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The Genius In Apple's Vertical Platform
Precision found a nice little piece of speculation on the real reason behind Apple's recent efforts to restrict app development to XCode. While the standard given reason is to kill competition from Flash and other stacks, this story speculates that the real reason has to do with the unusually large die size of the A4 processor inside the iPads. Worth a quick read.
It is a well written, well reasoned article. It even makes sense. It is also pure speculation. Basically it comes down to "die too big" == "epic win" This is tech, and we can do better than this.
Not the vertical integration, but the simple "Ok you're Applications are compatible now"
Apple has moved from 68k to PPC to OS X to Intel to ARM to (proposed) POWER) for both 32/64 bit and all it took in those last steps was flag in the compiler.
68k emulation in PPC was decent. Classic mode worked for most applications and Rosetta was as seamless as it gets. I understand that Microsoft has a ton of backwards compatibility they need to maintain, but if a company the fraction of your size can do it, why can't you?
Yes "FAT" Binaries are larger, but given how cheap HD space is, it's not too much of a concern of mine. (I gained more space deleting other languages). But to have a single, double clickable .app that runs on 4 platforms (PPC, Intel / 32, 64bit), naively.
Side note, and legitimate question, does Linux do fat binaries? Can I compile something that runs on my AMD64 and ARM machines and put it on a thumb drive?
No, the article doesn't make sense at all. Why assume the A4 is a dual-core PowerPC when it's built for an OS that restricts the use of multitasking? It's almost like suggesting using four wheel drive on a motorcycle. This writer is just a total and utter wanker, predicting 50% speed increases for reasons founded in pure fantasy. Bullshit story.
The article is interesting, but incorrect.
Converting from to objective-C is fine for the purposes he's talking about (allowing the compiler to build to 'native', where 'native' can change over time.) If you have a language that is 1:1 with C/ObjC and easily translated (there are many), then this argument is entirely moot.
(Further, its not just Flash we're talkin gabout.. BASIC, assembler, python, etc, are all impacted and outlawed (again.)) Heck, numerous games use ARM asm, which is now outlawed .. the ASM is to provide superior performance, as Xcode (gcc) is decent compiler, but no match for hand tooled assembly in 'just the right places'. (Don't argue this; compiles are great, but talk to emulation authors for ARM devices about dropping in a few lines of ASM :)
So no, its not really about native compilation speed. Its about blocking non-Apple tools, with the pretend reason that Apple makes the best tools.
Why does everyone think this has anything to do with technical issues? This is all about lock in, 100% pure business move.
Apple doesn't want cross compilers because that makes the iPhone just another smartphone because everyone and their dogs will be writing code for smartphones, not iPhones exclusively. Apple has to maintain the image of the iPhone to be unique, not just the 'PC' of smartphones. If cross compiling is allowed, and a person is fed up with the iPhone, nothing stops him/her/it to switch to a WM7, RIM or Android phone. Why? Because the software is probably available on those systems. Now, if some developers will stay iPhone exclusive because of the hassle of maintaining two codebases (One CS5 cross compilable and one Apple approved), people will have harder time to migrate to other platforms because their precious software only runs on iPhone OS. Why don't people switch to Linux en masse? MS Office + DirectX. Apple wants the exact same platform lock in for smarphones as the one Microsoft has achieved for PCs.
Führer Jobs is shit scared of Android, that's why the new draconian developer restrictions (and HTC patent suits), not because some [insert technical excuse here]. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point of view) Adobe is going to be collateral damage unless Flash on Android/ChromeOS takes off heavily. Jobs wants to stop the Android momentum at all cost, because if he doesn't, iPhone will be the 'Mac' and Android will be the 'PC'.
Disclosure: I have an iPhone 3GS.
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Yes, I hated the way I could only run one application at a time on my Pentium 3 desktop.
Seriously now, we've been multitasking for a very long time with /single core CPUs. It's a pretty poor excuse to say .we're taking out time to do it right'
I agree the article writer is a moron. I thought you might appreciate this though. I have a newer HP calculator. Since HP years ago laid-off all of the calculator division, no one was left when they made the HP50. An outside group put that one together. It has an ARM and uses an emulator to run much of the old Saturn software from the HP48. It seems to run just as long on a set of batteries as my 48S and 48G did, and it is incredibly faster running the old stuff.
Its essentially OS/X under the hood - ie unix. However apple have deliberately set it up so GUI apps are suspended when minimised (or whatever you want to call it). So its not a case of how well the OS does multitasking , its a case of how well apple have made it look like it can't.
the iPad has 10-12 hours of on in heavy use time. Everything else is an epic fail in comparison. I'd gladly give up features to get that kind of battery life from a windows tablet or a netbook.
Asus netbooks have 10+ hours of battery life doing the things that are "heavy use" on the iPad (which are very light use on the netbook's scale).
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
The problem here is that the guy's (and yours) assumptions are irrelevant, in that everything you wrote is not an explanation for why Apple banned code translators from other languages to Objective-C. Those things just aren't affected by architecture changes.
And the guy in TFA uses that ban as a starting point for his speculation...
If this is indeed the case, then iPhone OS 4.0 would bring incredible speed improvements to the iPad, since it would no longer run applications on an ARM processor emulator. Can you imagine if OS 4.0 improved the iPad’s speed by 50% on day 1? Apple would be heralded as a software God. But in order for these speed improvements to be realized, apps would need to be written in objective C—which is exactly what Apple is now telling developers to do.
The writer doesn't realize that Adobe/MonoTouch were making a cross compiler from ActionScript/C# to Objective-C. So any improvements made to XCode will be available to those Apps too and if regular Apps are speeded up by 50%, so would the CS5 and MonoTouch Apps.
Posters below have already explained what a bunch of crock the speculation that the processor is actually a Power CPU is. Anyway what can you expect from a blind fanboy who writes stuff like:
Apple's DNA in this area is untouchable, helping it to innovate at the confluence of software and hardware.
I find it fascinating that Apple has been so good at diverting attention to the Flash argument, that people don’t see the true genius behind Steve Job’s vision and moves. Apple is setting the stage to become one of the biggest winners in the storied history of vertically integrated companies.
Huh? Wtf?
Why is this crap posted on Slashdot anyway?
This space for rent.