Native Windows PE File Loading on OS X?

ozmanjusri writes "Coders working on Wine for Mac have found that the Mac loader has gained its own undocumented ability to load and understand Windows Portable Executable (PE) files. They found PE loading capabilities in Leopard that weren't there in Tiger. Further dissection showed that Apple is masking references to 'Win' and 'PE' in the dll, which means it's not an accidental inclusion. Is Apple planning native PE execution within OS X?"

Comments

noooo FP

[Anonymous Coward]

please not - i don't need every windows malware able to run on my mac...

Re:noooo FP

[Alan Partridge]

Yes please - we only keep Windows machines around for a couple of vital apps - we'd love to dump the crappy, unreliable hulks.

Re:noooo FP

[tacocat]

Exactly what I was thinking!!!

I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would do anything to allow the worlds most insecure operating system to gain access of any kind to their hardware. Might as well pin a hundred dollar bill to your ass and yell, "Victim Here!"

Re:noooo FP

[onefriedrice]

> please not - i don't need every windows malware able to run on my mac...

Except windows malware is just that: malware written for Windows. While it could potentially run, malware wouldn't automatically become a problem. You'd have a much easier time accidently running OS X malware than Windows malware. Think of it as WINE for OS X (which is apparently exactly what it is or will be except Jaguar can load the binaries itself). People running Windows binaries via WINE on Linux don't experience the same problems with malware because the expected security flaws in the underlying OS and/or applications aren't there.

In short, if Apple plans to implement a built-in WINE-like ability to run some Windows binaries in OS X, there is no reason to suspect it will cause a breeding ground for Windows malware. Malware only has the opportunity to run if it can somehow get installed.

Re:noooo FP

[devjj]

I'm an Apple fan, and I also happen to be a software developer. I use Linux regularly, an have built many PCs by hand.

Save the stereotypes for Digg, please.

Re:noooo FP

[Ahruman]

Jaguar? You expect this to be backported to 10.2?

Re:noooo FP

[frup]

The trouble is they have NIH and so won't just work with the wine project.

Re:noooo FP

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The trouble is they have NIH and so won't just work with the wine project.

Apple? NIH?!? Umm, the BSD subsystem, Webkit from KDE, OpenStep from Next, BeOS bits recreated, MAC from TrustedBSD, PDF as the basis for their display from Adobe, dtrace from Solaris, Apache, CalDav from Oracle... I could go on.

Apple might avoid the WINE codebase, but only because they have rights to much of an older version of the Windows API directly from having won a lawsuit against MS quite a while ago when MS stole their code. I don't think Apple would otherwise have a problem supporting WINE and I would not be surprised if Apple employees have submitted code to WINE or one of the offshoot projects. I think, however, they're probably content with the current ease of running Windows apps, inconvenient enough that not many mainstream developers can ignore OS X, but easy enough so that businesses are not put off and people are not afraid of trying OS X as their primary OS. I would not be surprised, actually, if this feature was added at the request of Parallels, whose latest RC supports making Windows apps the default for opening filetypes in OS X (which will launch the VM and open the file in the specified application.

Re:noooo FP

[onefriedrice]

> Jaguar? You expect this to be backported to 10.2?

You got me. Jaguar is 10.2 and of course I meant the latest cat, whatever it is.

Thanks.

Re:noooo FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy! I can see it now:

Mac OSX 10.8 British Longhair

Now with Windows 1.0 executable loading support! Finally, you can run reversi natively on Mac OSX! That's right, REVERSI!

Re:noooo FP

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Mac OSX 10.8 British Longhair Now with Windows 1.0 executable loading support!

Well, Apple has had an internal Windows compatibility project for many years, they even considered including it in Copeland. They have license to the APIs right up through the release of WinXP SP1, which is good enough for 95% of software on the market today, although that number will go down as more users target Vista's APIs. I doubt they will go that route though.

Re:noooo FP

[ozmanjusri]

Apple might avoid the WINE codebase, but only because they have rights to much of an older version of the Windows API directly from having won a lawsuit against MS quite a while ago when MS stole their code.

Apple might even license Win32 code from Microsoft.

There's writing on a lot of walls for Microsoft.
The EU legal settlement will eventually, despite the bitter fighting, force them to open their APIs to anyone.
They're facing an onslaught of low-end Linux machines like Asus Eee PC and the Walmart $199 box. So far, their response has been to lower the price of Windows below $40 for Eee PC owners. That's going to be hard to sustain when other buyers balk at paying three times Asus' price.
Vista won't drive any new sales, and looks losing anyone who was waiting for a sign from above.
Essentially, all MS has left to sell on the OS front is compatibility with the enormous back-catalogue of Windows applications.

Being able to sell Win32/FX as an API pack to other OS vendors might be a way out for MS. The future of computing looks like hypervisors and VMs anyway. Most tech savvy people already run Windows in a VM on their preferred OS (or vice versa) already.

Selling a portable API would just be going with the flow.

Re:noooo FP

[dotancohen]

If Apple is using the Windows codebase, then the flaw _are_still_there_. Thus the malware will run. Additionally, not all malware exploits flaws. May of these flaws were intentional design decisions (windows messenger, anyone?) that were changed in service packs. Thus, if Apple were using the Windows codebase this would be even less secure than Windows, as Windows has been (partially) patched since. Unless Apple is writing their own patches (unlikely), or using wine (less unlikely), or writing their own interpreter (unlikely).

Re:noooo FP

[noewun]

Webkit from KDE

Webkit isn't "from KDE". Apple started with KHTML and went from there, but saying "WebKit from KDE" sounds like they just copied it, which isn't at all true.

PDF as the basis for their display from Adob

Quartz and its related technologies aren't based on PDF: they're original Apple technologies from the ground up. Some of Quartz correlates pretty closely to PDF, but they are not at all the same tech.

Just being pedantic. . .

Re:noooo FP

[BasilBrush]

"From KDE" as in branched off KHTML. It certainly started as a straight copy.

PDF is a format not a technology. The technology that Adobe has is called Acrobat, and Apple's is Quartz 2D. But they are most certainly both using PDF.

(I'm not even being pedantic, just correct.)

Re:noooo FP

[CarpetShark]

People running Windows binaries via WINE on Linux don't experience the same problems with malware because the expected security flaws in the underlying OS and/or applications aren't there.

I wouldn't go that far. Windows security is flawed by design, as well as by implementation. Recreating that security model on another OS means you're letting the same things run there. For example, it's very easy to get IE infected in just the same way as on Windows. The only benefit WINE has over windows on that is that you can more easily delete your wine files and start again, or you can virtualise it somehow. But then you might as well run an actual VM.

Re:noooo FP

[Klanglor]

or maybe they are trying to get a piece of the mobile app business against Motorola.

think.. symbol.. corporate biz app..

Re:noooo FP

[Wiseman1024]

Certainly, you already have enough malware coming from Apple itself. Who needs even more digital restrictions management and buggy software?

Re:noooo FP

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Webkit isn't "from KDE". Apple started with KHTML and went from there, but saying "WebKit from KDE" sounds like they just copied it, which isn't at all true.

Umm, KHTML was written by the Konquerer team for use in Konquerer and other parts of KDE. Apple branched that codebase and started adding to it. They certainly did not invent the codebase, thus this contradicts the claim that Apple has NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome.

Quartz and its related technologies aren't based on PDF: they're original Apple technologies from the ground up.

If they were "from the ground up" Apple would have invented their own vector display format and standard, instead they adopted a published standard invented by Adobe. They may have written all the code themselves, but they were re-implementing the display technology someone else had already invented. This is, in my opinion, a very good thing and it certainly contradicts the claim that Apple won't adopt anything they did not invent.

Just being pedantic. . .

If you want to be pedantic you should have called out the "BeOS bits recreated" comment, since that was the largest oversimplification. Apple did not actually reimplement parts of BeOS as recreate some of the same functionality of their filesystem and OS interaction in completely different ways.

Re:noooo FP

[couchslug]

To heck with the malware, does this mean that executables which run in a PE environment (like that ofthe WinPE CDs..) will run with little work?

Re:noooo FP

[Anonymous Coward]

No, most tech savvy people do not run windows in VM, they dual boot. Most VM's do not offer perfect hardware passthrough for audio and video hardware. There are a lot of good games on windows, and even with the good work being done by cedega and others, you still can't expect 100% compatibility and 100% frame rate.

So, no, I know of very few people in my tech savvy circles who consider a VM Windows an acceptable replacement for dual booting.

Re:noooo FP

[Wiseman1024]

Oops, I forgot I was in Slashdot; you can post the truth except when it may hurt poor Apple fanboys. After the thousands they spent on their BSD-powered PC (but hey, a very stylish one, mind you), they can't bear to be reminded that Apple is no better than Microsoft when it comes to their rights (in fact, last time I checked Apple had invested even more money on digital restrictions malware technologies than Microsoft).

Re:noooo FP

[mr_mischief]

Being able to run some Windows executables doesn't necessarily mean running things with deep hooks into the OS like IE nor does it necessarily mean running them under the same security model as any particular version of Windows.

It could just mean they'd run a good portion of the the better-behaved applications. Hell, it's even possible if one wanted to do so in a ground-up rewrite, to make the Windows registry routines read and write to completely private registry files for each application. Enforcing OS X's memory and file protections goes a long way, and the applications only know whether they successfully got read or write access to something. The application doesn't generally know or care why permissions are granted or withheld, so a completely different security model could be enforced around most applications that use only the published Windows APIs.

Re:noooo FP

[CarpetShark]

I'm not talking about deep hooks into the OS; I'm talking about the app itself being a mini OS. Sure, you can partition that app from the rest of the system, but if that app can run arbitrary applets, contact any machine over the net, and is used for stuff like e-commerce, then you're pretty much screwed unless you as a user know what you're doing. Even then, it can be tricky.

Re:noooo FP

[mr_mischief]

You make a good point. That's how it is with today's browsers, though, no matter the OS or the browser. They do much more than the browser was originally intended to do. OS X should at least, like any modern Unix, keep any damage within the account of the browser's current user and not allow it to damage the system as a whole. Of course, that's little comfort to someone who got their identity stolen due to some malicious web site owning the running copy of the browser.

IE's one of the last things I'd expect to see supported by something like this, though. With Safari, Firefox, and all the other browsers for Mac I don't see IE as particularly needed anyway. I know I barely use it on Windows, and then only to test sites I've done to make sure they look sane on it. All my browsing of unknown sites is on Firefox or Opera.

Re:noooo FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple? NIH?!? Umm, the BSD subsystem, Webkit from KDE, OpenStep from Next, BeOS bits recreated, MAC from TrustedBSD, PDF as the basis for their display from Adobe, dtrace from Solaris, Apache, CalDav from Oracle... I could go on.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH

This always annoys me, lets put it down once and for all: THE GUI IN OSX IS NOT, NO WAY, NO HOW, PDF. There that's better, and on to the science stuff.

The display is actually a custom drawing bytecode based on bezier curves, and composited bitmaps, there is no PDF used anywhere. While it it possible to export some of the display as PDF this is done via a bytecode->PDF convertor.

To quote from wikipedia:

It is widely stated that Quartz "uses PDF" internally, often by people making comparisons with the Display PostScript technology used in NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. Quartz's internal imaging model correlates well with the PDF imaging model, making it easy to output PDF to multiple devices, but Quartz does not use PDF as an internal representation.[6]

Not for Win32 compatibility

[SigILL]

I don't think this is intended for Win32 compatibility. Apple has every reason not to do that, because it will mean there will be no more native versions of high-profile applications such as Photoshop. Adobe is probably already pissed off there won't be a 64-bit version of Carbon, which requires them to rewrite the entire UI of Photoshop in Cocoa to be able to release a 64-bit version of it. Giving them an easy way out by offering Win32 binary-level compatibility isn't in Apple's best interest there.

However, consider that the PE file format is also used by Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR/.NET). Therefore, I think this is a preparatory move to start offering a native implementation of the .NET platform for OS X.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[smaddox]

Couldn't they just run the UI as 32bit and the actual algorithms as separate 64 bit processes?

May take some engineering, but it seems like it could be possible.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[cnettel]

UI includes showing the actual images. Sending them over IPC is certainly not wise from a performance standpoint.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...one of Apple's biggest selling points for the Mac if you go into any store that sells one is that it can "still run all of your Windows stuff." They've changed architectures over to Intel-based PC's.

You have any special insight that would suggest why they _wouldn't_ want to be as compatible with Windows as possible, being that they're trying hard to convince people to switch? Why they wouldn't want a PC that can already run all of the Windows software on the shelves, without the painful experience of having to use Vista (which they reference more and more often in their commercials)? I think not.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

UIs are full of repetitive images. Send the most common ones over IPC once and have the UI cache them for great justice for glorious nation Kazahkstan.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[SigILL]

You have any special insight that would suggest why they _wouldn't_ want to be as compatible with Windows as possible, being that they're trying hard to convince people to switch?

Because if they did, customers could choose between machines that sorta run Windows applications (Macs) or machines that run Windows applications properly (PCs). As Wine proves, any reimplementation of the Win32 API is inevitably not going to be as good as the real thing.

Providing compatibility with Windows through VMWare or Parallels is a lot better in that respect. And if a virtual machine should fail, so what? It would only make Microsoft or the virtual machine maker look bad, not Apple.

Besides, as I said in my original post: I think the moment Apple starts offering integrated Win32 binary-level compatibility is the moment software vendors stop offering Mac-native applications. And that's the point where Apple might as well start bundling the current version of Windows with their systems.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, most X servers running on Linux, Solaris, *BSD and a host of other modern UNIX systems make liberal use of IPC, in the form of the MIT-SHM shared memory extension:

The basic capability provided is that of shared memory XImages. This is essentially a version of the ximage interface where the actual image data is stored in a shared memory segment, and thus need not be moved through the Xlib interprocess communication channel. For large images, use of this facility can result in some real performance increases.

Additionally, some implementations provide shared memory pixmaps. These are 2 dimensional arrays of pixels in a format specified by the X server, where the image data is stored in the shared memory segment. Through use of shared memory pixmaps, it is possible to change the contents of these pixmaps without using any Xlib routines at all.

This extension goes back nearly two decades. Yes, 20 years! Lower-end computers 20 years ago were able to use UNIX IPC, for high-performance graphics, in a very usable manner. There's no reason why a computer from today, especially a high-end Mac, couldn't effectively use shared memory in such a fashion. This is especially true on Mac OS X, which does offer the UNIX-like functionality that is required. Combined with the brilliant minds at Adobe (they hire a large number of the top Indian graduates each year), there's no reason why they couldn't get Photoshop working using such technology.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, he means the image you're editing/viewing in your PhotoShop window. The overhead of passing "control" messages from a UI widget to a process are trivial. The overhead of passing large (uncachable) image data structures between processes isn't.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcr]

I think this is a preparatory move to start offering a native implementation of the .NET platform for OS X.

Not likely. Apple's not about to sign up to support a Microsoft API on OS X. They very explicitly state that you're on your own if you run Windows with boot camp, for example. They don't supply a WMA plug-in for Quicktime (leaving that up to a third party), and they know better than to try going down that rathole.

I think that recognizing PE files is all about EFI, and nothing more.

-jcr

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Marcos Eliziario]

"As Wine proves, any reimplementation of the Win32 API is inevitably not going to be as good as the real thing."

Yeah, most of my pet spywares fail to run correctly under wine.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcr]

one of Apple's biggest selling points for the Mac if you go into any store that sells one is that it can "still run all of your Windows stuff."

No. The big selling points are what you can do with the Mac OS. Boot camp is more in the vein of removing a common barrier to a sale.

-jcr

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[SigILL]

Not likely. Apple's not about to sign up to support a Microsoft API on OS X.

You realise it's an open standard, do you? Hell, it's even ISO approved.

Apple would gain a _lot_ by providing support for .NET, without losing much.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[samkass]

PE is also the format for EFI, which Apple uses. It could be a step towards a more powerful boot loader.

This is all just wild speculation. I'd personally love it if Apple replaced its aging Cocoa/Objective-C/XCode infrastructure with something more modern like .NET or Java, but I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind telling me what the difference is between a selling point and removing a barrier to sale, exactly? Both are serving the exact same purpose, informing the customer in such a way as to influence their purchasing. There is no fundamental difference between the two. I guess you agree with me whether you intended to or not...either that or you're a Mac fan who is insulted by the possibility that Windows compatibility might be important to people in buying an iMac over a Dell. I don't personally care which.

The point still stands. Apple have made their _own_ Mac. vs PC ads espousing the fact that people can still run their Windows software if need be. It IS a selling point for Apple whether you choose to dress it up in fancy language or not ("removing a barrier?" You make it sound as if they're doing people a public service rather than just addressing the market needs...which, whether you accept it or not, include the need to run Windows software on Mac hardware).

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, except that it doesn't have to be process->process. Any 32-bit process can map a 64-bit address-space via a mach port. The memory-access performance is pretty darn good. Not *quite* as good as a true 64-bit app, but not at all noticeable.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[batkiwi]

.Net capability (and focus) could also explain the lack of Java updates.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Shabadage]

Yeah, you can; if you install windows on the Mac. We're talking OSX here. Apples and Oranges.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[abigor]

I'd personally love it if Apple replaced its aging Cocoa/Objective-C/XCode infrastructure with something more modern like .NET or Java, but I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Well, Apple has cut loose the Java bindings to Cocoa, so I guess you're right.

I've only dabbled with Cocoa in order to learn Objective-C, but the whole thing seems super elegant, and Objective-C itself is SO much nicer to work with than Java - it's like C combined with Python (very dynamic). The class hierarchy is clean and not particularly deep. I don't know, I personally think moving to, say, Java for infrastructure would be a step backwards (and I say this as someone whose current contracts are all big Java projects). But that's just my opinion.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[sjf]

If I had mod points, you'd get them. This is a good point. There are a lot of .NET programmers out there, and anything to encourage coding for a platform has to be a good thing.

On the otherhand, I doubt this is the full story. I'd bet on "you can run your windows apps without running windows" before I'd bet on, ".NET programmers wanted, no Mac experience necessary."

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcr]

Mind telling me what the difference is between a selling point and removing a barrier to sale, exactly?

A selling point is a reason why a product is superior to another product. A barrier to sale is a reason why a customer might be bound to stay with a different product.

You don't buy a Mac because it can run a windows app, since the cheap shit from Dell will do that, too. You buy the Mac for the things that it offers over and above what the Dell box can do.

-jcr

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Space cowboy]

I'd personally hate it if they gave up the beautiful elegance that is ObjC and forced Apple developers to move to Java or .NET.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again now: Objective C is exactly at the sweet spot for a computer language - it has all the power of C (it's a formal superset), the nice features of a true object-orientated language (OOP, garbage collection, protocols, etc.), adds in dynamic dispatch (thus removing the need for generics), and does it all by adding about a dozen commands to the C language. The only thing against it is the unfamiliar (to C/C++ programmers) syntax. Really, though, how hard is it to make the mental leap to [myObject insertObject:xxx atPosition:yyy] from myObject->insertObjectAtPosition(xxx,yyy) ? And which is the more readable ?

Plus, the class library is *very* well designed. It makes easy things easy, and hard things possible. A lot of hard things are pretty easy too... There's a site that often compares .NET and ObjC/Cocoa. It frequently (despite the obvious potential bias given the name of the site) argues that the ObjC method for doing something is better thought out, more elegant, or simply more capable than the corresponding .NET approach.

Objective C is a classic example of how a simple clear approach can reap huge rewards in terms of usability and flexibility. It's not the over-designed bloat-fest that is C++ (template metaprogramming ? Really ?), and it's not the raw pedal-to-the-metal-hear-the-engine-scream-in-protest of plain old C. I've never yet met anyone give it a fair try (ie: write a real program in it) and not end up loving the language.

Simon

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcr]

You realise it's an open standard, do you?

So what?

Apple would gain a _lot_ by providing support for .NET, without losing much.

Can you quantify this supposed gain? Do you have any idea of what the costs of support it would be?

Didn't think so.

-jcr

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[SigILL]

Can you quantify this supposed gain?

Sure I can... a little.

Right now, the world's colleges and universities are churning out Java & C# programmers. Those are the popular languages, the ones for which you can almost literally open up a can of programmers for.

Not so with Objective C. It's even starting to get problematic to find competent C++ programmers.

Microsoft's seen the proverbial storm coming, and has been working on an alternative for their aging and clunky Win32 API. Remember a few years back, when the Redmontians announced that Vista (then called Longhorn) would only support .NET programs natively? Back then the world evidently wasn't ready for it. But it's slowly becoming ready, because it's getting harder and harder to find competent C++ programmers.

Meanwhile, Apple is tied to Objective C. A language few people are willing to learn (remember "Objectionable C"?). For very valid technical reasons, Apple is slowly moving its developer base over from C/C++-written Carbon apps to Cocoa apps written in Objective C. However, this makes it even harder for software vendors to find competent developers for their Mac OS X offerings.

So, enter .NET. It's reasonably fast (getting faster), it has plenty of mindshare, and most importantly: there isn't much in the way of a legacy code base for it. Supporting .NET doesn't mean hurting your own APIs, its simply an additional one.

Is that enough of a quantification for you?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[turgid]

So why to the EULA's of MS's own apps forbid you from running them on non-MS operating systems?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[iJed]

However, consider that the PE file format is also used by Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR/.NET). Therefore, I think this is a preparatory move to start offering a native implementation of the .NET platform for OS X.

I was just about to post this myself... It makes a lot of sense for Apple to support .NET on Mac OS X. For a start C# is now the flagship language for Windows development and not supporting it may be the difference between getting hundreds of ported apps and not getting them at all. As a Mac user and .NET developer I think it would be a big mistake for Apple to ignore .NET.

I wonder if this is how the sandboxed iPhone SDK, which is to be available in February, will be implemented

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[setagllib]

With SystemV shared memory (shmem) it's trivial, and that's a decades-old feature of Real Unixes. What, doesn't OSX support it?

Even so, of course Photoshop should be rewritten for the new framework. After all, when a proprietary technology corporation decides to screw over their third-party developers and customers, isn't it the American Way to bear all the costs and keep paying them money?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Glasswire]

Frankly the LAST application that would still be Mac native, if OS/X could run Win32 apps would be Photoshop. You want a big application like that to be native.
I think you're right about the intention of PE format giving .NET support though.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[duffbeer703]

Remember that Mac is a hardware company. The ultimate goal of Apple is to sell hardware -- who gives a shit what you do with it. If anything, a customer using a Mac as an overpriced PC is a better customer that isn't going to need support for OSX, patches etc.

Boot Camp/VMWare/etc helps to sell computers, so to Apple its a good thing.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Semi; PE isn't really used for .net. What you really get is a PE "header" or standard launch code followed by the .net assembly in its own format itself (sort of as a tacked on resource from the PE point of view). A bit like how Windows programs start with an MS-DOS program (which, when run in DOS, says that it can only run under Windows).

But it does make sense that this is really a CLR loader rather than a generic PE loader. There's absoultely no need to execute the PE header at the beginning of a CLR assembly if your loader can recognise that it's a CLR assembly - and, certainly, if you're using Mono on a non-x86, rather difficult.

(The PE header is just a windows program that invokes mscoree.dll (I think) and passes it the path to this program as an argument; allowes .net exes to run on windows versions that don't natively recognise .Net assemblies.)

Now, I wonder, if Apple do implement .Net, does this mean they'll implement the Windows.Forms namespace?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[duffbeer703]

You're spot on.

Apple doesn't have a mature enough sales force or market stability to aim at the enterprise markets that .Net is thriving in. I know of large Mac shops that are totally screwed right now because key features (like directory integration) that they absolutely need simply don't work in Leopard at the moment. Apple was kind enough to ship hundreds of Leopard only computers that will be useless for months.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcr]

Is that enough of a quantification for you?

Nope. Do you even know what "quantification" means?

-jcr

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[EveLibertine]

bullhonky. Apple _was_ a hardware company. Since they started selling x86 pc's, the only way to distinguish them from any other pc out there is with their software. They are a software company when it comes down to it.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Ahruman]

Dunno, but it does support Mach ports, which support transferring pages between processes without copying and would be a sensible way to implement this sort of thing. However, moving all the back-end work of an existing app with plug-ins that require UI would be at least as big a change as switching to Cocoa. They could have done it for 10.4, but didn't. I doubt they'll do it now either.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[niteice]

"Mac"? What company is this "Mac"?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[BorgCopyeditor]

Do you even know what "quantification" means?

"churning out" "popular" "a can of" "a few years back" "a language few people are willing to learn" "slowly" "makes it even harder" "reasonably fast (getting faster)" "plenty of mindshare" "most importantly" "isn't much" "simply an additional one"

You do realize those are all quantitative expressions, right?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[SigILL]

Nope. Do you even know what "quantification" means?

Not right now, no. But it's half past twelve here. In the morning. And I'm writing posts in a language that's not my mother tongue. I'm actually amazed my posts are halfway coherent and readable.

But to get back on the subject, you probably want to see hard numbers regarding this. Well, there aren't any. Developing a platform has always and will always depend on guesses. That's because we're dealing with people here, who have those nasty undefinable things called "preferences". We can only guess what's going to work out, and what isn't.

And right now, .NET looks like a pretty good bet.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

Keep dreaming buddy. Mac OS X already has support for Java, Python, Ruby and many others. They don't need .NET, not even a little bit. No one really needs it. The only reason to use Java or .NET is to chase the pipe dream of write once, run everywhere. We've been down this road and right now the only thing that comes close is the web browser. If you want rapid development while supporting diverse environments and platforms, you build a web app.

Besides The worlds colleges are churning out neither Java nor C# programmers, they are simply churning out programmers. Most of which can learn a new language in no time. Objective-C would take a Java or C# developer a week to learn, a month to master. And, honestly, after using both Java and Objective-C, it's clear that Objective-C is object oriented programming done right. The only thing Java or C# really have going for them is mindshare in management.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that shared memory, it's such a dog.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Durandal64]

Right now, the world's colleges and universities are churning out Java & C# programmers. Those are the popular languages, the ones for which you can almost literally open up a can of programmers for.

Having the "dime a dozen" crowd develop for your platform isn't without its drawbacks. I hear a lot of comments from Windows converts saying that the Mac indy developer scene is smaller than Windows, but the software is almost always of much higher quality and polish. When you make it easy to develop for your platform, you attract lots of developers (good), but the signal-to-noise ratio drops significantly (bad).

Microsoft's seen the proverbial storm coming, and has been working on an alternative for their aging and clunky Win32 API. Remember a few years back, when the Redmontians announced that Vista (then called Longhorn) would only support .NET programs natively? Back then the world evidently wasn't ready for it. But it's slowly becoming ready, because it's getting harder and harder to find competent C++ programmers.

Based on what I've heard from Windows developers, Microsoft needed a good Win32 replacement because Win32 sucked. I've seen some Win32 code; it's not pretty, and the way the UI code connects to what's happening on the screen is a complete mystery to me. When I learned Cocoa and Objective-C, the connections were intuitive and obvious.

Meanwhile, Apple is tied to Objective C. A language few people are willing to learn (remember "Objectionable C"?).

I'm sure that'll change in February of 2008. Then lots of people will probably be interested in learning Objective-C.

So, enter .NET. It's reasonably fast (getting faster), it has plenty of mindshare, and most importantly: there isn't much in the way of a legacy code base for it. Supporting .NET doesn't mean hurting your own APIs, its simply an additional one.

Apple tried that kind of thing before with the Java/Cocoa bridge. It's now been deprecated because it was a pain in the ass to maintain, and no one was using it. A .Net bridge would require that Apple map all the .Net standard classes to their own. They might be able to do toll-free bridging to underlying CoreFoundation types (like dictionaries, strings, etc ...), but I don't know if C# supports the kind of dynamic typing that makes it possible through the C/Objective-C combination. I suspect it does. But it'd still be a lot of work.

Instead, Apple is offering Python and Ruby Objective-C bridges, and that makes a lot more sense. They've got bridging support for arbitrary scripting languages into the Objective-C runtime, enabling web developers to write native Mac OS X applications using native APIs. Whatever Apple does with respect to additional language support in the future, you can bet Objective-C will be a part of it. The language allows for a lot of dynamism and flexibility, and on top of that, it's a strict C superset, which means that there are no special wrappers required to call down to the POSIX layer. So it's just easy to bridge other languages with it.

At the end of the day, Objective-C just doesn't get the credit it deserves. It's a very well thought-out language with lots of power. Most people just don't see it because they think Objective-C is Apple's "proprietary" language or some such nonsense.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[insertwackynamehere]

I agree with you but I would like to add how I feel it's ridiculous that people can't program stuff outside of Java and C# because of colleges teaching it. I am a college freshman and I am learning everything in Java but I'm confident I could translate the ideas to other languages if I were to learn the syntax. But then again, I'm actually interested in computers and have been since 8th grade, some people I feel just major in compsci with no real interest in it. But what are you really learning if you can't move it over to different settings? Technically Java is the language we learn with but what we're learning is language independent for the most part. Java and C# are good in their own right but Universities employ them as training languages not end-all languages, it's the people who never really learned anything who can't think outside the box.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

Years ago I was reluctant to switch to the Mac because I was a C++ programmer. But after switching to the Mac and using Objective-C for awhile I never ever want to use C++ again. I cringe whenever I have to use Java which is often cause I'm in college. Objective-C is one of the nicest languages I've programmed. I can't see how anyone would dislike it.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[dlockamy]

Apple is still a hardware company, they're just not a COMPUTER hardware company.

I see it as if the product doesn't start with "i" it's a legacy product, and that includes Mac...tho it does make for one hell of a development platform for all those crazy new apple products.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Durandal64]

sides The worlds colleges are churning out neither Java nor C# programmers, they are simply churning out programmers. Most of which can learn a new language in no time.

I don't necessarily agree. If a student who only learned Java in school has to learn Objective-C, he has to learn to deal with more or less manual memory management. This is simply not a concept a lot of people can grasp, and it takes a lot of experience to get decent at debugging memory errors and keeping track of what's going on under the hood. And everything in Objective-C is a pointer, which is not a concept that's exposed at all in Java, and is only exposed in C# in a very "don't ever use this" kind of way, from my understanding. Sure, you could argue that everyone would just treat the pointer as an object, but things like dangling pointers and reference-passing are still problems.

Objective-C would take a Java or C# developer a week to learn, a month to master.

I definitely disagree here. Objective-C is fairly easy language to pick up, but master? No way. Maybe it's because I went from C++ to Objective-C and had to rid my mind of all the C++ OO kludges to really get a feel for Objective-C's OOP capabilities, but I've been writing it for years, and I still don't know if I could say I've mastered it.

And, honestly, after using both Java and Objective-C, it's clear that Objective-C is object oriented programming done right. The only thing Java or C# really have going for them is mindshare in management.

On this, we agree.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[coolGuyZak]

Really, though, how hard is it to make the mental leap to [myObject insertObject:xxx atPosition:yyy] from myObject->insertObjectAtPosition(xxx,yyy) ? And which is the more readable ?

As far as a layman is concerned, the former is more readable, but less understandable. I expect most formally educated programmers (meaning college) to prefer the latter. Why? A few reasons:

• Most institutions teach java, C#, or C++ in their core curriculum. Programmers simply know the syntax better.
• The programming paradigms of the language are different. In C, you access a method of an object. In Objective-C you send a message to a foreign object. The latter is confusing, given the background of a majority of programmers.
• The syntax for a function is derived from math (e.g. f(x)), which (AFAIK) most 'programming' curricula have a solid backing in.
• It's easier to follow the C-style *syntax*. '->' appears like an arrow; it implies direction, unlike the Objective-C messaging syntax.*

It's not perfect, though. I'd appreciate a few idioms from Objective-C to be "ported" to C#, particularly aspects of RTTI and message passing (functions, delegates, and events in C# are irritating). IMHO, it's far more elegant the Obj-C way.

I agree with your sentiment that Cocoa development is superior to .Net. My theory of why .Net sucks a nut, comparatively, is as follows:

• Apple considers the POV of third parties more heavily than MS. It also appears that Apple drinks from its own trough more than MS.
• It is clear in Apple's documentation and design how they developed something--Apple discusses design patterns, object relationships, and, on occasion, history, in their docs. Meanwhile, MS reinvents the wheel using proprietary, confusing terminology while offering contrived examples that don't express the power of their tech.
• The more I look at .Net, the more I think that Microsoft sicked their Win32 dev team on the problem. (Consider, for example, events versus callback functions. Compare with Objective C messaging.)

I still prefer C# and .Net, as sick as that may sound. My background is heavily Java and C# based, which makes the Objective C environment is too clunky for me to like (The @'s, #'s, and XCode-IB code integration are painful). Apple tries to alleviate this by providing (admittedly, great) tools to manage that business, but it always comes off as applying gauze to a gaping chest wound.

btw, thanks for the link :)

--
* Quite frankly, I think both suck. I'd like a strange frankenstein syntax. "myObject <- [message_name arg1: xxx arg2: yyy];" It's more clear than either of the other two, IMHO. Until then, I'll take C-style. As a further aside, I dislike 'dot syntax' wholesale.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this is how the sandboxed iPhone SDK, which is to be available in February, will be implemented

Wonder no more; it won't be.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[vtcodger]

Not disagreeing with your main point, but there is no such thing as a machine that will run all Windows software. Never has been. My guess is that there never will be although virtual machines may yet suprise me. About the best I've ever been able to do is 75-80% of Windows applications running properly on any given Windows machine. And that required a lot of tinkering with configuration files and the #$@(* Registry. XP might currently be a bit better than that because the extraordinarily long delay between XP and Vista and the poor acceptance of Vista seems to have slowed the ordinarily rapidly moving Windows target to a crawl for a while. But the circus seems to be reving up again. Not my problem. I've been off XP for a couple of years and should be shutting down the last few apps on the W98 machine in four to six months.

There's a reason for the term "DLL Hell".

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[rgravina]

Most institutions teach java, C#, or C++ in their core curriculum. Programmers simply know the syntax better.

I've always found this the most bizarre reason to to dismiss a technology. Any decent programmer should be able to pick a new syntax/language/technology etc. relatively quickly. It happens though, which I just don't understand.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[KeyserDK]

A bit offtopic...

Universities doesn't just churn out Java & C# developers. At least not in copenhagen :)

I've only had two courses that had specific language requirements for assignments was "Functional programming" (ML) and "Object Oriented Programming & Design" (JAVA).
You don't learn to master a language - they are just a tool. You learn how to pick the right tool. (That includes knowing what it does and how it's different).

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

Objective-C 2.0 has garbage collection, so that's not really an issue anymore. Regardless memory management isn't conceptually that difficult. Pointers to a Cocoa programmer for all intent and purpose are the same as references. It's only in C that pointers are a big deal, think pointer arithmetic.

I definitely disagree here. Objective-C is fairly easy language to pick up, but master? No way.

Okay, you're probably right. I think I meant "reasonably productive."

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcr]

right now, .NET looks like a pretty good bet.

I'm sure that jumping on the Windows NT bandwagon looked like a good bet to Tandem, DEC, and SGI.

-jcr

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[duffbeer703]

Q: Where do I go to buy OS X for my commodity PC?
A: I don't.

Mac OS, iTunes, the iTunes Music store, etc exist for one purpose: to sell Macs, iPhones, iPods, etc. The software simply isn't where the company makes the money. The old regime almost bankrupted Apple by switching to a Microsoft-like software licensing model... so I doubt that Apple would go back to that.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[coolGuyZak]

With Mac development, there's a lot to pick up. New language, unfamiliar programming paradigms (messaging is far different from event handlers), a new API with unfamiliar design principles (see my previous post), and a new development environment. It's difficult to transition all of those elements at once.

There are other benefits, though. I'm taking the time to develop a few Mac goodies because it improves my software design skills. It's already given me some great ideas to improve my .Net products.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[sentientbrendan]

> As Wine proves, any reimplementation of the Win32 API is inevitably not going to be as
> good as the real thing.

I just don't think this is really true. Win32 is a huge API, and so would take a huge effort to clone successfully. The wine project doesn't have the resources to even try to implement all of the resources of win32, and they don't have the resources to do proper reverse engineering on a large scale.

An effort by a company with more resources like apple could make wine a lot more usable. For instance, one problem with win32, is that some parts aren't sufficiently documented. Normally, people have to use black box testing to guess what the undocumented features should do. However, it is perfectly legal and practical to reverse engineer by reading the disassembly of real windows dlls, so long as the person who reads the disassembly doesn't write wine code, but instead just documents what he learns and hands it over to wine coders. A lot of progress could be made in this way.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[TheRaven64]

Describing Objective-C/OpenStep memory management as 'almost manual' is a bit misleading. It's pretty trivial, since it supports reference counting and autorelease pools so you don't have keep track of who is responsible for destruction when you pass an object up the stack. Just remember -retain means 'I want this', -release mean' I don't want it anymore' and -autorelease means 'I don't want it but give someone else a chance to grab it before you destroy it.'

The same is true of saying that everything in Objective-C is a pointer. The only real difference between an object pointer and an object reference of the kind that you get in Java is that you can do pointer arithmetic on the pointer and not on the reference, and it's very uncommon to do that with Objective-C.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[tengwar]

Objective C uses reference counting, not garbage collection - they're not the same thing. RC requires some manual work to maintain the counts, introducing some possibility of error, and it can be broken if you use structures such as circular lists. Several studies have also shown it to be slower than GC (I'm not entirely convinced myself).

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[TheRaven64]

it's like C combined with Python Ugh, you make it sound hideous. Objective-C is C combined with Smalltalk. It's not quite as elegant as C combined with Self would be, but it's quite close. The Smalltalk philosophy is very different from Python. Python piles a load of badly thought-out crap into the language and makes something that's a third rate OO language, a second rate procedural language and a fourth rate functional language. Smalltalk aims to make the language almost as small as possible an implements everything at the library level.

Objective-C is not quite as elegant as Smalltalk. In Smalltalk flow control structures (while loops, and so on) are part of the language and so you can add new ones as first class citizens. If you don't know Smalltalk, then you really should try it; you can't claim to understand object oriented programming until you understand Smalltalk.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[pootypeople]

so what about the iMac?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Combined with the brilliant minds at Adobe (they hire a large number of the top Indian graduates each year), there's no reason why they couldn't get Photoshop working using such technology.

Having spoken to the all indian dev team working on Framemaker, I hope your comment was sarcasm. (I expect MadCap to slaughter them within 5 years of Blaze's release.) Anyway, Adobe could continue to use a deprecated API and try to work around it, but I don't think any architect would think that is wise in the long term.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[xouumalperxe]

Show me someone who can master a language in a month, and I'll show you a freaking genius. Sure, a month of coding might give you enough experience to write decently good code in a new language, but to truly master it, to understand why it was designed the way it was, to know all the nooks and crannies? To understand where the common idioms came from? How many people with a month of C understand what

volatile

and

register

are for? Or the difference between

cons char *pointer

and

char *cons pointer

? Perhaps you're just a lot less demanding of a "master" of a language than I am, though.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again now: Objective C is exactly at the sweet spot for a computer language...

This may well be true (I've only dabbled with it). The sad fact is, the best technology may not be the best choice depending upon what is popular. Apple has been damaged before by supporting better technologies, that never caught on in the mainstream simply because of momentum or marketing. Objective C might be way better than C# or java or C, but if the dev tool makers and the developers don't adopt it, then it will become another wall between Windows and OS X, hindering migration and portability. If Objective C cannot gain developers on Windows and Linux then, it were better they moved to support Java and/or C# (although "timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes" applies to MS as much as to the Greeks).

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Space cowboy]

*Tiger* uses reference-counting. *Leopard* uses garbage collection (or reference-counting, at the programmers whim). Objective C just got an upgrade...

Simon

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[dgatwood]

With SystemV shared memory (shmem) it's trivial, and that's a decades-old feature of Real Unixes. What, doesn't OSX support it?

Yes, it does. It also supports POSIX shared memory, which is strongly preferred, IMHO.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[bluefoxlucid]

That's going on in ReactOS, which shares its results with Wine.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, diddums. Did he actually answer the question you posed him ? And correctly ? So now you're left with the tired old stereotype to bash ? aaaaah, there there,

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[slamb]

With SystemV shared memory (shmem) it's trivial, and that's a decades-old feature of Real Unixes. What, doesn't OSX support it?

What? Of course it does. It also supports the vastly superior mmap(), though unfortunately not everyone is using it. I remember struggling one Christmas morning to get iChat AV to work because iChat and PostgreSQL were fighting over the same shmget() key_t (54321, IIRC). mmap() allows you to just use a filename, which is much easier to make unique.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Space cowboy]

Not to mention that all the reference-counting is optional anyway in Leopard. Objective-C 2.0 has garbage collection...

Simon

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Space cowboy]

I'm assuming you mean 'const' rather than 'cons', declaring either the pointer or the pointee to be constant. However, given that ObjC is a formal superset of C, I think you'd need to already know 'C' before trying to master ObjC in a month. Given the mastery of 'C' though, I think you could probably master ObjC in a month... There really aren't that many additions...

Simon

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[bcat24]

Wow, a voice of reason! I couldn't agree more. As nice as it would be to have hard numbers about stuff like this, it just isn't possible. We can make an educated guess, but it's still just that: a guess.

I wish I had mod points to give you. Since I don't, this cheesy little "me too" post will have to do. :)

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be redundant to the above AC, but
"popular" "few" "slowly" "harder" "fast" "plenty" "most" "much"
are all qualitative, not quantitative, words.

You are a retard.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Randle_Revar]

Apples and Oranges. No, no, no. It's Apples and Windows.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[bcat24]

That's awesome, but most universities aren't that cool. It seems like the general trend is towards teaching languages, not programming, which kind of scares me. Knowledge of C++ or Java or C#, for example, will likely be worthless in ten years. On the other hand, a solid grasp of the fundamentals of computer science will last a very long time.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone who wants to program should first attain a professor's level of computer science knowledge. (I myself have almost no formal CS experience at the moment.) What I am saying is that a solid understanding of the behind-the-scenes issues in programming today will help greatly in the future, when C++ is dead and the Next Big Language is king.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[bcat24]

Keep dreaming buddy. Mac OS X already has support for Java, Python, Ruby and many others. They don't need .NET, not even a little bit. No one really needs it. The only reason to use Java or .NET is to chase the pipe dream of write once, run everywhere. I beg to differ. I like C# for many reasons, but being WORA is not high on that list. In my opinion, C# and the .NET Framework simply give the best development experience available today. They do have many flaws and quirks, of course. (What programming languages/runtimes don't?) In the end, though, all languages may suck, but I think C# sucks less.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[The One and Only]

Apple isn't a hardware company or a software company. They're a systems company. They sell a complete system that they put together. The hardware might have an Intel CPU, an nVidia graphics card or a Marvell WiFi controller, and the software might have a Mach kernel, a KDE-derived web browser, or a GNU compiler, but you don't have to invent your own kitchen sink or air conditioner to build a great house, either.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[cromar]

The only thing Java or C# really have going for them is mindshare in management.

C# has a lot of nice features (extensive API, large active development community, stability, etc.) I do agree that Objective-C is OO done right. I just wish it used a C++/Java/C# type syntax. All those brackets really annoy me ;) Objective-C is very powerful and has some really cool APIs, too (I especially like that the API include the passing of object messages to an instance across a network). I haven't had a chance to try out Mono on OS X, but it would certainly be nice to be able to write in C# and have it run on my Mac.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[mcrbids]

> "As Wine proves, any reimplementation of the Win32 API is inevitably not going to be as good as the real thing."

Yeah, most of my pet spywares fail to run correctly under wine.

Actually, I get the distinct feeling, with Vista, the Wine is really, really close to a tipping point. Wine is an example of Microsoft losing control of their API. Go ahead, read the linked article, then re-read this post.

Assume that:

1) Microsoft's core strength is their Win32 API, with massive investments by business and companies the world over in it.

2) Microsoft is losing the ability to alter their own API. Much like Intel trying to "clean up" the i386 architecture with the Itanic (I mean, Itanium) only to be slapped back by AMD's Opteron chipset,

3) As Microsoft's implementation of the Win32 API becomes increasingly hassle-prone, their apparent value will drop while re-implementations of the Win32 API (Read: Wine) continue to improve.

Already, most software works or "mostly works" with Wine. I routinely run IE with Flash on my Fedora Core 6 laptop in Wine. How long before Wine becomes a "target platform" for software vendors who are otherwise locked into the Win32 API?

I'm guessing that day is within 5 years, maybe as little as two years, if Apple gets in on the act as well. I mean, what Windows-based software vendor ISN'T going to make sure their Win32 applications don't work under Apple/Wine if it's officially blessed by Apple?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[mveloso]

There are other ways to do a 64-bit back end and a 32-bit front end than use shared memory. It's just Adobe has a large, old codebase that has been transitioned across so many different architectures (68000 series, Power PC series, and now x86 32/64) that re-engineering it will be difficult. Apple has made the transition relatively easy up until now, so companies haven't had to pay the price until now.

Troll. Adobe has made billions of Dollars off of the products they sold on the Mac OS. In fact, without Apple, there would be no Adobe (and vice versa). This kind of bullshit is a sign of not only ignorance, but of some sort of technical snobbery that is incredibly irritating.

So what you're saying is all those Multix users had an upgrade path? Unix isn't Open, it's interoperable (except for Linux and the various BSDs). There's a difference.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[lakeland]

You know, I'm pretty sure you weren't trying to troll but I don't see a single true statement in what you wrote.

Lets start with what Mac has already. It has Java 5, as in a .jnlp will 'just work' on OSX. It kinda has python - unless you want to do GUI stuff. Ruby is in much the same boat as python. However, this is all irrelevant. .NET is a new paradigm - learn a decent class library and keep using it from then on, whether that's in J#, IronPython, IronRuby, or whatever language is popular next year. Java claimed much the same thing, which isn't too surprising since .net is basically a java knockoff with some design faults smoothed out.

Since you brought up web apps, have you ever done any webapp development on windows? The connection between IIS and .NET is such that you are crazy to develop web apps without using .net. It's so much better than everything else out there that apache has added support for mono to achieve a similar effect (if a little crude at the moment).

As for colleges turning out programmers. Sadly, get real. Maybe one in ten to one in thirty of their graduates can program - as in, given this hot new language, pick it up and start churning out code. This has always been the case and has nothing to do with C#, Java or whatnot. Incidentally, at least around here they mainly seem to be targeting Java at the moment. Of course, when employing you will do your best to get the one person from the class that can actually program but sometimes that just isn't realistic - what if that person is unable to interact with the business? Conversely, if I had a job applicant from a objective-C developer, I wouldn't hold it against them for a C# job - anybody interesting enough to have picked up an obscure language is going to pick up C# just fine.

As for OO done right, neither C# or Objective C are OO done right, and unlike you I'm not convinced that C# is any worse at OO than Objective C, but I don't know enough Objective C to really say. Ruby is probably your best bet if you're looking for a good OO language. Personally I just write glue programs now and take advantage of .NET to keep my programs small enough to make OO irrelevant, but for people writing libraries or writing code unique enough that the majority can't be libraries... well, you'd have to ask them.

Oh, and I'm deliberately being slack with terminology - substitute C#, .net and CLR where appropriate. From a marketing perspective they're all the same anyway ;-)

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[fm6]

Apple has every reason not to do that, because it will mean there will be no more native versions of high-profile applications such as Photoshop.

So what? In case you hadn't noticed, Apple is a hardware vendor. They make money selling systems. If the Mac version of Photoshop disappears, but they can still run the Windows version, they haven't lost anything. And if they get access to the 90% of the market that has to he able to him Windows applications they are way ahead of the game.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

I really hate arguments about semantic, but since people would rather nitpick than understand the post as a whole, I must digress. Language, you see, is a very interesting thing, especially natural language. For one, words can have many senses and can be taken literally or not. Sometimes people like to use words rhetorically, like to make a point. I'm sorry for having to patronize you. :-(

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[nog_lorp]

As Wine proves, any reimplementation of the Win32 API is inevitably not going to be as good as the real thing. Odd logic there - "There is an A that is B, therefore all A's are B". By your logic, all humans are men.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[m1ndrape]

i didn't buy a mac for that reason at all. I bought it for the very basic expectation that it should just "work"; that is...not required to buy a lot of additional crapware just to get the environment to a level where it's even remotely useful.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

Of course it wasn't a troll.

As for colleges turning out programmers. Sadly, get real. Maybe one in ten to one in thirty of their graduates can program - as in, given this hot new language, pick it up and start churning out code.

Ever notice how practically everyone thinks they are so smart and everyone else is stupid. Maybe you don't, but from this statement that seems to be your attitude.

What isn't true about my post?
Is it that I said ".NET is chasing the pipe dream of write once, run everywhere"?
Or maybe it's not true that if you want a truly cross-platform application you should write a web app?
Or maybe programming languages are not that easy to learn, are they?
Or could it be that Objective-C isn't really very good at OO. Cause it's not like Java was influenced by Objective-C and by extension .NET.
Oh wait, it must be that Apple is dying and they need .NET to save them from themselves. That must be it.

I guess I'm just some kind of a fool. I hope you know about that little language called sarcasm. Cause I'm not sure it runs on .NET yet.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Vexorian]

Err am I missing something, how could the ability to run win32 apps mean adobe won't make native OS/X photoshop ? WINE has certainly not stopped native Linux applications.

I hope this is not about Apple selling out to MS to make .net reign bigger, they (.net) has already caused too much of a disaster in my country so thinking of Apple joining MS' push for .net is REALLY scary to me.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[log0n]

Why can't Apple be both a Hardware and a Software company? It seems pretty obvious that they hold both in pretty high, equal regard.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[lakeland]

Ever notice how practically everyone thinks they are so smart and everyone else is stupid.

Yup

Is it that I said ".NET is chasing the pipe dream of write once, run everywhere"?

Debatable, unless by everywhere you mean on 'XP, 2000, Vista, pocket edition, etc.' Their moderately friendly attutude to Mono and also silverlight implies they have some interest in cross-compatibility. But to me .net is about building a rich culture of library use, not about cross-platform compatibility.

Or maybe it's not true that if you want a truly cross-platform application you should write a web app?.

Web apps are more cross compatible than java? Try writing decent portable web-apps sometime. I have never worked anywhere where the intranet web apps ran on anything except windows, even when linux on the desktop was tolerated.

Or maybe programming languages are not that easy to learn, are they?

Clearly not, look how many people fail. It doesn't matter if you, I, or even 99% of slashdot find it easy. Most people learn one programming language (with trouble) and don't generalise at all. I've recently given up teaching SQL to a PL/SQL 'programmer'.

There is a very good reason why the companies that employ hundreds of code monkeys pay them so little, and their ability to learn a new programming language ties in.

Or could it be that Objective-C isn't really very good at OO. Cause it's not like Java was influenced by Objective-C and by extension .NET.

Not sure what you're getting at here, but I'm not enough of an OO programmer to comment anyway.

Oh wait, it must be that Apple is dying and they need .NET to save them from themselves. That must be it.

It could be, though I'll wait for NetCraft's confirmation ;-) .net is a class library.

Recently I purchased some really cool dashboard widgets. They're written in C# and come with C# examples but because it's all .net, I could write IronPython code that created them them perfectly - I doubt the people who created the library had even heard of ironpython.

Before that, I got a mapping program with an API designed for .net and the ADO.net addons for oracle - in all of a dozen lines of code I had oracle and a mapping program talking to each other. Not only that, I can use the .net add-on for oracle to write extensions (user designed functions), along with a C# class library for Markov modelling and a bit of iron python glue (since I only write C# if someone forces me to) to tie them all together. Voila - markov modelling as a UDF in Oracle. Essentially then, .net has provided me with the fabled code resue that I remember OO was supposed to.

Coming back to Apple, I don't know how .net affects them. I only use macs at home, so I don't really care that much. Maybe future programmers will all be trained in .net and apple is missing an opportunity by not having their computers accessible to these programmers, but that doesn't really ring true does it? Maybe future applications will be written in .net and with better .net support it would be easier to port them to the mac, thereby keeping commercial software more up to date - that rings more true.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Attila Dimedici]

right now, .NET looks like a pretty good bet.

I'm sure that jumping on the Windows NT bandwagon looked like a good bet to Tandem, DEC, and SGI.

-jcr No, it was their only bet. It was obvious by then that all of their other choices were losers. The Windows NT bandwagon was the only chance they had left, it didn't work either.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only thing against it is the unfamiliar (to C/C++ programmers) syntax. Really, though, how hard is it to make the mental leap to [myObject insertObject:xxx atPosition:yyy] from myObject->insertObjectAtPosition(xxx,yyy) ? And which is the more readable ?"

Well, um...there are a few problems with Objective C. One, it's hard to find a book on it. I could find one book on Cocoa (using Objective C) at my university library, and nothing on Objective C itself. It wouldn't be too bad to learn either, but both at one time is a bit painful.

As for readability, based on your example I'd have to go with C/C++. Having to write the name of each parameter sounds like a good way to make your code ridiculously verbose (slow to write, more chances for misspellings, and can't see as much on one screen at a time). (One of the worst offenders has got to be .NET; I mean, Windows.Forms.Some.Other.Long.Name every time you want to do anything?)

Overall, though, I just don't see why Apple limits languages so much. Most other systems have bindings that make the API accessible from many, many languages. What language _doesn't_ have a GTK binding, or can't call the Windows API?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[watchingeyes]

Well if you bought a Mac and expected to run Windows apps out of the box, you're frankly a moron and should research your purchases better. Start with going to "Apple.com".

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[garbletext]

if the product doesn't start with "i" it's a legacy product

You're right. Come to think of it, when the iBook was renamed MacBook, they *did* downgrade its hardware a full generation and sold those Macbooks without warranty or support. I sure am glad I spent my life savings on a pallet of iBooks right before they started that legacy intel crap.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[arminw]

.....And what would that be?.....

Run programs for those who still have a teensy weensy creative spark left in them. There are programs like iPhoto, iMovie, iDvd, Garage band etc which have no counterparts on Windows that come even close. Get a cheap Dell if all you want to do is email, surf the web and play some games along with the usual spyware, adware and other malware rampant on Windows, but largely absent from Apple's OSX..

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

This is ridiculous, not to mention pointless. You don't know what your talking about.

The .NET Framework is Microsoft's managed code programming model for building applications on Windows clients, servers, and mobile or embedded devices.

Hmm, clients, servers, mobile and embedded devices. Sounds like "everywhere" to me. This is exactly what Java was supposed to do.

Web apps are more cross compatible than java?

One word: Facebook. Actually, Google is proof as well.

If computer programming languages are so hard to learn why is it that I can code in: C, C++, Basic, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Bash, Scheme and I'm sure I'm forgetting at least one. While on the other hand, I have barely started to learn elementary Japanese after a whole semester course and a really good sensei? If you hear of a person that can program in 3 or more languages that's hardly interesting, but if a person speaks 3 or more natural languages that's astonishing. I wonder why that is?

If you don't know what I'm getting at in regards to Java being influenced by Objective-C, I suggest you do a little google search. It follows that if Java was influenced by Objective-C and .NET (or whatever it's called) by Java, then .NET was influenced by Objective-C. Get it?

Apple doesn't need .NET. Let me repeat that: Apple does NOT need .NET. The only reason, AFAIK, for OS X to load PE files is because of EFI. This was mentioned by another person already.

$ strings /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi | grep DOS
!This program cannot be run in DOS mode.

OMG, Apple is implementing .NET. LOL.

Before that, I got a mapping program with an API designed for .net.....blah....blah...I'm so smart....

I see your horn is working. Toot, toot.

In summary get of your high horse!

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[arminw]

.....Since they started selling x86 pc's, the only way to distinguish them from any other pc out there is with their software.......

They are the ONLY hardware company that makes their own operating software for their own computer, which comprise a COMPLETE computer. Anybody that wants to may also run Windows Linux or who knows what else on their hardware.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[DECS]

Make a list of commercial desktop applications that exist for Linux. Now make a list of ones that can run via WINE.

I think one can extrapolate that the presence of WINE has prevented native applications from being developed for Linux. Outside of that, the extremely small market for commercial applications on Linux makes such a suggestion nearly non-sensical anyway.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[paulproteus]

You wrote:

They are the ONLY hardware company that makes their own operating software for their own computer, which comprise a COMPLETE computer.

Just to name one counter-example, Sun Microsystems makes the Solaris "operating software" and sells their own computers with it.

The fact that you can ask Sun not to install Solaris doesn't change the fact that they do make their own OS and sell it on Sun-branded hardware.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[lakeland]

This is ridiculous

Feel free to stop replying any time.

Hmm, clients, servers, mobile and embedded devices.

You're right, I misunderstood you. Since this discussion started with apple I interpreted everywhere as 'windows, macos, linux'.

One word: Facebook. Actually, Google is proof as well.

*sigh*, no.

Facebook works for everyone, as does Google and a few other high-profile examples. Do you know how many people they have working on making their systems cross-platform? By that logic, MFC is cross-platform too - look at MS word on a mac!

To me, cross platform means that it is easy to make an application run on multiple platforms, not just possible with lots of skill and effort.

If computer programming languages are so hard to learn why is it that I can code ... but can't speak Japanese

Because, in case you hadn't noticed yet, you're not normal. I know people who can speak half a dozen different languages yet can't write in even the simplest scripting languages. Look around, how many people down your street can program in one programming language? How many can program in more than one? What I think you'll find is that most people down your street can use a computer but only a tiny fraction can program. Of that tiny number, only a small fraction of those can program in more than one language and learn another language easily.

Yes, some people learn multiple programming languages without effort. For most it is a daunting, unrealistic prospect. Try to think of the people down the street when you say something is easy, or think of you parents learning a programming language, or ... your experiences (or mine, or most of slashdot's) are just not useful for judging how easy things are. ...blah....blah...I'm so smart....

Actually, my point was the opposite. I tried to make this clear by including how little work I had to do, but obviously I was not clear enough. My point is that .net makes pretty cool things easy - it brings stuff to the masses (ie. me)

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[cheater512]

Just FYI, MS lost the ability to modify the API a long time ago.
Ever since Windows 3 they havent been able to change anything without seriously screwing up programs.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Sancho]

Sun also gives away most of their OS, and they still make a pretty decent amount of money. Of course, they aren't targeting desktop users.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Space cowboy]

Well, um...there are a few problems with Objective C. One, it's hard to find a book on it. I could find one book on Cocoa (using Objective C) at my university library, and nothing on Objective C itself. It wouldn't be too bad to learn either, but both at one time is a bit painful

1. Go to www.amazon.com
2. type in 'objective c'

... or ...

1. Go to developer.apple.com

As for readability, based on your example I'd have to go with C/C++. Having to write the name of each parameter sounds like a good way to make your code ridiculously verbose (slow to write, more chances for misspellings, and can't see as much on one screen at a time)

Some points:

1. We moved away from 80-columns being the maximum length of a line a long long time ago.
   
2. Any sensible IDE handles all the parameter expansion for you (including XCode). No typing...
   
3. In the example I gave, it's very obvious which of xxx and yyy are the object and the index. Not so, when the parameters aren't named.
   
4. Naming conventions (and they're rigorously followed in Cocoa/Foundation) give very useful information and context of what is supplied and taken as arguments.
   

Overall, though, I just don't see why Apple limits languages so much.

I'm not sure I get your point here... Apple doesn't limit the language choices: there is C, ObjC, C++ (since there is ObjC++), Ruby & Python. Hardly limited. I guess I don't see MS providing a GTK interface to the windows forms library, but maybe they do, and I just missed it...

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[poopdeville]

Lets start with what Mac has already. It has Java 5, as in a .jnlp will 'just work' on OSX. It kinda has python - unless you want to do GUI stuff. Ruby is in much the same boat as python. However, this is all irrelevant. .NET is a new paradigm - learn a decent class library and keep using it from then on, whether that's in J#, IronPython, IronRuby, or whatever language is popular next year. Java claimed much the same thing, which isn't too surprising since .net is basically a java knockoff with some design faults smoothed out.

Python and Ruby development with Cocoa using the PyObjC and Cocoa/Ruby bridges is now officially supported by Xcode. The bridges are installed on all new Leopard installs. They will "just work" for GUI applications.

With the use of bridges to the ObjC runtime environment, Cocoa has the same potential for acting as a platform defining API as .NET.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Sancho]

Why do you think that WINE is the reason that native applications aren't developed, as opposed to the tiny marketshare?

Like it or not, there just aren't that many Linux users out there compared to Windows users. In many cases, it just doesn't make sense to target Linux for commercial software.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[lakeland]

That would be cool.

I noticed Cocoa# the other day too, but I haven't looked into it at all.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

With SystemV shared memory (shmem) it's trivial, and that's a decades-old feature of Real Unixes.

OS-X is, as of Leopard, certified Unix(tm). (note the capitalization congruent with your asinine quip).

What, doesn't OSX support it?

yes, it does.

Even so, of course Photoshop should be rewritten for the new framework.

asshat, meet strawman argument. one of you should buy the other a beer.

After all, when a proprietary technology corporation decides to screw over their third-party developers and customers, isn't it the American Way to bear all the costs and keep paying them money?

and therein lies the troll with which you are. do you feel better now that you vented a trite perspective? are you sure you don't want fall on that very public sword with which you've made every attempt to bring attention upon?

hey, here's an idea... you espouse a Unix(tm) (capitalized for your attention) philosophy, why not try and get an idea about the thing that you publicly trash so easily? i hear there are these things called, ahem, what's the name again? oh yea, "manual pages". there may even be a shorter way of finding out the desired information, a way of saving keystrokes. try the first three letters of the aforementioned quoted sarcasm.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[m1ndrape]

doesn't "just works" and running windows rips apart the space/time continuum?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[noewun]

Adobe is probably already pissed off there won't be a 64-bit version of Carbon, which requires them to rewrite the entire UI of Photoshop in Cocoa to be able to release a 64-bit version of it.

Adobe is pissed because it can't figure out how to squeeze more money out of a saturated market. Even though the design/print/pre-press market is large, it's finite and it's not growing much. Adobe has already sold everyone who wants or needs one a copy of Photoshop, and so they've been forced into release-constant-upgrades cycle to try and generate more revenue. So, I think Adobe's pissed they can't dump the print and pre-press market altogether and just move full scale into Flash, PDF and whatever other web technologies they can think of. And I think they're doubly pissed that, last I checked their annual report, about half the revenue from their print/design/pre-press sales come from the Apple world. So, instead of dumping that business, or spinning it off, they have to expend the time, money and effort to support two platforms. Adobe isn't pissed because of anything Apple's done. Adobe's pissed they can't dump their "legacy" apps and follow whatever will make them the most short-term profit, overall corporate health be damned.

Adobe hasn't been the same since Warnock and Company sold out and the bean counters took over. They're now a marketing company which happens to release some software from time to time. Their days as a company which produced technology which got you excited are long over.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Juanvaldes]

Obj-C 2.0 (released with Leopard last month) added garbage collection. You can use either method but I believe the idea is to migrate to GC.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[bitmonk]

FYI: * Objective-C's garbage collection comes from gcc, it's called boehm-weimers, and it's what everyone except cPython uses these days. Java, .NET, ObjC, they all build with gcc --enable-boehm-gc or whatever. * The Common Language Infrastructure - the ISO standard - outlines a C++-like language which is sort of 'the assembler of .NET' It's pretty smart stuff, I hate to give Microsoft credit, but I'm pretty sure they just stole the idea from someone. ;)

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[bitmonk]

Some comments: .NET and CoreFoundation have more in common than you clearly understand, you should learn a bit about the former. Also, the work of maintaining a Ruby bridge and a Python bridge is far more than maintaining one .NET bridge which would be accessible to two python implementations, ruby, java, php, managed C++, boo, and whatever 900 other langauges come out for the CLI. Hey, man, I hate Microsoft, and I love my Mac. I even like Objective-C, but the CLI is an evolution in compiler chains. Imagine the computing world as a whole failed a course when Java was developed, and CLI is the result of really fucking paying attention in class this time. Ignoring this advancement could really give those bastards an edge, so for the sake of those that come after us, let's keep focused. Microsoft: evil. CLI: an ECMA/ISO-flavoured pacifier for redmond's rabid backwards-compatibility-status-quo crowd.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[egomaniac]

Odd logic there - "There is an A that is B, therefore all A's are B". By your logic, all humans are men.

No, his logic is more along the lines of "Wine graphically illlustrated all of the massive pitfalls with this approach, which aren't going to magically disappear when someone else attempts the same feat."

Perfect Win32 compatibility is an intractable problem.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[DrXym]

Sure, the core is an open standard. Unfortunately there are precious few .NET applications that actually run cleanly on Mono. Why? Because Microsoft made it far too easy (on purpose) to invoke Win32 calls, ActiveX controls and so on. Consequently a lot of apps and libs break make those calls and they break on Mono. And they'd break on OS X unless Apple implemented a large chunk of the Win32 API.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this is how the sandboxed iPhone SDK, which is to be available in February, will be implemented You mean in C#.net ?
The iPhone SDK ?

I heard iPods & ITMS will start using wma and play-for-sure too.
And the next version of iLife is to be rethinked to make full use of MOOXML.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if Apple wanted Win32, they would do the sensible thing and just call up Microsoft and buy it. (and of course, pass the cost on to you)

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[cyber-vandal]

There may be no more native versions of current apps but there would be plenty of other apps that will never run on Mac OS X suddenly able to.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Ashmo6ai]

Or when a 3rd paty developer has been cruising on old frameworks for years, never committing themselves to an upgrade because the so-called "proprietary technology corporation" might be out of business soon. Honestly, Adobe should have seen this coming years ago, but instead they just decidd not to do any real development work on the Mac.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

.net is the way it is, because the vast majority of its "core" functionality is implemented by wrapping the native win32 functions, which are all written in C, and use a lot of gnarly tricks from way back in the day.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read what Anders Hejlsberg has to say before telling your bullshit to the ignorant masses of Slashdot.
http://www.artima.com/intv/anders.html

If you want to understand why delegates and events are the way they are, read this :
http://www.artima.com/intv/simplexity.html

This has nothing to do with the state of win32 itself.
Also, if you read the *whole* interview of Anders, you'll understand that some of the clunky things people with a smalltalk or objective c background don't like are the way they are because of PERFORMANCE. Like C++ and Object Pascal, Anders Hejlsberg designed C# with performance in mind. That's why you get structs (value types), instance methods that are not virtual by default (unlike Java) and the way generics are implemented. That's also why C# is never going to be as dynamic as Objective C. .net went through a LOT of research, some of it are already in C# 3, some of it is in side projects that may or may never make it to the commercial product. But be sure of the fact that Microsoft is working a lot more on language research than Apple and don't confuse the docs on MSDN with the way they do their work inside.
See :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%CF%89
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spec_sharp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_sharp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphonic_C_sharp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Singularity

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

but you don't have to invent your own kitchen sink or air conditioner to build a great house, either.

NOW you're telling me!

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Weedlekin]

"Like it or not, there just aren't that many Linux users out there compared to Windows users"

And equally importantly, most of those that exist have demonstrated a notable reluctance to pay for software. Although piracy is rampant on Windows (I'm not implying that Linux users pirate software here!), its huge market share means that there are still more than enough people out there who will pay to make commercial software a viable proposition; and the Mac, which probably has similar numbers to Linux worldwide (although it's arguably growing faster on the desktop), tends to be owned by a more affluent sector that buys more software than it pirates (shareware is actually profitable on Macs, whereas Windows shareware rarely if ever makes any significant amounts of money despite its massively greater market share).

"In many cases, it just doesn't make sense to target Linux for commercial software."

One should I think add that this is true for _consumer_ desktop-oriented stuff. The fact that server-side software on Linux can make money is amply demonstrated by vendors such as Oracle and IBM, who have been offering pricey closed source Linux RDBMS packages for some years. An additional factor here is of course the ease of porting server-side solutions that already existed for UNIX, whereas porting a native Windows or Mac desktop program to Linux is much more difficult unless it was written with portability in mind (e.g. targeting Wine or GNUStep rather than the Win32 API or Cocoa). The problem here of course is the fact that doing this tends to result in software which uses a lowest common denominator approach that can't use certain features of the host OS, and therefore either compares poorly with non-portable competitors, or ends up with developers having to write their own versions of things that the lower common denominator lacks, thus increasing both development and maintenance costs.

It should also be noted that there are some commercial GUI packages for Linux which do sell well into certain niches, e.g. high-end animation software aimed at the movie industry, which has a rare combination of Linux and a willingness to pay large sums of money for "desktop" software that runs on it ("desktop" is in quotes because a significant selling point for these packages is their ability to use render farms as a way of producing movie-definition sequences more quickly).

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

Apple sell complete systems...
A bundle of hardware and software designed to work properly together. That's a big selling point, no hassle with drivers, no hardware conflicts etc.
Windows could never provide the same level of integration unless microsoft start producing hardware against (remember the jazz platform?) and linux could but would really need the hardware maker to roll their own distro.

The only other place you get good integration between hardware and software, is at the high end.. Think z/OS, Solaris/Sparc, AIX etc

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

They are not the only one, perhaps the only company remaining in consumer space since the end of atari and commodore...

Sun make systems to run Solaris..
IBM make systems to run AIX and z/OS etc
HP make systems to run HP-UX

And with the exception of Solaris, these systems only run on their respective vendors' hardware.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

My grievance with the first macbooks, is that they form a very short lived 32bit x86 mac...

Personally i think Apple should have used the architecture switch to move to a pure 64bit platform (64bit kernel at least, with capability to run 32bit apps)... Instead, they are retaining a 32bit kernel for "compatibility"... That is, compatibility with the very short lived first generation macbooks and minis, so now they effectively have 3 architectures to support.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

Leopard-only?
Are there really machines which can't run Tiger? They've not updated their hardware since Leopard came out, so what were these machines shipping with before the launch date of leopard?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

Is the version of .net that is iso certified the same version microsoft are currently pushing?

As i understand it, tho i could be wrong, it's .net 1.0 that is iso certified and implemented by mono, but microsoft are now pushing 2.0 and 3.0 which is incompatible.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

If you look at some of the more complex webapps, you'l find that most have kludges to support ie and firefox, some have extra kludges for opera and safari...
It's very hard to write a webapp where the same code runs in all browsers, you quite often have to determine the browser being used and serve up slightly different code to different browsers. That's not write once run anywhere, that's write once then port to several target platforms - like C.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[yabos]

AFAIK, at WWDC 06 developers were told Carbon would have full 64 bit compatibility. This year at WWDC Apple said "nope, we changed our minds.". This is why many developers are mad. But, I'm with you still. It's been fairly obvious that Apple doesn't want to put more effort into Carbon than they have to and that it'll be losing support sooner rather than later.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[squiggleslash]

Already, most software works or "mostly works" with Wine. I routinely run IE with Flash on my Fedora Core 6 laptop in Wine. How long before Wine becomes a "target platform" for software vendors who are otherwise locked into the Win32 API?

That's impressive, given the AppDB currently reports IE7 as being unusable, and IE6 as being installable only if you jump through several hoops and download at least one proprietary DLL that's neither bundled with IE6 nor freely distributable.

Don't get me wrong: I'm 100% certain you're telling the truth, and that you are running IE6, complete with msls31.dll that you've obtained from somewhere (perhaps an existing Windows installation?), but as a standalone product Wine is clearly far from "prime-time", and far from something that "works" or "mostly works" for the vast majority of ordinary users. It says something that as yet I haven't had a single application actually run. I tried Safari, it starts and locks up, needing to be manually killed. Apparently if I install certain fonts it might work but as yet I can't get those fonts to install, they claim to install but don't. I can't get Alpha Centauri to run for any length of time. Nobody else can either (well, someone got it to run longer than a few minutes, but cannot read anything on screen because there are no fonts.) I can't get IE6 to install because, in part, I can't find the above DLL; I looked into installing Outlook when I had problems (since resolved) with Evolution, but most versions are rated "Garbage" in the AppDB.

Going to the AppDB to find working applications finds that the apps that work the best tend to be some of the more popular games. The current top 25 has two (three, if you count Photoshop twice) non-games in it, iTunes and Photoshop, which gives you some idea of where Wine's strengths are.

Wine is not ready for prime-time. For anyone other than a person with very specific application requirements, who's prepared to spend a great deal of time configuring it and downloading hacks that fall outside of their GNU/Linux distribution's package collection, it's utterly and completely unusable. Wine is a great demonstration of how difficult it is to replicate the Windows operating system APIs. It's not "almost there", despite the immense effort put into it by some of the world's most talented programmers, it never has been.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

A barrier to sale is "why not", a selling point is "why".

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[ptlis]

Already, most software works or "mostly works" with Wine. I routinely run IE with Flash on my Fedora Core 6 laptop in Wine. How long before Wine becomes a "target platform" for software vendors who are otherwise locked into the Win32 API?

Not long at all, infact there was an article less than a month ago about Eve Online's linux and max osx support via wine (Cadega). Personally I can't decide if it's a good thing (because it's now a supported platform) or a bad thing (because there's little motivation to create native ports if running it through wine is "good enough").

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[vidarh]

I tend to consider a good thing, because even crappy ports help plug the holes that prevent Linux from being a full desktop alternative for people. Whenever the Linux penetration of the desktop gets large enough, competition will take care of making better ports a requirement. For now, getting stuff that's "good enough" is far more valuable than getting perfect ports.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[darthflo]

I agree on lots of stuff not working properly, but for many apps relatively simple workarounds exist.
For your mentioned IE problems, there's IEs4Linux. Versions 5-6 run more or less flawlessy, 7 mostly works and 1/2 sometimes do (for laughs).
FlashFXP (which I frequently use because of the lack of any decently stable native FTP client(!)) runs almost perfectly after applying a small source patch and recompiling.
Steam with all it's HL2-based apps worked out-of-the-box, IIRC. (Bought HL2 back after buying and before trying to install Windows on my shiny new metal box. Unfortunately XP got a wee bit confused by too much storage and refused to install, so I switched to Gentoo and, more recently, Ubuntu).

Many other apps will work if you put a similar amount of work into them. For anything else, I've got a legacy XP ThinkPad with Office, Civ III and that kind of stuff installed. Ironically it's the only computer having trouble accessing some SMB shares on this network.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[darthflo]

Because their primary source of income is not the software they sell. They sell iPods and iPhones and give away firmware upgrades for free - money made with hardware, not software. They sell Macs with OS X and iLife and iWhatever included and don't expect most users to upgrade. A certain subset of their users will keep their PCs updated with the latest Tiger, Housecat and Guinea Pig releases, but the crowd they're attracting with "Everything just works" kind of slogans won't.
Also, the software they sell runs exclusively on their hardware, ensured by their license agreement and software locks*. After BootCamp, their hardware, however, doesn't just run Apple software. Of course nobody would actually buy their hardware 'cause it's all about The Mac Experience and Being Pretentious, but essentially Apple wouldn't lose out if such behaviour was to occur.

* OSx86 is neither sanctioned nor supported by Apple. It's a project by hackers for hackers which, I imagine, doesn't really bother any high execs anywhere. If it were to somehow get some traction in the market this might change but I suspect it won't, at least not in the short term.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[easter1916]

My experience is that most Dutch speak English *better* than native speakers... nicely done, Wouter!

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[David Gerard]

In practice, Wine is already a better Windows than Vista. And better and better every two-weekly release.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[vidarh]

If we assume "master" means "know every detail of the language", I'll agree with you. If we're talking about master as "know well enough to use it highly effectively" I'm not so sure. None of your examples would make a difference for most developers in the latter case. I can't remember the last time I saw C code that used register, volatile or for that matter "char * const", though granted the former two will be important for people who intend to do hardware work (but is then easy enough to learn). In fact, I've worked with C developers that's never in their career used any of those and wouldn't have a clue what they're even for, because it's a dark corner of the language that most normal app developers never bother with (as is const-correctness generally in C and C++ - people use some very specific patterns and forget about the rest).

People can "master" a subset of the language appropriate for what they need very quickly - few people EVER learn every quirky little feature.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's just Adobe has a large, old codebase that has been transitioned across so many different architectures (68000 series, Power PC series, and now x86 32/64) that re-engineering it will be difficult.

I'm confused...

Were this Microsoft, I could understand, given that chunks of DOS were carried around for so long, and Win16 after that, but then, even modern kick-ass 64-bit dual-core processors can still run 16-bit code -- probably 8-bit code, if there is such a thing.

But I'm confused... Photoshop has run on Windows for a long time, which means x86. It also ran on 68k and PowerPC. And you're telling me it's an old, inflexible codebase? What they've done with it suggests that it would have to be extremely portable... guess not.

But then, I keep forgetting... Flash runs on everything, Windows, Linux, Mac, x86, PPC, ARM even, but not 64-bit. Either they don't care, or they've got a fairly huge engineering problem on their hands.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Vexorian]

Hmmm the only commercial Linux applications I can think of would be the propietary apps included in enterprise SUSE and red hat and also Pixel, that one awesome photoshop clone, they don't use WINE.

I can't tell you about more commercial apps since I don't really know about that stuff. I can name mainstream applications that are native and are used by plenty of users and were not developed by gnome/FSF/KDE/etc , for example Google earth, and Opera

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Run programs for those who still have a teensy weensy creative spark left in them. There are programs like iPhoto, iMovie, iDvd, Garage band etc which have no counterparts on Windows that come even close. iPhoto: ACDSee, Picasa
iMovie: ULead Video Studio, Adobe Premiere Elements
iDVD: ULead Video Workshop
Garage Band: Sonic Foundry ACID

Most have more features than the Apple counterpart...

Use the money you save on the hardware to buy them.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcr]

I bought it for the very basic expectation that it should just "work"

That's over and above what you can expect from the windows box, QED.

-jcr

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[WillAdams]

While they're not Leopard only, they do require a fairly specific set of circumstances to run Tiger:

- must have a retail copy of Tiger
- must have a defunct machine identical to the new one (so as to be legal)

William

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[denmarkw00t]

"As Wine proves, any reimplementation of the Win32 API is inevitably not going to be as good as the real thing."
Let's see, in Wine I have trouble with performance, compatibility and software just working the way its supposed to - sounds like it works a little better than Windows.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[squiggleslash]

Reference counting is a form of garbage collection. The other popular family of garbage collection methods is called "Tracing".

Java uses tracing. Some languages, notably Delphi, uses reference counting. Reference counting has major issues related to objects that have circular references, but it at least has predictable performance, whereas tracing is extremely fast and deals with circular references, but has the "stop the world" issue where a program will grind to a halt whenever GC needs to be involved. There are various means by which the "stop the world" issue is minimized in recent GCs.

The issue with Objective C 1.0 isn't that the method it uses is reference counting, it's that it's not fully automatic. It's extremely easy to create memory leaks in pre-Leopard Objective C applications by forgetting to include an object in either the built-in garbage collector or in whatever you do manually to free unused memory.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Tacvek]

and anything to encourage coding for a platform has to be a good thing.

I'm not so sure. Some of the benefits of the whole Mac system are somewhat incompatible with the concept of thousands of people who don't really understand programming writing apps for the platform.

Take the bundle system. It is really nice for applications to be basically self contained, and runnable from anywhere. Generally bundles let this happen. Many (but not all) Mac apps have no need for an installer, and can run from any location. To remove the app, you simply drag it to the trash. Sure, they sometimes leave behind a bit of cruft, but the cruft is in well known locations and is trivial to remove.

But look at many .NET programmers. Very few of them are even aware what would be nessisary to create an location independent application, and might not care even if they did know.

Further, what about the interface standards. Sure Apple is not following them perfectly themselves, but as long as most apps follow them pretty closely everything works well. But how many .NET developers even try to follow the very minimal interface standards of Windows? There is almost no chance they would try to follow the interface standards of a Mac.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[abigor]

Many years ago in school, I had an instructor who was big on Smalltalk (he later wrote a textbook about it and went on to work for IBM as a Smalltalk instructor). So I dabbled in it a bit, in the way that you do in a school course. I agree that it was nice, and it's too bad it utterly failed to catch on.

I used Python as a reference point for a dynamic language because of its familiarity with some of the Slashdot audience. Very, very few people know Smalltalk; lots know Python. So my point is better illustrated that way, that's all ;)

However you want to look at it, Objective-C's dynamic, runtime-binding nature beats the hell out of C++, where the vast majority of my language experience lies. Let's agree on that, at least.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[coolGuyZak]

You fail to differentiate between .Net and C#. By and large, I criticize the former. I can see where you might get the wrong idea, though, so I'll elaborate.

The .Net framework suggests that the prototype for an event is as follows: "ret_type event( Object sender, EventArgs_subclass e )". Compare with a "typical" windows callback mechanism: "ret_type function( HWND hParam, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam )". Suspiciously similar, neh? HWND corresponds to "Object sender", and the W- and L- PARAM objects are wrapped into EventArgs.

EventArgs and its sub-classes encapsulate all of the data given to a particular handler, much like W- and L- params, which changed meanings depending on call context. Some EventArgs subclasses also perform odd tasks, for instance the CancelEventArgs.Cancel property. This is the downright stupidest OOP implementation I've ever seen. Cancel is not data, it's an action. I don't want to specify the "cancelness" of the data, I want to cancel an operation. A better design would be to send a message back to the sending object that says, "I can't validate this." Unfortunately, because .Net event handlers use the ambiguous "object handle." I'd need a cast before I could send my response.

The complexity of implementing a cancel message is likely greater than CancelEventArgs, but the solution is far more intuitive. We don't even need to go as far as sending a message, though. Provide a real type to the sender argument (for instance, ICancelableControl, or just Control), and provide a Cancel method, and I'd be happy.

Performance is a shoddy argument for the lack of a message passing system, because .Net treats the event system as a messaging network anyway. AFAIAC, use events, but add more formality to the event system. Call your EventArgs what they are -- a message--and type the sending object appropriately. Finally, differentiate functioanlly between events and multicast delegates. Events should manage their subscription list; if an object subscribing to an event is garbage collected, fail silently. If the event lacks subscribers, then succeed.

And now for something completely different.

Everyone knows MSDN is a steaming pile of crap. What's worse, Microsoft seems to be doing very little to correct that image. IMHO, this is a mistake. As a developer, my first exposure to .Net is through MSDN--fundamentally, it's marketing for techies. It should be thorough, describing how components interact, typical real-world use cases for code, the history or motivation of a particular interface, etc. MSDN should serve the same function as an O'Reilly book--set a mood and mindset for development.

MS can spend as much money developing the perfect language as they want, but without the proper supporting tools--and don't get me started on the woes of VS--their efforts piss people off. This is precisely the motivation for the GGP's note that Objective-C developers are so "happy" and my "bullshit" post.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: * Objective-C's garbage collection comes from gcc, it's called boehm-weimers, and it's what everyone except cPython uses these days. Java, .NET, ObjC, they all build with gcc --enable-boehm-gc or whatever.

FYI: this is bullshit.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[coolGuyZak]

Awesome. I italicized a typo. "functioanlly" should read "functionally".

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

75-80? What a load of bullshit. I haven't come across a single useful app that doesn't run on my Windows XP box. And I don't even know where the registry or any of that other stuff is. Either you're lying or your computer is fucked beyond recognition.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Fallingcow]

FlashFXP (which I frequently use because of the lack of any decently stable native FTP client(!))

Tried the FireFTP extension for Firefox?

Beats the hell out of gFTP, which is what I was using before.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[squiggleslash]

I suspect the list of commercial desktop applications that exists for GNU/Linux is small because of the number of high quality free software alternatives that exist for that platform, the difficulty of packaging third party software in such a way that it installs easily on an arbitrary GNU/Linux distribution, and the relatively small marketshare.

It certainly isn't because people can run the Windows versions of the same applications via Wine. Wine requires extraordinary patience and knowledge to set up and get most applications running that it runs. I suspect you've never tried it, though given the quality of the commentary on your website...

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[darthflo]

I tend to avoid Firefox wherever possible, but if FireFTP can do the following I might have to think it over:
- Detect connection losses in a sensible timeframe (Konqueror likes to have a "Stalled" connection for several hours) and reconnect/resume accordingly
- Be able to decide if resuming or skipping (partially) downloaded files is appropriate and act accordingly
- Allow me to select a subset of all files in a directory (e.g. Ctrl + Click or checkboxes)
- Allow me to save the queue to a file (or be stable).

Any insights if FireFTP's worth being tried?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[bitmonk]

Mono is quickly catching, I think 2.0 at least is ISO certified, and 3.0 is really more about the .NET lib than the runtime / architecture - and who cares about Microsoft's lib when you just want to talk to Cocoa? ;)

Have a look here for details:

    http://mono-project.com/Roadmap

It sounds like they are somewhere between 1.1 and 2.0, and that 3.0 is an addon to the MS apis, which has little to do with the core. 3.5 is really the next target with some updates to the core, but it really sounds about as significant as a python point release.

So, sure, Mono lags a bit, but from the C# and other # developers I've talked to, it has the most important stuff, and that's how it's been developed, by taking codebases and trying to make them work.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[garbletext]

The first Macbooks were released before the Core 2, so 64-bit wasn't even an option at the time. Furthermore, the rush to 64-bit everywhere makes no sense. It's not that beneficial for most desktop applications. If you're not brushing up against the RAM limit, you don't need it, certainly not on a laptop. By the time we actually do need it, it will be ubiquitously supported anyways.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[MK_CSGuy]

I've seen some Win32 code; it's not pretty, and the way the UI code connects to what's happening on the screen is a complete mystery to me.

So grab a freaking win internals book and read it. I agree that it's not pretty, but to bitch about you not knowing how the internals work when the information is readily available (regarding UI!) is just plain lazy.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[tepples]

"Mac"? What company is this "Mac"? The division of Apple Inc. that produces Macintosh computers, as opposed to the divisions that produce iPod players and operate the iTunes Store.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

That's why you use a web development framework.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Fallingcow]

Well, let me see...

- Detect connection losses in a sensible timeframe (Konqueror likes to have a "Stalled" connection for several hours) and reconnect/resume accordingly

Never had a problem. Plus, it keeps the connection alive, which is nice for servers that a short timeout (I assume that this can be changed if you'd rather it didn't do that).

- Be able to decide if resuming or skipping (partially) downloaded files is appropriate and act accordingly

Testing that now... OK, I started downloading a 28 MB file, killed the connection, reconnected, browsed back to the directory on the server, and told it to download again. It gave me a dialog box with "overwrite", "overwrite all", "skip", "skip all", and "resume" as options. Choosing "resume" got it going again immediately. So, it doesn't decide it automatically (not sure how it could...) but the options are there.

- Allow me to select a subset of all files in a directory (e.g. Ctrl + Click or checkboxes)

Yeah, normal selection conventions seem to work. shift+click, ctrl+click, selecting, deselecting some or all, etc.

- Allow me to save the queue to a file (or be stable).

Uh, I can't find a way to do that. Haven't had it crash once, though. Only trouble I've had was when I tried to run it on the new Firefox 3 Beta, which it's not marked as being compatible with yet, so I kind of expected that not to work (and it really, really didn't).

It's very convenient if you run Firefox as your main browser, especially if you're doing web work. Firefox (with the FireFTP and Webdev tools addons) and Notepad++ (or Geany, on Linux, which is very nearly identical) is a great kit, with all the Firefox stuff being cross-platform so I can quickly set up for work even on an unfamiliar system (especially if it already has Firefox installed).

Actually, now that I'm looking at it, I could do all my work form Firefox if I could find an addon that could replace Notepad++/Geany. Anyone know of such a thing?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

> I think one can extrapolate that the presence of WINE has prevented native applications from being developed for Linux.

This is an interesting thought. One could further extrapolate the success of Bootcamp, VMWare and Parallels will prevent native applications from being developed on the Mac -- most especially games.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[tepples]

And everything in Objective-C is a pointer, which is not a concept that's exposed at all in Java, and is only exposed in C# in a very "don't ever use this" kind of way, from my understanding. In the Java environment, a "reference" to an object acts like a pointer in some ways. Or are you referring specifically to the potentially unsafe iteration ("arithmetic" of the form p++) associated with C and C++ pointers?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

Thats not the point...
64bit is coming, sooner or later, and apple must have known this...
The core2 wasnt around, but mobile p4s were (yes, they suck and consume lots of power) and the turion64 was available.
The point was more about not having to support 2 architectures, and having another migration in the future. They chose an architecture that's heading out (32bit x86) and ran with it for 1 short lived line of machines. What they could have done, was done the migration all at once.. Direct from PPC32/64 to x86/64, removing the need to support (and continue being held back by) a very short lived 32bit x86 machine.
I'm sure that's also the reason why the mac pro came later, since they were replacing the already 64bit G5 machines.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

So your no longer writing the kludges yourself, your merely using a set that someone else has already developed.
You can also develop cross platform C code by using cross platform libs like SDL and OpenGL etc..

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, some of the iBooks cannot run Tiger.

Check out the OSX Enterprise list at http://macenterprise.org/

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[duffbeer703]

You're missing a few small companies like HP, IBM (ever hear of AIX, zOS?), Sun, Unisys?

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[gerrysteele]

> FlashFXP (which I frequently use because of the lack of any decently stable native FTP client(!)) runs almost perfectly after applying a small source patch [winehq.org] and recompiling.

Are you serious? lftp is the awesomemost thing in the universe. And there must be at least 4000 more ftp clients

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[mrogers]

I remember struggling one Christmas morning to get iChat AV to work because iChat and PostgreSQL were fighting over the same shmget() key_t (54321, IIRC).

See, people say OSX isn't a real Unix, but I think this example of inexplicable behaviour caused by a hardcoded value buried in an arcane decades-old API proves how wrong they are. Welcome to the family. ;-)

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Bert64]

And they probably can't run leopard either...
I'm talking about machines which can only run leopard or newer.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[samkass]

As someone who's used Objective-C, Java, C++, C, and many others, I sympathize with your disdain for C++. I developed almost exclusively in that language for about 8 years. Going to Java was a breath of fresh air, and even Objective-C is significantly refreshing compared to it. But Objective-C is no Java-- it's way too easy to write bugs in that the compiler can't catch, or code that's difficult to understand, or find ways to refactor or analyze the code. Once you get out of college into the real world and have to support a codebase for a decade I suspect you'll appreciate Java a lot more than you do now.

Java is often a little less performant than Objective-C, and sometimes a little more performant. It's rarely significantly different in performance, though.

But what the dynamic compilation and simple but expressive syntax of Java buys you is hugely powerful developer tools and a language in which it's almost difficult to write bugs in. Every time I load up XCode on my Mac and have to read Objective-C I feel like I've been teleported into the 1980's or something. IDE's, languages, and runtimes have come a long way since XCode's predecessors were created in the mid 80's. I wish Apple's market was big enough that alternatives were available.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[samkass]

I'd personally hate it if they gave up the beautiful elegance that is ObjC and forced Apple developers to move to Java or .NET.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again now: Objective C is exactly at the sweet spot for a computer language

I have to admit to not appreciating beautiful elegance, and prefer the buglessness, productivity, and tools of Java. Every time I start up XCode it's painful compared to even the free Java IDEs, let alone something like IntelliJ IDEA. And it also doesn't compare to Microsoft's tools.

As for Objective-C itself as a language, its syntax is unnecessarily complex and its few benefits over Java are pretty meaningless in practice. In performance, the two are fairly comparable.

In summary, Interface Builder, Project Builder/XCode, and Objective-C were state-of-the-art in the mid to late 80's when they came around. The industry has far surpassed them in this day and age. Every time I start up XCode on my Mac I feel like I've been transported to a dark age of development compared to my IntelliJ IDEA tools for work... and it's not just that Apple is lazy about its IDE. Objective-C is fundamentally not as amenable to the analysis, refactoring, and syntax help that Java is.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

??

Your post made no freaking sense dude..

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[BitZtream]

What you are referring to is really the difference between 'a programmer' and 'a person who writes code'.

'A person who writes code' is basically someone who was taught a language and can get a few things done with it, but will never be 'good' and will have a real steep learning curve dealing with a different programming language.

'A programmer' is someone who, given a good reference manual, can write code in pretty much any language and given a some time to learn and understand a language/runtime/enviroment can write good, fast, stable applications.

Schools typically turn out a bunch of 'people who write code' but aren't worth a damn as programmers. They can typically turn out something relatively simple in the language they know, but have a real hard time writting a complex system or switching to a new language. A programmer can typically write code in just about any language but will be faster in the languages they have the most experience with. Most 'programers' have no problem writting code in assembly, C, Java, C#, and any number of other languages, and typically will use more than one to complete a complex project. Using a scripting language to generate a source file used in a larger project of another language is common with 'programmers' as an example.

I truely detest the number of people coming out of school with a comp sci major thinking they are programmers, especially the ones who have only used crap like Visual Basic and having no real idea of how to solve complex problems once they don't have an extremely narrow scope defined by their professors. I wish more students were taught 'how to program' rather than 'how to write hello world with <INSERT LANGUAGE OF PROFESSORS CHOICE HERE>

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[darthflo]

So, it doesn't decide it automatically (not sure how it could...)

That somewhat of a killer argument for me. I can tell FlashFXP to "intelligently" resume/skip (filesize on server equals size on client => skip, server > client => resume, server has, client doesn't => transfer) which seems to be kind of exclusive.
I need it to be able to decide automatically because I often have to transfer hundreds of gigabytes over a not-too reliable dsl connection (tens of hours, sometimes days spent on one transfer) and don't want to have to wait in front of the comp to catch any arrors.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[darthflo]

There are tons of clients available for Linux, but to date I haven't found a decent one. I tried more or less everything I could find in gentoo's and Ubuntu's repositories, but may have missed lftp. If it's able to cover all points I mentioned in this other comment, nothing's holding me in the wine/FlashFXP world. If it, however, is worse than the mess I'm currently using, I'll just stick to that.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

My gripe with Java is the that its class library isn't convenient and I often find myself fighting with it. With Objective-C and Cocoa I can do really simple things easily. For instance to initialize an NSArray with an arbitrary collection of objects I can use the following:

NSArray *anArray = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:obj1, obj2, obj3, nil];

In Java you have to do the following:

List list = new LinkedList();
list.add(obj1);
list.add(obj2);
list.add(obj3);

Java is a pain. Maybe there is a better way, but I haven't found anything that's immediately obvious.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall the docs advice is to use a filename, and hash it to get your key.

54321 doesn't sound like they followed the advice.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Voos onhlaze es tray be en.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[slamb]

Sure doesn't, but even if they had, ftok() is a lousy excuse for a hash function. From the Darwin ftok() manpage, BUGS section:

The returned key is computed based on the device minor number and inode of the specified path in combination with the lower 8 bits of the given id. Thus it is quite possible for the routine to return duplicate keys.

IIRC from reading Stevens, way back when the interface was designed 32 bits was sufficient for guaranteed uniqueness. Even now, you could achieve somewhat low probability of collision with a decent hash function. But ftok() is not a decent hash function, so it's probably no better than everyone just picking numbers arbitrarily. It's a totally braindead interface now that mmap() exists on all useful platforms.

mmap() has plenty of other advantages, like actual reference counting (open descriptors + filesystem links) instead of a virtual post-it note reading "last person to leave the shared memory segment please turn the lights off with shmctl(..., IPC_RMID, ...)".

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jcgf]

I think master does mean knows every detail. Remember though that just because someone isn't a "master" it does not mean that they are incompetent.

"char * const x;" isn't that useful an example, consider instead "MyClass * const x;". Now imagine that you need to pass a function your really big class to process, but need speed and also want to make certain that the function doesn't alter said class. Of course C++ still provides const_cast which allows you to shoot yourself in the foot, but that's another story.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

A selling point is a reason why a product is superior to another product. A barrier to sale is a reason why a customer might be bound to stay with a different product.

You don't buy a Mac because it can run a windows app, since the cheap shit from Dell will do that, too. You buy the Mac for the things that it offers over and above what the Dell box can do. So put another way, the selling point of a Mac system is that it can run both OS X and Windows. Whereas most intel systems can not run an unmodified version of OS X. So again, the fact that a Mac system can run Windows IS a selling point. Its obvious that it runs OS X, it wouldn't be a mac if it couldn't. But it is clearly a selling point that it runs both, and other systems do not.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, most of my pet spywares fail to run correctly under wine.

Nice FUD. None of my Windows machines have had a single piece of spyware in several years. Simply use SpywareBlaster. All it requires is there to be a brain between the chair and the keyboard... not that a FUD spewer like you would know what I'm talking about.

I supposed next you'll tell us how much better Leoptard is to Vista. Bwahahaha!

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jonbryce]

That would be OK for some programs, but this is Photoshop we are talking about, and good performance is pretty important here.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[jonbryce]

And the programs wine does run reliably, such as Office 2000 (not including Access), are programs where there are already suitable native alternatives which do the job much better.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[chasd]

Apple tried that kind of thing before with the Java/Cocoa bridge. It's now been deprecated because it was a pain in the ass to maintain, and no one was using it.

The NeoOffice developers do. Forcing people to use the X11 version of OpenOffice would be a bad, bad, thing.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[arminw]

......Just to name one counter-example, Sun Microsystems makes the Solaris "operating software" .......

OK, nitpicker, I should have added the words CONSUMER and SMALL BUSINESS computers. IBM still makes mainframes and Sun's offerings are for servers. You won't find those systems running word processors spreadsheets and games.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

A: http://www.apple.com/store/

  oh ess ex ate eee six. buy it. own it. use it.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Durandal64]

Hey, man, I hate Microsoft, and I love my Mac. I even like Objective-C, but the CLI is an evolution in compiler chains. Imagine the computing world as a whole failed a course when Java was developed, and CLI is the result of really fucking paying attention in class this time. Ignoring this advancement could really give those bastards an edge, so for the sake of those that come after us, let's keep focused. Microsoft: evil. CLI: an ECMA/ISO-flavoured pacifier for redmond's rabid backwards-compatibility-status-quo crowd.

I never made any comments about whether .Net was evil. From what I hear, it's a fine framework. What I questioned was whether .Net was worth bringing into Cocoa.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[Durandal64]

No offense, but what people? The impact of breaking NeoOffice is probably negligible at best.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[SpectreBlofeld]

BitTorrent.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[tehcyder]

Adobe has already sold everyone who wants or needs one a copy of Photoshop

No, everyone who wants or needs a copy of Photoshop already has one, but I doubt Adobe actually sold the majority of them...

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[anotherone]

No it isn't.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[ByteSlicer]

Euhm, maybe because you're using a list instead of an array? The corresponding Java code is:

Object[] anArray = new Object[]{obj1, obj2, obj3};

Not that hard, is it? Seems even simpler than in Objective-C...

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[edalytical]

Objective-C can do C-like arrays too.

NSObject *anArray[] = {obj1, obj2 obj3};

Which IMHO is even simpler than Java since I don't have to use "new" or a constructor.

The beauty of Cocoa is that NSArray and it mutable counterpart NSMutableArray have the same method names, so:

NSMutableArray *anArray = [NSMutableArray arrayWithObjects:obj1, obj2, obj3, nil];

Creates a linked list object where objects can be added and removed. The same is true for NSDictionary and NSMutableDictionary they have convenient methods for constructing them, unlike Java's HashMap class or other collection classes.

Re:Not for Win32 compatibility

[DECS]

Exactly: what purpose would there be for mainstream games developers to write Mac games using Cocoa when they can use their existing Windows game code with a wrapper like Cider and deliver a 'native' game for Mac users that works better, is easier to maintain, and is more likely to work over the network than a starting from scratch Cocoa version?

EA's new Cider Mac games are fair to good, with a strangely long pause on startup, but otherwise far better than waiting for 6-12 months or never getting anything. Sure there are other markets for Mac-centric games, but expecting big title Mac games is a bit silly and impractical give the size of the Mac gamer market (and the limited availability of game-equipped Mac hardware). Even native games like Bilzzard's WOW are based on a shared core; Cider just makes that core larger. Games don't need a native interface because they run in their own box.

The Linux games market is similar, with more hardware options but lacking in any commercial incentive to sell native Linux games at retail. The Linux desktop applications market is even worse, as there are more free options like OpenOffice or the Gimp that are considered acceptable on Linux, and far less of a commercial market than the Mac.

If Apple were to deliver excellent Win32 compatibility, there would be no reason at all to develop Mac apps... for the majority of third party developers. Apple would still deliver its consumer and pro apps, and Mac developers would stick to Cocoa because they like it, but why would anyone else port things to the Mac? Games don't need to be ported natively, but other apps really do. Tools like Parallels exist only to enable the use of apps that will never be ported to the Mac (such as Internet Explorer for testing purposes. It's a legacy environment, and that's what Apple wants it to remain.

Linux needs Wine for entirely different reasons: to make up for the conspicuous void of commercial desktop software. If you want to run iTunes on Linux, Wine makes it possible. It also makes it slightly less likely (because it was already impossibly unlikely) that Apple will bother porting it, because there's no market to tap and there's a viable alternative to those who might want it.

Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[gothicpoet]

This is pretty fascinating. If Apple were able to run Win32 executables at some point out of the box it would add a great deal of value to their platform -- especially if it worked well enough to do things like run all of those games that you can't play on OS X so far.

Watch out microsoft

[eli pabst]

Interesting. One of the major downsides to using OSX is that there isn't as much software available for it. If OSX were able to run windows executables natively (think Microsoft Office and games) that would be a major coup for Apple. Plus you wouldn't need to sit around hoping that WINE decides to support that application.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

um, except there is office on osx and a _ton_ of amazing software. as a mac/linux/windows user, i'd say the best overall software in terms of usable/quality stuff is out on the mac.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[g0at]

Interesting. One of the major downsides to using OSX is that there isn't as much software available for it. If OSX were able to run windows executables natively (think Microsoft Office and games) that would be a major coup for Apple. Plus you wouldn't need to sit around hoping that WINE decides to support that application. Eh? Did you copy/paste this from a discussion five years ago?

-b

Re:Watch out microsoft

[GiMP]

With a few exceptions, there is usually more than one well-known application under MacOS (or Linux, for that matter) to perform any given task. Also, the pure number of applications has nothing to do with the usefulness of said applications. There may only be 200 text editors for MacOS, as opposed to 20000 text editors for Windows, but on either platform there will be less than 10 that are really worth using.

The popularity of Parallels and VMWare Fusion is boggling because there really isn't that much of a need or desire to run applications from one OS, from another; if there was, those users wouldn't have bought a Mac in the first place. Personally, I use virtualization for testing and deployment, usually of Linux systems, not for "running Windows apps" because I have every application that I need on my OS -- if I couldn't run all the applications that I needed on MacOS or Linux, I would be running Windows. The fact that I'm not running Windows only shows that I don't need those Windows applications -- 200 text editors is enough, thank you.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[christurkel]

I thought the same thing, but even further back. There has been, for instance, a native MS Office since 1997.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Dasher42]

Having a history of using MS-DOS, the Amiga, OS/2, and Linux since the Slackware 0.9x days, I'm now using OSX on my MacBook Pro primarily. "Not as much software available" may be true in some respects, but you should ask yourself how that really affects you. You don't need quantity, you need quality. Right now I have the well integrated, nicely designed software suite that comes with OSX, and a shell prompt is just a click away where I have my MacPorts which makes getting the standard open source software that I have to have available.

My other machines are a Windows/Linux desktop and a Kurobox running Debian. The desktop rarely gets turned on, and the Kurobox does its job serving out NFS and SMB shares and hosting the occasional nethack game quite well. In practice, though, when all these machines are available, it's the quality that counts.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[eli pabst]

Yes I realize there is a OSX version of MS Office. There has also been consistent threats by MS to not release versions for OSX and there have also been plenty of complaints that the OSX version is buggy and doesn't run as well. Plus how many people avoids becoming switchers because you can't run games? When did they release a Mac version of Halo? What about Halflife?

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Hemogoblin]

I agree with your thesis that there is usually an equivalent program available for a given OS. However, you're forgetting about high-profile games that are specific to Windows. It's difficult, if not impossible, to find an equivalent version for some OSs.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Winckle]

Mac version of halo was 2004 I think. Half life for mac was canceled in 99.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[PCM2]

there have also been plenty of complaints that the OSX version is buggy and doesn't run as well.

From who? Most of the people I know who have used both say that Mac Office 2004 is better than Office 2003 for Windows (and they think that makes no sense and they don't get what the hell is wrong with Microsoft).

Re:Watch out microsoft

[ceoyoyo]

What he means is that there isn't as much crappy software for it.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[spud603]

I generally agree as well that there's a native app on OSX for any task I'd be doing with a Windows app. Usually even one I like more.
However, compatibility with specific programs is trickier. The sole reason that I use VMWare is to run Microsoft Access (among the worst database apps I've ever had to use, though to be fair I do think the 2007 version actually managed to be an improvement). But .mdb files are everywhere, particularly in the business world, and there's no reliable way to read them without Access. So until I convince my boss to move over to SQLite databases with a Kexi frontend I'm stuck.
That said, I boot into it as infrequently as I can, maybe once a month.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...there have also been plenty of complaints that the OSX version is buggy and doesn't run as well.

Umm, I've mostly heard complaints that the Windows version is buggier actually. There is plenty of software that is badly ported or not available on OS X, but you picked a crappy example. Of course it cuts both ways, since iTunes on Windows is pretty crappy by comparison, and you can't get OmniGraffle at all.

Plus how many people avoids becoming switchers because you can't run games?

Some, but not as many as most people on Slashdot probably think. The hardcore gamer market is not as large as it is vocal. The casual gamer has a several year old machine and by the time they own one that can play a given game, most of them (especially outside the hardcore market) are ported to OS X. The top 10 games in a given year account for about half of game sales, and the last time I checked, 8 out of 10 had been ported within a year.

When did they release a Mac version of Halo? What about Halflife?

That's where a lot of people are misled. Most gamers could not run Halo on their machine for years, even if the owned a PC. And what most people care about is The Sims. In fact, if you look at the list of top selling games of all time, according to wikipedia you have:

1. The Sims (16 million shipped) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
2. StarCraft (9.5 million) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
3. World of Warcraft (9.3 million subscribers) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
4. Half-Life (8 million) - Windows release only, no Mac - there are some interesting theories why.
5. Diablo II (4 million) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
6. Myst (6 million) - Mac release before Windows

Do you see how the average, gamer who is not hardcore would not be too perturbed by the lack of choice?

Re:Watch out microsoft

[s4ltyd0g]

Hell no he didn't. If you don't count ported Linux software and a some specialized packages, there's diddle squat.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Pollardito]

1. The Sims (16 million shipped) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
2. StarCraft (9.5 million) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
3. World of Warcraft (9.3 million subscribers) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
4. Half-Life (8 million) - Windows release only, no Mac - there are some interesting theories why.
5. Diablo II (4 million) - simultaneous Windows and Mac release
6. Myst (6 million) - Mac release before Windows

Do you see how the average, gamer who is not hardcore would not be too perturbed by the lack of choice?

that's a pretty misleading way of examining the games. the 5 games listed there that work on a Mac have release dates that span more than a decade (Myst is 1993?). i've played a game for as long as 2 years before (Diablo, EQ, WoW), but i doubt most non-hardcore people would do it. if your argument is that the list you gave is a representative sample of all games released and therefore the time between those top games can be filled with others, i'd have to disagree. but it's hard to provide evidence beyond suggesting that you take a walk through the Mac games section of your local CompUSA, well maybe "walking through" it is an overstatement since it'll be about 20 boxes (of which a majority will be solitaire compilations).

Re:Watch out microsoft

[toddestan]

Interesting. One of the major downsides to using OSX is that there isn't as much software available for it. If OSX were able to run windows executables natively (think Microsoft Office and games) that would be a major coup for Apple.

You might want to ask IBM how that worked out for them years ago.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

that's a pretty misleading way of examining the games. the 5 games listed there that work on a Mac have release dates that span more than a decade (Myst is 1993?).

So? They're the top selling games of all time, picked for that reason. WoW is only a few years old and is a good representation of the normal gaming market. The Sims is even better, as Sims expansion packs occupied 4 of the top 10 spots last year.

if your argument is that the list you gave is a representative sample of all games released and therefore the time between those top games can be filled with others, i'd have to disagree.

That is not my argument. My argument is that the top 10 games in a year represent a significant portion of most people's gaming time and for the most part, that situation is not very bad for Mac users. The casual gamer can easily find 1 to 3 games to play in a year and that is all most people buy. If their tastes are average, they're even better off. I don't think the games available are a large deterrent to the average person, even if it is the the relatively small hardcore gamer market. This isn't even taking into account the console gaming market's mitigating effect.

but it's hard to provide evidence beyond suggesting that you take a walk through the Mac games section of your local CompUSA, well maybe "walking through" it is an overstatement since it'll be about 20 boxes (of which a majority will be solitaire compilations).

Hmm, their Website claims the one closest to my house has 122 mac gaming titles in stock. 34 of those are in either card games or puzzle/trivia/board categories leaving 88 in action, RPG, shooters, and strategy. Not that it matters because if they did have only 20 games, so long as they included 8 of the top 10 games of the year, 5 of the top 6 of all time, and 5 standby games like solitaire compilations, the average person would be happy enough not to consider it a serious detriment to using that platform.

It is my opinion that because of the overlap of technical people and hardcore gamers and because of the the "popular wisdom" on Slashdot and the like, people don't actually look at what games people buy, and how many, and which of those are on the Mac to see how much the difference in available games effects normal people. The popularity of the Wii should have woken a few people up to the fact that Slashdot is not a good predictor of the mainstream gaming market and that entrenched ideas about who buys games and what type and what matters... well it is often just completely wrong.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably. And it's still true. Sorry.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[g0at]

Probably. And it's still true. Sorry. Oh! Thank you for gracing us with your baseless opinion, Mr. Coward. On behalf of all Mac enthusiasts worldwide, your apology is accepted out of pity.

-b

Re:Watch out microsoft

[GaryPatterson]

You're right - his list was terrible. He didn't even include Bejewelled!

Otherwise those games mostly cover what 'normal' people care about. These are the people who don't care about getting the latest Catalyst driver within fifteen seconds of release to crank that extra 0.83 FPS in Bioshock. Hell, WoW pretty much satisfies casual gaming today, but add in the Sims, Bejewelled and a card game and there's almost nothing left.

Anyone still in doubt should just get a Wii or an X-Box 360 in addition to their computer. They'll have all the casual games and all the really hardcore games then.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Thumper_SVX]

Interesting that you point this out, because I can say from my own experience that when I bought a Mac (Macbook Pro, first gen), one of the first apps I bought was Parallels. I created a nice little Windows VM, and have been quite happy.

Of course, the reason I bought it is because I thought I would need a lot more Windows support than I actually ended up needing. In fact, I rarely even boot it any more unless I need to VPN into work (Cisco VPN software and they won't give me a Mac native version)... but even that is mitigated by the fact that they provide me a work laptop for exactly that reason. Most times these days if I get called on a weekend when I'm at a coffee shop I just tell them to call someone else who has the ability to dial in because my Mac won't. :)

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that you're right; that Parallels is cool when you need it, but pretty quickly you find you don't need it nearly as much as you thought you did. Generally I use Parallels these days mostly to stand up quick and dirty virtual machines for dev purposes. I have done a few installs of car PC's for friends, and when I'm staging the OS I do it in a VM in Parallels, that way I can crank it up and test it nicely to make sure it's stable before I dump it down to the hardware. As long as the hardware's pretty generic (mostly is for Car PC's) then a quick port is easy. Even with Windows XP Embedded :)

Re:Watch out microsoft

[Pollardito]

if your argument is that the list you gave is a representative sample of all games released and therefore the time between those top games can be filled with others, i'd have to disagree.

That is not my argument. My argument is that the top 10 games in a year represent a significant portion of most people's gaming time and for the most part, that situation is not very bad for Mac users. The casual gamer can easily find 1 to 3 games to play in a year and that is all most people buy. If their tastes are average, they're even better off. I don't think the games available are a large deterrent to the average person, even if it is the the relatively small hardcore gamer market. This isn't even taking into account the console gaming market's mitigating effect.

you mentioned the top 10 in a year, but you listed the top 6 of all time which seemed like cherry-picking to me at the time. it looks like the top 10 games in a year aren't a "5 of 6" situation, but they aren't as bad as i figured they'd be:

2006
1. World of Warcraft--Vivendi Games - PC/MAC
2. The Sims 2--Electronic Arts - PC/MAC (8 months later)
3. The Sims 2: Open For Business Expansion Pack--Electronic Arts - PC/MAC (6 months later)
4. Star Wars: Empire At War--LucasArts - PC/Mac (1 year later)
5. The Sims 2: Pets Expansion Pack--Electronic Arts - PC/Mac (1 month later)
6. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion--Take-Two Interactive - PC
7. Age of Empires III--Microsoft - PC
8. The Sims 2: Family Fun Stuff Expansion Pack--Electronic Arts - PC/MAC
9. Civilization IV--Take-Two Interactive - PC
10. The Sims 2: Nightlife Expansion Pack--Electronic Arts - PC/MAC (6 months later)


2005
1. World Of Warcraft (Vivendi Universal) - PC/MAC
2. The Sims 2: University Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) - PC/MAC (9 months later)
3. The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts) - PC/MAC (8 months later)
4. Guild Wars (NCSoft) - PC
5. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (Atari) - PC/Mac (1 year later)
6. Battlefield 2 (Electronic Arts) - PC
7. The Sims 2: Nightlife Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) - PC/MAC (6 months later)
8. Age Of Empires III (Microsoft) - PC
9. The Sims Deluxe (Electronic Arts) - PC/Mac (5 months later)
10. Call Of Duty 2 (Activision) - PC/Mac (6 months later)

(i used this site for release date lookup)

it looks like Aspyr is doing a good job of translating EA games (and some non-EA), but there's still pretty significant lagtime and i'm not sure how much play-time there is to be had out of a lot of the Sims expansion packs even if they are being bought in great numbers (i've owned both The Sims games, but never played an expansion pack, and never played either longer than a month). i also can't vouch for the quality of the translation, the only games i've played on my Macs have been WoW and Diablo and they use a different development model.

Re:Watch out microsoft

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Just a minor correction, for your lists, both Age of Empires III and Civ IV are out for the Mac, leaving only Elder Scrolls IV as the lone top 10 title not to be ported for 2006. That makes it 9 of 10 and 8 of 10 for the last two years. We haven't yet had a full year of most Macs running on Intel yet, or seen the effect of Cider being used for cheaper, faster ports yet. Also, Mac market share is up about 50% from last year, now making up 8% of the US market. Basically, I see the situation getting better over time, not worse. You mention the lag time, which matters a lot to hardcore gamers waiting for their new fix, but in reality is not too significant for the average gamer. The average gamer buys 3 or fewer games and is a low/mid range system from two years ago, and thus can't play a lot of the big titles until their next upgrade anyway.

...the only games i've played on my Macs have been WoW and Diablo and they use a different development model.

The majority of big game developers (not owned by MS) move to programming with fairly portable and reusable code within a few years because it makes business sense even if they don't want to port to the Mac. They usually license or create an engine, almost all of which work with both ActiveX and OpenGL, making porting fairly minor. Making a Mac port of a game that is or is likely to be successful is just good business and has been for years. The only reason not to do a port is if you're cutting your losses for a game that is going to fail or if your code is a bloody mess and is too hard to untangle... at which point you're going to be screwed soon anyway.

Four words:

[Anonymous Coward]

When hell freezes over.

security?

[yakumo.unr]

unless their access is locked down won't this open them up to a lot of new security vulnerabilities?

like Quicktime seems to be the source of most win32 vulnerabilities at the moment ;p

On what fantasy planet do you live on?

[Ayanami Rei]

You'd have heard that Apple was licensing the Windows common runtime from Microsoft, Mainwin, or somebody like that if that's what their goal was. Even Apple doesn't have the resources to re-implement the Wine wheel. .NET is, however, an open standard with an implementation that already works on FreeBSD and OSX (10.2 and up)... ENTERPRISEY!

Re:On what fantasy planet do you live on?

[eli pabst]

Look at the comments in the mailing list, like:

"I think it may be a sign of future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X."

And that's coming from the WINE guys. To be honest, I'm not a Windows guy so I don't know that much about the ins and outs of the licensing, but I don't think it's that absurd if the WINE people are legitimately suspicious that they're adding some form of WIN32 capability. Maybe you can enlighten me on why that would be impossible for Apple to do, but WINE can get away with it?

Re:On what fantasy planet do you live on?

[colourmyeyes]

Try not to say the same thing twice in your subject, because that's redundant, which means you're saying the same thing twice and being redundant.

Re:On what fantasy planet do you live on?

[TheSpoom]

Not to mention that he was being redundant.

Re:On what fantasy planet do you live on?

[gyrogeerloose]

Stamp out redundancy and do away with it!

Oh God NOOOOO!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugly confusing Windows apps on my Mac PRECIOUS?

*faints*

maybe OSX already have wine

[jim.hansson]

wine is LGPL so apple maybe already is using wine.

Re: maybe OSX already have wine

[Dolda2000]

I think you've probably misunderstood something. The LPGL doesn't mean that Apple would be free to hide its presence or source code or anything of the kind. It just means that it is allowed to link Wine into proprietary programs. They would still need to both inform the world that they have included Wine, and to provide its source code and a way to rebuild both Wine itself and any programs that would be linked statically against Wine. This is in contrast with the GPL only in the way that proprietary programs are not even allowed to link against GPL'ed code.

Virus???

[ocirs]

Doesn't that mean viruses and adware will also be able to run on Macs?

Hmm...

[FlyByPC]

A recent article was talking about how much less reliable Leopard seems to be than Tiger.

Now we find out that Leopard has some Windows compatibility. Maybe they're just making it bug-for-bug compatible?

How long until we hear Apple take up the "it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature" line?

Well then

[iminplaya]

That should explain the "gray screen of death".

More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

Wouldn't it be funny if OSX ended up better able to load old exes than Vista.

I'm no fan of OSX, but nor am I a fan of Vista. Unpopular as the view is I don't think Linux is "ready for the desktop" either. SO I'm going to be one of these sad people that clings to XP for as long as they can. The bottom line is I can't stand Vista for its restrictions (Microsoft has been behaving very badly in the last couple of years) and I can't stand OSX because I've suffered badly many years ago due to Apple's tactics and my own naivety as a child. I use XP at work and at home begrudingly. As far as I'm concerned the more cross compatibility the better since less of the apps I've spent time finding and learning to use will die a premature death.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[pavera]

how did you suffer badly *many* years ago from OSX its only been out for 6 years, I wouldn't say that is many, and even then it was 10.0, so of course it sucked. Apple's "tactics" hurt you as a child?! wow, that's funny that you were scarred for life by a computer company's tactics when you were 6.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Your C-style boolean logic syntax sucks.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[spartas]

I don't think Linux is "ready for the desktop" either

Surely you jest.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

I suffered years ago from Apple. I bought a IIe at a premium just as the Mac came out, then Apple decided to close distribution and I had to drive a couple of hours to get any software legally (whereas I WAs able to buy software from a department store previously).

I think if you get screwed over by a company you should learn from it. Apple does dubious things even now. Like crippling iTunes. I also had to babysit an eMac at work a few years ago and saw it die horribly within a month (motherboard died), then had to jump through hoops with support that was actually worse than most of my experiences with Dell. In terms of general tactics I don't think Apple have changed one bit. Not what I'd call a pleasure to deal with.

By the way you come across as a Mac fanboy.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[cerberusss]

Unpopular as the view is I don't think Linux is "ready for the desktop" either.

It's unpopular because it's a generalization. For me, it works perfectly.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[hyades1]

You're not alone. I'm also going to keep XP going for as long as possible, too.

I never had a problem with Apple, it's just that 'way back, business went DOS/IBM and Apple got frozen out. By the time that situation changed, I worked on a Windows machine and therefore had one at home.

I'm pretty sure my next desktop machine will use a Linux OS, but that won't be 'til XP finally croaks. As far as I'm concerned, you're 100% right. Linux isn't quite ready for prime time yet. Very soon, but not yet. With any luck, they'll come up with a kick-ass OS just when Microsoft releases the Vista successor.

I'm not sure I want to lay out all the extra coin for an Apple. I might, though, for a laptop. It depends on what they come up with, and what my needs are.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Ash-Fox]

I don't think Linux is "ready for the desktop" either.

Oh God, not this crap again.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Baricom]

Unfortunately, for every bad story about Apple, there's another bad story about Microsoft. I'm a Mac user, but only recently - I just switched a little over a year ago. Microsoft's insistence on using buggy and inflexible copy protection was the tipping point for me. At least with OS X, there are no serial numbers to lose, no constant berating me for being a pirate, no machines suddenly "bricked" because Microsoft has decided that you don't deserve the Genuine Advantage, and no bundling of an inferior browser.

I'm a Mac fanboy at the moment, but I'm not deluded. Apple's no saint, and their corrupt business practices are going to overtake Microsoft's eventually. Maybe Linux will be ready for the desktop at that point; otherwise, I'll have no problem switching back to Windows then.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stand OSX because I've suffered badly many years ago due to Apple's tactics and my own naivety as a child. If you don't mind, could you explain? Do you mean you can't stand OS X, or you can't stand Apple?

It's just a little funny to me because I agree with you about Linux, and I can't stand Windows because I've suffered badly many years ago due to Microsoft's tactics and my own naivety as a child. God, I wasted so much time on VB, Win95, and Win98. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Arrrgh, winmodems too... If I could go back in time, I'd buy my younger self a Mac, a Unix shell account (only because Linux was a B*TCH to get installed back then), and C/C++ book. I use XP at work begrudgingly, and an iMac at home EXTREMELY HAPPILY. I'm sitting at my old Linux/XP machine, and I can't possibly imagine going back to either one now.

So.. what pushed you over the edge to use XP??

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

It's unpopular because it's a generalization. For me, it works perfectly.

It's unpopular because a large portion of the community uses and/or contributes to Linux. Its not a generalizaiton though. "Ready for the desktop" has never meant "ready for a computer hobbyist desktop". It's very widely accepted to mean popular for the mainstream - users who's only interest in using computers is as tools or appliances to do something they are actually interested in.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

Hey if the Mac laptops came with a decent video card, I _might_ be tempted. I'm using Dells right now because for half the price I'd spend on a decent Mac, I get a Dell with a good video card. The 5 laptops I've bought over the last 10 years or so haven't been without problems though. I've had to run non-standard drivers on my latest to prevent BSOD. My last one was okay, but the one before that broke due to what appears to be a design flaw - a case rubs against motherboard, motherboard died - had it fixed under extended warranty obtained through credit card purchase but only after 4-5 months of headaches like having to get Dell to say it would have been covered under warranty had it happened in the warranty period. Then there's the fact that tech support doesn't show up for the appointments they arrange (repeatedly). So if I thought i could lay out more coin and get something better I would. However I'm afraid I'd just be laying out coin for hassles by a different bunch of underpaid customer "support" drones (not their fault) so I keep the coin and get Dell with extra warranty for half the cost.

By the way I think Vista is less ready for the desktop than Linux. What a pile of poo.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

I don't think Linux is "ready for the desktop" either.
Oh God, not this crap again.

Funny, that's what I say every time I take the plunge and try out a Linux distro. I must admit I'm trying less frequently lately.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

what pushed you over the edge to use XP

I had a look at the Emac I had to babysit at work. The interface wasn't that different to the crap I remember from high school with the original Macs and Mac Plus. I've never liked it. I might get use to it if I had a lot of money to spend trying to use it for the desktop, but then I couldn't use half the software I've grown up with. Chessmaster, Flight Simulators and r/c flight simulators in terms of gaming, and all the tools I'm use to. It's only in the last couple of years that running windows on a Mac was possible and I need windows for the apps and handful of games.

Plus their lock-in proprietary model irks me. I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that I had to beg and plead as a kid for my parents to drive hours to go shopping for software. (This was after convincing them to spend big money because the IIe was better! Wish I'd bought a fucking C64. Would have saved my parents about $4000 too!). Oh there was mail order but then you took the hit for delivery which wasn't small in the mid 80s. The fact that Apple were able to suddenly prevent software sales through department stores and go to their own "resellers" meant I was cut off. Even now it's stil the case only for hardware - if ou buy a Mac, you have to take it to Apple if it breaks. If my PC breaks I can replace the part myself with bits bought from any one of a number of suppliers a few minutes from either work or home. Laptops are different of course, which is why I looked at Apple for my last laptop, till I saw the graphics cards and prices and just laughed.

I bought my wife and I iPods a couple of years back. Had problems with them too, and at the time they were refusing return/exchange which isn't legal here. My click wheel still doesn't work right and I can't be bothered trying to get it fixed. Basically Apple's been nothing but a headache to deal with. Their stuff has given me lots of headaches. So has Windows but the difference with Windows is that often _I_ can do something to fix them besides go running to a single company. The user base is bigger so there's more knowledge on troubleshooting. Unfortunately with WGA, Vista and the whole DRM fiasco (crippling machines to call them "trusted"! Weasel words!), MS has gone to the dogs as far as I'm concerned. I really don't know where I'll be once I can no longer run XP.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, that's what I say every time I take the plunge and try out a Linux distro.

Do or do not. There is no 'try'.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Ash-Fox]

Funny, that's what I say every time I take the plunge and try out a Linux distro. I must admit I'm trying less frequently lately.

That is where we differ, I am far more descriptive when I have issues with a OS. I don't summarize my OS issues with a simple blanket statement that can apply to anything.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

Do or do not. There is no 'try'.

Sorry coward. I stopped lifting my philosophy from sci-fi when I was 12. Suggest you do the same. Oh and stop collecting starwars memorabilia. It's not going to make you rich.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

That is where we differ, I am far more descriptive when I have issues with a OS. I don't summarize my OS issues with a simple blanket statement that can apply to anything.

That's right. That's where we differ. You are a condescending prat who's happy to adopt a superior tone. I wasn't filing a bug report, and your response indicates your social skills are on par with that of a sloth. The same social skills and attitude I might add that make Linux horrible for a non-hobbyist end user.

As a hobbyist Linux is fine, but I have less and less time to be a hobbyist these days and as an end user an OS that doesn't run the most applications and still has faults and bugs that require the end user to learn all sorts of intricate details is not suitable.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Ash-Fox]

You are a condescending prat who's happy to adopt a superior tone.

I love you too.

I wasn't filing a bug report

That much was obvious. You wern't even giving constructive criticism about anything in your original post. Just bland statements that could really apply to anything. It gets annoying hearing the same tired 'memes' on Slashdot over and over with nothing real backing them up.

and your response indicates your social skills are on par with that of a sloth.

I think sloths are cute.

The same social skills and attitude I might add that make Linux horrible for a non-hobbyist end user.

I am not a helper here, nor is it my intention to promote Linux on Slashdot either. If you want hugs, you might want to try http://www.ubuntuforums.com/ or such.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

That much was obvious. You wern't even giving constructive criticism about anything in your original post. Just bland statements that could really apply to anything.

Actually I was sharing my experiences, and my opinion. This is a social thing that has merit and value. No I didn't wish to file a bug report, provide "constructive" criticism to people who'd just ignore it, or go into explicit detail about my experiences. This isn't a committee for the improvement of Linux. Yet you seem to come here expecting that...or perhaps you're just being dishonest and like so many other fools who hear an opinion they don't like are just trying to tell me to shut up, clutching at whatever criticism suits them for an excuse.

You attack me with a vague garbage hypocritical statement like "Just bland statements that could really apply to anything." If you're going to attack me on the basis of a lack of thoroughness and accuracy, and a lack of constructive feedback, the least you could do is actually provide something constructive, coherent and accurate yourself. Instead I get a vague inaccurate criticism which is a very shallow cover for "shut up". How am I even suppose to take your gibbering seriously?

It gets annoying hearing the same tired 'memes' on Slashdot over and over with nothing real backing them up.

Oh lookie he learnt a new word: 'meme'. Give him a pat. There are plenty of 'memes' I don't particularly care for here. Linux is ready for the desktop is one of them. Yet you support that and decide to attack my opinion. Just what exactly do you hope to achieve? I'm not going to change my mind. I'm certainly not going to shut up. All you've done is created hostility in a pompous, arrogant and asinie way. You really do lack any social skill, and if I were you I wouldn't be picking on other people's ability to construct an argument, or for being unconstructive.

I think sloths are cute.

Go mate with one then, just don't procreate for heaven sake.

I am not a helper here, nor is it my intention to promote Linux on Slashdot either. If you want hugs, you might want to try http://www.ubuntuforums.com/ or such.

What an arrogant self congratulatory pratt you truly are. Now you're attacking other Unix users because they're not as 'lite as you. I guess they're only collateral damage. Again no social skills at all, and a complete lack of comprehension as to why what you're saying only damages both your argument and the software you profess to enjoy. What a tosser! Idiots like you are one very major reason the whole "Linux is ready for the desktop" mantra won't be true for some time. You're very amusing though and I'm a little bored today so I hope you respond with something else stupid and weak so I can pick it apart. I hope whatever the hell you do for a living is done with better technique than your debating.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Ash-Fox]

Actually I was sharing my experiences, and my opinion.

With no real information to back it up, beyond extremely vague references.

Yet you seem to come here expecting that...

I consider Slashdot to be a site to be for 'nerds', part of the expectations in that is being able to actually debate or gain more insight from other 'nerds' on various topics.

or perhaps you're just being dishonest and like so many other fools who hear an opinion they don't like are just trying to tell me to shut up, clutching at whatever criticism suits them for an excuse.

Honestly, I am sick of the "Linux is not ready for the desktop", "Apple just works", "Windows crashes every hour" sort of memes.

They are all incorrect in my opinion, they may apply in certain scenarios, true, but they also don't in others.

When there are currently 60years and older people, children who are six years old who can use a Linux system without any real difficulty, it is in my opinion "ready for the desktop". These are normal people, some of which never used a computer before and they can actually use the system without difficulty - How can anyone say Linux is not ready for the desktop? The software is being used.

Linux distributions have definitely already surpassed what was considered "ready for the desktop" in other operating systems five years ago and this is accepted knowledge.

Yet, you bring up a common phrase that is often used in flamebaits, "Linux is not ready for the desktop". You don't bring up any information reinforcing it, what does that look like to me? Another flamebait.

If you're going to attack me on the basis of a lack of thoroughness and accuracy, and a lack of constructive feedback, the least you could do is actually provide something constructive, coherent and accurate yourself.

It was as constructive and thorough enough needed for a response to your posts.

Instead I get a vague inaccurate criticism which is a very shallow cover for "shut up". How am I even suppose to take your gibbering seriously?

I don't consider what I wrote vague, there was more than enough content to understand what the problem was, unlike in your previous posts.

Oh lookie he learnt a new word: 'meme'. Give him a pat. There are plenty of 'memes' I don't particularly care for here. Linux is ready for the desktop is one of them. Yet you support that

Oh yes, I support 'memes'. Wait, what?

Go mate with one then

It is generally believed that furrys are into bestiality. I am a furry.

Now you're attacking other Unix users because they're not as 'lite as you.

Heh, you missunderstood that. I am not on Slashdot to be friendly, I am not here to promote anything.

If you see me on IRC help channel, I will likely be offering you help and I won't be 'attacking' things you state. However, this is Slashdot, a site where 'nerds' communicate and if someone raises a point that appears to be obviously false, I am not going to assume he or she needs help and I am more likely to assume things such as this are flamebait, trolling and so on.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

With no real information to back it up, beyond extremely vague references.

If you'd asked for references or more information instead of being rude and arrogant we may have been able to have a discussion. What the fuck do you want on a forum? Refereed journal articles? You're being ridiculous.

I consider Slashdot to be a site to be for 'nerds', part of the expectations in that is being able to actually debate or gain more insight from other 'nerds' on various topics.

Ahh I see so now one of the criteria for commenting on a story is to post references to every comment or anecdote? Gimme a break. You have no interest in bettering the site, or getting more information from me. You're just sore that someone would dare to criticize your pet OS. How old are you?

What insight did you provide again? Oh that's right, none. Just a personal attack and a bunch of arrogant whining.

Honestly, I am sick of the "Linux is not ready for the desktop", "Apple just works", "Windows crashes every hour" sort of memes.

That's really too bad because these "memes" are here to stay. They summarise a users experience. The fact is Linux isn't ready to be unleashed on mainstream non-hobbyists. Apple does not "just work" and depending on what you do windows may or may not crash every hour - certainly it was true for certain versions of windows (95, ME).

When there are currently 60years and older people, children who are six years old who can use a Linux system without any real difficulty, it is in my opinion "ready for the desktop".

When most of the desktop software isn't written for Linux/Unix, when the alternatives are very weak and often incomplete immitations of better software or require dropping to the command line to hand configure. When document formats are different and opening common docs like word docs reformats the crap out of them. When every distro does things differently or leaves certain things out due to licensing. No Linux isn't ready for the mainstream. You can deny it till the sun goes cold, it doesn't change reality. It's not anywhere near ready. Yeah sure if all your family member does is browse the web and read email, Linux is ready. If that's all you do, great for you.

It was as constructive and thorough enough needed for a response to your posts.

Rubbish. You were being a hypocrite. You cited no more references than I and still haven't. You're just an arrogant superiorist git that thinks if YOU thought of it it's somehow more valid - "I think, therefore I am better than you".

I don't consider what I wrote vague, there was more than enough content to understand what the problem was, unlike in your previous posts.

How many times do I have to say this? Are you thick as pig shit? Quit with the straw man already. I wasn't asking you to help me solve a problem. If you wanted more information all you had to do is ask instead of launch a stupid arrogant and childish personal attack. Unfortunately you not only lack the social skills to do that, but don't see the value in those social skills.

Heh, you missunderstood that. I am not on Slashdot to be friendly, I am not here to promote anything.

What you think the less pleasant you make this place the better it will be? What???? Again are you thick as pig shit? Where did I ask you to promote anything? Where exactly did I promote one OS over another? My point was they're all garbage and the more cross compatibility the more it broadens your options. Yet you picked your pet OS to defend because heaven forbid I used a common phrase that sums up what some people think of it.

If you see me on IRC help channel, I will likely be offering you help and I won't be 'attacking' things you state. However, this is Slashdot, a site where 'nerds' communicate and if someone raises a point that appears to be obviously false, I am not going to assume he or she needs help and I am more likely to assume things such as this are flamebait, trolling and so on.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[David Gerard]

Indeed. Wine is already a better Windows than Vista is.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Ash-Fox]

If you'd asked for references or more information instead of being rude and arrogant we may have been able to have a discussion. What the fuck do you want on a forum? Refereed journal articles? You're being ridiculous.

Not to that extent, but certainly more information than you did provide, rather than the stereotypical flamebait phrases.

Ahh I see so now one of the criteria for commenting on a story is to post references to every comment or anecdote?

A reasonable amount, yes.

Gimme a break. You have no interest in bettering the site

I have far more interest in decent content than you do obviously.

or getting more information from me.

After the generic flamebait material in your post? No, not interested at all.

You're just sore that someone would dare to criticize your pet OS.

My pet OS is AROS, believe it or not I actually use plenty of operating systems daily and I have issues with all of them. None of them is 'perfect' for me. What annoys me is your stupid generic 'memes' which are used as flamebait all the time

How old are you?

If I were to give you any number, you would ridicule it, no point telling you.

That's really too bad because these "memes" are here to stay.

Doesn't mean I won't moderate everyone who uses them as flamebait, and it won't mean people like me will not just simply ignore it.

They summarise a users experience.

That is not a summary.

The fact is Linux isn't ready to be unleashed on mainstream non-hobbyists. Apple does not "just work" and depending on what you do windows may or may not crash every hour - certainly it was true for certain versions of windows (95, ME).

As I said, in certain scenarios. With Apple systems, there is a very good history of the system just not working with everything and even today, there are plenty of oddities and issues with OS X. I have had plenty of widely known, common issues within the mac community, with it for years and I still use it almost daily.

With Windows, the continuous crashing every hour was true for a minority, the systems did not crash to that extent, people claim that happens to the majority of modern Windows systems today - which is certainly not the case.

When most of the desktop software isn't written for Linux/Unix

That has never determined in the past if a OS was desktop ready. People claim OS X is ready for the desktop, but it definately does not get the amount of development Linux gets on desktop applications in comparison (just look at the DE development and compare it to the huge OS X software library sites).

when the alternatives are very weak and often incomplete immitations of better software

Honestly, the majority of the software on my Linux desktop are not even incomplete, cheap imitations...

But, let's see. I'll list the desktop applications:
Crossover, Fontforge, Kooka, KPDF (even supports DRM fully, and has features that help the user in certain circumstances), Firefox, Kontact, Pidgin, Krita, Amarok, K3B, Kaffiene, xmms, Kexi, Staroffice, Karbon, Adept, Dolphin, kbluetooth, Keep, Ark, kate, speedcrunch, Strigi, ktemperature, Skype.

Out of that list and comparing against software that is similar which is incomplete and/or cheap imitations of other software, I can confidently say it is: Speedcrunch and Skype. Some of the software listed above obviously adapted concepts from other software, but they are in my opinion, superior to the applications because of the additional features they introduce which the original software does not have, thus not a 'cheap imitation'.

I considered for a bit adding Staroffice to the list, but it

Re:More compatible than Vista

[hyades1]

Thanks for that story. One of the reasons I spend time on this site is because I can pick real-world information on software and hardware I may want to use or buy.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

You were amusing for a while but I'm busy today and have more important things to do. It doesn't matter how many times you claim you provided more information than I since a quick review of the thread will show you did no such thing. Same goes for the fact that you were rude and focused only on what I said about Linux. That you choose to consider what I've said is invalid is fine - go ahead and bury your head in the sand.

I'm not even going to read the rest of your response. A skim is good enough. You're full of hot air and have nothing new or interesting to say. You can believe whatever you choose to, it doesn't make it true or change reality, and the reality is that Linux in its current guise won't be replacing Windows or MacOS any time soon. Most users aren't even thinking in the same terms as you. They couldn't give a shit which desktop manager is more intuitive (and your claim is subjective anyway). What they want to know is which one lets them run their favourite programs and perform the tasks they want to get done. That you don't understand this, and that you don't think manners are important make you the social inept that you are. That you'll be a two bit hypocrite and criticize me for not supplying references while in the same breath telling me you don't owe me the same makes your entire argument nothing more than a pathetic childish whine. You're no more than a troll and I'm done feeding you.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Ash-Fox]

It doesn't matter how many times you claim you provided more information than I since a quick review of the thread will show you did no such thing.

You can claim what you like. But at the end of the day, you can look at your own thread and see how other users have been stirred up by your troll-like posts.

Same goes for the fact that you were rude and focused only on what I said about Linux.

I brought up Apple and Windows, but did not exactly have much to say on it since - Well, what is there to say about a OS that doesn't crash as much as when people claim it crashes so much? Sure. I could bring up all my OS X issues, but it didn't seem relevant at all to the response since you particularly mentioned "Linux" repeatedly.

and the reality is that Linux in its current guise won't be replacing Windows or MacOS any time soon.

I did not claim that, where am I saying that? I don't even consider Linux to be a replacement of another OS.

Most users aren't even thinking in the same terms as you.

Where did I mention average Joe thinks like me?

They couldn't give a shit which desktop manager is more intuitive (and your claim is subjective anyway).

Actually, they do. They use what they find more comfortable and intuitive for them. Be it a specific OS or window manager. Usually the reasons with choice are what they are most familiar with.

What they want to know is which one lets them run their favourite programs and perform the tasks they want to get done.

From what I have seen of most users. They don't want to know, they just want it to work.

That you don't understand this

From what you've stated so far, it is apparent to me you don't understand this.

and that you don't think manners are important make you the social inept that you are.

I have manners, I don't go around telling people to go mate with animals, nor do I go around calling people names unlike some people. I don't let myself escalate in profanity either.

That you'll be a two bit hypocrite and criticize me for not supplying references while in the same breath telling me you don't owe me the same makes your entire argument nothing more than a pathetic childish whine.

I have given you more than enough factual information that you can verify yourself easily. I am not going to spoon feed someone who behaves like a troll references.

You completely ignore the majority of my arguments and pick on other details, deterring from any sort of meaningful discussion. You don't even acknowledge the validity of anything stated. In inclusion, it is obvious to me that you are just trying to get a rise out of users like me, much like other trolls.

You're no more than a troll and I'm done feeding you.

Irony.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

You're dilluisonal. Seriously. There was one line in my whole post about Linux. You're the only one who got "stirred up" by it. I even had your "meme" in quotes too. You ignored the rest of the post, harped on the one line, and went on and on about how I provided no evidence (while providing none of your own). You wouldn't know a constructive or logical argument if it came up and bit you. YOU are the troll. No irony at all.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[Ash-Fox]

You're dilluisonal. Seriously.

Whatever you say Sammy, whatever you say.

You're the only one who got "stirred up" by it.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=376935&cid=21547799

You ignored the rest of the post, harped on the one line, and went on and on about how I provided no evidence (while providing none of your own).

Actually, my first post was merely declaring "Oh God, not this crap again". Because that single line alone works well as flamebait on Slashdot usually.

You chose to continue it, at that point I started replying to each sentence except for some that were insults.

YOU are the troll.

Not from my point of view, which has been made pretty clear my previous posts.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=376935&cid=21547799

There were a total of 8 replies to my post. Not all of them were negative. I even had one person mod it as interesting. Picking out that one sentence out of the whole post then then continuing to harp on about it (and insulting others in the process) is childish to say the least.

Actually, my first post was merely declaring "Oh God, not this crap again".

So your first post was merely insulting/derogatory and assumed I was trolling. Do you really wonder why I responded?

Not from my point of view, which has been made pretty clear my previous posts

Your point of view is dillusional, which is made pretty clear from your posts. You really should stop trying to twist the truth. You're not very good at it.

You may have nothing better to do with your time than rehash what you've said and continue to be a troll and a bully to boot. I do have better things to do. Good day.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[pavera]

I'm sorry if I come across as a mac fanboy, I wasn't a computer user in the IIe/original mac days (well they had some macs at my elementary school...).

I'm much more frustrated by Microsoft's recent attitude and tactics. I have horror stories about support from HP, Dell, IBM, and Apple. No computer company is perfect. In fact generally hardware support I equate with telecom companies, they all suck, if the hardware breaks, you're screwed.

My favorite ( not a hardware problem, just my favorite dell horror story) a small company I support purchased 5 new Dell PCs, the PCs showed up with no OS installed (should have winxp pro) pull the hard drives and put them in a running PC nothing shows up on the drives, not formatted, no partitions, nothing. No OS install CDs in the box, call Dell give them the support tag, Dell says "those PCs are still in our assembly plant". Took about 10 hours of phone calls over 3 days to actually convince them we actually had the PCs in our possession, and that they were shipped from Dell. In fact during most of this time they were accusing us of stealing the PCs from their plant somehow. Then another 5 hours and 2 days to get them to agree to pay for shipping back to the factory and out to us again... Dell would only agree to ground shipping (even though they paid for overnight on the original order), so a week and a half later, we finally got the PCs back in working order.

I will say in 14 years of IT support, network admin, and software development, 13 using PCs and windows and 1 using OSX on a powerbook I'm much more satisfied in the last year. I spend so much less time messing with my own computer issues now, I turn on my computer, it boots up, Connects to wireless networks flawlessly, I install software, uninstall it, fill up the hard drive, delete things, write code, test it, blow things up in general... the thing just keeps running. I recently went 12 months without reformatting/reinstalling (clean install with 10.5). That is a record for me, my windows boxes rarely made it past 6 months before they were so slow and registry bloated that they couldn't operate. I'm sure if my hard drive crashes or my motherboard dies, I'll be dealing with incompetent customer service reps and it will be a headache, but I've accepted that as part of dealing with computers in general, just like dealing with the phone company is never a pleasant experience.

How is iTunes crippled? If you're referring to DRM how is windows media player any better? Granted, I don't do much but rip my CDs and listen to MP3s in it... I don't buy music or video from the iTunes music store... but it seems much less crippled than windows media player.

In short, Apple isn't perfect, but they are way better than MS. Is their hardware fool proof? No its all built by the same people in Taiwan and China. A macbook has the same parts as a Dell. Your original post raised concerns about OS X, in your rebuttal to my post you don't mention OS X once... You mention a hardware problem (bad mobo) and a business decision made in the early 80's.

My question is what does MS have to do to piss you off and get you off their platform forever? And when that happens where will you turn? Since apparently in your world once a company makes a single mistake they are blacklisted for life, how do you still receive services from any companies? Or, alternatively, can you provide me your list of "perfect" companies that have never made a mistake? I'd like to get service from as many of those companies as possible.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

Interesting annecdotes.

I have to say I've never understood the idea of reformating every 6 months. I don't do that at work and I certainly don't at home. I basically only reformat when a hard disk crashes. I'm able to get my PCs running reasonably well and all I do is occassionally defrag (and not all of them). If your computer is running slow it's because its' underpowered to run all the software you put on it simultaneously. It doesn't matter how many times you do it, it'll still run at the same speed when you're done installing all your apps.

iTunes started out allowing you to transfer content back from your iPod to the computer. You can still get to it through the mass storage interface (well as of a generation or 2 ago you could - my iPods a couple of years old now) but the files are all renamed for playback on the iPod. This is a complete pain in the neck for me and it's not because I want to pirate anything.

I will have to disagree about Apple being better than MS. At the risk of invoking Godwin, it's kinda like saying Stalin is better than Hitler. Both companies have committed atrocities.

I'm staying with MS at the moment almost exclusively because Windows has the widest application support. No I don't have a list of perfect suppliers for you, but with Windows I at least get a wide choice of suppliers for hardware (certainly wider than a single company). It also gives me the widest choice of software. That said I'm staying with XP until I can't find hardware to run it. I'm not sure if I'll begrudgingly move to Vista which I hate with a passion. For the first time in my life there isn't a shiny new OS on the horizon that I want to play with.

By the way, not to put too fine a point on it but Apple didn't just provide bad service. Their dealers sold me outdated and overpriced hardware, then pulled the software supply chain just as I needed it. Under those circumstances I don't think staying away from them is unreasonable at all, even for as long as I have (and it's been about 20 years).

Re:More compatible than Vista

[syousef]

You're welcome. A word of advice. If you do buy Dell spring for maximum extended warranty. Chances are good you'll use it, and I've always seemed to get better service if it's under warranty.

Re:More compatible than Vista

[pavera]

I find that reformatting does increase speed dramatically. After a reformat and clean install of all of the software I use on a daily basis, my windows pc runs much faster. The problem comes through testing. I install and then uninstall a lot of software (probably 2-3 apps a week). I don't run a lot of software on my PC, but I do install things for 2-3 days to test them, and at least 95% of that software I uninstall almost immediately. Unfortunately in windows uninstalling does not remove all pieces of an application, and over time the cruft and left over crap cripples the computer.

we'll agree to disagree, I abhor vista as well (used it for about a week). I still use windows and know the system, I just have found more reliability from my mac, and it lets me get more work done (like writing long posts on slashdot)

Shush!

[billcopc]

The secret is out: Leopard is really just Vista with a new skin! That would explain all the crashing and weirdness.

Seriously, 10.5 has got to be the clumsiest OSX release ever. It introduced a ton of problems.

Re:Shush!

[insertwackynamehere]

You mean leopard is just win2k with a new skin 3 generations removed :P

Re:Shush!

[gyrogeerloose]

Seriously, 10.5 has got to be the clumsiest OSX release ever. It introduced a ton of problems.

Funny, Leopard is working just fine for me and everyone else I know who's running it. While there have been some issues that Apple needs to address (if they haven't already), Leopard is in no way as bad as Vista. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it has a ton of problems.

Re:Shush!

[billcopc]

Well let's see, Vista introduced a bunch of unwanted features and made a bunch of things break.

Leopard introduced a bunch of unwanted features and made a bunch of things break.

I'm not saying everyone's going to see those problems. I know quite a few people who are fine with Vista, but they tend to be the same people who don't do anything beyond web surfing, email and a few games. It's when you start doing actual work that the bugs creep up in any operating system.

Most likely there for EFI

[dpokorny]

The most probable reason for Apple to have partial support for the PE executable format is EFI. Both the firmware itself and all of the drivers embedded within it use the PE object format.

If they want to natively host EFI development and not use Windows to do it, then some level PE support is required.

Just take a look at /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi -- it has the same "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." at the beginning of the executable like every other PE executable.

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[ElMiguel]

But why would they try to hide this capability if that was the reason?

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the thread on the mailing list, Steven Edwards considers this. But, as 10.4 doesn't have this "secret" ability to load the PE format and also supports EFI (on Intel anyway) it's probably not there for this purpose.

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[Anonymous Coward]

Just take a look at /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi -- it has the same "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." at the beginning of the executable

I feel dirty.

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[coolGuyZak]

I'm in the camp that's hoping for .Net on OS X, but one reason is "Apple doesn't want developers to rely on the functionality".

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[poopie]

That's my bet too. EFI on IA64 runs Windows PE binaries (for IA64). EFI on X64 (which hasn't been implemented by many hardware manufacturers btw) runs Windows PE binaries.

I, for one, griped at Intel about EFI the first time we tried to do any useful automation on Itanium with it -- EFI is glorified DOS, except without any of the useful tools available for DOS. Intel would have been miles ahead if the would have made a linux BIOS/preboot environment instead.

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[bhima]

Just because they didn't hold an "Apple Special Event" announcing this doesn't really mean they are hiding it. How much documentation is floating around for the rest of Apple's EFI stuff. How many people really need documentation for EFI stuff?

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[ElMiguel]

This mail, which was linked from the summary, asks: "Why would they go to all this trouble to hide Windows Binary support?"

HTH.

Re:Most likely there for EFI

[JadeNB]

You said:

The most probable reason for Apple to have partial support for the PE executable format is EFI. Both the firmware itself and all of the drivers embedded within it use the PE object format.

but the second linked article in the summary ('weren't there in Tiger') says:

PE Files were rejected on Tiger, which is interesting to me because I don't
think that this is just a hold over from EFI support. I think it may be a sign
of future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X.

Loading PE is not a big deal

[apankrat]

The actual problem is resolving all external dependencies of Windows-bound binaries. If the Win32 API is somehow emulated (see Wine project for some "minor" details), this leaves (an ungodly mess of) COM interfaces. Then even if this is taken care of, Apple is going to be quite exposed to a legal beating from MS.

Lastly, "Is Apple planning native PE execution within OSX?" - if they were _planning_ that, they wouldn't include this into a production release of the OS. This means that it's already used for something. The big question is what exactly.

Re:Loading PE is not a big deal

[NTiOzymandias]

Lastly, "Is Apple planning native PE execution within OSX?" - if they were _planning_ that, they wouldn't include this into a production release of the OS. This means that it's already used for something.

That, or they implemented the support in such a way that conditional compilation (using #ifdefs) was significantly more complicated and bug-prone than just leaving it in and not documenting it. If you've ever written a C program that had to behave differently on different platforms, you've doubtlessly run into this issue once or twice.

Re:Loading PE is not a big deal

[mysidia]

Planned future additions are not an additional platform. Development code gets to stay in development versions.

You don't put development code in a production release and merely try to #ifdef it out. That's extremely error prone, and messy. You use version control and configuration management, to keep unfinished code under development for the future separate from code for the next release.

I'm sure Apple practices some form of release engineering to keep partially completed, experimental code out of their public releases.

It's very probable that if it is included; something uses it.

Re:Loading PE is not a big deal

[jim3e8]

Lastly, "Is Apple planning native PE execution within OSX?" - if they were _planning_ that, they wouldn't include this into a production release of the OS. This means that it's already used for something.

It's common to include "unused" code and undocumented interfaces in an OS, especially if they are benign.

For example, Quartz 2D Extreme (QuartzGL) has been available since 10.4 was released, and it's still disabled, and enabling it is not officially supported as it may cause stability issues. Yet they did not simply compile it out, but left it in as an undocumented option.

Re:Loading PE is not a big deal

[Gryffin]

The actual problem is resolving all external dependencies of Windows-bound binaries. If the Win32 API is somehow emulated (see Wine project for some "minor" details), this leaves (an ungodly mess of) COM interfaces. Then even if this is taken care of, Apple is going to be quite exposed to a legal beating from MS.

True, but with Boot Camp, all the MS DLL cruft is only a partition away.

I admit, I'm not an OS dev, but wouldn't it be possible for Apple to write a linker that could map Windows OS calls to an installed copy of Windows? The DLLs are all there...

How could it be for Win32 compatibility

[Rosyna]

I don't understand how this could be for Win32 compatibility. Just being able to load the PE executable format does not mean you can actually use anything in PE executables. It's required before anything else is done, sure, but it doesn't mean compatibility. Especially since you'd still need PE files to load. And then you'd need shims. Lots of shims. Just look at WINE, loading PEs doesn't seem to be a huge part of it. It could just be necessary support so a third party can finish the job (kind of like all the VPC-specific stuff they had for PowerPC Mac OS X).

I'd normally say Apple would never finish the rest of this. But they switched to Intel.

Re:How could it be for Win32 compatibility

[cduffy]

As you say -- you'd need shims, and wrappers, and a whole lot more -- but none of those will work until you've got support in the loader.

So they've got support in the loader, and perhaps some future version of MacOS X will have WINE-alike code for the API and syscalls (or a .NET CLR interpreter, if that's what they're going for). It's groundwork. If Apple never included parts of a feature until the whole thing was production status, there wouldn't be read-only ZFS support in OS X right now.

Re:How could it be for Win32 compatibility

[palndron]

I believe that has part of some settlements that happened with Microsoft ( when they got the non-voting shares etc ) Apple got the rights to the Win32 api as part of the deal.

Something to ponder

[Alexx K]

This is either most likely do to Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop, or because of the nature of Apple zealotry, but if Microsoft included support for running OSX binaries, people would be crying "Anti-competition!" faster than it would take to load up Notepad.

Re:Something to ponder

[cduffy]

if Microsoft included support for running OSX binaries, people would be crying "Anti-competition!" faster than it would take to load up Notepad.

Why would anyone cry that? If Microsoft started doing that folks would mostly be too busy being shocked, because it would primarily benefit Apple: Developers could write software natively for OSX using Objective C, Cocoa, and (otherwise) Apple's native toolkit, and be able to still target Microsoft's audience, rather than writing only for the lone larger-audience proprietary platform and leaving Apple's userbase unable to run their software.

After all, it's not the general consensus that Microsoft's platform is hurting for good software. (I'm pretty unhappy with software availability on Windows, but I'm not exactly your general audience -- and I recognize that; even then, it's not OSX-specific software that I miss when working on win32, but nifty, Freely licensed POSIX-centric toolage like pexpect).

Re:Something to ponder

[ChunderDownunder]

Developers could write software natively for OSX using Objective C, Cocoa, and (otherwise) Apple's native toolkit, and be able to still target Microsoft's audience, rather than writing only for the lone larger-audience proprietary platform and leaving Apple's userbase unable to run their software. Back to the future! NeXT did exactly that in a previous life, after their hardware business dried up, as OPENSTEP.

Any software Apple produces for Windows will probably be using this win-cocoa layer, particularly as carbon and any legacy carbon support they might have had in Windows is defunct. For everyone else there's GNUstep

OS /2 was able to run windows 3.1 apps and look wh

[Joe The Dragon]

OS /2 was able to run windows 3.1 apps and look where that got them and now os /2 is just about dead and you want to know way.

Developers just made windows apps and very few os /2 apps.

M$ pushed out updates and new API's that did not fully work in os /2 EX win32s updates like ver 1.30c.

If apple added win 32 M$ may push win 64 even harder push out small DX , .NET and other API updates just to brake it on os-x.

Apple will lose many developers to windows and there lack of a mid-range desk, the much wider range of hardware support and drivers on windows systems, and the all of the people who custom build there systems will make spending time on OS X apps a bad idea.

Apple lack of good gameing hardware and is likely pushing developers to make mac games that are windows based run under a winex warper in osx.

Well I guess It is really time to down grade

[BeeazleBub]

Well with all the issues in Leapard (probably explained here by the inclusion of any thing windows), this is really news to make me dump the upgrade.

Who is the stupid bone head who would ever include direct windows compatibility code in OSX. There is absolutely no reason on the planet to ever include any compatibility for Windows in OSX. Preaching to the choir but the security sucks, there are more bugs than words in Websters, and over all its a pain to use.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid..........

No wonder Leopard is crashing more!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now no wonder that Leopard is crashing more. They're trying to make it more Windows-like!

isn't as much software available?

[JonTurner]

One of the major downsides to using OSX is that there isn't as much software available for it.

Quite true. I've not seen an OSX virus, trojan or spyware in years.

Re:isn't as much software available?

[Ash-Fox]

Quite true. I've not seen an OSX virus, trojan or spyware in years.

I can say the same about my Windows systems.

Re:isn't as much software available?

[eldepeche]

Yeah, but that's because you're running 98 and you don't have any network drivers.

No

[acvh]

There is no reason for Apple to want to be able to run Windows executables natively. As others have pointed out, malware alone would be enough reason to say no.

More likely this is related to EFI. Less likely this is something that a developer was playing around with and forgot to delete from his code before checking it in.

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not true. Anyone remember when IBM did this with OS/2? It killed the market for OS/2 software, because every developer just wrote for the lowest common denominator (Windows) instead of making "native" OS/2 software. Adding Windows application support in Mac OS X would kill the platform slowly.

Adobe? Please.

[jpellino]

No tears. Adobe had just as much time as any other developer abotu Xcode and Intel, and then spent the better part of a year doing their best huminahumina Jackie Gleason imitation when they failed to produce universal binaries along with most of the rest of the major developers.

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[jcr]

Bingo! Give the man a cigar!

-jcr

Malware's not much of an issue

[Myria]

The Mac equivalent of Win32's WriteProcessMemory requires your program to be setgid procmod, so essentially you'd need Administrator access. This probably makes Mac malware considerably more difficult to make than on other platforms. Even Linux lets programs ptrace each other on all by the strictest of SELinux modes. Also, on Linux, a lot more machines have GDB installed, so malware could pipe to it when SELinux does interfere. Few Mac users have GDB installed.

Re:Malware's not much of an issue

[The One and Only]

Few Mac users have GDB installed.

Really? It either comes with the OS or with Xcode, because I have it and don't ever remember installing it.

It's for self-extracting zips

[Nermal6693]

You can now double-click self-extracting zips and they'll unzip automatically, instead of having to manually open them with BOMArchiveHelper or StuffIt Expander.

Unlikely

[makomk]

This seems unlikely. Self-extracting zips are basically a standard zip file with an extractor .exe stuck on the front. Since the zip header is at the end of the file, there shouldn't be any need to parse the PE format (in fact, I don't think it'd help).

Re:Unlikely

[Nermal6693]

Doh! You're quite right... and the plot thickens!

The sheer amount of work.

[Ayanami Rei]

The Apple devs are good. But not that good. (Wine is how old?)
Keep in mind most of the software they release is acquired through purchase or license and then revamped and maintained. Not that they don't make a lot of changes and improvements, but I don't see them making a Win32 subsystem from scratch.

But I _can_ see them taking the ECMA standard and adding support for the more advanced features in WinForms w/Cocoa bindings and stuff, thus creating a nifty ecosystem of cross-platform software, a native SilverLight implementation, and blah-dee-blah-dee-blah.

This is especially relevant as Microsoft is encouraging developers using VS2005+ to target .NET 3.0 and up, taking advantage of all the new Vista capabilities. New windows software implicitly running on OSX? Using VMWare Fusion to run the old and busted stuff?
Sounds like a plan to me.

Re:The sheer amount of work.

[ChunderDownunder]

As one poster suggested, it's most likely all idle speculation in that they've added support for EFI purposes.

Further rumours of running Windows apps natively in OS X, are nothing new. A decade ago, the idea was touted as Red Box.

Many posters have argued that for Apple to actively support other platforms natively such as Win32, .NET, KDE, GTK and Java are counter-productive in terms of promoting their own native Cocoa and iApps. However providing OS level hooks to run .Net/Windows applications through mono/wine would allow 3rd party volunteers to complete the efforts. [Off-topic]Similarly, Apple mightn't be an active participant in the virtualization area such as porting Xen but providing implicit support in XNU wouldn't hurt either[/Off-topic].

I have another wild theory: It might actually exist and be a, currently, hidden Apple internal subsystem for running cross-platform applications in XCode. Since the NeXT days, there's been a Cocoa subsystem for Windows which facilitates Apple building iSuite apps for Vista. The missing piece? Click Run in XCode and an embedded Wine-subsystem will launch enough of Windows to show you, with high fidelity, how the application will behave under Vista/XP.

That scenario would save Apple a lot of time in terms of testing their Windows applications. If they wanted to re-launch Cocoa as a cross-platform deployment platform makes more sense, to me at least, than the proposal that Apple will endorse running natively the Windows version of Photoshop et alia.

PE Loading on x86 is easy,,,

[Jeff_at_RAD]

Our game middleware products load PE format binaries on GNU/Linux and MacOS. It's like 200 lines of code to load and fix up a DLL - not difficult at all.

The two wins are that we have one binary on all x86 platforms (which usually means testing on one platform is sufficient) and that the MS compiler generates faster binaries. The downside is that when you *do* have to debug on the non-native platforms, you must resort to printf-style debugging.

You also have to replace the default MS crt, because they make a lot of Win32 calls that you don't want to have to emulate. We just have a tiny OS layer for memory, file IO, threading, audio, and video that is native (about 30 functions).

Leopard == Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again it's proven. Sucktastic undocumented proprietary fail.

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[inferis]

Not the same: Apple's main revenue is hardware based, not software based. I'd bet they'd have more revenue from people buying Macs being able to run Windows apps too, compared to the revenue lost in OSX sales. Also, I don't see how people would not buy OSX? It's clearly the best choice since you can run both OSX apps and Windows apps. Even if the share of OSX apps would diminish, there's always the added bonus of using OSX instead of Windows.

So if this would happen, it's the OSX app developers who are screwed, but not Apple.

Maybe this is a dumb question...

[onosson]

... but is there any reason to think that an operating system being able to open files in a format from another system is a bad thing? If there was more across-the-board compatibility like this, then more people would be able to make the choice of OS based on actual features. As it is now, many of us are stuck with a certain OS merely because we have certain software that only runs on that OS, which isn't really a choice at all.

Why not Java first?

[mario_grgic]

Wouldn't that be ironic? Have .NET/CLR support on OS X, but no official Java :).

Re:Offtopic; Slashdot's fucked up RSS feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot works fine for me.

Re:Offtopic; Slashdot's fucked up RSS feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit it "works", but it is also incomplete. Certain types of articles don't make it into it. Most games articles won't for example, unless they also fit into another category that makes front page (like an article on game censorship that is also YRO).

So does anyone who actually read what I said have anything to say? Even if it is just showing solidarity in our dislike of slashdot's fucked up ways?

Running Windows apps natively would make no sense

[LKM]

I think Gruber had it right when he said that Apple wants its users to think of Windows as the new Classic, i.e. if Windows apps run inside Mac OS X, they should do so the way Mac OS 9 apps used to run inside OS X: With distinctly different windows, in a separate environment, and a bit glitchy. Users need to be reminded that running Windows apps is not the preferred choice, but merely a last resort.

The idea is to tell users "Yeah, you can run your Windows apps using Parallels or VMWare if you really have to, but if you can, we'd much rather you ran real Mac applications." Running Windows apps quasi-natively by implementing the APIs would send the wrong message; it would put Windows apps on the same or a similar level as Mac apps. That's a bad thing: The Mac relies on Mac-only or "better on Macs" applications; the high quality of software is one of the Mac's selling point. If developers could write Windows apps and they would run on Macs just fine, hey, why not write Windows apps and have five or ten times the market at no additional cost?

Of course, I'd personally love to see something like this; Office for Macs is about to lose support for Macros, so I'll probably have to run Office in Parallels, soon. Come to think of it... Maybe that's Apple's way of fixing Microsoft's Macro Mistake? Maybe the idea is to let Windows Office run natively on Macs?

Anyway, Apple's actions have been extremely hard to predict recently, so I'm not ruling out anything. Maybe they are indeed going to give the Windows APIs the Carbon treatment...

Also

[Sycraft-fu]

Full Win32 compatibility would be really hard. There is a lot that encompasses what Windows does, as any of the Wine devs can tell you. I don't think Apple would want to go through the massive process of implementing all of that, including the bugs and quirks. For a free product like Wine it is easy enough to say "Meh, some shit works, some doesn't." That doesn't fly if you are making it an ability of an OS who's biggest selling point is its ease of use.

Running a PE isn't a huge deal, you can get a DOS extender to do it. YA RLY, you can run a Windows app in DOS With HX DOS if you want (http://www.japheth.de/HX.html). However just because it can load a Windows executable, doesn't mean it supports all the Windows features. The executable has to limit itself to the subset it can handle. Same deal as the old DOS4G/W crap. That was an extender for loading OS/2 format Linear Executable files. However that didn't mean it handled all of OS/2, or even much of it. It was just a way for loading a 32-bit executable format in DOS.

I think your comment on .NET is more likely, especially since MS is pushing the whole .NET thing for more apps. That is much more feasible since it is an open standard and since it is intended to be more portable and not as tied to Windows.

One possibility: Xen-like co-install

[PhotoGuy]

Adopting Wine would have its limitations.

Being a hook for Parallels (as some have suggested) isn't super efficient (a whole virtual PC just to run Windows apps is a lot of overhead; Parallels is awesome, but I doubt Apple is catering specifically to them).

Emulating or copying in some form or other the hundreds of COM objects isn't practical either.

But what if they allowed you to pop in your XP (or Vista, ugh) CD, and do an install of XP right inside OS X (a bit Xen-like) and cross-launch apps seamlessly, sharing the file system (in a Crossover Office-like way). That would really rock. (Keeping the Windows apps appropriately sandboxed of course.) Crossover Office (and coLinux, to a degree) achieve inter-OS compatibility by leveraging actual OS code, with native hooks into the host operating system. When it works, it's far more efficient that emulating an entire machine.

The more I think about it, the more I'm hoping that will be their approach.

If they can have XP (or Vista, once again, ugh) run, properly licensed, inside/alongside OS X seamlessly, it would bring people to Apple in droves. The switch to X86, allowing people to bail to Windows if their "switch" didn't work, and the efficiency of Parallels on an X86 platform (no emulation of every instruction), truly won over a lot of people to the Mac camp, myself included. This final step would be a major coup, and a natural final step in helping people get away from dependency upon Windows as their sole operating system...

Keeping my fingers crossed...

Not for .Net

[SoopahMan]

.Net apps don't REALLY use the PE format - every Windows XP-targeted .Net app (yes it can target other platforms - and be built to things other than .exe) is packaged in PE but only as a little loader stub. The only thing actually in this format is this same PE stub as used in every other .Net exe - after that it's all .Net bytecode, which you can read with Mono or any other .Net-compatible VM, ignoring the little stub.

Going through all the trouble of implementing PE is a waste of time if all you want to do is run .Net apps - just focus on Mono/getting libraries drawing nicely to OSX if that's what you want.

I think an earlier post here about EFI being based in PE is the right answer about this. But it is possible they're planning to support Win32 as a "Legacy format" - if they treat it like it's a compatibility layer for old apps, it might really work in their favor. You make a good point about the risk that some companies will never bother with a native Mac version, but I think it would help Apple more than hurt them. When Google opened up forwarding, IMAP and POP3 on Gmail, they were scared people would just stop using Gmail itself. That never came to fruition, and instead the compatibility drove users to move to Gmail. So while some software makers might stop bothering with Mac-specific binaries, I think Apple would gain so many users it could mostly benefit them. If they implement Win32 with security first, just think of the ad:

"Now, run your legacy Windows apps without all the security fears of Windows."

Re:Not for .Net

[arminw]

....So while some software makers might stop bothering with Mac-specific binaries........

Would such software makers not also shut themselves off from the potentially huge iPhone market? The iPhone is really a small Mac, running OSX. Programmers for OSX, it seems to me should be more in demand than for Windows as the iPhone market grows. Apple seems to be pretty adept at making their software run on different kinds of hardware. They pulled off the PPC->Intelx86 switch fairly well and now run OSX on yet a different processor. It must be that their way of doing things is pretty flexible.

macinfags

[Anonymous Coward]

you guys are funny.

ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who immediately thought of running windows CE apps on the iphone when I read the article title?

Apple: out of ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like Apple has finally decided to address their biggest deficiency: not being Windows.

Now that they can figure out how to truly rip off Windows, instead of forcing people to pirate a copy of Windows so they can get OSX to virtualize it... they can just try to backdoor Windows support using PE.

Either that, or they are just ripping off PE to fix something they can't figure out anyway. Apple's software writing abilities have ALWAYS been horribly overrated. Just look at Quicktime. Or Leopard.

Re: Half-Life

[floodo1]

Half life is not on mac because Valve thinks that there should be few platforms that they have to develop on.
Im sure the typical, "there isnt any money in porting/making games for mac," had something to do with it, but the fine folks at Valve seem to think that multiple platforms are a waste, which is motivated by their bottom line. They want to convince the market that we need PC/Xbox only; this can easily be seen by the horrible travesty which is Orange Box for PS3.

Safari OS X knows what .exe is

[Ilgaz]

Since early 10.3 or 10.4, Apple OS X Safari will warn you if you (generally,accidentally) download a .EXE file or .COM file over the web saying it can be potentially harmful to your computer. I am on PPC/G5 and always thought it is sign of things to come.

maybe supporting C#/CLR?

[m2943]

PE is used by Microsoft native code, but also by .NET. Apple's support of Java has slowed down and they may be looking for a replacement.

Furthermore, C# and CLR would be a reasonable platform for them to move to, given that Microsoft is not dogmatic about what libraries to use with the CLR; they could probably even create an Objective C to CLR compiler, giving people the choice of either running Objective C as native code or as CLR bytecodes. It would also make it easier for Windows developers to develop for Macintosh.

How prominently such support would feature in OS X would have to be seen; it might only be used for things like Silverlight, or it might become a full alternative to native development.

Re:Offtopic; Slashdot's fucked up RSS feeds

[Hal_Porter]

You can't read articles on censorship through the RSS feed. It's one of those clever meta jokes by the editors.

Re: Half-Life

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Well, I think there is more to it. They know there is money since they were supposedly asking an outrageous 1 million dollars US, up front, from any publisher who wanted to port it. More than that, however, Valve was founded by two Microsoft employees and I think they seriously drank the kool-aid there. I suspect their coders have little or no experience with anything but DirectX and they are happy to keep it that way. I notice that engineers with diverse skills tend to hire more of the same, whereas engineers that only know one thing tend to hire kids straight from college or with a similar or even more limited skill set, so they don't look incompetent themselves or are at risk of having the newbies promoted above them.

I don't know what all goes on there, that is just my impression from Valve developer comments.

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[Sancho]

The order of events isn't too hard to imagine:

1. Apple announces Windows binary compatibility.
   
2. A few more people buy Apple computers, but developers don't. Developers mostly move to Windows, since it maximizes the market share.
   
3. Microsoft changes the API just enough to break compatibility with OS X. They release patches for their older OSes.
   
4. Microsoft releases new version of Office and Visual Studio, which use secret, undocumented API calls, incompatible with Apple. They also offer these free to their larger customers.
   
5. Unable to run the new applications, customers flock back to Microsoft OS in droves. Since no one develops for OS X anymore, the application base crumbles.
   
6. Apple stock drops.
   
7. Apple announces that it is dropping its computer line.
   

mod parent up please

[Jerry Smith]

+1, Insightful. No modpoints here to dispense.

This is the catalyst

[JackMeyhoff]

This is the final catalyst for me to SWITCH :)

Literally?

[bar-agent]

Those are the popular languages, the ones for which you can almost literally open up a can of programmers for.

You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Offtopic; Slashdot's fucked up RSS feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

Subscribers can make custom RSS feeds. HTH.

A good bet?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

You seriously recommend betting on Microsoft?

This is the company that brings you your drive-buy infections. By the dozens. Not theoretical, but in the wild.

Because they have this compulsion about putting tech into the general market before it's ready, and they have this aversion toward cleaning up their own messes.

There is only so much of this kind of market pollution the industry can take.

And you want us to bet on a Microsoft-grown technology? Half-stolen^H^H^H^H^H^Hborrowed without asking, just like pretty much everything they produce?

(I remember a story about a dangerous man named Midas.)

Re:A good bet?

[SigILL]

You seriously recommend betting on Microsoft?

Actually, I'm betting on Microsoft Research...

Re:A good bet?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

You want some of that Midas gold, huh?

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

"because every developer just wrote for the lowest common denominator (Windows) instead of making "native" OS/2 software" - by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01, @05:16PM (#21547385) Don't you mean "the highest common denominator? I mean, well, it's STILL true today: Windows IS the most used OS there is overall, on personal computers ranging from the home use PC, thru departmental nodes, to departmental servers, up to back office mission critical enterprise class servers.

APK

Office was a Mac product before it ran on Windows.

[Monx]

Excel was released for the Mac 1985. Word was released for the Mac in 1984. Word for Windows wasn't released until 1989. Excel for Windows came out in 1987.

There has never been a time when Word and Excel existed on Windows but on on Mac. Even Office as a suite came out for Mac first: 1989 vs 1990 for Windows.

Update needed

[ZoneGray]

Apple needs to update their promotional materials for Leopard. Turns out it has 301 new features.

Re: Half-Life

[gsnedders]

The original Half-Life had a nearly production ready port to the Mac OS done -- it was scrapped as multiplayer was incompatible with the Windows release.

It's not quite NIH

[SanityInAnarchy]

Disclaimer: I didn't even read grandparent, and your post seems reasonable enough.

What I find frustrating about Apple is their need to so tightly control every bit of code they borrow. Look how long it's taken for Webkit to go back into Konqueror... and don't even get me started on BSD/Darwin, whose policy seems to be "Open whenever we feel like it."

Thus, I suspect that, were Apple to include Wine, they'd fork it, improve it quite a lot (though largely in ways that can't easily be integrated back into Wine), assuming they didn't just fork Crossover, Cedega, or the newest version of Wine that's not LGPL'd. I don't know who to blame for this situation, actually -- it seems like Apple is not playing nice with others, yet with all the code there (well, most of the time), it seems like the projects which got forked could be re-integrating a lot of Apple improvements a lot faster.

Re:It's not quite NIH

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What I find frustrating about Apple is their need to so tightly control every bit of code they borrow.

Partly I think this is because Apple relies upon secrecy in order to be competitive against MS's offerings so they don't like people looking at their codebase for future releases, unlike most OSS projects. They tend to wait until they have a project completely and ready to go before they let anyone outside Apple know it exists, which often means they've reworked code for a year and the original projects has a massive load of work dumped upon them at once.

Look how long it's taken for Webkit to go back into Konqueror...

That is actually a good example, although a bit clouded by all the nonsense people posted about it, when they had no idea what they're talking about. For some fairly obvious for business reasons Apple could not have let slip to MS they were working on their own browser, lest MS retaliate by canceling IE before it is ready, or introducing a lock-in into IE in some way. When Apple did release the code, they did not well document the evolution of their version. Someone commented on this in a forum and suddenly all sorts of people were claiming Apple was screwing over the Konquerer team, or intentionally obfuscating things, or violating the spirit of the license. Of course at that point, no one had asked anyone at Apple for a better breakdown and when someone did, the guys working at Apple went out of their way to help make things easier for them to re-integrate into KHTML. Mind you, because the Konquerer team was not happy with some of the design decisions Apple had made, they delayed implementing most of them. They had been used to being the only ones contributing and were not used to dealing with major contributions from other coders. Lately, they've come around with Apple and several other making regular contributions (something the Konquerer guys consider the best thing to come out of Apple's adoption) and they're moving to merging the WebKit and KHTML branches back together since Apple's contributions are more useful than the inconvenience caused by Apple's architectural decisions. The delay in getting Apple's changes incorporated, however, can't really be blamed on Apple, more than a few days, for the most part it was a conscious decision by the Konquerer developers.

...and don't even get me started on BSD/Darwin, whose policy seems to be "Open whenever we feel like it."

Credit where credit is due, the BSD license does not require Apple to release their changes at all, so doing so on a delayed timetable is still a lot better than most vendors.

Thus, I suspect that, were Apple to include Wine, they'd fork it, improve it quite a lot (though largely in ways that can't easily be integrated back into Wine), assuming they didn't just fork Crossover, Cedega, or the newest version of Wine that's not LGPL'd.

I doubt it. Why do you suppose Apple publishes the Darwin source or any of the other low-level technologies they code (ZeroConf, LaunchD, etc.). They publish them because they actually see the business case for sharing the work with other companies and gaining wider adoption of said technologies. Windows API re-implementations fit in that same category. If possible, Apple would try to share the load with other players. Realistically, I think they would be prevented from using WINE because of their license to MS's code nor do I think they have a lot interest in such a project.

Re:It's not quite NIH

[SanityInAnarchy]

Credit where credit is due, the BSD license does not require Apple to release their changes at all, so doing so on a delayed timetable is still a lot better than most vendors.

I didn't say they were violating the license, just that it annoys me how they choose to contribute.

I'd rather have them contribute than not contribute, though.

I doubt it. Why do you suppose Apple publishes the Darwin source or any of the other low-level technologies they code (ZeroConf, LaunchD, etc.). They publish them because they actually see the business case for sharing the work with other companies and gaining wider adoption of said technologies.

And why do you suppose they started with a kernel they could get under a BSD license?

If Apple were to fork the latest WineHQ Wine, thus requiring them to give code back (LGPL'd and all), I'd argue that it's not because they're so willing to share the code, but because it would take them much more work to bring any of the other forks up to speed. I don't necessarily believe they'd avoid releasing at all, but rather, that they'd stall and delay and maybe give something back every year or two.

Re:It's not quite NIH

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I didn't say they were violating the license, just that it annoys me how they choose to contribute.

Sorry, I could have made this comment clearer. GPL and BSD licenses are generally preferred for different things. The areas where BSD is very popular is where the coders find widespread adoption/standardization to be more important that keeping future contributions public. (To some extent the LGPL fills a middle ground). The coders where happy when MS took the BSD licensed TCP/IP stack and incorporated it into Windows. It would be better yet if they kept it open and published the changes, but they didn't. The technologies that fit into this category are generally not usually as time dependent as GPL and normal userspace software. You say you wish Apple was faster publishing the source to Darwin, but why? Very few people seem to be adopting the technologies Apple introduces in Darwin so it is not like they are waiting for the new version to start harvesting for Linux. I know very few people with any interest in seeing this code. Mostly those people are a few hardcore security people looking to tweak things and audit looking for holes, backdoors, and privacy concerns. Aside from that, there are some people interested in violating the license and running a copy on generic hardware. Really, aside from them, who wants to see the source and needs it right away that Apple should make this a priority?

And why do you suppose they started with a kernel they could get under a BSD license?

Mostly because it was the kernel used in NextStep and all the UNIX people that had just taken over the company from their acquisition of Next were intimately familiar with it and advocates of it. Given a choice of two very similar kernels, one BSD and one GPL, the BSD licensed one is more flexible for a business and the GPL one is more likely to get contributions from the outside. Obviously Apple would prefer BSD because of their culture, because they are trying to make a profit (what kernel is on the iPhone?), and because it simplifies their legal obligations.

If Apple were to fork the latest WineHQ Wine, thus requiring them to give code back (LGPL'd and all), I'd argue that it's not because they're so willing to share the code, but because it would take them much more work to bring any of the other forks up to speed. I don't necessarily believe they'd avoid releasing at all, but rather, that they'd stall and delay and maybe give something back every year or two.

Why did Apple choose more permissive licenses for their ZeroConf implementation and for LaunchD and why have they been keeping that code up to date regularly? Is a Windows API re-implementation more like these projects or more like their kernel? Like how they handled Webkit, Apple would probably keep such a project hush hush until it released, but then the coders at Apple would probably be happy to talk to other coders on the project and help re-integrate their work as well as keeping the code they release up to date with the version they have in the shipping version of OS X or the product that includes it. That has been their behavior in the past for projects where there are other, major contributors actively working on it. Realistically, however, Apple is the only one working on Darwin, so they don't have anyone really asking for it to be kept up to date, except the occasionally conspiracy theorist posting on Slashdot... who is unlikely to ever really look at the code anyway.

Re:It's not quite NIH

[SanityInAnarchy]

You say you wish Apple was faster publishing the source to Darwin, but why? Very few people seem to be adopting the technologies Apple introduces in Darwin so it is not like they are waiting for the new version to start harvesting for Linux.

Maybe people aren't so eager to contribute to Darwin, or even glance at the source, precisely because they don't like waiting for the release? Or because they don't particularly like Apple's policies -- at one point, there was a policy of not being able to be a part of Apple's open source projects unless you were at least 18.

Obviously Apple would prefer BSD because of their culture, because they are trying to make a profit (what kernel is on the iPhone?), and because it simplifies their legal obligations.

And why couldn't Linux go on the iPhone? It's not GPLv3.

I understand what you mean -- it is more flexible for a business, if you feel you're going to need to keep the code proprietary. But if "the code" means just the kernel, which, as you say, may not be very exciting, why the secrecy?

Why did Apple choose more permissive licenses for their ZeroConf implementation and for LaunchD and why have they been keeping that code up to date regularly? Is a Windows API re-implementation more like these projects or more like their kernel?

It really seems like neither, and I'm actually entirely missing the point here.

What are you trying to say?

Like how they handled Webkit, Apple would probably keep such a project hush hush until it released, but then the coders at Apple would probably be happy to talk to other coders on the project and help re-integrate their work as well as keeping the code they release up to date with the version they have in the shipping version of OS X or the product that includes it.

So, you're arguing this is more like ZeroConf or LaunchD? But earlier, you argued that the reason ZeroConf and LaunchD are open is that they want both to become widely adopted. So I'm confused -- why would it benefit Apple to support Linux through Wine, other than the possibility of getting more code back from the WineHQ project? Why wouldn't it be much more to their benefit to support Windows applications better than anything except Windows?

so they don't have anyone really asking for it to be kept up to date, except the occasionally conspiracy theorist posting on Slashdot... who is unlikely to ever really look at the code anyway.

I'm certainly unlikely to look at the code (or not soon), but I fail to see how I'm a "conspiracy theorist". I don't think Apple is particularly malicious here, just not as cooperative as I'd like. That their marketing model is intrinsically tied to secrecy doesn't change this at all.

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[jcr]

You've got it. Jumping on a microsoft bandwagon is a very bad business decision, as any company who signed up for "plays for sure" now knows.

-jcr

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers who are serious about writing good software don't write to the lowest common denominator.

Re:Offtopic; Slashdot's fucked up RSS feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

You've gotta be kidding me. Well thanks for responding, but theres no way in HELL I'm going to pay for slashdot while they are still posting sensational and misleading article titles and summaries as if they were the enquirer "us house of representatives says the internet is for terrorists! LOLOLZZZZ". I'll probably just keep bringing the subject up and try to get something done about it for non-subscribers.

Do I have to subscribe?
Of course not. Subscriptions are voluntary. Right now, subscriptions serve one purpose: getting rid of ads. If you don't care about seeing ads, don't subscribe.

Re:Win32 on OS X -- goodness

[BasilBrush]

You don't appear to understand what a common denominator is.

"Elegance": code word for "Obscure"

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost every time I read that a language is "elegant" compared to the competition, it's because that language is less practical, more obscure and needs a philosophical reasons to be used.

Languages are tools. That's it. Usually the reasons to use one are:

a) Availability of talent to code in the language.
b) Prior use in the space it's being applied.
c) Performance.

When "elegance" wins out over these, that's when you end up in poor situations. For internal corporate development, you get the situation where one guy decides that everything should be written in Elegant Language, he writes a ton of code and APIs, becomes the only one who knows how to do it, and then he leaves the company.

For packaged software APIs, you end up on an island where third parties no longer want to support you. This is where Apple has been since they have deprecated Carbon. Adobe HAS to ship cross-platform software. Objective-C adds a ton of overhead for them.

The true test is that Objective-C is available on Windows and Linux, but no one would ever code in it on those platforms. The only reason Apple themselves use it is due to legacy of NeXTSTEP and the "elegance" argument winning out in the face of C++ in the early-90s. NeXT could have corrected their ways long, long ago, and sorta tried to with Carbon. Now it's obvious that Carbon was a token gesture to MacOS 9.0 developers. Though I'm really surprised they made the Carbon decision after Avie Tevanian left. Just goes to show that once you make a bad decision at the language level, it's very very hard to undo.

BTW, back to the topic. C# is already supported on Mac in two ways. One is called Mono. Only problem is that few C# developers target Mono -- they target the Microsoft implementation. The chances that this is ever going to work out for the Mac are pretty slim. The other is Silverlight and the DLR. I actually see this being pretty successful in the long run. Microsoft has already gotten IronPython running on top of Silverlight 1.1. If they start adding some real widgets to Silverlight and flesh out the .NET Framework behind it, you could see pretty robust C# apps running on Mac without any help from Apple.

Qualitative != quantitative

[tepples]

"churning out" "popular" "a can of" "a few years back" "a language few people are willing to learn" "slowly" "makes it even harder" "reasonably fast (getting faster)" "plenty of mindshare" "most importantly" "isn't much" "simply an additional one"

You do realize those are all quantitative expressions, right?

No, those are qualitative. Quantitative expressions involve measurable quantities. Giving an estimate of the number of curricula that use C# vs. the number of curricula that use Objective-C would be quantitative.

Re:Qualitative != quantitative

[BorgCopyeditor]

I agree that giving numbers would be more precise, but "more" etc. just are expressions of quantity, i.e., of how-much-ness. It's true that in the GGP, they are being used to compare qualities, but the key word there is "compare," because precisely what is being compared in each case is those qualities' intensity, number, or ratio, that is, quantities of qualities.

[citation needed]

[tepples]

I agree that giving numbers would be more precise, but "more" etc. just are expressions of quantity, i.e., of how-much-ness. I think the real point of contention was verifiability. If a post has actual numbers and the URL of a reliable source to back them up, readers find it easier to take the post seriously.

Re:[citation needed]

[BorgCopyeditor]

That's just fine. However, the word "quantify" doesn't mean "give evidence sufficient for verification." This is the point that the GGGP (I think) was trying to get at with the line "is that quantitative enough for you?" or whatever it was.

My guess

[richardtallent]

Reproducing or even bringing WINE up to consumer level would be a monumental task. I don't think their strategy is to support Windows apps across-the-board.

My guess is that Apple has a secret project to integrate just enough of WINE/Crossover into OS X to support Microsoft Office, in the event that Microsoft backs down on its commitment to provide Office for Mac.

Microsoft screwed them over before on its promised releases of Office, and Office is a de facto requirement for corporate workstations.

Yes, iWork, OpenOffice, and Office-under-Parallels are good alternatives, but they are NOT feature-complete or performant, and are a much harder sell than "and it runs Microsoft Office too!"

Re:My guess

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> My guess is that Apple has a secret project to integrate just enough of WINE/Crossover into OS X to support Microsoft Office

Why would they do that? Microsoft Office works just fine on my Mac. Over the years I've run it under Virtual PC, Parallels and VMWare. There's no shortage of ways to run it. So I doubt it's a high priority for Apple to provide yet another method.

Macros?

[argent]

Office for Macs is about to lose support for Macros

Explain... where was this announced?

Re:Macros?

[LKM]

Explain... where was this announced?

What do you mean by "where"? On the Microsoft Mac Dev Unit Blog, I think. It was widely reported and discussed all over the web, for example here. just fucking google it :-)

Re:Macros?

[argent]

What do you mean by "where"?

I'm not an Office geek. I haven't touched Microsoft Office on my Mac in about 6 months, and the last time I had to deal with macros in Office it was in the context of Microsoft breaking the macro virus protection I was deploying at the office in one of their attempts at fixing macro security. If Microsoft has finally wised up about sandboxes and macros and the like I can only applaud.

Unfortunately, it seems like that's not the case. All the lush VB viral ecosystem will remain intact on Windows. Pity.

Apple's Windows software is Carbon

[argent]

particularly as carbon and any legacy carbon support they might have had in Windows is defunct.

I suspect the most likely reason reason iTunes and Quicktime Player are still largely Carbon (modern Carbon, true, not legacy Carbon, but still Carbon) is because they've gotta stay compatible with Windows.

The "Open" part of OPENSTEP seems to have been pretty much lost in the transition to Cocoa.

Not at all Microsoft-like

[GPS Pilot]

The old regime almost bankrupted Apple by switching to a Microsoft-like software licensing model

No, the experiment with Mac clones was not at all Microsoft-like. Microsoft makes money every time Dell ships a PC with Windows installed, and Apple lost money every time Power Computing shipped a clone with Mac OS 8 installed.

The reason is pretty simple. Apple should have priced OS licenses such that it wouldn't matter to its bottom line whether the hardware had been made by Apple or a cloner. The price of an OS license was initially set too low, perhaps out of optimism about the extent to which Apple's hardware sales would be cannibalized. When sales turned out to be cannibalized quite a bit, instead of adjusting to the circumstances, Apple simply killed the cloning program :(

Not so fast

[GPS Pilot]

the Mac indy developer scene is smaller than Windows, but the software is almost always of much higher quality and polish [because it's easier to develop for Windows]

This is contradictory. If devloping for the platform is easier, the developer should in theory have more time left at his or her disposal to polish the GUI and stomp bugs.

By this reasoning, the quality of Mac software would rise even higher if Apple intentionally placed some more difficulties in the path of its developers.

I'm sure that'll change in February of 2008. Then lots of people will probably be interested in learning Objective-C.

What's coming in Feb?

Re:Not so fast

[Durandal64]

This is contradictory. If devloping for the platform is easier, the developer should in theory have more time left at his or her disposal to polish the GUI and stomp bugs.

You're assuming a competent developer. The lower the barrier to entry of developing for your platform is, the less competent a developer has to be to write for it. Less competent developers will write lower quality code and not be terribly good at bug stomping.

What's coming in Feb?

The iPhone SDK.

MOD PARENT DOWN (troll)

[shentino]

I'd be modding you down myself if I had any mod points. Please keep such pejorative terms off of slashdot, thank you.

Where you'll be?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Ubuntu, would be my guess. Or Mandrake or whatever.

Fedora's not bad either, but it really isn't for the masses.

Next OS I buy (new, anyway) will probably be RedHat's Enterprise. But that's me, and you are not I.

Running MSOffice?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

That's one reason for me to be running the other way.

Data lockin, here we come. Not.

binfmt_misc

[oglueck]

Linux could do that easily with WINE and the binfmt_misc kernel module.

Maybe they are using wine code

[paulatz]

This could be a good reason to hide (still partial) support for window executables: wine is a very good project, and even with all its glitches it can run a lot of windows apps. Maybe OSX developers are using a lot o wine code but, since it's GPL, they want (and have to) keep it secret as long as they are able to rewrite it from scratch or include it in a way that don't violates GPL licence.

It may even be that they already violated the licence, this could be interesting to investigate, as having open source OSX would be quite nice ;-).

Re:Offtopic; Slashdot's fucked up RSS feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you didn't post your complaint on a story about running windows apps on macs? Kind of makes you look like an idiot.