. My timing sucks.

Re:Deployment license, development license, or bot

[fhmiv]

I managed to answer some of my questions by looking at http://www.apple.com/webobjects/. Tiger Client includes a development license for WebObjects. Tiger Server includes a deployment license.

Re:Why?

[tourvil]

Why would Apple do this? The average Tiger user does not ever now that when you access a website you are accessing a computer. Why Steve? Why!

If Apple only cared about this market, why would they even ship Xcode with their OS? And surely there is some significant percentage of Xcode users who would benefit from WebObjects...

Re:Apple learns fast?

[captnitro]

Yeah, it's $999 for a lease - the package has to be returned sometime in 2006. Moreover, you have to be a Select or Premier member, which are $500 or $3,500, so if you're looking for just a shiny new OS X intel box to play with, you'll be shelling out quite a bit. :)

Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[Anonymous Coward]

The article quoted only explains the WebObjects DEVELOPMENT environment.

While Apple did give you free WebObjects 5.3 Development on every XCode 2.1, you have to buy a MacOS X Tiger Server to run the applications. Yes, you can still build a WAR file to deploy the application on Tomcat/JBoss/Jetty but you still need the server license to deploy your applications.

The old way (pay $699usd, you get development environment on Mac and Windows, plus deployment on any JVM):
You can deploy WebObjects 5.0 to 5.2.4 applications on any Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS X and even FreeBSD with a compliant JVM. In short, WebObjects 5.0 - 5.2.4, you spent $699 usd to buy from Apple (I bought my copy $88 usd from eBay. Apple used to has student developer discount for $99 usd).

The New Way ("Free development license, but $$$$ on each deployment license from Tiger server):
Enough said, starting from 5.3, you've to buy the license for each deployment license.

Anyway I'm pissed because I like to write apps on my Powerbook, and deploy the apps to my Debian Linux server running Apache with mod_webobjects adaptor. I would never switch to a Apple machine running Tiger Server.

Look I love WebObjects... with all the Direct To Web and the EOF goodies, it runs circles around Ruby on Rails and the EJB/JDO toys... but I felt being sold by Apple this time.

-cocoa ninja

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[bstarrfield]

Actually, Apple is somewhat ambivalent about how to deploy. We know that Apple personnel read Slashdot - perhaps someone from Apple will explain whether we can actually deploy with a .WAR package on a platform besides Mac OS X Sever.

WebObjects used to be authored in Objective-C. WO developers were very happy. Then Apple decided that Java would be the Next Great Thing and removed Objective-C support and transitioned to Java - causing a great number of previous WO sites and developers to give up the toolkit.

Of course, one of the major reasons to port WO to Java was to use it in an enterprise environment. Now Apple wants us only to deploy on X server, somewhat breaking the point of the entire Java transition. Ah well....

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[iphayd]

Actually, the 10 user license is $499, and comes with an unlimited license for WebObjects (The 10 user license applies only for file sharing).

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[verdot]

I'm just switching back to WO 5.2 because of some problems that my D2W apps have... however, the WO 5.3 Developer License that came installed with Xcode 2.1 is a "Unlimited Requests Multithreading: Yes LoadBalancing: Yes" License. The former 5.2 Developer license was limited to 100 Requests as well as LoadBalancing: No. Thus it seems that the developer license of 5.3 is actually a deployment license.

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[killjoe]

My take on this is that Appple is moving WO to be a mac only product. Right now you can build WARs but I'll bet you dollars to donuts they will incorporate some Mac only framework (most likely coredata) into it by the time the next version comes out.

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[Snorklefish]

With the old way $699 got you the development environment on Mac and Windows, plus deployment on any JVM. With the new way, the $129 purchase of Tiger gets you a development license, while the $499 purchase of Tiger Server adds deployment tools and license.

I saw nothing in the fine print would prevent deployment on non-Apple products. Apple still says Webobjects "[d]eploys to virtually any J2EE server or the WebObjects J2SE application server." So... $499 allows deployment to a server of your choosing, whether it's the bundled Tiger server or something else.

In short, it looks to me like Apple has cut the cost of deploying WebObjects from $699 to $499 and thrown in Tiger Server to boot. If I've read the fine print correctly, that's not free, but it's also not bad.

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[x mani x]

You're drawing a distinction between a WebObjects DEVELOPMENT license and a DEPLOYMENT license where there isnt any. They are one and the same.

WebObjects used to cost $699 (for one deployment, or one developer seat), but is now free. It was already free with Mac OS X Server (starting June 2002 according to the article).

I'm betting they just removed the chunk of code having to do with entering licenses.

Maybe you are right, but if your only source of info is the linked article, then you know as little as I do and perhaps you misread the article.

You should re-read the following quote from the article:

"The company released WebObjects deployment software for free with Xserves (as part of the Mac OS X Server package) in June 2002, but the move to a wider distribution is regarded as significant - not least because until May 2000 the software cost $50,000."

Personally, I am totally psyched about this. Enterprise Objects, and the whole WebObjects environment in general are so way ahead of other similar technologies out there it is actually kind of ridiculous.

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[x mani x]

Ok, I just read the Apple site and realized I was completely wrong.

Disregard everything I said. :)

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[bnenning]

ight now you can build WARs but I'll bet you dollars to donuts they will incorporate some Mac only framework (most likely coredata) into it by the time the next version comes out.

Unlikely; CoreData is Objective C and essentially a subset of WebObjects's EOF designed specifically for desktop apps.

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[killjoe]

"Unlikely; CoreData is Objective C and essentially a subset of WebObjects's EOF designed specifically for desktop apps."

They already have bridges from ObjC to java and python so that's no obstacle. There is no reason not to make coredata more robust like EOF especially if you are not concerned about cross platform issues.

Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server!

[MacDork]

You could always get a free dev version with a free membership to ADC. The key was time limited, but they always posted a new one at about the time the old one would expire.

Re:free as in ???

[porcupine8]

Well, yes, if you're referring to the Free Download of the Week. Or the Free Sampler they had a few weeks ago.

Re:I bet you didn't know that...

[CrackedButter]

Not until the headline I read mentioned it!

Re:Why?

[indie1982]

That's a bit harsh on Tiger users when you yourself can't even construct a sentence with the right words in it!

Don't run before you can walk...

Where and How

[MisterSquid]

For those of you who are wondering how to get a hold of Apple's XCode 2.1, you can do so here. Before you download, you'll need an Apple Developer Connection account, a free registration.

Re:Where and How

[frankie]

Sadly, Apple doesn't have a Torrent link, which is an obvious choice for a 770MB file. 2 hours to download software in this day and age, bleah.

Re:Where and How

[RegularFry]

Ick. Misread as Apple Developer Coercion account.

Is it just me, or is there something of the night about Apple these days?

Re:Where and How

[waynelorentz]

Do you always look gift horses in the mouth? It's free. Quit yer bitchin'. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Re:Where and How

[metamatic]

You'll also need Tiger, which was a showstopper for me as I'm still running 10.3.

(Never upgrade OS in the middle of a video editing project.)

Says a lot about software pricing

[zakkie]

If it really went from $50k to $0, I think it says a lot about the crazy prices that software costs. It's obviously priced by good 'ol thumb suck & guess work . Also, after a certain point, your initial development costs are completely covered, and whatever sales you achieve thereafter is almost pure profit. If you reach that point before the end of the product cycle, IMHO you've then over-charged. Disclaimer: IANAE (I am not an economist) of course :/

Re:Says a lot about software pricing

[the quick brown fox]

In other words, software companies don't deserve to make a profit?

Re:Says a lot about software pricing

[Phil John]

If you reach that point before the end of the product cycle, IMHO you've then over-charged

No it doesn't, first of all, if you were able to sell that software at that price (and made a profit) then you where charging what the market would sustain. If you didn't shift enough units, then you would have charged too little (or misjudged the need for the app in the first place). You also may have developed the software early and under-budget (hah) so whilst the perceived value of the product is still high, you get your initial investment back sooner.

At the end of the day, companies will be willing to pay big bucks for software for three very good reasons:

1. It would cost them more to implement themselves
2. No cheaper/free alternative, or cheaper/free alternative doesn't have all the required features
3. It will make them money over time

The last point is the most important, Dell used WebObjects to sell who knows how many million units before shifting to something else. WebObjects was probably the best tool for the job at the time, so some part of those sales can probably be attributed to it.

Re:Says a lot about software pricing

[chochos]

That sentence is not accurate at all. It did cost 50K at first (there were three licenses: free WO which was only scriptable with no DB connectivity; a 4K developer license which allowed you to compile your own components, and the 50K enterprise deployment version - this was when WO was ObjC-based), but then in 1998 (or 1999) it went down to $699 with free developer licenses, and stayed at that price until now.

And the old license was better, I think. It allowed you to deploy on Linux or Windows. OSX Server has included a free WO deployment license for quite some time now. But now, with this new license, you can only deploy on Tiger Server. Being Java (and not J2EE, but J2SE) I guess you can deploy it on Linux but it's going to be unsupported now.

Re:Says a lot about software pricing

[waynelorentz]

This is Slashdot. All companies are BIG EVIL MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS from Microsoft to Amnesty International. The Slashdot mantra is that no one should to make money. We should live in a world where Dell hands out free laptops so nerds can surf on free wireless connections in fields full of daisies.

What For?

[Walrus99]

What for? I still got my Claris Home Page 3.0. Makes web pages that download easily are are compatible with 99% of the browsers in use. Runs great under Classic too.

Re:What For?

[timmerk15]

v2.0 was way better. I still have that on some cd somewhere.

Re:What For?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Hey, I'm still using textedit you insensitive clod!

Re:What For?

[cliffy2000]

Well, I'm using TeachText! So there!

Re:What For?

[tbone1]

TeachText? You're lucky! We had to make do with ed and ex when I were young.

Re:What For?

[agent dero]

n00b, I have it on two 3.5" floppies.

bow before my amazing pack-rat-like archival capabilities!

Re:I bet you didn't know that...

[ClaraBow]

This is another tool that will help more people adopt OSX. From the information I've gathered from Apple, it seems that there are a lot of visual tools to help a person keep track of their projects (great for me). Also the database tools are quite impressive. We just have to wait and see how "free" this really is, but it is wonderfu to have access to it without having to pay for it.

Obligatory

[MisterSquid]

I just installed WebObjects 5.3 on my powerbook and now it's running much snappier.

Re:free as in ???

[lp-habu]

For those who may not have noticed, there is usually more than one "Free Download of the Week". Check down at the lower right of the main page and there will usually be at least three listings for free songs -- one of them is usually a mix or something which will stay around for multiple weeks, the others are one-week only.

Re:I bet you didn't know that...

[Xenna]

I hope you're joking, just like the person that just modded me interesting ;)

Re:Apple learns fast?

[hcdejong]

No.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[MadEE]

Though my point still remains, regardless.

Your point was it was excessively expensive, that is just plain not true when you consider the bulk of the cost behind that is the pre-release small run hardware (something you were not aware of).

Re:Apple learns fast?

[dysprosia]

When NeXT was selling NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, excellent software, for ridiculously expensive prices, they got into trouble, unfortunately.

Now Apple, are they beginning to learn?

No, my point was that Apple might be learning from its time when NeXT sold NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP for very high prices.

Re:free as in ??? (Parent is mis-modded)

[the_pooh_experience]

The parent is absolutely right, WebObjects is not "free" in any sence of the word. It is not free as in freedom (i.e. not open), is not free as in no money. I haven't checked the license, but I guess it probably will not be free as in "free to do what you want with it."

However it is "free" as in you paid for a developers' tool kit and we are including this in with it. A better suited term would be "included at no extra charge" but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? Mind you, I have no problem with them charging for the package, or at least charging for the tool kit, just with the refering to it as "free."

Prelude to OpenSource?

[parvenu74]

According to an article at AppleInsider.com: "Employees working the show floor of the Apple's developers conference last week could be overheard discussing the prospect of open-sourcing the company's WebObjects environment used for rapidly building and deploying web-based applications." Perhaps releasing the dev kit for free is just the first step to going open source with it.

Re:Prelude to OpenSource?

[ubuntu]

Employees working the show floor of the Apple's developers conference last week could be overheard discussing the prospect of open-sourcing the company's WebObjects environment

Employees also discussed who they'd rather get naked with, Christina Aquilera or Jessica Simpson.

Talk is cheap, especially off-the-record gossip. When I see the code I'll believe it.

Re:Prelude to OpenSource?

[killjoe]

They were asked about this on WWDC. They flat out said no, it will not be open sourced.

Re:Prelude to OpenSource?

[earthtoandy]

you must not have a lot of experience with Apples public statements Apple also flat out denies things just for the sake of secrecy!

Re:Prelude to OpenSource?

[byronic001]

From the license agreement in the XCode 2.1 bundled installer: "Important note: This is trial, pre-release, time-limited software meant for evaluation and development purposes only. This software should not be used in a commercial operating environment or with important data."

It is at the beginning, bolded and in all caps (I tried to just paste the excerpt, but I was greeted with "Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!").

Re:What is it?

[DeVryGuy23]

It's basically Apple's J2EE container

Re:Apple learns fast?

[Richard_at_work]

From your link:

The development system has the preview release of Mac OS X Tiger on Intel pre-installed, allowing you to run, verify, and debug your Universal Binary application.

If it doesnt come with a computer system, whats it preinstalled on? Yes, theres no 'This includes a full Intel based computer system' wording, but it does hint at it, including using terms like 'Use of a Developer Transition System' and 'pre-installed' and 'pre-loaded'.

No rails?

[gregRowe]

I don't want to use web objects until they put some rails on it. Or maybe if they clean it with a chemical cleaner...

Re:Apple learns fast?

[Richard_at_work]

Ignore me, I misnoticed what parent you were replying to, apologies.

Re:WebObject is great ....

[City Jim 3000]

Except that Java isn't opensource of course...

Re:free as in ??? (Parent is mis-modded)

[Rosyna]

Not sure what you mean by it's free if you paid for a dev toolkit. It's part of Xcode 2.1 and Xcode can be downloaded freely by anyone. There is no charge to get an ADC account. And Xcode 2.1 will be included on new macs and likely on the 10.4.2 refresh DVDs. So no need to purchase anything but a mac. (you don't even need to buy a mac to get it, either).

dell's website now runs .Net

[dioscaido]

Any idea why Dell dropped Web Objects in favor of an Asp .Net system? It can't have been a small move, which would involve not only recoding their app, but moving to win2k3 servers.

Re:dell's website now runs .Net

[stang7423]

Most Likely because WebObjects now only runs in OS X. Dell probably hasn't used WebObjects for about 7 years now, right about the time Apple bought Next. It was there original store that was coded in WebObjects.

Re:dell's website now runs .Net

[macshome]

IIRC it was at MS's urging. The change happened very quickly after Apple bought NeXT.

Re:dell's website now runs .Net

[chochos]

probably microsoft gave it to them for free (the development of the website, I mean).

A friend of mine was the main developer for Mexico's Yellow Pages back in 1996, and we built it with WebObjects (back when it was an ObjC-based NeXT product). It worked great.

Now it's built with ASP, I don't even know if it's .NET or if this switch happened previously. Why did they dump a working website in favor of a new one that has many problems? because MS developed the site for them, for free. It only has the MS logo all over the place, so everybody knows that MS can build a website as important as that (Mexico's yellow pages cover the whole country, not just Mexico City). So for MS it's an advertising expense.

Re:dell's website now runs .Net

[Nick of NSTime]

Dell dropped WebObjects and went with ASP because, as the site grew in popularity, they needed more developers and ASP knowledge was far more prevalent than WebObjects. I know this from my tenure at Dell in 1998. The move to ASP.NET was an evolutionary one.

Re:dell's website now runs .Net

[Trail_of_Dead]

I was hired at NeXT specifically to run the services arm of WebObjects delivery when it was released. Dell was one of my customers (of course). The reason the dropped WebObjects is because of Dell's relationship with Microsoft. Microsoft gave them not only free software, but free services as well.

Re:dell's website now runs .Net

[stefaanh]

Dell Dumps WebObjects - Wanna read the the news: postings from that time (summer 1997), and feel a little more close to the shockwave?
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=Dell+webobj ects&hl=en

Re:Apple learns fast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Doesn't that 999$ include a (lease) of a computer system? It's not just the price of the software...

Right, but it's a computer you didn't need until Apple decided to change their corporate strategy.

And, it's a $200 mobo in a $100 case with a $60 hard drive and $100 worth of RAM. So by all accounts, Apple's making money on this computer.

Apple should be selling them for $499 or less - who cares if the developers have them in the end? - it's just a PC.

Would they take a loss on each machine at $499? Perhaps a little, but it would be small. And Apple would get many more developers involved.

At $999 for a lease, sure Adobe, Microsoft, and Quark are going to have one. Dozens of other companies will follow, no doubt.

But Apple needs every shareware developer to have one months before the Intel launch. At $499, most all of them would say, "nice PC in a Mac case - good deal, I'll get one". At $999 for a lease they think, "Eh, I made $600 on that program over the past two years - I'll wait until it's time to refresh my system."

With $7B in the bank Apple can afford to do this. They'd be able to claim 10,000 apps native for Intel at next year's WWDC. Why they're not investing in their future (and a really cheap investment at that) is flabbergasting.

This isn't the place to make a profit.

Re:Deployment license, development license, or bot

[egghat]

There has been a discussion about this a few days ago at heise.de (this is rather old news from the last Apple Developer meeting, but was buried under the big news of switch to Intel).

The news seems to boil down to this:

a) WebObjects Development (not deployment) is included in XCode and therefore free.

b) WebObjects Deployment is included for free with Tiger Server.

c) Other licences aren't available any longer. So that means, that you'll have to buy MacOS Tiger Server to get a valid licence. Deployment on all other platforms isn't supported any longer (it should work, cause it's java only, but there's no guarantee).

If Apple doen't change its mind on point c, this news is not good news ...

Bye egghat.

Re:Why?

[porcupine8]

? I thought they stopped shipping with OS 9 quite a while ago. Now you just get Classic mode.

Re:free as in ??? (Parent is mis-modded)

[stang7423]

As of now WebObjects developer is free. Your can develop with only a copy of Apples free dev tools. Now Deploying requires a License of 10.4 Server which will put you back $499 ($299 if your educational). This dev kit you talk about was the Tiger quick start kit, to allow developers to get tiger early. Apple's Dev Tool have been free from the start. Stop spreading FUD.

In other new the rumblings around WWDC was that Apple is planning on open sourcing WebObjects, which would then make it free. More on that here.

license risk

[cahiha]

Well, that's one of the biggest risks with proprietary software: the company changes licensing terms on you. Another big risk is that they change APIs or other parts of the software.

The solution? Contribute to an open source project and make it do what you want it to do. There are plenty of open source systems like WebObjects; help improve them.

Re:license risk

[vegetablespork]

obstarwarsreference: "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further" could be a commentary on closed source.

Re:license risk

[chasingporsches]

actually, there is talk of open sourcing webobjects.

Re:license risk

[aristotle-dude]

You are at the same risk with open source projects where only have code contributions from company employees. Copyright owners always have the right to change licence terms.

Open source licenses are not the panecea some make it out to be.

Re:license risk

[Wesley Felter]

Copyright owners always have the right to change licence terms.

Not retroactively, and the old versions are always available.

Re:license risk

[BitGeek]

There is some confusion here. They didn't "Change the terms". What they did was LOWER THE PRICE.

It used to be you paid $699 for a box with the development environement in it, a test-deployment license, and a full deployment license. You could deploy it anywhere.

Now you pay $0 for the development system, and $499 for a copy of OSX Server for deployment.

So, if you had 4 Mac Server, before your cost was $2,800-- for 4 copies of WebObjects.

Now your cost is .... $0! If your Mac Servers are XServes (since OS X Server is free with them, and WO is free with OS X Server.)

So, for that situation, they lowered the price by almost $3,000.

Even if you're not using OS X Server, you have always had to buy deployment licenses, and that was $699 with the WO retail box.

Now they have basically bunded WebObjects with their client OS for FREE, and with their server OS for FREE, reducing the additional cost of WebObjects to Zero.

How is this bad again?

As to deployment on non-Mac machines, you have *always* needed a deployment license to do that, and that cost $699 before. I think its pretty safe to say that once they get this adjustment to the business model worked out, it won't cost more than $699 to deploy WO apps on non-Mac hardware.

And they may well just open source the whole thing.

Any way you cut it, this is a price cut. Yes, their support for non-mac hardware is lagging, but that's not uncommon with WO...and generally WO deployed apps stay on the old version for awhile after the new version comes out-- its not like there are a lot of commercial WO apps out there that are just waiting for 5.3.

As to open source alternatives, there are none. There are some WO developers working on essentially a replacement in open source, and that may be a great project ultimately.

But most open source methods for doing web applications pale when compared to web objects. Its unfortunate there are so many thousands of Java and Open source devleopers out there creating inferior projects and spending more time to do it, when all they need to do is use WO and have a better solution quicker.

WO is really fantastic, and its really under-estimated, and not well understood in the general community. Apple lowered the price and made the model simpler before, and all they've done here is do the same thing again.

Its not unreasonable for Apple to charge money for WebObjects-- its one hell of a great solution, and is currently unmatched in the market place, free or proprietary. For what it does, its a total bargain.

Re:license risk

[joshua_archer]

...actually I was in the feedback session for WebObjects at WWDC and when the question of using the license key from tiger came up to deploy on other platforms, they said don't do it because it's tied to the OS X architecture and wouldn't work.

However, they are looking to clarify their licensing policy and legalese, and I feel confident they'll provide some sort of path for the non-Tiger user.

Re:license risk

[aristotle-dude]

That is true, however most open source projects are poorly documented. If a project like the one I had in my example only had documentation of the code changes within the company, only the copyright holders would have the understanding of how the code worked.

Anyone wishing to continue a fork of the project would have to get up to speed on the source code and be able to continue development.

Many open source projects started up by individuals or a small group of people seldom have outside contributions or interest from other developers. Those kind of projects could also go closed source and there would be very little the "community" could do in the short term.

Re:license risk

[cahiha]

You are at the same risk with open source projects where only have code contributions from company employees.

No, you are not at the same risk.

Copyright owners always have the right to change licence terms.

If it's under an open source license, they can't change the license terms retroactively; whatever new license they choose only apply to code they distribute after the change.

So, you and other users of the existing open source code can then continue to maintain the existing code as an open source project.

Re:license risk

[cahiha]

Stop spreading FUD about open source projects.

With an open source project, you know exactly what you are getting: the license, the quality of the source code, and the documentation. You are guaranteed by the license that you can continue to use, maintain, distribute, sublicense, and enhance that source code.

That is a guarantee proprietary licenses do not give you.

The quality of the project has nothing to do with the license; a poorly documented closed source project also has a high risk of evaporating. And with open source software, you can look at the source and avoid projects that are poorly written or unmaintainable, another advantage over closed source software.

Re:license risk

[cahiha]

There is some confusion here. They didn't "Change the terms". What they did was LOWER THE PRICE.

Well, that's your interpretation. The grandparent post obviously doesn't agree with you. I suggest you read it.

Its not unreasonable for Apple to charge money for WebObjects-- its one hell of a great solution, and is currently unmatched in the market place, free or proprietary. For what it does, its a total bargain.

If it were such a great solution, then Apple wouldn't have to keep lowering the price for it. I suspect people won't be using it even once it goes open source.

As it is, web development frameworks are a dime a dozen.

Re:license risk

[aristotle-dude]

The problem is that if it was not being maintained by anyone else outside of the company, you are not going to have anyone readily available to maintain it.

Re:license risk

[aristotle-dude]

I'm not spreading FUD. Look at the majority of projects. Very few of them have a lot of outside contributors. Most people consume the projects and don't go beyond compiling binaries if even that since most projects also provide compiled binaries.

It may be possible to enhance the code base but that is not likely to happen if nobody bothered to contribute while it was open source and if the community lacks the skills/time/will to enhance it.

Re:license risk

[cahiha]

Look at the majority of projects. Very few of them have a lot of outside contributors.

An open source license gives you the guarantee that you can continue to use, maintain, and alter software, no matter what the original author decides to do.

Whether the software is well-written, well-documented, or easy to maintain is a completely irrelevant point.

Most people consume the projects and don't go beyond compiling binaries if even that since most projects also provide compiled binaries.

It doesn't matter what "most people" do. What matters is whether there is the legal and practical guarantee that the software can get taken over by someone else if the original maintainers decide to change terms. Open source licenses make that guarantee, proprietary licenses don't.

I'm not spreading FUD.

Yes, you are, first by incorrectly stating that proprietary and open source licenses have similar risks, and secondly by making unsubstantiated claims about the relative quality of proprietary and open source software.

Re:license risk

[cahiha]

First of all, that point has nothing to do with the difference in licenses: open source licenses guarantee that you can continue to maintain the software, no matter what its original creator decides to do, a guarantee proprietary licenses don't give you.

Secondly, it is merely your belief that this is a problem. In practice, it doesn't seem to be a problem. Why? Because open source software packages with small user communities require little maintenance, so they are trivial to maintain, and open source software packages with big user communities have a large pool of potential contributors and maintainers to draw on.

Re:license risk

[BitGeek]

And you're being silly in assuming that Apple will never give you the option to deploy to other platforms.

Apple has not taken this option away, it has simply not extended ti to 5.3 YET.

To not make 5.3 support that is inconsistent with the way Apple has been doing business for 20 years.

Yet Apple announces something and people go into a panic based on their assumptions about what it means... ignoring the last time they paniced and the fact that Apple didn't do what they were assuming.

Forcing us towards OS X as a server platform

[Glyndwr]

I'm not enough of a Big Iron guy to know if there's rampant holes in these benchmarks or not, but this benchmark set at Anandtech (and other pages in that article) suggests the Mach kernel in OS X isn't the greatest for high end server stuff. So is this the smartest move Apple could make?

As for the viability of WebObjects, well... I'm currently a J2EE developer working with in-house libraries. Once I get my thesis written I'm going to spend some time with one of the next generation web development platforms; either some more Java libraries (Spring/Webwork/Hibernate), Rails, or Seaside. I'm afraid WebObjects is a good long way down my list, and I'm a daily OS X user! I'd maybe have thought about it if I could have rolled out onto Tomcat, but now I can't, well, it appeals to me even less.

Re:Forcing us towards OS X as a server platform

[Marc2k]

A J2EE developer still not using Spring, Hibernate, etc.?!? Sweet Jesus, that is an arcane art, sir.

Re:Forcing us towards OS X as a server platform

[Glyndwr]

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I only started at the firm eight months back (my first post-PhD job, I was a Perl developer before that). The project I'm working on has been in development, on and off, for nearly five years so it predates most of the really snazzy frameworks. It has all these little home-grown bits and bobs for HTML templating and logging and database persistence and suchlike. Which, naturally, aren't anywhere near as good as what's out there but there's no time to fix that, so whaddyagonnado?

Re:Forcing us towards OS X as a server platform

[chochos]

believe it or not there are several J2EE developers who don't use hibernate, spring, etc. Sometimes it's because their employers won't allow them. I've been to some places (banks and the like) where it's company policy to not use open source, or somtimes to not use anything besides their corporate tool (i.e. weblogic, websphere, etc) and certain frameworks approved by management (like struts, which somehow has managed to gain acceptance from PHB's all around).

Re:Dell

[dioscaido]

If you browse their site, you'll see .aspx extensions. That's Microsoft ASP .Net.

Re:Hmmmm

[macshome]

Um, like the summary says, it is.

It's also what runs the .mac site and the online Apple store.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[Ilgaz]

I called it the most expensive pentium 4 ever shipped, they banned me from chatroom. :)

WebObjects is Awesome

[jimijon]

I have been developing a hosted application (Application as a Service) with WebObjects and I must say it has completely spoiled me over all these other technologies. I have been able to rollout release after release of high quality, maintainable, fast and scalable code. I have used quite a few other technologies except for Ruby and .Net, but I really cannot believe that productivity I have had with WebObjects. Plus, its caching has made people comment on "is this really a web application". It so far has played nicely with other frameworks, like jFreeChart, and I cannot recommend WebObjects enough. It kind of reminds me of some article I read where a company chose to use LISP. They were able to constantly stay ahead of the competition etc., until Yahoo bought them out. Well, WebObjects has been our secret weapon and we are able to run rings around the competition wih our productivity. - jimijon

Re:WebObjects is Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

"I read where a company chose to use LISP. They were able to constantly stay ahead of the competition etc., until Yahoo bought them out. "

I think you're referring to Paul Graham (paulgraham.com). If memory serves, he put together a Lisp-based system that Yahoo! bought out for their Yahoo! Stores offerings. He's got an article or two about it at his website.

Erik

Re:free as in ???

[FidelCatsro]

Um no , its the same definition as in Get X free with your purchase of Y.
how are they not playing fair though ? They are being rather fair i would say since there was no moral obligation for them to do this

Re:Apple learns fast?

[antifoidulus]

I don't think profit is the main motivation behind the pricing scheme. I think it's moreso to act as a detterent to people who just want the Apple Intel machine earlier than everyone else. Plus it won't eat into their current hardware sales. Furthermore, they also probably haven't ramped up their manufacturing capability enough so that they can sell it at that low price point. By allowing oly their top developers to buy, they ensure that they have enough so that everyone who is serious about OS X development can get one, but not allowing people who just want to toy with it to get one(easily)
I'm not making a judgement call, but I don't think you took everything into consideration in your post....

Re:Apple learns fast?

[tequesta]

You have quite obviously no idea what developer kits cost anywhere else in the industry. Even in software: Visual Studio .NET alone costs more than $999.

Re:free already

[byolinux]

Er.. weren't they selling it for 299 dollars up until like a fortnight ago?

Nice introduction to WebObjects

[lub]

Right here.

all i want for christmas is an xcode php debugger.

[pstreck]

Apple, apple, apple... all I really want is xcode to have as good as support for LAMP (PHP mainly) as it does with java and obj c.. please apple, pretty please.....

Re:all i want for christmas is an xcode php debugg

[the_2nd_coming]

that would be nice... as would Apache 2.0 coming by default in OS X desktop edition...... PHP 5 would be nice as well too.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[justforaday]

The point remains that you're stating as fact something of which you clearly and admittedly know nothing about? Way to go!

M$DN

[plopez]

With MSDN subscriptions in the $1k+ price range I would say it isn't a bad deal. See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/subscribers/

Disney and TIAA-CREF

[Anonymous Coward]

Disney uses WebObjects for booking vacations to Disneyland, Disneyworld and Disneycruise. See this URL I just pulled from their site:

http://dlr.reservations.disney.go.com/cgi-bin/WebO bjects/TravelDLIBC.woa/

TIAA-CREF, an institutional and individual investment house has over 200+ WebObjects applications still in productcion. Here's another live URL:

https://ais2.tiaa-cref.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects.exe/ IndvGate?Request=CustomerInquiry

Those are just a few of the "small" companies using WebObjects :)

I've been developing in J2EE for over 3 years now (WebObjects before that) and I can say that nothing beats EOF. Entity EJBs are still way too slow of a technology to get up and running. The change notification and delegation that is present in the EOF framework stack is so powerful and the level of caching that's given to the developer are way too easy. Hibernate, CMP EJBs and JDO don't compare. Note that Apple was actually on the JDO specification board. I'm not sure if they voted for or against JDO but it was interesting to see they were on the board. Maybe there were thoughts creating a specification around EOF? HAHAHA!

Re:Disney and TIAA-CREF

[TeamSPAM]

At my last job, I used WebObjects for some of our web apps. I thought it did a great job and especially like using EOModeler. One app was supposed to use data from our other apps. So the app had to talk to 4 database, 3 of which belonged to other apps in the company. We made EOModels for each of our database connections. In our main EOModel, we had a couple objects that were connected to objects in the other models. Above the EOModel, EOF totally hid that fact that I was talking to multiple databases and assembling all the object relations for me. Granted I didn all this against an Oracle database, but when the Apple Reps we pitching the IDE to us they connected an Oracle db and an Access db to prove it didn't matter where your data was.

Re:Disney and TIAA-CREF

[Infonaut]

Several DoD entities have been using WO since its inception. Some of NeXT's best customers came from the DoD. The problem with DoD clients is that they're not exactly going to partner with your marketing department and help you create case studies. ;-)

Re:Hmmmm

[bjtuna]

W H O O S H !

Re:Why?

[jrrl]

Sigh. Some days it just doesn't pay to try to make a Windows joke.

For the record, since my humor circuit seems to be broken, I was suggesting that Windows, which comes on most x86 laptops, was a legacy OS that was best removed.

Again, sigh.

-John.

Re:free already

[dubl-u]

Weakup!

That word deserves to become as much of a classic as cow-orkers.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

This is the price on top of the Apple developer membership.

Besides, Apple already ships XCode with the OS - that's not an added cost.

Some of you are confused - it's not "just Java"

[csoto]

The programming language is mostly irrelevant. WebObjects uses Java simply because that's better known by programmers. What WebObjects brings to the table is exactly what OS X does - ridiculously complete and versatile object frameworks. Who cares what code glues together these objects? It's the richness of the framekworks that matters. Anybody who does J2EE or .Net should really look into it. Every application we have reviewed lately that was built on WebObjects works great. We even bought one of them.

IIRC, the USPS uses WebObjects for a number of systems. I sure love their new "automated postal systems."

Re:What is it?

[CatOne]

No. JBoss is the J2EE container. WebObjects is everything that goes inside the container -- a whole bunch of doodads (beans, scripts, code, whatever) that you now deploy in a standard container.

JBoss has been used as the container since Panther shipped, or shortly thereafter.

WebObjects was one of the leading Application Servers (along with NetDynamics and Kiva) 3 or 4 years before J2EE even existed. Since the price went from $50K to free, it saw a fairly significant drop in market share. Sorta strange what a big price drop and drop in marketing will do... now BEA can plunder peoples pocketbooks instead.

COMPLETELY Misses the Point!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The real story should be, "Apple decides to kill what's left of WebObjects by limiting deployment to Mac OS X servers, which almost nobody uses."

Yes, WebObjects is now free to develop under Tiger and free to deploy under Tiger server. But the real story is that Apple no longer offers licenses to deploy WebObjects on any other platform - at any price. Probably 99% of existing WebObjects deployments are on non-Apple boxes. Goodbye, WebObjects!

Re:COMPLETELY Misses the Point!!

[chochos]

my thoughts exactly. They should have just opensourced it instead. The WO deployments I did on 2000-2003 were on Solaris, Linux and Windows, none of them on OSX.

Re:COMPLETELY Misses the Point!!

[Anonymous Writer]

Yes, but with the switch to the Intel Platform, perhaps Apple may let OS X Server run on servers made by different companies which in turn would come along with WebObjects. For example, Dell, since he said that he would offer OS X to customers if Apple were so willing.

Also, if .Mac Homepages allow for WebObjects, then that would make it interesting. Buy a Mac, subscribe to .Mac, and not only do you have WebObjects, but the server to deploy your site from. And you use iSync to keep what you have online synchronised with what's on your computer.

Re:COMPLETELY Misses the Point!!

[javaxman]

Earlier I wrote:
Note to parent: do your research before jumping to conclusions and making false claims, it helps prevent you from looking silly. I know. I've learned this the hard way myself...

Damn. You can never do too much research, I guess.

Anyway, before anyone else points this out, I'm going to have to point out that what you can buy at the Apple Store is Version 5.2. What the story is about ( and what ships with Tiger and XServes ) is version 5.3. The interesting part is that both are available, I guess? What does that imply??

From what I can tell, though, this all doesn't look like even 5.3 stops you from deploying a .war on Apache using mod_webobjects on any ol' platform you can find mod_webobjects for.

I'm going to shut up now, though. I'm not a WO expert, I just noticed 5.2 still at the Apple Store. I'm just as curious as everyone else to find out what Apple's plans are. If anyone can explain what's going on, please do. I'm not sure this means 'goodbye, WebObjects', though.

AnandTech report flawed

[MikeMo]

Here's a quote from a gent at MacInTouch that I think is relevant:

[Christian Kent] I was forwarded this today by a Macintosh MPEG software developer:

Okay, stop, I have to make an argument about why this article fails, before I explode. MySQL has a disgusting tendency to fork() at random moments, which is bad for performance essentially everywhere but Linux. OS X server includes a version of MySQL that doesn't have this issue.

No real arguments that Power Macs are somewhat behind the times on memory latency, but that's because they're still using PC3200 DDR1 memory from 2003. AMD/Intel chips use DDR2 or Rambus now ... this could be solved without switching CPUs.

The article also goes out of its way to get bad results for PPC. Why are they using an old version of GCC (3.3.x has no autovectorization, much worse performance on non-x86 platforms), then a brand spanking new version of mySQL (see above)? The floating point benchmark was particularly absurd: "The results are quite interesting. First of all, the gcc compiler isn't very good in vectorizing. With vectorizing, we mean generating SIMD (SSE, Altivec) code. From the numbers, it seems like gcc was only capable of using Altivec in one test, the third one. In this test, the G5 really shows superiority compared to the Opteron and especially the Xeons" In fact, gcc 3.3 is unable to generate AltiVec code ANYWHERE, except on x86 where they added a special SSE mode because x87 floating point is so miserable. This could have been discovered with about 5 minutes of Google research. It wouldn't had to have been discovered at all if they hadn't gone out of their way to use a compiler which is the non-default on OS X 10.4. Alarm bells should have been going off in the benchmarkers head when an AMD chips outperforms an Intel one by 3x, but, anyway ...

I hate to seem like I'm just blindly defending Apple here, but this article seems to have been written with an agenda. There's no way one guy could stuff this much stuff up. To claim there's something inherently wrong with OS X's ability to be a server is going against so much publicly available information it's not even funny. Notice Apple seems to have no trouble getting Apache to run with Linux-like performance.

Re:AnandTech report flawed

[Glyndwr]

Interesting stuff, particularly as Anandtech has been pretty pro-Apple lately... Anand himself has bought and reviewed Powermacs and Powerbooks and been very positive about the whole switcher thing. How weird.

Anyway, thanks for the info!

Re:AnandTech report flawed

[Glyndwr]

Having read the article quite closely, actually, I don't think he had an agenda. I just think he did it backwards. He took his SUSE 9 system and looked at what versions of MySQL and GCC it had. Then he built GCC for the OS X machine, then used that to build MySQL. He probably felt really good about that being a fair test, too! After all, the software was the same on all machines!

He'd have done better to use OS X Server with the shipped MySQL, of course, as your source points out. Apple's platform isn't fully mainstream for either GCC or MySQL, and it's hardly unfair to allow Apple's own tweaks to these packages to be used in the test. It's still a pretty real-world test he's doing, so it's not like it can be cheated.

Maybe it was deliberate bias, but I try not to suspect evil when simple incompetence can explain it.

Re:AnandTech report flawed

[prockcore]

MySQL has a disgusting tendency to fork() at random moments, which is bad for performance essentially everywhere but Linux.

Um.. NO. MySQL doesn't fork at all. Check your process list; only once process. MySQL uses threads.. not process forking.

Re:all i want for christmas is an xcode php debugg

[doon]

I use ZDE on my Powerbook and it runs Great. While it isn't free or come with the Operating system, it has helped to make me much more productive. The other bonus is that I can run in a Linux box also...

Re:Apple learns fast?

[gabebear]

Its very likely that Apple doesn't want every shareware developer to have the Intel machines. If Apple gets Rosetta working well enough the transition from PowerPC to Intel will be almost painless, however for clients with a large investment in PowerPC machines it could be quite painful. If every new revision of every little piece of software is Intel only then you are going to have a LOT of pissed off Mac users. In my opinion Apple is very wise to manage this transition for developers with an iron fist until they are ready to ditch their PowerPC users.

Any profit Apple would see from selling $999 computers to their already higher end developers would be immaterial. The slightly high cost is so that this system doesn't get abused. Besides, VS.NET goes for $800 to $2500 from Microsoft's website without any hardware.

Old Wired magazine cover story

[Pope]

As I was packing up to move last weekend, I found one of the few old issues of Wired magazine that I've kept over the years that featured Steve Jobs on the cover, talking up WebObjects and what a great tool it was for rapid web application development. This was in 1996, and he was talking about how important web apps were going to be in a very short time.

Love him or hate him, he does have an eye on the future most times.

Re:Old Wired magazine cover story

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, BGates made some comments about the Web in 1995, a year earlier than Jobs. What a visionary!

Oh, sorry, wrong comments.

Love him or hate him, Gates does have an eye on the future most times, though it's closed pretty much all the time.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[Skibbering]

Apple should be selling them for $499 or less - who cares if the developers have them in the end? - it's just a PC.

Sorry, but that's just wrong. If they had to ramp up a PCB (printed circuit board) production line somewhere to build these things, the cost would be enormous. Bear in mind this cost is going to be shared across what, a few hundred prototypes? At most.

Prototype machines like this are ENORMOUSLY expensive. I believe the prototype Macs typically tested internally are valued at some tens of thousands of dollars.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

If every new revision of every little piece of software is Intel only then you are going to have a LOT of pissed off Mac users.

I have to assume this works just like NeXT's fat binaries did - so a developer would have to go explicitly turn off PowerPC code generation and ship an Intel-only binary on-purpose. Just because he's developing/testing on Intel doesn't mean he's not generating PowerPC code as well - NeXT was expert with cross-compiling.

The slightly high cost is so that this system doesn't get abused.

But you have to already be an ADC member to take advantage of this program. That starts at $499. So what's the worst-case scenario? That lots of shareware developers buy a new Intel Mac and don't produce software? There aren't that many ADC members for this to materially affect Apple's bottom line. The machine is admittedly low performance so it's not going to cut into future sales and noone is going to join ADC and pay $998 ($499+499) for a $500 PC.

Besides, VS.NET goes for $800 to $2500 from Microsoft's website without any hardware.

Apple isn't charging for the software - that comes free with the OS. Interestingly, there's a much more vibrant shareware community for Mac than for Windows, maybe that's part of the reason.

If your argument is, "that's not a bad price for a development environment if you're in the software business," you're right - but I'm arguing for the hobbyist developer who isn't really in the software business. As I said, Microsoft, Adobe and Quark are not going to have a problem with this. Besides that, I don't know of anybody who actually buys VS.NET - they all have copies from TechNet subscriptions or an ActionPack.

The primary advantage of low pricing for the development system would be for Apple to be able to put up a huge number on the screen behind Steve Jobs at WWDC 2006 with the number of Intel-native apps. I know Rosetta is supposed to run at 60%, but a 40% speed boost is remarkable for most applications and they're going to sell it. By WWDC 2006 Steve will be calling the PPC-only developers 'slackers' just like he did to the OS9-only developers. Feel free to poke me next year if I'm wrong about this.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sorry, but that's just wrong. If they had to ramp up a PCB (printed circuit board) production line somewhere to build these things, the cost would be enormous. Bear in mind this cost is going to be shared across what, a few hundred prototypes? At most.

If they did you'd be right. But they didn't, they're using an Intel D925XEBC2 motherboard according to people at WWDC - standard PC.

Be aware that I'm answering this whilst drunk

[Anonymous Coward]

WebObject rocks. I started using webobjects four years ago. I've been away and worked on projects in raw struts, raw jsp, have played with other frameworks in my own time, and laughed. I've written a couple of my own, and am currently part of a team working to replicate the best of WebObjects using Cayenne and Tapestry. For the most part all the alternatives *completely suck*. That people do commercial work on struts - this is laughable. It is inelegant, heavy, and yuck.

A few tools go some way towards recreating the success of parts of WebObjects - I've not played with Hibernate but hear it's a good. We use Cayenne, which is better in many respects (no addToBothSidesOfRelationshipWithKey - the default setters do this), although there are some bugs in the latest major release (1.1). Still, Andrus has really improved on some of the weak points of EO, and it's nice to see some people taking some pride in the interface with more recent releases of Cayenne - after fifteen years Apple (who pride themselves on their interfaces) still don't be able get the interface for EO to a point where it's acceptable. Focus doesn't work properly - there are mandatory fields hidden in strange places. And it's made awkward to work outside of the standard toolkit. All this is stupid. Stupid!

Some of the templating systems are comparable to the WOBuilder. The WOBuilder has some bugs in it, and there are templating systems around that are more powerful. Nevertheless, having now used Tapestry and the wo templating system I can see advantages to the less powerful WO system. It doesn't scale to seriously complicated pages as well as tapestry, and really is a lot less powerful, but for simple pages it's a lot quicker to make magic happen. That'll be OK for us, we're planning to hack tapestry to allow us to store the quivalent of a wod file within a single tapestry tag.

In the past, I've worked with some top notch people who develop on WebObjects. One of them is just the quintisenial guru programmer. He can look at a problem, sit down and start typing, and have a working product out in a tenth the time it would take me to produce an equivalent. Another guy is a perl guru. He's recreated the entire WebObjects development system in pure perl and moved the platform to linux. We do all our WO development on linux using text editor of choise (mostly emacs but I'm a bim type of guy) and the java libraries on linux. I have a mac laptop and had the privilege of porting them to BSD :) so I could continue to use that command-line approach in preference to the mac tools.

Apple disappoints me. Releasing webobjects with the OS is a good idea, but they're not doing it to maek WebObjects the next best thing, they're just looking for an exit. The wasted opportunities are so disappointing, and the history of WebObjects is ridden with them. WebObjects is the best of breed and has been as long as it's been out. I'd love to know how the original team conceived it. Did they hire a team of people who'd worked on a web-like thin client system for unix or VMS? It has that feel about it that says that the people who pieced it together had a really good grasp of the problem they were trying to solve, and they did it near the beginning of the web application era. Don't take away the impression that WebObjects is some sort of golden hammer - it's quirky as hell. For example, instead of using List or evven Vector, every time you use a list by default you need to use a java implementation of NSArray. All the NS objects are default, and it's blatant that this is a quick port of Next's objective-C system to java. This is offputting at first as are all the other annoying interface quirks, stupidly long methods names and strange things that go wrong without meaningful explanation when you accidentally leave a colon sitting at the bottom of a wod file (binding file between the temaplted html file and java view file) but - it really is a mile ahead of all competition. Yet1 Apple have kept it on the backburner. They haven't dedicated de

Re:Be aware that I'm answering this whilst drunk

[Sam Ritchie]

after fifteen years Apple (who pride themselves on their interfaces) still don't be able get the interface for EO to a point where it's acceptable.

EOModeler, while it's still part of the dev tools distribution, appears to be deprecated in favour of moving the EOModel editing into Xcode 2.1 - I wouldn't think there'll be too many improvements made on the old application. In principle though, I agree that the tools don't have the best interfaces - I think part of the problem has been the need to support Windows as a dev platform.

I assumed the fact that the deployment license is now platform-independent means that you can just buy a copy of OS X Server to deploy on 'unsupported' platforms - this is effectively a price cut.

How do you use NSTimestamps with PostgreSQL? Optimistic locking on those fields has been annoying the hell out of me.

Re:Why?

[a7244270]

I thought it was funny. (despite my sig)

Re:free as in ??? (Parent is mis-modded)

[fdobbie]

You do not have to buy an ADC Select membership to get a copy of the Xcode Tools. Xcode Tools 2.1 are available to ADC Online members. ADC Online membership is free.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[djdavetrouble]

ah well then, carry on. It was the doohickey with the included computer that was $9999 or something.

This is a desperate last-effort move from Apple

[Qbertino]

to prevent being crushed by the overwelming success of the rising Uber-frameworks 'Ajax' and 'Ruby on Rails'.
These 4th millenium technologies are going to squish everything else that is even remotely related to the internet and Apple is intelligent enough to know this. Just like everybody who reads slashdot.
It's a shame. First Longhorn anounces it's upcoming search technology and now this. It's all downhill from here on, Apple.
RIP. It was nice with you.

I was at the WWDC WO sessions

[ashpool7]

The sessions are confidential, but I think I can say that Apple is aware of the problem and that you should wait for them to do something. :) Promise.

Re:In other Apple News

[noewun]

Cause it still works?

I've get a new 1.8 G5. It still runs fine, even after the Intel announcement. It will continue to run just fine for the next three or four years, when I will buy a new machine.

Re:What is it?

[chochos]

It uses a different architecture altogether. WebObjects was born in 1996, before J2EE containers even existed. And it was written in Objective-C. In 2000 they rewrote WO in Java, and that's when the trouble started; they basically just rewrote the whole thing, and it looks like the work was done by the ObjC people, because they even migrated the ObjC collection classes (there was no need for this, really, they could have used the Java collection classes) and this caused a bunch of compatibility problems. A patch was released later that added conversion methods from the java collection classes to the WO foundation collection classes. And supposedly you can deploy a WO app into a J2EE container, but EOF has issues with multithreading, you have to lock a lot of stuff manually, and generally it's easier to just use the same old WO way of deploying stuff, which is via the WOMonitor, launching many instances of your application and letting the apache WO adaptor handle the load balancing. In short, you can deploy WO apps using only J2SE without a container.

WebObjects ahead of its time

[Trail_of_Dead]

I hired on at NeXT to run the services group focused on WebObjects many years ago. I can tell you, like most things at NeXT, the stuff was ahead of its time. We had a lot of large customers: Dell, Disney, Sharper Image (their first online store was WO). NeXT had an opportunity to build the standard for a great web app development tool, but it was well on its way to getting bought by Apple, so the focus wasn't there.

Re:WebObjects ahead of its time

[chochos]

not only that... I heard amazing stories (from people at NeXT who worked with WO at that time) about how Sharper Image and Reebok were done in 3 days by 3 developers... the development cost I think 30K. At that time I was working here in Mexico with seccion amarilla, Sanborns, Cablevision and a couple other sites that I was writing with WO. Great tool, like you say, ahead of its time.

Re:free as in ???

[Gax]

Maybe you'd rather they buy you a Mac and give you all the software, including the source, for free? Or better yet, they should give you a Mac, PAY you to use it, and give you all the software for free. That will really help Apple thrive...

Hell no! They would have to throw in some dancing girls and strippers. And pay for the shipping.

Actually, forget the Mac, software and source. Just send me the...

Re:Apple learns fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the $999 kit *is* the one with the included computer. You're just confused.

Just a PC?

[weg]

If the developer kit comes with this box then it isn't "just a PC". It's a PC in an Aluminium G5 enclosure.

Re:Just a PC?

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's why I allowed them $100 for the cost of a case in my original argument. A cheap PC-style case can be had retail for $30.

You should read docs before making statements

[jscotta44]

Go to http://www.apple.com/webobjects/ and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. There you will see this nice little section: Deploy painlessly - Deploys to virtually any J2EE server or the WebObjects J2SE application server - Provides easy scalability with built-in clustering support and low-cost licensing - Supports Servlet/JSP, EJB, RMI-IIOP and JTA/JTS (J2EE technologies) So...tell me why you need Tiger Server? We can save the why you should WANT Tiger Server for another thread.

Re:You should read docs before making statements

[chochos]

because the only free license is the developer license. The deployment license is now only bundled with Tiger Server. So if you want to legally deploy a WO app on, say, Linux or Solaris, you have to buy a Tiger Server license, get the license code for WO, and deploy on whatever you want. and now you have a Tiger Server license you're not even gonna use.

So the price actually went up... before, you could buy a WO deployment license for $700 nos it's goine to be $130 or more (I don't really know the price for Tiger Server but it surely is at least the same as the regular OSX).

Re:You should read docs before making statements

[chochos]

i'm sorry it's friday and my brain is already on vacation... the price still goes down but it's certainly not free, now it's like $400 and if you deploy on anything but Tiger Server it's probably going to be unsupported.

Re:You should read docs before making statements

[egghat]

That's an interesting interpretation! In Germany (after some discussion with Apple) the facts were interpreted like I've summarized.

That means: You need a deploment licence (you needed it before and Apple never said that you don't need a deployment licence any more). The only way to get a deployment licence is to buy MacOS Server licence. And even if you buy this licence, the deployment on other OS and other JSEE isn't supported any longer.

But all of this has to be taken with a grain of salt, cause Apple reps (at least in Germany) are somewhat dis/malinformed when you ask them about WebObjects (I once have been on the cebit and I couldn't find a single guy who even knew that Apple had a product called WebObjects. Quite bizarre ...).

I sincerely hope that Apple clears this up! Anyone from Apple that listens?

Bye egghat.

Re:You should read docs before making statements

[Bobartig]

Mac OS X server is $499 for a 10-client, and $999 for unlimited client.

Fan boys please know your facts

[ad0gg]

PPCs have bad memory latency because of chip design, it has nothing to do with what type of memory they are running. DDR2 is crap anyway and only prevalent in Dell Boxes. AMD doesn't support DDR2 and are most likely holding out for DDR3.

Mysql is slow on Apple boxes is because Apple boxes suck at thread creation. If mysql forked instead of creating new threads, it would run 'decently'. Problem is forking is an old paradigm, threading is the new paradigm. Apple server will never suceed because its based on a 25 year old operating system(bsd). If apple would have picked BeOs they would have not had this problem since BeOs was built and designed to be highly multithreaded.

Re:free already

[chasingporsches]

no, it wasn't. the developer suite was still costly. i think if you owned mac os x server, then you could run WO apps for free, though.

MOD UP

[SuperKendall]

Drunk or not, very interesting. And I never had a lot of respect for Struts to begin with so it's not hard to imagine.

No need to apologize. Fridays happen!

[jscotta44]

No need for the apology. You were very polite just incorrect! Seriously, I don't think you need a deployment license. The deliverable runs on virtually any J2EE server. That means you don't need a license to run the application you build with it. It seems to me that Apple just greatly increased the value of developing on OS X without much fanfare. The no fanfare part is what worries me. WebObjects is a great development tool for web services. I hope that they are not trying to end-of-life it because I am planning on some of my products being built with it. And, I think it is a huge mistake for them not to trumpet its inclusion in Xcode 2.1 with Tiger. Once your typical LAMP developer gets their hands on it and gets over the learning curve, they love it.

Re:No need to apologize. Fridays happen!

[chochos]

well, "no fanfare" has been part of WebObjects for the last 5 years, right?

I never deployed WO apps on J2EE containers, but I remember reading on the dev lists that it was kind of troublesome because then you had to take care of all the threading stuff (something you don't have to do if you use WOMonitor an a bunch of instances). All that manual locking and unlocking of the editing contexts... does it even scale well with such bottlenecks? besides, I think a WO app on a J2EE container can't even take advantage of container-managed datasources, can it? I stopped using it on 2002/2003 so maybe the newer versions have it now...

Anyway, I hope they open source WebObjects. wotonomy is just not advancing, we don't have the time for it.

Re:What is it?

[bnenning]

because they even migrated the ObjC collection classes (there was no need for this, really, they could have used the Java collection classes)

Possibly, but the WO collection classes do have advantages. For example, you can do 'personArray.valueForKey("name")' which will return an array created by calling the "name" method on every element of personArray. And as of WO 5.3 the collection classes implement the java.util.Collection interfaces, which I agree they should have done from the start.

Parent post is WRONG !

[javaxman]

Sorry about the caps, just doing that to point out the icky use of caps by the incorrect-information-offering parent post. I'm also sorry if I appear combative, but incorrect information in a Slashdot post is almost worse than a troll, really. At least the average reader knows a troll when they see it. You have to look to know the parent is wrong on at least two counts.

Here's the truth: the article should read "Apple gives away $699 software package with every copy of OS X Server!"

You can buy WebObjects from the Apple store just like always, and

Development platforms:
Mac OS X v10.2.2
Windows 2000 Professional SP3

Deployment platforms:
Mac OS X Server v10.2.2
Windows 2000 Server SP3
Solaris 8

just as it's been for some time. The only new thing is that the developer tools are free ( for OS X ) and the entire package is free ( for new OS X Server purchases ). Now it only costs money ( exluding developer time, of course ) to develop and deploy WebObjects if you want to do so entirely on Windows 2000, or if you want to avoid buying an XServe. This is actually a brilliant move by Apple, although it is one likely triggered in part by low sales due to increased competition from J2EE, LAMP, and .Net ( and probably other ) solutions.

Note to parent: do your research before jumping to conclusions and making false claims, it helps prevent you from looking silly. I know. I've learned this the hard way myself...

Like Apache What?

[Vagary]

I could go analyse TFA, but I'd prefer if someone could specify what Apache projects this competes with and explain why anyone would rather use this free-until-deployment solution.

You can still buy WO 5.2...

[javaxman]

I just noticed you can still buy WebObjects 5.2. Is that significant to this discussion?

To me, this looks more like "Apple includes $699 enterprise development product with every XServe"... am I reading this wrong somehow? How is this bad again, I'm confused...

It is true, though, that the Tech Specs on the WebObjects 5.3 page only list OS X Server as the deployment environment, what the heck is up with that?

Is there any official Apple word on what the thinking is here moving forward, how committed they are to the Windows2000 and Solaris versions ( well, I guess since MS isn't supporting Win2k much... hmmm ) ? Not providing WO cross-platform does seem to call into question the purpose of having migrated to Java and having dropped Objective-C. Are they going to bring back WO Objective-C ? What the heck are they doing?

I guess the important question is how long the 5.2 version will be sold and supported, and how compatable 5.3 is with 5.2 and popular .war/mod_webobjects deployment methods. I'm not sure I see how they could easily _stop_ that from working, frankly, short of going back to native code or introducing some forced incompatability. Odd.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[sribe]

If Microsoft decided to drop x86 support and move on to PPC, you can bet they will give away free copies of Visual Studio PPC. With so much at stake and so little time to make the switch, it is vitally important to give developers a test bed. And apple already gives away developer kit for free now, on PPC, following that logic, Apple should pay people to develop for x86.

Are you really that retarded???

1) Apple *is* giving away the developer tools. Right now. XCode 2.1, available right now, for free download to anyone, running on either platform, can create a Universal Binary.

2) If Microsoft were to switch processor architectures, you can bet your life they won't be giving away free developer machines to anyone who asks! There's even a precedent here, when the released NT on MIPS I'm pretty sure they didn't give away free workstations to developers just to be nice.

Re:all i want for christmas is an xcode php debugg

[geoffspear]

Why would Xcode support Linux at all? Or does the L in LAMP stand for something else in your case?

Re:Apple learns fast?

[dtfarmer]

And, it's a $200 mobo in a $100 case with a $60 hard drive and $100 worth of RAM.

Plus a $400 processor. Maybe $30-50 for some kind of optical drive?

Would they take a loss on each machine at $499? Perhaps a little, but it would be small.

small? wtf? Ok, so I go to dell to try and find the cheapest 3.6GHz Pentium 4 machine and I see that dimensions don't support anything near that, so the precision 380 line which starts at $649 has an option for $580 to upgrade to a 3.6GHz processor. That's $1229 for the non-math majors out there. There is no way this apple development machine comes in anywhere near your $499 price point - not with the processor it sports.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

[Warlock7]

RTFA!

There is a reason, I'm sure, however...

[lullabud]

I don't think the reason it's free is because it's crap. I've never programmed with it either, but I read an interview with Jonathan Rentzsch a while back that praised it greatly:

When I picked up WO in 2000, I told pretty much anyone who listened that while WebObjects is the most advanced application server out there, that open source would catch up with it inside five years.

Yet here we are in 2005, and there's still nothing close. Believe me, I've been looking. Read the WebObjects developer mailing list for a recap of the treatment WebObjects developers got at WWDC 2004.

I would love to get off WebObjects and replace it with something open source. It would make web application development pitches easier if I never have to mention the dreaded "A" word. I have clients who will simply shut the door if I mention Apple's name, even today.

So I keep an eye on projects like Hibernate, Cayenne, Tapestry and Ruby on Rails. And yet, each time I start a new project, I do the math and rediscover WebObjects will deliver better software in less time. Lord, I wish it weren't true, but it is.

Re:Hello retard

[Macrat]

Of course not. You have more important things to worry about. Like your parents turning off the power to the basement.

very good news

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope Apple open source WebObjects. Having used both WebObjects, J2EE, PHP and some others I can categorically say that webobjects rules.

For those who wonder why webobjects used to cost 50k it's because WebObjects was basically the first application server - Next pretty much invented the idea. And through 5 generations webobjects has been refined, until now it can do pretty much anything you want with ease. The simplicity of EOF for instance, is wonderful, and nothing compares (except perhaps Hibernate). Those who describe WO sites as being slow just really don't know what they're talking about, or they've been looking at some pretty badly coded sites that I haven't seen. Most of Apples sites run using WebObjects. The BBC news website used to run on webobjects (they used WO to generate static pages which were then cached and served on demand), etc. etc.

The problem in recent history has been that Apple just haven't bothered to promote it much, and all their WebObject developers have been working on internal Apple applications (Like iTunes, .Mac, the Apple Store, Apple developer connection etc. etc.). If they can just bite the bullet and properly open source it everyone wins.

CHP + OSX = killer (with a small "k")

[jpellino]

Seriously - Claris Home Page, Carbonized or Cocoa'd, with some updating changes (for image types, tags, blogging support etc) running on OSX would be very very sweet.

- The templates in .mac and the iApps are over-simple;
- Pages, while wonderful for a lot of things, puts out ransom-note like HTML;
- Mozilla composer (and NVU) are button-mad overkill so far - but show promise.

Apple could own this if they felt like it. They used to. They should again.

Re:Hmmmm

[aristotle-dude]

How about going to Apple.com and click on the Store link?

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore/

Now what does that URL tell you?

Re:Apple learns fast?

[gabebear]

I have to assume this works just like NeXT's fat binaries did - so a developer would have to go explicitly turn off PowerPC code generation and ship an Intel-only binary on-purpose. Just because he's developing/testing on Intel doesn't mean he's not generating PowerPC code as well - NeXT was expert with cross-compiling.

This statement seems to undermine your argument that every developer needs an Intel based Mac... Apple has supposedly made it simple to make FAT binaries with XCode based projects. A lot of apps can't/won't use XCode for various reasons and will likely have problems supporting both architechtures. Letting a lot of low budget programmers have at it with beta development tools sounds like the perfect way to fuck up a smooth transition to FAT binaries.


By WWDC 2006 Steve will be calling the PPC-only developers 'slackers' just like he did to the OS9-only developers.

I think you are VERY wrong here. This isn't like an OS upgrade where existing users are willing to just buy a upgrade. It's unlikely there will be a reverse Rosetta(let X86 apps run on PowerPC) so letting developers make X86-only apps to soon could destroy Apple's existing customer base. Apple must support it's existing PowerPC machines for several more years and that means forcing Mac developers to support them to.


I know Rosetta is supposed to run at 60%, but a 40% speed boost is remarkable for most applications and they're going to sell it.

How many shareware apps need much CPU power? Most that do are using Quicktime which will be running natively. It will probably be a month after the Intel Macs are released before we see most XCode based apps using FAT binaries. Apple has a lot to gain by not letting developers ditch the PowerPC platform to quickly. Anything Apple can do to make this a slow and orderly transition will be a good thing.

Link to the story

[Microsift]

Here's the link to the story you mentioned. This story also includes the infamous washing machine interview.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

The processors aren't cheap, you're right. I was also wrong on my pricing estimates.

So, I can get the motherboard from NewEgg for $120. I'll guess $80 in quantity from Intel if you're their new favorite partner.

I'm also highly skeptical that Apple is buying their processors in retail boxes from NewEgg. We know that Intel grabs massive profit on their fastest chips. Even the 3.2 is about $200. Again, Intel is going to be giving Apple good price breaks on these systems. I'll go out on a limb here and say $180. Running total: $260.

Hard drive: SATA 160 (I don't have a list of devkit specs, guesing) - $80 at NewEgg, Apple pays $60. $320 so far.

A case - Apple is mass producing these cases already: $50. $370 so far.

An optical drive. Let's throw in a dual layer 16x DVD-+RW. $50 at NewEgg, Apple pays $40. $410.

Memory - let's be generous and give them a gig of RAM. $89 at NewEgg. Apple buys so much memory I'm putting it at $70. That may be too much, even. $480.

Video card - I see an OEM Radeon 9600 like in the PowerMac G5 for $55. Apple ships hundreds of thousands of these, $40. $520 total.

An Apple keyboard and mouse will add $10 and the box surely costs five, plus assembly costs. Let's be generous and cost the system out at $600.

We can argue about how much profit Intel is trying to extract from Apple on this project and adjust that number up if you think Intel is charging closer to retail for its CPU's for these developer machines. I don't think they are, it's not really good business sense.

Did I miss any components? So based on that Apple would take a loss of $100 per system to ship these for $499. If everybody at WWDC (~ 3500 people) bought one it would cost Apple $350,000. Imagine how many developers could have one for a million dollars.

Would it be worth a million dollars to Apple to have 10,000 native Intel apps for the product launch? I think so.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You are a fucking troll.

Mommy didn't teach you have to behave in public, did she?

The processor alone costs $400 USD.

I'm fairly confident Apple isn't buying these processors in retail boxes from NewEgg, and I'm willing to bet that Intel is giving them steep discounts on development systems. You may disagree with this assessment but it would be instructive to state your reasoning.

Then add ram, the case, the motherboard, harddrive and optical drive.

I already added up the costs here.

Re:What is it?

[mlilback]

The rewrite in Java had one big goal -- easy transition of your projects. Moving a WO 4.5 Java project to 5.0 was pretty trivial. If they had switched to collections instead of NSArray, etc. then it would have taken more work. Also, the order of parameters differs (NSArray.setValueForKey(value, key), Vector.put(key, value)) which would have been a nightmare.

Java was the "hot" language at the time and WO already worked with it. The switch worked nicely, except Apple never marketed it. Now they have finally accepted they are never going to market it, so they make it free.

And they have killed deployment on non OS-X platforms. Sure, you can do it. But they won't officially support it. That kills my ability to sell WO as a solution to enterprise customers. We have loads of Solaris and Linux boxes that we are not going to replace, and big business won't go with an unsupported deployment solution.

I've used WO for 7 years and it is now largely dead for me. I'm likely going to give up web development, because no other system even comes close. I have no desire to work with jsp, struts, or php again.

Re:What is it?

[chochos]

I dumped WebObjects when I left a company I was working at, which used WO but was switching to .NET because MS somehow convinced all the PHB's that it was better than java, etc etc. Now I use a combination of frameworks that I have found to be similar or even superior to WebObjects: Tapestry for the web (instead of struts, jsp or any other crap) works in an almost identical way to WebObjects (I think the author used to work with WO but I'm not sure); Hibernate (instead of EOF; I know it has its shortcomings but it does the job); and Spring. This last one doesn't even have an equivalent on WebObjects, but it's really powerful and nice to work with. If you don't like Hibernate you can try Cayenne, it's inspired by EOF and it even comes with an application that resembles EOModeler. If you want to try J2EE web development, you definitely have to check out Tapestry and Hibernate or Cayenne, and Spring. Then later if Apple decides to open source WebObjects, we'll see if we keep using it, right? Oh and I almost forget wotonomy (shame on me, I even contributed a lot of code into that project - lots of web and EOAdaptor stuff that still doesn't work).

ASP.NET Better

[Anamanaman]

I've been a big WebObjects proponent until recently switching to ASP.NET. While it sucks to have to work on Windows, the overall architecture is fairly similar between the 2. I miss direct2web, it was cool but I never really used it that much. The dev tools (VS.NET 2003) beats the hell out of WOBuilder and Project Builder. Creating new projects, debugging, and deployment are significantly more efficient.

Another big thing is the Component model on ASP.NET really makes buying and integrating reusable components amazingly easy. I've saved hundreds of hours just buying and reusing components (such as www.freetextbox.com) instead of developing them. Just check out www.asp.net for the huge library of quality controls that you can add into your web application. Also, there are some great 3rd party data abstraction layers that are even better than EOF. And the upcoming .NET 2.0 Object Spaces looks promising.

So yeah, WebObjects is great but it has stagnated for the last 5 years. While its fun to talk about and reminisce over, anyone basing their future career off webobjects really needs to re-examine whether they are doing it using reason, or if they are doing it because of some sort of blind geek faith.

In short, ASP.NET has a visible future. WebObjects is almost universally recognized as dead, except for internal use at apple.

Re:ASP.NET Better

[The OPTiCIAN]

> WebObjects is almost universally recognized as
> dead, except for internal use at apple.

It's thin client software. So it just doesn't matter what you use on the server. It's your choice. I haven't used anything .NET, but I used to be an .asp programmer (oh the shame!), and I hear C# is just a lot like java, and I use WO. I don't find your arument compelling - for me WO is still very relevant and will be for a long time come. It's still the best tool out there, and your customers don't care what you use as long as your system delivers content that works in their web browser. Cayenne looks like it will be as good as EOF, but it's still not mature. I haven't seen anything else that comes close, and you don't give any examples, but want to put faith in a product coming soon from Microsoft. Well - um - ... I don't trust products before they're out, and Microsoft doesn't have a very good reputation for delivering on promises of what will be in future releases of software atm.

This "almost universally recognised" (whatever that means) is a perhaps somewhat more than an altogether generous bit controversial. ;) But if ASP works for you better than WebObjects used to, that's cool as well. I agree that most of the tools suck, but you don't have to use them. Most stuff can be done in a text editor, and replacements for the rest can be built.

Re:ASP.NET Better

[DuEyNZ]

You should go to jail.

Me, too!

[jscotta44]

I too hope that they open source it. But if they do, will anyone work on it? If you are having problems getting Wotonomy staffed with volunteers, how well will WO fare? I don't know the answers about deploying on a J2EE container. Maybe someone here will step in and let us know. And, your first comment about WO not getting any fanfare for the last five years is spot on. Too, bad, too.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[Wesley Felter]

I have to assume this works just like NeXT's fat binaries did - so a developer would have to go explicitly turn off PowerPC code generation and ship an Intel-only binary on-purpose. Just because he's developing/testing on Intel doesn't mean he's not generating PowerPC code as well

Yeah, but untested PPC binaries probably won't work. So an Intel-only developer would (foolishly) ship fat binaries, users would say "this doesn't work on PPC", and the developer would say "sorry, works on my machine". This is not a good situation, and Apple should not encourage it.

So then it's $499 to deploy WebObjects now?

[javaxman]

*AND* you get a copy of OS X Server as well?!?

Now I'm *really* wondering why you can still buy copies of WO 5.2. Maybe some people just don't want OS X but do want WO? That'd be weird. I can see not wanting to deploy the server on OS X, but not wanting a Mac... I guess... it does happen...

Still, the price just went down.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[nate nice]

"...for ridiculously expensive prices..."

It's not really intended for people like you. This is what they call a "pro-tool". These are the things the pros use and something like $999.99 is actually really cheap. Hell, VS.NET costs over $1500.00 for a professional developer. Of course that's worth it though as it provides you with state of the art tools and systems for developing software quickly and correctly (no guarantees of course). Same thing with Apple's new dev box. You get a system and the environment for mearly $1000.00. That's really cheap, honestly. Especially when you consider you can get a year on the competition. Of course the competition bought the system too so now you have to etc...

In conclusion, you pay a lot of money for these tools because you're going to make a lot of money with these tools.

Parent post is RIGHT

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to parent: do your research before jumping to conclusions and making false claims, it helps prevent you from looking silly. I know. I've learned this the hard way myself...

You're about to learn it again. While there is no statement from an Apple employee or press release concerning this, Apple was very clear at WWDC: WebObjects is a Mac OS X-only technology as of 5.3. As you point out, 5.2 is still for sale, for now.

This is being discussed by other WWDC attendees on the WebObjects deployment mailing list:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-deploy/ 2005/Jun/msg00004.html
http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-deploy/ 2005/Jun/msg00001.html
http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-deploy/ 2005/Jun/msg00005.html

Now it's true that 5.3 can still technically be deployed on other platforms. You can still create a .war file. But it isn't just that Apple isn't supporting that. They haven't licensed it, and have stated that 5.2 licenses don't cover 5.3 deployments. So the only legal way to deploy WO as of 5.3 is on Mac OS X server.

I realize I'm just a lowly "Anonymous Coward," but I don't trade in rumors or misinformation, if I can help it. My original grandparent post was correct, and parent is incorrect. Moderators, please mod parent down and consider modding up the original grandparent. This is a VERY IMPORTANT issue for all WebObjects developers and they should be aware of it.

iTunes got nothing - BBC has way more traffic

[inof8r]

The BBC website is all webobjects

WebObjects Development and Deployment are free!

[MrHatken]

The WebObjects license with the Xcode development tools is unlimited requests, load-balanced, and multi-threaded. It is a development and deployment license.

The license says you may copy it but it does not explicitly state that it can be used on other platforms. Apparently Apple is going to clear this up (in the affirmative).

There are, however, no longer any Windows development tools (notably EOModeller and WOBuilder) and deployment on other platforms is NOT supported (ie bugs may not be finished).

It is pure Java but, of couse, we all know what write-once-run-anywhere really means.

Cheers,
Ashley.

Developers, developers, developers, developers.

[Tetravus]

Why are there more free applications for Windows than OS X? Why are there more servers that run god awful IIS than OS X?
Developers create the killer apps that drive OS sales. It's great to see that Apple is working to actively court developers as this investment (which costs them little) may yield an increase in demand for both their hardware and software as more and more applications become available.
The parent post's mention of Dell's switch to .NET highlights my point. They needed more developers, were even paying them pretty well I bet, but couldn't get the volume up without moving to an MS product.
This is an intelligent move by Apple and I wish them success with it.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[dysprosia]

If you read my comment closely, viz.,

When NeXT was selling NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, excellent software, for ridiculously expensive prices,

I wasn't talking about OS X nor the developer kit at this point. The main point of the comment, which everybody has seemed to miss, is the inquiry that Apple may be changing the high-pricing attitude that was present at NeXT.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[PierceLabs]

I'm sure Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo "make money" on their devkits as well if you look at the dollar value of the components on the inside of it :)

Took awhile..

[DuEyNZ]

You know, Xcode 2.1 has been out for about 2 weeks now, and people are only just starting to talk about WebObjects being free, and thats probably only because it got slashdot'd. I guess that shows how everyone cares.

Re:all i want for christmas is an xcode php debugg

[the_2nd_coming]

no its not.

It's almost always been free....

[mkiwi]

Apple has made Web Objects available to ADC members (Developer connection) for some time now, and that was a free download.

Re:It's almost always been free....

[macopia]

That was a free 30-day trial.

Re:free as in ???

[Blondie-Wan]

Additionally, as the previous poster mentioned, there's a whole free album sampler; as a matter of fact, there have been at least two: this one, and a similar, previous "Universal Motown Edition" one that no longer seems to be available.

I think they're mainly intended for new iPod owners; the first time one goes to the iTMS after connecting a new iPod, there's a button on the main page with a blurb about free music for your new iPod, or some such thing. I actually ignored it when I got my iPod, thinking it was just a blurb about the regular free weekly stuff, but apparently it's a link to one of these samplers. The samplers don't seem to be accessible from directly within the iTMS any other way (they don't show up in search results, for example), but they can be linked to from outside the iTMS, as I've done here; that's how I found out about them after initially failing to check out that button when I got my iPod.

A number of the songs in the samplers are some of the same ones they've offered as the free Singles of the Week, Discovery Downloads, etc., but most of them aren't.

Developer's kit is available for free

[werdna]

for a web signup and free developer's membership at Apple.

Re:Apple learns fast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'm sure Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo "make money" on their devkits as well if you look at the dollar value of the components on the inside of it :)

And the number of share/freeware developers for the XBox and PlayStation are in the single digits, maybe only 1.

This isn't a problem for big corporate developers.