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Why Developers Are Switching To Macs
snydeq writes "Programmers are finding themselves increasingly drawn to the Mac as a development platform, in large part due to Apple's decision to move to Intel chips and to embrace virtualization of other OSes, which has turned Mac OS X into a flexible tool for development, InfoWorld reports. The explosion of interest in smartphone development is helping the trend, with iPhone development lock-in to the Mac environment the chief motivating factor for Apple as a platform of choice for mobile development. Yet for many, the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development, with developers citing its virtual memory system's poor performance in paging data in and out of memory and likening use of the default-network file system, AFS, to engaging oneself with 'some kind of passive-aggressive torture.' What remains unclear is whether Apple will lend an ear to this new wave of Mac-based development or continue to develop products that lock out uses programmers expect."
As opposed to the Windows paging system? Has the author used a Windows OS lately? Swapping is a *bleeping* killer! Especially when you have more than enough memory not to swap. :-/
So don't use it. Macs support CIFS/SMB pretty darn well these days. I keep hoping that someone will come up with a better replacement, but CIFS/SMB will continue to work until that day comes.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
But all that Mac gaming makes up for it.
OS X is really a good middle ground between Windows and Linux. OS X supports many of the Windows Protocols (a lot better then linux in some ways) as well there is a better selection of high quality closed source applications, then linux has. However being Unix based it it is more stable then Windows and less prone to viruses and other malware. Then combined with virtualization you can run Linux OS X and Windows all at the same time for cross testing your code.
It has a clean interface and performs well. You are not fussing with simple stuff. all in all it is good for development. (And the Apple keyboards have extended function keys that makes compatibility with old Vax systems much nicer too)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
once again macs seem to be innovating, the dual gpu thing where you have a low power one for run of the mill 2d stuff and high power one for the apps that need it are a good example (i believe this is appearing in pc laptops as well).
my friend just got a shiny new £1800 mac book pro, its faster and has more ram than my main desktop machine, makes me feel sick (that windows xp 32 bit can only address 3.25 GB of ram doesn't help either).
AFS is something else altogether.
You would think that the fact that OS X is UNIX 03 certified might be of some interest to developers as well.
Sure, maybe not as much as the reasons stated above, but... it is worth mentioning. And just the fact that it is any flavor of Unix-like OS is attractive to many.
That doesn't seem to make any sense.
Is there some other AFS?
This is the first time I've actually LOL'd at a 'dept' line in a while. Self-employment makes for all sorts of wonderful tax-deductable gadgets.
Not a typewriter
Almost as bad as the Ron Paul trolls on Digg.
I can think of a few reasons why Macs are becoming more popular (especially in this field). Like the first commenter said, has this guy used Vista? 1. More and more programs are coming Linux. Like today we have Flash. 2. Stable OS/Well built systems. 3. More people are realizing that you don't need windows to read windows files. Just format your junk to FAT instead of NTFS. This is just brushing the surface...
Uh...isn't the point that you can run any OS you want on Mac hardware? Isn't that what makes them good development machines? If the paging system or AFS is torture, just boot frickin Windows. These flamebait articles are so tiring.
Facebook is the new AOL
recently got into Cocoa programming and for the most part absolutely love it, Apple has obviously put a lot of effort into their system and it shows. However, Apple seemingly skimped on one of the most important, but usually easiest to implement parts of their system: good, up to date documentation!
For instance, in the QTKit documentation is just beyond abysmal. There is little documentation on how to do very common things, such as set your export settings. I had to do a lot of hackery just to figure that one out(and its still far from straightforward), they have typos that have been there for eons, even though I used their feedback form to tell them about it, and perhaps worst of all, they don't even mention many methods that are in the API.
On multiple occasions I have had to go into the header files just to find out what I could do with various classes. I shouldn't have to do this! Compare this experience with say, Javadocs and its night and day. While Javadocs are far from perfect, they are infinitely better than what Apple puts out.
Why would Apple do something like this? It costs them almost nothing to create a lot of these docs, and actually updating them once in a while could save developers tons of frustration. I guess maybe the paid ADC accounts are bit better? Thats really a low blow if they are though....
Furthermore, Apple tends to deprecate APIs without really replacing them with an API with the same functionality. Case in point is QTKit. Its a nice API for what its worth, but there are tons of occasions you either:
a) have to go down to the old Quicktime C APIs(which means your code won't be able to compile in 64 bit and may not work at all on Snow Leopard) or
b) Have to come up with some creative hacks to get the functionality you want.
For instance, in order to get an MPEG-4 formatted to anything but the default size you either have to use an atom container which is 32 bit only, or manually set up a Quicktime export with the settings you want, write some applescript to save that to a file, THEN read that file in as NSData THEN set that to be your export settings(which on Apple's website has the oh so helpful documentation:"Information to come."(That was over a year ago).
Monstar L
Andrew File System? Surely not. Perhaps they meant Apple Filing Protocol (AppleShare over IP (and sometimes AppleTalk)).
I have spent the last 8 years writing visual basic applications in Windows
At Christmas last year I got myself a Nokia internet tablet - it runs Maemo Linux.
Surprisingly now, 11 months later I am comfortable back in C, have a nice little library and *know* I have found a better path.
Its been a kind of torture as well, everything was new and sometimes finding information is a brutal experience.
If it hadn't been for the great community around maemo.org I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have.
It was this community element which was missing with other devices and systems when I was looking around.
liqbase
Our office started having problems with Thinkpads after years of trouble-free use (oops, Lenovo), so I took the chance to see if we could use Macs. I got a big 17" MacBook Pro.
I run Win XP via Parallels, and will get around to installing Ubuntu as well.
Things work pretty well. Not perfectly, but pretty well. I currently spend ~70% of my time using Windows stuff, but I anticipate that going down to 30% or so as I get smart about doing stuff on the Mac side without losing file compatibility with my peers. It's *really* nice to be able to switch back and forth seamlessly. And though I am by temperament more of a Linux guy, I find myself quite happy with OS X.
I'm not an Apple fan-boi; I don't ignore imperfections in Apple and their products. That said, when my old PC laptop died at home, I found that we were left with 3 Macs- my work Mac, my wife's, and our Mac Mini media center/kid computer/home automation thingy.
I just hope Apple's market share doesn't grow too high (I'm not that worried); competition (plus open standards) is a good thing.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Apple needs a mini tower not a over priced mini laptop with out a screen in a small box.
The mac pro is nice but $2300 and only a $30-$50 video card?
AIO also are not that good.
Where is the mini tower that can do dual display?
IMO, from what I've seen, one reason is because it's Unixy and there are lots of developers who move to it because it's a top-tier Unixy environment... supported hardware and software from a top-tier company. They other reason is because it's the only legal way to program the iPhone... vendor lockin the likes of which not even Microsoft has dared to try (and couldn't, really, without risk of more lawsuits about being a monopoly).
I've been using a Mac as a development platform for years. Never had an issue. Just because it's an Apple system doesn't mean one has to use AFS or write Cocoa apps.
A decent headless mini-tower mac at a fair price, and I'd snap one up in a minute.
AFP is not strange, twisted, or any sort of barrier for programmers. Over the years, I have found AFP performance (to netatalk) out of the box trounces Samba by almost a 1:2 margin on raw file transfer speed, and 10:1 on directory-intensive operations. It supports international character sets without fuss, and folder/file name restrictions are downright amazing compared to the shit that is SMB/CIFS.
Don't like AFP? Fine. Use SMB (and yes, you can turn off the "annoying dot files".) Or NFSv4. Or SSHFS with MacFusion, making any Unix box you've got a file server with the installation of one package. There are installers for AFS and (I may have this wrong) Coda.
Please help metamoderate.
Unlike some operating systems from Redmon, OS X can do NFS right out of the box. Though I guess we can cut Microsoft a little slack, the protocol is only 20 years old after all.
Actually, there is only 1 case where I would actually recommend using AFP over NFS on macs: If you are using Mac OS X Server to provide authentication to other Macs, the AFP is fully kerberized and encrypted over the wire(well it can be) whereas NFS is just plain old NFS.
Monstar L
Yeah, no other hardware or OS in the world supports virtualization.
If you want to develop for MacOS (and why wouldn't you?) you can either run it natively and run Windows/Linux/FreeBSD virtually, or you can... oh, right, you can't install MacOS in a VM on decent, user-serviceable hardware, because that would cut into Apple's profit margin.
Okay first, about the title: All programmers are developers, but not all developers are programmers. Second, it isn't just developers, it's everybody. Vista exploded on the launch pad. Nobody's upgrading. So for the last several years who's been the only commercial manufacturer to be releasing new spiffy shiny? Apple of course. So, umm, HELLO? Of course people are switching, Apple is the only company offering anything new!
Microsoft wasn't advertising because they had nothing to advertise -- The only major products they've been pushing out are all incremental upgrades for commercial use. Now we see giant billboards about how great Vista is, but please... The media shot and killed that cow, now they're just trying to recoup their investment. As an aside, I've been waiting for this moment since I got into the industry! Now, whatever you want to say about Macintosh as a platform, you can't deny their marketing has been so good it's making history. That, and Apple has at least three batallions of lawyers ready to crush anyone who "Thinks different". And the only personalities Microsoft has is Bill Gates (now retired), and Balmer, better known as the amazing flying monkey boy.
Lastly, if we want to talk about developers, not just programmers -- which would include web and graphic designers, architects, etc., Apple has enjoyed huge market share here for one very simple reason: It's simple and it works. This is an industry where the software on a machine costs several times the cost of a system and people happily pay for it. Apple, and companies who develop for their platform, have made design a priority for years -- usability and simplicity. Everything else has come after that. Well, except for some serious QC issues on their hardware lines lately, for which they have not been publicly flogged enough over. Meanwhile, all the other players in the market are trying to be all things to everyone... Vista's DRM and horrible, horrible driver subsystem comes to mind as an example of "Trying to do it all".
Disclaimer: Not an Apple fangirl (personally, I despise macintoshes), but does work in graphic design and so I deal with it every day.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've always heard that Intel Macs were comparable to Intel Windows machines in running similar application. Now suddenly there are complaints about sluggish virtual memory handling and other ills? Where has this been hiding all along now that (pardon) apples-to-Apples comparisons are actually possible?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is that a developer issue, or just something you want?
Quicktime is scheduled to get a large rewrite in Snow Leopard. There have been many complaints about the Quicktime API, but there is hope that Snow Leopard will fix that.
Sigh, not this one again. Apple will likely not ever make an inexpensive mini tower because the profit margins are too small. Their strategy is to aim at the high end of the market and let Dell and HP fight it out over the market for cheap computers.
This ain't rocket surgery.
A sizable part of the programming community writes Java code and MacOSX is simply not an option for them.
Applet's JVM is buggy, poorly maintained and totally out of date. Sun plans on putting out Java 1.7 in a few months and Applet has yet to even release Java 1.6.
Desktop imacs are a bit limited for serious stuff (max RAM, only one internal HD, etc). The Mac Pro requires a second mortgage. It's sort of a use issue for those of us who need to do mroe than surf the web.
I find it hard to take anyone seriously who is unable to tell the difference between AFS and AFP, or lacks the copyediting skills to catch their mistake.
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
It would be smart for Apple to cater to the needs and desires of developers. Eventually Developers will develop cool apps for the platform they use the most, if that turns out to be OS X, then Apple could win BIG.
Think Deeply.
You may be able to run the software of your choice on your Mac, but its a lot harder to run the hardware of your choice on it - at least under OS-X. Want to work on applications for ATI's latest graphics card cuda-equivalent GPU processing then you are likely going to want a 4870 X2 to play with. That may work fine under Windows, but if you can't run OS-X as well with that hardware then you've just bought yourself a very expensive Windows-only machine.
And that's what many developers do. Run specific hardware configurations.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I gave up on TFA when I got to "increasingly more common".
I really like developing on my Apple machine for the most part, but it has a few issues that make it less appealing to me than Linux.
Currently, most of the development I'm doing is using Django and PostgreSQL. Installing PostgreSQL and the required Python libraries on OS X is tremendously painful. It was painful on Tiger and Leopard has made it more so. Macports tries to make it easier, but it could use a lot of work/testing/more work.
Installing the same tools on Linux is so easy, a Windows user could do it.
... so they get the girls!
They already introduced supposedly the next generation of the Quicktime API with QTKit when they released Quicktime 7. The problem with QTKit is that its not really complete, and as I have said, not at all documented. So if they want people to start to use QTKit instead of the old quicktime APIs, they better get on the ball. They also really need to cut out the secrecy bullshit and let people who don't fork over tons of cash know what direction the API is going.
Monstar L
You're not the first, or only one to bring up the lack of documentation.
I tried to get into a little programming as a total newbie, since the Developer Tools came free and it seemed like an interesting thing to try.
It's still something I would like to have a go at, but I got nowhere when I went to look at some parts of the documentation and saw all those gaps.
I should probably start with a simpler language, but the temptation was the tools were right there and I could start making some simple applications for OS X. Not as easy as it looks though!
Yes, it is a pain to set up, but once there, you can scale from a workgroup to global filesystem. That is, you'll need a dozen AFS admins compared to 100 CIFS admins in a large organisation. Not only that, with a global filesystem the amount of duplicated data drastically falls, and with that goes storage costs.
Deleted
not worldwide. Maybe I shock you, but outside the US apple is a niche market that its only used for graphics design- you know, a heritage of the 80s. In the old Europe you would find much more projects for linux than for OSX (and both are a minimal percentage of the total projects, because everyone still use some version of Windows). Even the ipod is a rare avis in the mp3 market. Of course Apple started an agressive campaing to catch the academic world few years ago, financing laptops for teachers and student, but it's too early to move the trend.
So, no. I work in a mid-size software factory and I can assure you developers aren't going anywhere.
AFS is something else.
"Some developers are using Macs. However, some are not." Silly.
Apple seemingly skimped on one of the most important, but usually easiest to implement parts of their system: good, up to date documentation!
Are you really a developer? :)
The article probably means AFP is torture. AFP itself isn't that bad, but getting it to work reliably can be very tricky as Apple seem intent on breaking it in interesting new ways with every OS update. Kerberos support in Leopard only works if you use one of the three methods of connecting (and it's the one users are least likely to use). Kerberised AFP seems to have stopped working entirely using 10.4.11 as a server. This is generally true of other Kerberised services on OS X though - Apple Mail in Leopard now does the same dumb non-canonicalisation that Safari on Tiger and Leopard does.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080609&mode=classic
I have linux boxes at home, I have *BSD boxes at home, I have colocated *BSD boxes around the world for other personal endeavors. I have a fairly extensive MythTV/Zoneminder network at home as well. So I'm not your average Mac weenie... To me, the mac is just a decent portal to all the other Unixy boxes I maintain. I've tried using a Linux desktop on a day to day basis and I've found it just too painful... Ever try getting a bluetooth keyboard working on Ubuntu? It doesn't "just work"; or at least not 6 months ago. It might now... But that's my point... Linux is always improving, but it never does everything I want, when I want it... And yes, I know, "patches welcome"... I contribute plenty to open-source. I can contribute more in my area of specialty and I can do it better sitting in front of a Mac. When I want to relax and watch TV, I don't want to have to hack MythTV to do it. I just want to plunk my fat ass on the couch and be entertained.
The rest of the OS and developer tools seem ok. But, since I have the choice I'll stick with a window manager I can configure properly. I'm probably in a minority (and yes, I know about mondo-mouse
I vote developer issue.
The low-end mac mini hasn't had an update in years.
If you want to hook up and coming developers, you need a cheap platform to let them experiment on.
A mid tower would fit that much better then their current offerings. Of course, a newer mac mini would be a change in the right direction...
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
OK, then, what filesystem would we want Apple to make available on their machines? ZFS? After the announcement on MacForge that they'd ported ZFS to OSX, I heard a big fat silence. ReiserFS? Ummmm...
OSX Server supports UFS and ZFS, but for a developer workstation you'd want other options, yes? So, what do you wanna see?
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
You may 'sigh' yet again, but the reason this keeps popping up is because it's a valid criticism that hasn't yet been addressed. Perhaps it's true that Apple wouldn't make as much money in that particular market; most people don't care! They just want a certain product at a certain price point, and Apple isn't delivering it. Sigh'ing that someone else is complaining about this oversight won't make the problem go away. Apple systems in general are either too underpowered or too expensive. There's no middle ground, and they're losing a lot of business because of it.
Devs share alot in common with /. ers. We hate being closed in HATE IT. We like options. With a mac base you fuck yourself for cross-platform options. You fuck yourself for installed base. You fuck yourself on freedom MANYMANY times over. You fuck yourself on dev tools, libraries and compilers of all sorts. And you support an OS that maintains an iron grip over the computer and what goes on it. Why don't i just shoot myself in the foot some more?
On a side note how are there so many people here that hate closed anything (People were arguing about firefox being free because it has a logo today) and hate DRM and so many that love apple? Kinda retarded...
Apple do not need a mini tower. It's something a lot of people want, but firstly, it dilutes the product line, and secondly, it would cannibalise their own sales of other products. I would personally love a cheaper tower from Apple, but I don't confuse my own personal desire for one with a need for Apple to build one.
And are also aware that OSX _is_ Unix.
..."Programmers care about computers in the same way other computer experts do."
;-)
I've found this to be a huge fallacy after working as a relative outsider with teams of programmers for years now. I've found that the best programmers I know are incredibly stubborn and those who care about their OS are very picky about it. The Mac-using programmers I know like it because everything "just works." The Windows-using programmers I know like it because they're too busy thinking about algorithms to care how it works, as long as they know how to edit and compile. The Linux-using programmers I know are too antisocial to talk about why they use it in person, but from reading their blogs I gather that they are usually either very angry inside or very, very creative.
As opposed to the Windows paging system? Has the author used a Windows OS lately? Swapping is a *bleeping* killer! Especially when you have more than enough memory not to swap. :-/
So don't use it. Macs support CIFS/SMB pretty darn well these days. I keep hoping that someone will come up with a better replacement, but CIFS/SMB will continue to work until that day comes.
As opposed to the Windows paging system? Has the author used a Windows OS lately? Swapping is a *bleeping* killer! Especially when you have more than enough memory not to swap. :-/
So don't use it. Macs support CIFS/SMB pretty darn well these days. I keep hoping that someone will come up with a better replacement, but CIFS/SMB will continue to work until that day comes.
It always amazes me to see an OS article turn into a M$ Bashing ground. I am using Windows for over 8 years now and _it_works_. i have tried my hand at UBUNTU and for starters it cant configure my sound card out of the box and sorry i am not interested in searching a driver because if canonical dident care to write one for Toshiba laptops i dont care to search for one and install it. Mac's they dotn have Back space oops... documentation well, check MSDN, every thing else seems rooted in the 80's
These are the three reasons why I enjoy developing on the Mac:
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
If it doesn't run Visual Studio than I don't want it. Right now theres nothing out there that beats it. Plus you don't get WPF which you can reuse for Silverlight. On top of that who wants to learn COCO. Who the hell names a programing language COCO.
Cost nothing? Documentation is _hard_, and coder are usually chosen because they like to solve problems by coding, not documenting, so you have to hire some special people and they have to spend lots of time on this. Documentation is expensive and slows down development a lot.
If it doesn't run Visual Studio I don't want it!
Right now nothing comes close to VS and its great tools. Plus you get WPF on windows and you can reuse that for Silverlight.
Plus who wants to learn Coco. Who names a programming language COCO!
Agreed. Even if it was just the mac mini with a larger case. I just want dual monitors on a box around $600. For those others who are interested - you can run 3x20" monitors using the matrox triplehead2go. I've done this using my MacBook Pro, and it's worked great. My only problem with it is you can't run 2x26", which I bought, and now can only use 1 of. Kind of a bummer.
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
With a Mac base you've got better cross-platform options than anything... you've got UNIX at the base, and a decent and consistent GUI, and two virtual machine vendors tripping over each other trying to give you the best Windows experience, and for Linux development... well, it's UNIX. UNIX is UNIX is UNIX. Portable apps run on OS X with "./configure; make install" and if you need something that's written to "all the world's Red Hat" standards... well, Linux runs REALLY well inside virtual machines.
Dev tools, libraries, and compilers? You have the same GNU toolchain you have on Linux.
Yes, Apple bears watching, but for something that right now Just Works, get a Mac. And if you write portable code, if Apple decides to rip its belly out on DRM and wander around bleating and tripping over its own entrails? You can still jump ship to Linux, BSD, or even (if you're a masochist) Vista and Cygwin.
If it doesn't run Visual Studio I don't want it! Right now nothing comes close to VS and its great tools. Plus you get WPF on windows and you can reuse that for Silverlight. Plus who wants to learn Coco. Who names a programming language COCO!
This is unsurprising, not only because of the platforms, but also because MS appear to be completely ignoring native development, and have been pouring everything on .NET. Which is fair enough, but .NET is going to be MS's method of gradual lock in (Mono implements .NET, but not all of it can be implemented without patent hindrance, which means even with Novell's help, it's not a "forever" solution). Apple's focus upon actual APIs rather than ".NET does XYZ but this feature doesn't work in native!" is definitely an attraction in my opinion (native being ignored is particularly in reference to development tools - for instance, nearly all the features of MSVC "Team System" are irrelevant for native code)
Even if this is true, you do realize that Apple does not manufacture their own batteries? Like Dell, HP, and many other computer makers, Sony makes their batteries. All this came out when the exploding laptop battery issue came out. 1) Sony made their batteries. 2) The problem was not exclusive to Apples. Dell and HP also recalled batteries.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Now suddenly there are complaints about sluggish virtual memory handling and other ills?
Compared to Linux or FreeBSD, OS X is still kinda sluggish.
Compared to Vista? Who can tell, if your virtual memory is full of predictively loaded copies of applications you last used six months ago?
You can easily develop on SFTP or FTP... check out MacFuse (http://www.macfusionapp.org/)
with iPhone development lock-in to the Mac environment the chief motivating factor for Apple as a platform of choice for mobile development
I don't do iPhone, but what's wrong with Aptana?
iPhone
That's the carrot. The stick, of course, is that development on Microsoft's platforms is no longer interesting. Desktop is dead, both on Windows and Mac, so WPF, Cocoa, etc - those are boring. I don't care about database applications with cool graphics. I don't care about awesome list view widgets, XML UI, etc. Those are just nuts and bolts which are pointless unless there's something compelling to build. The potential of iPhone is compelling.
That said, and this is totally biased from this Windows dev, to me Xcode doesn't compare to Visual Studio. I find VS's debugging, editing, and pretty much everything else to be slicker and more stable (at least, in VS2008sp1). I find getting a quick-and-dirty Windows app to be faster to slap together than an equivalent Cocoa app (eg. creating a quick game level editor). I also prefer the single-window IDE, and VS.NET works better in that layout. The IDE morphs to be a good debugger IDE when debugging. I find STL debugging easier, as well. MSDN documentation is a library of congress compared to Xcode's docs. But again, a more experienced Xcode dev will kick my ass on these points.
Little extras: I love having a real command line. I love not having installers be its own entire dev cycle.
Is this supposed to be a neutral or fair analysis of Mac as a development platform?
Sure Apple benefit from the fact that Apple products work well together with Apple products, -just like Microsoft products has done for decades.
Id like to see a poll among developers asking who acually:
The weak arguments in the article agains Apple fails to render it as more than a long textual advertisement for Mac targeted against developers.
Mission somehow completed I guess. Sad...
and now I hate MacOSX.
I have used windows since the begining, and have always been annoyed by something, but now that I get to develop for the Mac, I seem to hate it too. Oh, I like having bash and perl ready and available, saving me days of work installing and configuring ActiveState and CygWin. But this "It just works" is nonsense.
For example, I open a log file, and the console window automatically scrolls to the bottom of the screen. Nice, but when I scroll to the top of the file, I find that the console app only shows the tail of the file. I have to reload it, setting the amount of the file to be loaded. Seriously? This is a professional development platform? It's like Clippy is in charge.
me: Open the file.
mac: I'm guessing you really only want to see the last part of the file.
me: No, really, I want to see the whole damn thing!
If the OS just worked, then when I open Finder in list view the columns would resize so that I could see the entire file name, or at least the entire date. It's especially annoying that the date format is so long that it's always written as Mon...08 format. Can I change it to 11/17/08 format so that it's easier to read with having to resize the column? No, that feature is only available in windows. Only choice in Mac is "Monday, November 17, 2008"
I realize that this are nits that I'm picking, but at least in windows I can customize a hundred different things in the UI. In MacOS? I get to choose the background image. The end result is that every action I take requires a handful of follow-on actions that only serve to slow me down and break my train of thought. That is definitely not a desirable characteristic of a professional development platform. And it is something that just doesn't work.
I cant really understand why anyone in open source would like to be locked in and giving the key to Apple. If Appe had won the battle against Microsoft im pretty sure we would have some variant of MacOS9 by now, being as or more locked in than we are to Microsoft. If there is a company more anal retentive than Apple when it comes to total control over everything than Apple id like to see it.
I really hope they wont take over from Microsoft anyday soon. Id rather has my hopes Linux will take enough marketshare to enable better players on the OS market through proxy of the wast catalogue of open source apps. Lord knows our modern operating systems are stoneage and an abdomination. MacOSX is just an extremely polished old turd. Go beneeth the surface and the smell reeks.
HTTP/1.1 400
my livelihood consists of writing quicktime-based software for os x. qtkit's not even remotely near being a "finished" API, and the documentation isn't up to date largely because significant portions of QTKit are being re-written completely from scratch so it runs well on 10.6 (whereas right now most QTKit calls wind up using the old-school "Quicktime" framework).
beyond that, i've noticed that methods/etc. not covered in the documentation have been omitted because they're buggy or cause problems in some (frequently exceptional) circumstances. in other words, the act of looking up an obscure method in a header file sort of reminds you that what you're going to come up with may not work as you expect in every possible situation. on the other hand, stuff covered in the class browser or documentation is virtually guaranteed to work in pretty much any situation you can imagine.
i'm not saying that the documentation's even remotely perfect, but it's not the abysmal pit of fail you make it out to be- and many of my changes and corrections have been implemented very quickly.
Delivering a product that guts your profit is dumb.
Well-- probably not what you're looking for, but the iMac happily drives dual displays. There's a mini-DVI-I port on the back of the machine. I have a new-ish iMac and I've been very happy with it (with the exception that the one I originally took out of the box was DOA-- but Apple was very quick about getting me another). Not my favorite machine ever (I could use a few more USB ports), but it's a real workhorse. Runs multiple VMs and my development environment.
One of the few things Solaris (Sun) has developed that I think is deserving of widespread use, is dtrace. Luckily, I don't have to try to use OpenSolaris when I could get MacOSX experience alongside dtrace.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Now the rest of the world gets to peak behind the iron curtain and the critics can compare apples to apples in the Window vs Mac saga.
... at least to Macs with german keyboards: no curly braces, no square brackets, no pipe char (not visible on the keyboard and oddly placed keyboard combination to type them).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
It's not the swapping that gets me.
YOU CAN'T SKIN XCODE !!!!!
Who uses development tools you cant skin?
Sad, so so sad...
Apple decides who will make their crap batteries, like every other corporation they choose the lowest bid and then sell for the highest amount they feel they can sell them for.
In the end it's Apple's responsibility to make sure their batteries are functional, don't try to pan off Apple as some victim, the only victims here are the people that bought Apple products.
The question is still "why would anyone pay 3 times the amount when they can get it for cheaper and frankly better".
I can't tell you how many times I have heard stories like " I bought a 5000 dollar mac pro so I could start a music studio and now it isn't working" and I tell them "you could've bought 4 PC's that do the exact same thing for that price and if you had you would still be working right now thanks to redundancy".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
"The explosion of interest in smartphone development is helping the trend, with iPhone development lock-in to the Mac environment the chief motivating factor for Apple as a platform of choice for mobile development."
This is why Apple is retarded. They miss out on developers by restricting the platform/IDE and not supporting Java or Mono. Then they place absurd restrictions on iPhone applications. Anyone who is thinking of getting a mac just so they can develop on the iPhone should ask themselves this question.
WHY SHOULD I SWITCH PLATFORMS IF APPLE CAN LOCK DOWN MY iPHONE APP WITHOUT REASON!!!
Devs share alot in common with /. ers. We hate being closed in HATE IT. We like options. With a mac base you fuck yourself for cross-platform options.
Java. Qt. Ruby. PHP, Python. Perl. PHP.
Mono? Even that.
You fuck yourself for installed base.
Well, yes, anybody who doesn't develop for Win32 is fucked there. That's why virtualization and dual-booting exist.
You fuck yourself on freedom MANYMANY times over.
Freedom? What, to be massively ignorant?
You fuck yourself on dev tools, libraries and compilers of all sorts.
The standard C compiler is GCC. You may have heard of it.
Intel's C compiler is also available. For Java, there's javac. What else do you need? GNU Pascal? Check. Absoft's Fortran? Go nuts.
Libraries? Name your language, they're all there...well, except for the Win32-specific ones, but we've covered that.
Tools? Eclipse, JDeveloper, JBuilder, NetBeans, Vim, emacs, a variety of OS X-only editors (BBEdit, Smultron, TextMate, SubEthaEdit) and Apple's own XCode. Even ColdFusion, if you lean that way.
And you support an OS that maintains an iron grip over the computer and what goes on it.
Please.
Why don't i just shoot myself in the foot some more?
That's the most intelligent thing you've said so far....
maybe so, but the alternative to them providing me with a mini-tower to buy, is me building my own and using the chameleon bootloader to run osx on whitebox hardware. I've been running my desktop this way since the release of leopard and have not had an issue yet. my laptop is a macbook, but there's no way in hell I'm buying a mac pro (i dont need workstation class hardware), and i refuse to get an iMac until they allow you to use it as just a monitor, so that once it's past its useful life I can still get value out of the screen they're forcing me to buy.
a 2700 PC laptop likey has 2 high end video cards in SLI not a low - mid range 9500 card.
They're not losing a lot of business because of it. Apple is a publicly traded, for-profit company out to make money for themselves and their shareholders. I would assume then that if they were losing lots of business because they lacked a mini tower then they'd have a mini tower in their lineup. The fact they don't suggests that they're not losing a lot of business because of it.
Not one developer I interact with on a daily basis uses a Mac or has expressed an interest in using one for his or her "real work". If they own one, it's for lesiure purposes; casual browsing and iTunes. For development of apps that we use at work, it's Win32 or Linux. While the vast majority of development is in Win32, most long for linux adoption for dev work, not MacOS.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
There are very few companies that can handle the volume and customization that Apple (or other laptop makers) requires. There are some startups in China but as recent news has told, the quality of the parts is sometimes lacking. Really there are not many players out there.
Functional, yes but the problem with the batteries the issues were manufacturing defects. Manufacturing defects are not something that Apple could have predicted. In the end, Apple did recall the batteries and replaced them.
This is a bit of a generalization. Apples are pricier because they focus on the high end market. If you compare actual specifications, their prices are competitive but they're not going to be low-priced. The base Mac starts at $2700. If you were to price out just the processors on Newegg (2.83 GHz Quadcore Xeon X 2), that comes to $1400 just for the processors. So in your example, you could say to some one who just bought a Ferrari, "you could have bought 4 Fords for that price and be driving around". It's not the same.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I have the options of Oracle's Jdeveloper, Netbeans and Eclipse. (free) I run WebLogic, JBoss or Glassfish. (free) I've got apache, tomcat, php, perl and ruby or python should I wish. (free) I can do web apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch or native apps for them. (free) I have mySQL (free) I have many unix shells. I can have from 2 ($1100 iMac) to 8 ($2400 refurb) cores. All 64 bit. I can run Windows ($250), Linux (free) using parallels or vmware (~$50). With that I can run Oracle's 10g db or IBM's DB2 express (free). Anything java I develop can be pushed to any Windows or Linux or Unix environment, yes with tweaking. And I have a really, really nice gui that runs MSFT office, or OpenOffice, has iTunes and plays some games. For the purists, I can do vi, emacs, gcc and make. I can get this in a laptop. So, yea, I'm happy.
I think you've failed to recognise that this is Slashdot, and we don't tolerate uninformed posts implying your stupidity and unwillingness to search google or learn. Especially when you're trolling.
Care to post the machine brand and model which matches a $2700 MBP, that we can buy for $799 ?
Didn't think so.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Not really a fare critisim. Maybe they don't realise that iphone is running OS X. Mac is the natural development platform, becuase the iphone emulator is practically running native code. As well as that I wouldn't expect Windows IDEs to be able to debug Objective C half as good as XCode.
...and they're losing a lot of business because of it....
I seriously doubt that statement. Apple's main business is not catering to developers, but to ordinary users. Their iMac and Macpro line is designed for the majority of all such users. Anyone who is a professional programmer or artist making a living with a computer will buy the best tool for their profession that money can buy. As in most professions, a cheap tool that does not work well is the most expensive one in the long run. An 8 core Mac-Pro with 8 or more GB of RAM is definitely expensive, but will pay for itself for use by anyone making a living with it. In addition to its native OSX with its normal applications, it can run Windows VISTA, XP and Linux in their 32 or 64 bit versions all at the same time in separate virtual machines.
A hammer and a bucket of nails is a lot cheaper than a professional nailing gun together with its high-performance air compressor. The expense of such would not be worth it to a weekend handyman, but definitely to a professional house builder.
All theory is gray
"Mac's are sluggish. There are plenty of theories as to why"
I honestly don't know, so I guess I'm looking for an informed opinion on this... but could the kernel be the problem? Part of the kernel is Mach-based, no? Supposedly Steve Jobs insisted on Mach way back in the NeXT-day as it was cutting edge, and Steve is all about cutting edge. But Mach has always had a horrible reputation for performance... it's promise has never quite lived up to the reality. And yet, IIRC, Darwin still has Mach code at it's core, with some userland stuff taken from BSD and grafted on. And again, IIRC, the Mach stuff is still the 2.0 or 3.0 stuff, and not the updated 4.0 version that the University of Utah developed.
If all this is true, it begs the question, why does Apple still use the Mach code then? I'm certainly not ripping on OS X... I'm typing this on my eMac. Now, I think it runs slow sometimes, but I always assumed that was because of old G4 cpu (which despite Apple's advertising to the contrary, really was outclassed by even the Pentiums of the day). Are you telling me that your Macs, which I assume are Intel-based, are still sluggish?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
After reading the first part of TFA I realized he's developing in a Microsoft environment running on a virtual machine on the Mac. So yes he's developing "on" the Mac, but not necessarily for the Mac. His Mac is basically being used as a web browser for testing.
You are in luck, it is simple:
Start terminal and type
sudo vi /etc/rc.shutdown.local
and append the following line /usr/sbin/nvram SystemAudioVolume=%80
and you will never hear the startup sound again.
substitute your favourite editor for vi above. Also, rc.shutdown.local might not exist. Create it in that case.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Apple tends to write good documentation overall. I do a lot of development targeting GNUstep, and I tend to use the Apple documentation rather than the GNUstep docs. The problem with QTKit isn't that the documentation is bad, it's that the framework is truly horrible.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There's really nothing wrong with programming on a current iMac.
Anodized aluminum, so people won't laugh at you.... No more embarrassing colors copied straight off a queer-pride flag.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Apple sales are now over 60% laptops. If you want a desktop of any kind, you are a minority customer in the general computer market and a member of an even smaller minority in the Apple market. If you want an expandable desktop, you are a minority in a minority. If you want a cheap, expandable, desktop then you are a minority in a minority and don't have much money. Who in their right mind would design a product to cater to you?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This author must be joking, Windows grinds away continuously at my hard drive whether I have any applications open or not, even with 2gb of ram. I develop solely on Linux and OSX... they don't touch the hard drive unless it needs to and page memory very efficiently. Plus, Linux and OSX actually leave some of my system resources free to actually run programs with! Imagine that! Right now on OSX I have 3 instances of eclipse running, two tomcat servers and a virtual machine with Vista running in it. Try THAT on a windows box!
He could use ZFS, if he doesn't like the AFS.
There's really nothing wrong with programming on a current iMac. Anodized aluminum, so people won't laugh at you.... No more embarrassing colors copied straight off a queer-pride flag
Yes indeedy. As a Serious Applications Developer, the first and only criterion I have for selecting a development box is the color of its case, and in particular whether or not people will laugh at it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Yes, but if they aren't going to make a profit on that business why bother?
A low margin mini-tower would eat into the higher revenue products but probably wouldn't satisfy those who want a commodity box just for games.
Hackintosh.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Mod parent up. It is true.
and none of us seem to have received this shitty memo, or even heard of it.
...
this article is absurd out of the scales. just check how belong sentences compare to each other :
"scientists now agree that evolution does not exist", as voiced by various creationist propaganda sources
and
"Programmers are finding themselves increasingly drawn to the Mac as a development platform", as voiced by the shitty article we are being made read. in its summary at least
Read radical news here
I've never seen the need to install a Windows license on my MacBookPro - for not very much more money, I can just have a cheap Vista box to run my app testing on while I continue developing on the Mac.
I was skeptical of Macs for ages. The switch to OS X intruiged me. The switch to Intel won me over (heck, if it doesn't work, it'll make a good Linux or windows box). But I never boot it into Windows or Linux, it just works so well.
I do most of my development these days in Python (or Perl or Ruby or Java). It all works as expected on OS X.
And Virtualization? Man, does it support virtualization.
Right now, I am running simultaneously (among other things):
- A virtual copy of CentOS, which is serving up SunRay sessions to two SunRay terminals (a test for some thin client pitch I'll be doing) .NET app I've been contracted to port to a Web application
- A virtual of Windows XP, so I can do some verification/validation on a windows
- Several development apps (Komodo, iTerm's)
- Messenger, Word, Excel, Acrobat
- Azureus (to ummm, errr., download some Linux distributions)
- A bootcamp virtual session with Parallels
And I'm doing this with my MacBook dual display (hooked to a 24" 1680x1050 screen); actually triple-screened, since I'm running a SunRay session next to it (from that virtual CentOS session), linking my mouse/keyboard with Synergy.
It all just works too well... You'll want lots of memory, but that's cheap. I just bumped up to 4g for $100 last week.
I've become a Mac Fanboi, yes. But when I pitch it to someone, it's not out of ego. I don't think it's out of pure fanboi-ism. I honestly want people to know that they can be more productive, they can achieve more with their time, than fighting with the limitations of windows. It sometimes come across as Mac elitism, and I try to fight that.
I did a Mac vs. PC talk last year, well after having been won over. Prior to the talk, the PC guys were fussing with the projector, making sure it would work with their laptops. They politely asked if I would like to try out my Mac before the presentation. I honestly (without trying to be smug) told them it wouldn't be necessary. I've never once experienced a situation where plugging in a projector external monitor hasn't immediately worked, and as expected. It just wasn't necessary to test. And that's a bit symbolic of how things (generally) work on OS X.
There are some drawbacks. Some stuff just won't compile/work under OS X. X window support feels (and is) tacked on. Python/Tkinter is a bit painful natively. Leopard had some growing pains, and some apps (mostly old games) won't work. I find the odd bit of grief like that here and there; but people are working on those things. And if something really sucks, I just fire up a virtual box with Linux, and do my thing from there. (It's quite rare I have to do that, but I have, on occasion.)
At the end of the day, I don't *care* what people use from an idological standpoint. Hell, Apple's been pulling some MS-like anticompetitive boners lately (shutting down iPhone apps, among others). But the fact is, I work *better* in this environment, and I kind of like to share with my fellow men (and women) developers, how much better they too could be working. If they think I'm just a fanboi freak, fine; their loss, really.
But I think most serious developers would benefit from checking it out.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Thank you for this. But still, I think this one is a "lose" for the Mac...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Wait until summer... they'll have a fresh new batch of interns to do some documentation bitch-work =)
This article is BS. There are more developers buyig Macbook Pro's an the like, that is factually true. But most in my experience are running Windows natively to do their development, and rarely boot into the MacOS unless testing an app in Safari.
They're buying Mac's because you can boot almost any OS on it, allowing a developer to test browsers for example in other OS's. But developers are far and away running Windows natively, then running MacOS or running windows in parallels.
I'm also a developer and I work with numerous developers. We all got the memo. The macs are taking over since it became an option at work.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Since when do developers care about virtual memory performance?
If you care about performance, get enough memory.
(And while I would have been joking if I'd posted this in 1996, today, my laptop's got 4GB of memory, and I don't really even consider less than that in a development system.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Try maximizing a window on a mac. Minimize a window, then alt-tab back to that app. You get the app, with no window! You then get the 'pleasure' of moving the mouse to the menu bar, selecting the window menu, and hopefully finding the window you wanted.
If you've minimized a window, you can bring it back from the task-switcher. This only works for single-windowed apps (or apps with only a single window open).
When you've cmd+tabbed, keep the cmd button down, then press the option button, then release the cmd button while holding the option button. This will restore your window.
I agree that this is maximally stupid finger-gymnastics to have to do, but I was very happy to have it shown to me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First, you're just limited to 32-bit jdk 1.6. You just can't used 64-bit jdk 1.6.
Second, someone has released a different jdk 1.6 for the mac, which is now part of openjdk:
http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/
Hackintosh.
Abso-fuckin-lutely! For less than the cost of my quad core Mac Pro at work I built one dual core and two quad core Hackintoshes for home. If there was a decent mid-range headless Mac I'd have gladly paid the Apple premium but since they don't want to sell me one I'll build my own.
Cost nothing? Documentation is _hard_, and coder are usually chosen because they like to solve problems by coding, not documenting, so you have to hire some special people and they have to spend lots of time on this. Documentation is expensive and slows down development a lot.
Unfortunately documentation is also necessary if you want anybody to use your software. I have depressingly often found it necessary to abandoned the idea of using some API simply because I found myself spending way to much time trying to accomplish even simple tasks due to the complete inadequacy of the documentation. If figuring out how to do simple stuff requires a disproportionately large effort it often isn't worth the risk of continuing to use that API because the effort you have to put into figuring things out once you move into the API's more complex features will slow your project down unacceptably. When you are being pressed for results by your PHB and have to meet a deadline it is often preferable to use a less elegant API/Framework that may have been your second choice simply because is better documented. I don't really care if that documentation is in the form of good well written traditional API/Developer/Administrator/User guides or, alternatively, in the form of a large number of forum-posts, articles or blogs by frustrated users who painfully found out how to do things not mentioned in the scanty documentation by reverse-engineering, debugging and even painfully weeding through the source code. I do very much prefer the former but browsing through endless pages of google hits also gets me there in the end.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I think the newer iMacs have a bit of a image problem with some techies. Many of them don't take iMacs seriously because they're an all-in-one, and anyone who has assembled their own tower from parts before couldn't possibly use such a computer. I'm very happy with my 24" iMac. It would have been about the same specs as I was looking for in a tower (Mac Pro is too much, Mac mini not powerful enough), and I got a really nice new screen. I guess if you already had a better screen than the iMac's and only wanted to run one display, you might have a good reason to not want an all-in-one of this spec. I do look forward to getting a Mac Pro at some stage, but my iMac is hardly a what I'd call a chore to use. Yeah, it's not easy to upgrade, but the last time I wanted to upgrade my old PC, the motherboard was so old that it required pretty-much all new stuff, anyway. I won't be upgrading my iMac, I'll be replacing it. The resell value on iMacs is pretty good compared to PCs.
I disagree. It's not just developers and Slashdotters, it's also switchers and the enterprise. And yes, Apple could make money with it. It would be a Mac Mini with a desktop hard drive, one good CPU, an upgradeable graphics card, maybe one other slot, plus the standard ports and DVD drive. Make it beautiful and call it a new standard and "green" and guarantee available motherboard upgrades for five years. Sell it for no more than $999, or even $899 or less. (Yes, there would still be an "Apple premium," but it's cheap as Apple expandable desktops go.) Pitch it to businesses afraid of or disgusted by Vista and I think they'd sell boatloads. Lots of people want more than a Mini or an iMac, think a Pro is overkill, and already have a monitor.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Tcl? Really? Come on. Objective C has done way more damage than Tcl. Of course, that's probably because all 3 of Tcl's users retired in 1998.
I, unfortunately, am not entitled to be an elitist, opinionated bore because... I never wrote for Tcl...
"OS X supports many of the Windows Protocols (a lot better then linux in some ways) "
Oh ya? As an "OS Slut" I like to try out everything that comes along. Yep, even Bob, NeXT and BeOS.
NOTHING touches linux for windows interoperability, and nothing has been close since the days of OS-2 Warp. Linux has other weaknesses, but credit the guys for all the work they have done here.
"Losing a lot of business" is acceptable if you grow 2-3 times faster than the rest of the market quarter after quarter. I think Apple will reevaluate strategies some once their current strategies stop being so wildly successful. This is the reason they introduced new MacBooks at a higher price in a sliding economyâ"they know they can get it. Until their growth slows, they're not going to do much differently, and they'll stay focused on high margin products.
Oh god. Another idiot who thinks that OS X has a horrible interface simply because it's different to the one they're used to.
As for your fans, it sounds like you have a faulty computer.
I can right click with the mouse that came with my iMac, no problems. And it's not as if mice are expensive if you can't stand the one that ships with it. I actually prefer it over any other mouse I've tried.
Why would you want to open two copies of the same application?
I suspect that if you think that both Windows and Ubutu have better usability that OS X, you are probably a programmer with some very strange and wrong ideas about GUIs.
It's easy to make a silly analogy, but that doesn't mean it proves a point.
and none of us seem to have received this shitty memo, or even heard of it.
You must not ever attend technical conferences or you'd realize the truth of it just looking around.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is why Apple is retarded. They miss out on developers by restricting the platform/IDE and not supporting Java or Mono.
They do support Java, and they have for some time. XCode has a lot of built in support for Java... the versions may lag but serious Java developers are generally a rev behind anyway for production code.
As for Mono, why should they support something with the Lawsuit Of Damocles hanging over it? Even as a developer I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole, and I just shake me head looking at people pouring resources into that.
I'm also not quite sue what you mean by "absurd" restrictions on iPhone development. Some of them are annoying but there are reasons. The only truly absurd one (blanket NDA) was lifted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2.5 years on a mac now, at first there was a bit of a learning curve, but since I develop web services and web applications that run on Unix servers (Solaris and Linux), well... it just makes complete sense to have a Unix OS as my dev machine.
I think a lot of devs are moving to this sort of platform (IE web services/web apps over traditional desktop client apps) and that could explain a lot of the shift, OS X is by far the nicest Unix desktop there is.
Of course, the fact that I don't even remember how to repair the TCP/IP stack in windows is nice too :) Or edit the registry... well lets just say, I do basically zero stupid day to day IT admin on my dev machines now, whereas I used to reload windows at least every 3-4 months to get a stable machine again after registry tweaks, multiple installs of various software stepping on each other, etc... My mac, (surprisingly even to me) seems immune to the crazy amount of software I install/uninstall/install again... only 1 reload over 2.5 years for each machine, and that was for the 10.4-10.5 upgrade
wanting developers to go to Mac doesn't make it also true... There aren't "a lot of developers" who are flocking to the Mac.. I personally don't know anyone who is 'flocking over' to the mac, and I know a lot of developers.. Where they are 'flocking' to is linux, not Mac.. but then again, MacFanBoys/Girls really want developers to go to their favorite OS... Remember, the more people are flocking over to the Mac, the more virusses and malware will surface for the Mac, and don't think the Mac is more secure as Windows is, it really isn't..
You are so right. I have cried my eyes out to Adobe, but they have retards working in their development groups that can't do simple things like write an app that installs and runs correctly on their so called favorite platform for creatives. It means that people that want to use photo editing software, and expect to be able to un-tar unix software sources must use separate drives. Formatting the primary system drive case sensitive is adobe suicide. I recommend doing the case sensitive work on an external drive or partition.
You got that great Java support and vi. What more could you want?
Some of us create technology solutions by using standards to combine technologies together and create solutions. Having the OS comply with some standards helps a lot in this area. I must be one of those people, and I don 't work for the certifying company.
They also really need to cut out the secrecy bullshit and let people who don't fork over tons of cash know what direction the API is going.
Yeah, that's a common and fully justified complaint a lot of people have about Apple.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
They're not gaining any either. Macs have also been something I'd like to try but I want a good, solid machine at a fair price. This means buying a PC.
Silly rabbit
A powerstation from Terrasoft is better than this @1900$ with Linux and SAS drive is a killer developer product.
And a really good, solid PC is cheaper and just as good as a Mac but without the silly price tag. When it comes to power use a Mac is good but Apple don't have anything worth me paying the extra since I can get the same for less elsewhere.
Macs are bought for preference, not because they're more suited to development. Sure, they have some really good points but very few that justify the cost.
Silly rabbit
Do their workstations also have no DEL-key? This drove me insane on my MacBook. Moreover the whole apple-layout doesn't sit well with me. I could probably get over their wierd META-Keys (who cares whether it's called "ALT" or "APPLE" after all..) but having all the frequently used brackets and meta-characters in a different location from the rest of the world is a non-starter. Apple+Q anyone?
Yeah shiney. Expos`e and all. Really nice when you're photoshopping some pictures, working with a few Excel sheets or shagging away in PhotoBooth. Absolutely useless when you're trying to deal with 10+ terminal windows (yes, I have heard of tabs). The distinction between "app"-tabbing and "window"-tabbing is hilarious at best (what were they smoking) and the primitive, not changeable focus-model (Click-To-Raise) is a showstopper, no less.
Even linux has a half-decent filemanager these days (konqueror), there is no excuse for putting up with this mess in a commercial OS.
So, in summary, yes, OSX may be nice when you spend your day inside of eclipse, generally don't have more than 3 windows showing at a time and type slow enough so that the wierd keyboard-layout and focus-issues are not driving you insane. For someone coming from unix-land who basically spends his life inside of terminal windows OSX is not a serious option.
And yes I *have* tried. Anyone wanna buy a MacBook?
Out of the kettle, in to the fire...
Switch to an open, free (libre) platform, people!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." -Pravin Lal
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I couldn't reproduce this. Which app?
I just reproduced it with Firefox and Finder. OS version 10.5.5.
Apple already has all the pieces in place for a very nice mini-tower machine about the size of the smaller HP Pavilion PC's such as the a64xxf and a65xxf series models. A lot of users would love to see Apple build a smaller-case tower unit because frankly, the Mac Pro tower is too big of a machine to be placed on a desktop and the iMac's difficulty in upgrading internal components is also a turnoff, too.
My problem with OS X is that it'll do 50% of what I might use a Windows box for, and 75% of what I might use a Linux box for. So it can do the majority of what I need from both, but can't completely replace either. (also, Apple doesn't make a non-insanely-spec'ed/priced mid-tower desktop, but that's another discussion) This is why my home desktop is a Linux box and a Windows box on a KVM, and no Mac to be seen.
However, for the past 5 years or so all the laptops I've owned have been Macs. And for a laptop, they do work really well. In fact, they do the 3 killer laptop-specific features better than any other OS I've seen:
1) On-the-fly display reconfiguration
- Windows: A crapshoot depending on your video drivers, but usually works. (except when someone is giving a presentation, and seems to not know how to reconfigure their laptop)
- Linux: A total embarrassment, don't get me started. (XrandR is just a small piece of what is necessary)
- OS X: JFW, pretty much all the time
2) Dependable WiFi configuration
- Windows: Usually works, though sometimes 3rd party drivers make it difficult, and sometimes requires manual poking
- Linux: Thanks to NetworkManager, works really well now. Well, except sometimes, when they didn't think of your auth mechanism, then you're SOL.
- OS X: JFW, pretty much all the time
3) Suspend/resume
- Windows: Pray and hope, but probably works (XP); Works just fine, but a tag sluggish (Vista SP1)
- Linux: Pray and hope, may not work at all, but they say the latest distros now work fine
- OS X: JFW, pretty much all the time, resume is near-instant
Now for reasons I won't get into here, I recently had to buy a new personal laptop. (I'd been just using my latest work laptop, which is a MacBook Pro.) This time, despite my fondness for Apple laptops, I went for an HP (the business-grade ones, not the consumer-grade garbage). Why did I do that? Because Apple laptops suck when running Windows natively (at least the trackpad drivers and power management), and I needed to do things in Windows more often than I'd like (and didn't want to use a VM). Also, PC laptops make it easier to get extended-life batteries. Also, PC laptops make it possible to get a high-res screen that is smaller than 17". Also, there are still geek-targeted things that support both Windows and Linux, but don't seem to give a flying $@$!@ about the Mac.
Who in their right mind would design a product to cater to you?
Someone other than Apple.
When it comes to evaluating how good Macs are, I find it odd to resort to special pleading of "Oh, but they want to make a large amount of profit". Yes, we know, thank you for confirming that Macs are expensive.
Back in the days when the Amiga 4000 was rather expensive, you never heard people defending it with "Oh, but Commodore have to make a nice profit off of people, so actually that's okay, and it doesn't matter than high end PCs were much cheaper".
We know that Apple don't cater to all computer users, and are only interested in selling where they can make a profit in a niche market. We know that the PC platform allows you to buy whatever product you want, at a low price. The question is, why is Apple's way of doing things good from a potential buyer's point of view?
Here at the University of Waterloo--a major CS academic hub--a lot of professors are starting to use macs for everything from lectures to research. We keep getting labs full of macs, too. A walk through the CS building shows you how popular they've become, so while *nix might be the choice of the most hardcore (and/or the purists), you can't deny that these apple machines are literally everywhere these days. My $0.02
I think you've failed to recognise that this is Slashdot, and we don't tolerate uninformed posts implying your stupidity and unwillingness to search google or learn. Especially when you're trolling.
You obviously don't read Ask Slashdot.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
You're falling into a common trap with Vista sales. "Not selling" in terms of Microsoft sales figures doesn't actually mean that it's literally not selling, it means it's not selling as it could have been with Microsoft's installbase.
Microsoft actually shifted 100million copies of Vista in it's first year of release (not sure how many more in the 10months since then). To put that into context, Apple has shifted only around 10million macs in the last year and only slightly less in the year previous, the story is similar for the previous few years before that.
Vista isn't doing so bad that it's causing a massive migration to the Mac in the slightest, in fact, judging by the fact there's been only a minor increase in Mac sales over the last few years despite platforms like the iPhone going from none to over 10million units in the last year providing a whole new market for mobile developers suggests that there isn't even really much of a switch to Mac development at all.
Regarding your comments on developers, that's a complete redefinition of the term as it's commonly used. Developers and programmers are nearly always cited as one and the same in computing. Artists and web designers aren't developers, they're, well, artists and web designers. If you go for a developer job as an artist people are going to look at you rather funny. It's like an IT manager saying they're a developer because they develop reports, an HR person calling themselves a developer because they help develop the underlying staff base by performing recruitment and payroll tasks. Architects are about the only profession you list that falls in the realm of developer.
http://developers.sun.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx
http://developer.intel.com/design/index.htm
oh, and even:
http://developer.apple.com/
All are focussed towards programming and software architecture.
4) all the unix parts of the system REQUIRE linefeeds not carriage returns, so he got it completely backwards. Moreover, since OS9 a majority of mac apps are agnostic about carriage return versus linefeed (or both), so as to be Microsoft compatible.
3) Whether the file system is case-sensitive or not is a setting the user can choose. So if developers care then it does not matter.
2) moreover if you are developing for linux in a VM as he says then it will be case preserving on the linux partition or VDI anyhow so this issue never even arises.
1) Apple's File system is called HFS+ , not AFS (which stands for Carnegie Mellon's Andrew File system). The remote access protocol is called AFP but it's hardly a "default" since one can substitute SAMBA or NFS just as easily.
I'm surprised he did not raise the 1-button mouse canard. Or complain about the lack of a floppy disk. I susprised he did not mention
"they're losing a lot of business because of it"
On Slashdot, I'd expect better, but I'm sure you're one of the "copyright infringement == theft" people.
Apple aren't losing money or business by not providing a mini tower; they're just not making more money.
Well, actually I learned most of what I know about GUIs from having a Mac Plus for five years and reading the Apple user interface guidelines. The original Mac was so good it was practically orgasmic (although obviously the non-modern internals weren't much fun). I don't know what they've been smoking since...
As for the mouse, just give us 1984 mice, which worked great, with two buttons. How hard is that?
Why multiple invocations of the same program? Fault isolation, debugging, ability to recover memory, and most importantly so that I can rotate through all of the PDFs I'm looking at with Alt-TAB. Grrr...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Apple decides who will make their crap batteries, like every other corporation they choose the lowest bid and then sell for the highest amount they feel they can sell them for.
I thought the justification for paying an arm and a leg for their hardware was because the quality was better. I guess I was wrong.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
...Macs are bought for preference, not because they're more suited to development...
That depends on what is to be developed for. If you want to develop for the iPhone or iTouch, or of course the increasingly popular Macintosh, you would have to buy a Mac anyway, in addition to your solid, cheaper PC. So now, you would have two computers cluttering up your office and taking up space, rather than only one. Can you justify that cost?
All theory is gray
low price != low margin.
Sony ha
True. Damnit, should've googled that one.
F-ing slashdot, my paragraphs looked fine in preview!!
What's keeping me off osx is the lack of a tiling window manager, like xmonad.
I still remember compiling NetBSD on my Mac IIci running netbsd.
Now go ahead and get off my lawn.
Macs are already fairly priced if you compare them to a similarly configured PC. But if what you actually mean by "fair price" is a cheap computer, then you're probably out of luck.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Speaking of cost, buying a relatively cheap Windows PC and dual-booting is of course possible, although technically illegal... it would hurt Apple's bottom line.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Apple aren't losing money or business by not providing a mini tower; they're just not making more money.
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what "losing business" usually means...
Also, are you Australian?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Way to go mods...
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
end rant
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
The best reason to move to a Mac for your development platform is the DRM-laden goodness. The Mac is a perfect shiny media player, errm, I mean, development environment, yes, development environment plus DRM.
Super!
.... it would hurt Apple's bottom line...
Of course it would hurt Apple's bottom line. Is that so bad? After all, Apple is not a charity, but just another profit-making organization, a for-profit corporation.
Many people here on /. (and other technical forums) constantly lament the fact that Apple does not allow the installation of their OSX on generic hardware. Apple is the only company that builds complete computers, hardware and software well integrated. Everybody else, builds only half computers, the hardware and then they buy their software from Microsoft, or sometimes use the free Linux OS.
Why in the world should Apple sell their OS to their competitors? Unlike all the others, Apple supplies a complete computer SYSTEM, not some cobbled together box where the customer is often stuck with trying to figure out how to get it to work properly. That is why VISTA has been such a dismal failure. Computers these days are considered by most people an appliance, like a refrigerator or dishwasher. They expected it to do the job for which it was bought without having to futz around with it, before it does work as expected. Because of this no other computer can possibly ever work out of the box as well as an Apple Macintosh. Apple knows this, and that is why they are able to get away with what many here on Slashdot consider to be exorbitant prices and obscene profits.
All theory is gray
The problem is that Apple seems to design for the "dumbest common denominator" and end up over-simplifying things. This makes the UI frustratingly inefficient for power-users.
Many people here on /. (and other technical forums) constantly lament the fact that Apple does not allow the installation of their OSX on generic hardware. [...] Unlike all the others, Apple supplies a complete computer SYSTEM, not some cobbled together box where the customer is often stuck with trying to figure out how to get it to work properly.
If Microsoft released a "system" that included both a computer and an OS, chipped the system and limited the OS so it wouldn't install on anything else, I bet you wouldn't be so forgiving of their monopolistic behavour.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
...I bet you wouldn't be so forgiving of their monopolistic behavour....
On the contrary, I would applaud such a move. Maybe then finally the world might get some Windows Computers that actually worked right out of the box. After all, their X-Box is basically a computer with its own operating system. Car makers build their own engines and nobody complains about that being monopolistic. So why should it be illegal for all computer makers to write their own software, rather than buying it from some monopolistic seller?
If MS made a quality computer with a new OS called "Doors" rather than Windows that could run ALL existing software, such as Macs do, they would have a runaway best seller. I can run of course OSX programs, but also Windows programs and Linux programs all on my Macbook Pro. It is a UNIVERSAL computer than can run any software. There are no laws that say MS or anyone else could not also make such a complete computer system.
All theory is gray
And if I want to develop for the PS3 I have to buy one of those so why not skip the PC and Mac and get a PS3? Because that'd be silly? Yep! Seriously, just because a small percent of people want to develop for a certain device doesn't mean I should go buy one just in case I want to do so some time in the future. I'd rather get a nice cheap mac mini if I ever feel the need to write an iPhone app, or if my work requires it they can get me a mac.
However, I have no specific need for a Mac so why pay more for the sake of a shiny white box?
Silly rabbit
low price != low margin
I never said anything about margins. The OP said "If you want a cheap, expandable, desktop", and praised Apple for not producing such products, simply because it isn't in their interest.
Holy crap! Not being able to un-minimize an app with cmd-tab has always driven me crazy! Every other mac user I've ever asked has said it's not do-able. Thank you for posting this!
Also webdesign developers all around me started using macs!
"but you can still type "ls /library" in a command-line window and get the same results as typing "ls /Library""
no you can't I've just tried it