Mac OS X Secretly Cripples Non-Apple Software

spikedLemur writes "Vladimir Vukicevic of the Firefox team stumbled upon some questionable practices from Apple while trying to improve the performance of Firefox. Apparently, Apple is using some undocumented APIs that give Safari a significant performance advantage over other browsers. Of course, "undocumented" means that non-Apple developers have to try and reverse-engineer these interfaces to get the same level of performance. You really have to wonder what Apple is thinking, considering the kind of retaliation Microsoft has gotten for similar practices.

Comments

Bad Engineering

[metachimp]

I never can get this quote quite right, but 'Never attribute to malice that which can be accounted for by stupidity'. These unpublished APIs were probably custom-built for Safari, and since Apple apparently has a wicked case of not-made-here, this is not a surprise. I don't use OSX, but I do use iTunes, and I can only conclude that Apple just does not have a priority placed on well-engineered apps. They look great, but on Windows especially, they are pretty pitiful. I am always amazed at how much memory iTunes takes up for itself considering what it does. If I fire up Windows Media Player, loathsome as it is, it uses up a fraction of the resources. I run a Postgresql database server on my laptopn for development, and it does not even approach the big ol' Homer Simpson ass print that iTunes does. I don't get it. Do they deploy some kind of bottom-up graphics library? A monstrous cache? What? For all the memory that sucker takes up, it sure runs ponderously slow.

Enough of that. Apple just doesn't make applications very well. They put all the resources into the UI, and skimp on the important stuff.

Open your eyes apple fanbois

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Since when has Microsoft's mistakes and bad practices ever stopped Apple from making mistakes and excersizing bad practices?

You're just a blind apple fanboi if you don't see it.