Slashdot Mirror
The Old Guard of Mac Indy Apps Has Thrived For More Than 25 Years (macworld.com)
Glenn Fleishman, writing for MacWorld: It seems like it was only yesterday that I first used BareBones Software's BBEdit, but in actuality, yesterday is so far away -- 25 years, in fact. With all the twists and turns across more than two decades of Apple as a company, Mac hardware, and the underlying operating system, you might think that BBEdit stands alone as a continuously-developed app shepherded largely or exclusively by the same independent developer -- an app without a giant company behind it. As it turns out, BBEdit is one of several apps that's been around the block more than a few times.
The longevity of indie apps is more extraordinary when you consider the changes Apple put the Mac through from the early 1990s to 2018. Apple switched from Motorola 680x0 processors to PowerPC to Intel chips, from 32-bit to 64-bit code, and among supported coding languages. It revved System 7 to 8 to 9, then to Unix across now 15 major releases (from 10.0 to 10.14). That's a lot for any individual programmer or small company to cope with. Bare Bones's head honcho, Rich Siegel, and the developers behind three other long-running Mac software programs shared with me their insight on development histories for over 25 years, what's changed the most during that time, and any hidden treasures users haven't yet found. You can hear more on BareBones Software's in this recent episode of The Talk Show, a podcast by DaringFireball's John Gruber.
The longevity of indie apps is more extraordinary when you consider the changes Apple put the Mac through from the early 1990s to 2018. Apple switched from Motorola 680x0 processors to PowerPC to Intel chips, from 32-bit to 64-bit code, and among supported coding languages. It revved System 7 to 8 to 9, then to Unix across now 15 major releases (from 10.0 to 10.14). That's a lot for any individual programmer or small company to cope with. Bare Bones's head honcho, Rich Siegel, and the developers behind three other long-running Mac software programs shared with me their insight on development histories for over 25 years, what's changed the most during that time, and any hidden treasures users haven't yet found. You can hear more on BareBones Software's in this recent episode of The Talk Show, a podcast by DaringFireball's John Gruber.
There's plenty of win32, VMS, Unix, z/OS, etc. software that's still actively developed 30 years later.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
We're not too far away from the 30th anniversary of NeXT.
Apple should make a commemorative system for all NeXT fans.
What's your wish list for the new NeXTCube?
Back in the old days, the most ardent Mac enthusiasts pooh-poohed unix. This was back when Apple was blowing many millions of dollars on their 'next generation Mac OS' which was a flop. Apple's developers really aren't good enough to produce a robust preemptive multitasking OS. They ended up just piggybacking on unix.
Speaking to third party Apple developers, they have always been a captive group. The tools back in the 90's were expensive and you had to pretty much be a club member to do much at all.
Did those platforms have three major CPU architecture changes, two completely different OS core and a 32-to-64-bit upgrade path in the last three decades?
I think what the parent A/C meant to say is that despite all the work required, some people want to make their software available for Mac.
I thought Indy was an archeologist. Anonymous Cowards, please, spelling counts.
BBEdit falls short of being able to do simple syntax highlighting without helper applications.
It's unable to deal with simple nesting. For example, it can't properly highlight the following, even on a single line...
{keyword [keyword {keyword content} thing] content}
...even creaky old mcedit, a component of midnight commander, can handle that easily with a simple syntax definition that produces this:
o square braces color 1
o left-square-brace-adjacent keywords color 2
o sqiggly braces color 3
o left-sqiggly-brace-adjacent keywords color 4
o content of squiggly braces color 5
o content of square braces color 6
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Windows has long supported ARM and Itanium. The whole point of the Win32 API/MFC/WinForms/Aero/other is so Windows apps can be built on all platforms.
Windows has long supported ARM and Itanium.
How much indie Windows software added ARM and Titanium support?
ALL Mac indie software has (by necessity) followed Apple through architecture and pretty dramatic OS changes, especially in terms of frameworks (Windows programming has evolved, but is Windows programming today really so different from older Win32 development)?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I remember, way back in the day, putting together a mac for a broke friend of mine. Another friend knew one of the owners of Bare Bones, made a phone call, and they donated a color monitor to the project. Class act all around. (And yeah, to this day I'm still a customer!)
I've been using GraphicConverter and DefaultFolder since Mac OS 7 on PowerPC (and I think even back to 68000.) DefaultFolder, in particular, had to be redesigned from the ground up a couple years ago not because of change of processor, but due to changes in how Mac OS X handles security features and system extensions.
Although it's not old enough to make "the old guard", I'm a huge fan of Aquamacs, a very well done EMACS port/reworking to be consistent with the Apple user interface. (Real EMACS beats BBEdit any day, IMHO.)
PopChar is a close second.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Does it do syntax highlighting well, by using an external program / library, thereby leveraging all of the work done by an for people who don't use BBEedit? That sounds like a winner to me. Why should each editor separately implement parsing of every version of every language, when we can have a better result with less effort by separating parsing programming languages from a text editor. Two different jobs.
I just had a look, the version of Corel PhotoPaint I'm running on this box (Win 8.1) has a copyright date of 1998. If I recall I bought it surplus in 2002 or so, it's been installed on a few Windows machines since then without needing to be rewritten or patched.
Have you any idea of the history behind the *nixes? Apparently not.
But if you want to take a look a a similar product: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(text_editor)
It has been in development for more than 25 years and is inspired/based on an even older editor (vi, from 1976). Ran on a lot of now dead OSes / hardware and it still alive on lots of operating systems.
> Did those platforms have three major CPU architecture changes, two completely different OS core and a 32-to-64-bit upgrade path in the last three decades?
Yes, in the case of Unix. In fact most of the old Unix programs supported three different CPU architectures *simultaneously*. Instead of version 1.0 supporting one architecture and version 4.0 supporting a different architecture, all versions supported all architectures. They did so partly by using some *simple* abstractions so that the applications mostly didn't care what the CPU architecture was. (Complex abstractions can make these things harder, simple abstractions make them easier).
Two different "OS core" - yep, completely changed out the entire kernel. Most Unix software runs fine on any of three or four different kernels. Originally Unix, then most switched over to Linus's Not Unix (Linux), and they run fine on MacOS, which is derived from an old Unix. Again simultaneously - the developers didn't have to switch. Simple abstractions like "everything is a file" mean the application doesn't care which kernel is providing fopen(). The application only cares that some kernel allows reading and writing of files. Since everything is a file, fopen(), read(), and write() let you do whatever you want in the system.
"32-to-64-bit upgrade path"? Linux supported x64 before x64 hardware existed. At the same time, the same version of the kernel supported 32 bit, and someone even rannitnon an 8 bit processor.
GraphicsConverter - basically a GUI version of ImageMagick - could open absolutely anything, and pretty damn fast at it
SoundApp - GraphicConverter for sound files. It was the only thing fast enough to play high quality MP3s on my old PowerMac 6100
Fetch - THE FTP client. Only thing I've used that's even close to being as simple and clean is FileZilla
PlayerPro - All in one MOD file player with cool as hell spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes, per-track VU meters...
Stuffit Expander / Compressor / ShrinkWrap - Open any archive or disk image file and do pretty much anything with it - the coolest thing is you could (trivially) script it to automatically expand something, drop the archive into one folder, then put the contents in another folder depending on the file type.
ZTerm - Dialup client with Zmodem - essential for BBSes
NIH Image - Freeware image editing software designed to do medical imaging analysis - but it had all kinds of crazy filters and color modification algorithms that let you do Photoshop-style color channel operations for free
Realmz - Massive tile-based role playing game with tons of character options, weapons and gear
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Back when they charged over a hundred bucks for the software, I did wonder who the heck pays that much for a text editor. But eventually they started offering a free “lite” version (originally the lite version was cheaper, but not free) - and I found that to be really handy. After several years of using BBEdit Lite and then TextWrangler (they rebranded the free one), I decided to buy BBEdit - not because I needed the additional features, but to support the company.
A lot of well-known Mac companies have bit the dust over the past decade (we hardly knew ye, FreeVerse)... but it’s nice that there are still a few stalwarts like BareBones and Omni left.
#DeleteChrome
Interesting little recent story with that one....
My workplace recently had a challenge. Our Finance dept. had been using a couple of Windows software applications made by EMC for the purpose of scanning in, indexing and providing view access to checks and invoices. Back when all of these were first set up, EMC allowed people to license them individually and use them as "building blocks" for your own document handling solutions. We hired a consulting firm to make them work in tandem with the Great Plains accounting package.
Since then, it seems that EMC has become more focused on selling them as a bundled document management solution. Problem is? As we've upgraded Windows past 7 and on to 10, it broke compatibility with these programs. On the server side, we can't even do all of the latest . NET upgrades or security patches without it causing problems. The cost to pay for the upgrades and support licenses to get current versions of the tools is way more than we can justify for what we do with them. So we decided to migrate to a new solution.
The first big stumbling block to migration was exporting all of our existing scanned images. Apparently, a really oddball version of TIFF was implemented in the EMC software and nothing else was able to open the files. We we able to contact GraphicsConverter's author and he took up the challenge of reverse engineering the file format and adding support to his software package. Thanks to that effort, we could finally set up a batch conversion using GraphicsConverter!
IMO, it really is the premiere application out there, regardless of OS platform, for viewing and working with just about ALL image formats out there. If his software can't work with it, he's willing to make it happen -- even this long after developing the product.
> The original Visicalc on Windows still works
The original VisiCalc was for Apple II, and it was discontinued before Windows 1 was even launched.
no, that is because they did not choose a absolute dumpster fire of a platform to stick to
the only reason these people are special is cause no one else wants to deal with apple's constant fuck you we changed everything shit
Tell it to the author of TFA, and TFS. They started this. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Have to admit, even though I moved to the Mac platform some time ago, I never really got what the truly long time Mac users saw in programs like BBEdit...
For me one draw of the Mac was how easy it was to run Emacs on it. Once you know Emacs well, it's pretty hard for any other editor to pull you away.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> Simple parsing, IMHO anyway, shouldn't require external code.
You're entitled to your opinions. A mathematically proven fact is that only Perl can parse Perl. If you want fully correct syntax highlighting for Perl, you have to implement the entire Perl language. In other words, only /usr/bin/perl can do it. Because of optional semi-colons, t-sql (Microsoft SQL) is just as difficult. You can think correct syntax highlighting "should be" easy, but the fact is you have to implement a complete programming language in order to do it correctly.
> It's almost certainly slower, it is definitely clumsier, and it is indirect.
You that, /usr.bin/python, for example, is really slow at parsing Python? You think you can write a faster Python parser this weekend? I'll give you $2,000 if you can pull that off.
> It requires a level of knowledge far beyond that of "a person who edits text", and frankly, it's simply unnecessary if some basic tools are available.
Plugins > Load > Perl is too hard for you?
Sometimes people will not move to something better until they have no other choice.
Yup, people should really shut up about "choice" and do what their betters tell them to.And if they're still reluctant, then choice needs to be forcefully taken away from them, so they get on with the program, dammit.
Glad to see you subscribe to the courageous attitude that brought us such triumphs as the Office ribbon, the notch, Windows 8, no headphone jacks and New Coke!
This is a good time to mention Jeff Vogel at Spiderweb Software and his old school role-playing games.
emacs, young padewan.
Just goes to show how much better Apple is than anything else. No other platform/company has a history of community and development that is as rich and long lasting.
The one big thing Apple did better than anyone else was deploy a Unix-based operatimng system that users and developers both like. It's the OS that Linux might have become had it not been for all that poisonous bickering and fragmentation.
'.app' is literally the file extension for applications on a mac.
...Hypercard. Wiki says the last release was in 1998. I've never been an Apple/Mac guy, but I have fond memories of using it in some sort of a summer computer camp in 1994.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
I said simple parsing, and I didn't say a single word about Perl. So your post... into the bit bucket.
Next time, try addressing the points that were actually made.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes.
And "apps" are directories ... they copied that idea from RISC OS ... with subdirectories for libraries, and other resources.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Happened a few years back. A major reason for preferring PCalc on the Mac to anything built-in is that it could open multiple windows and so have multiple calculators active at the same time. In this iOS unification craze, it lost that ability a few years back with a promise the ability was coming back - well...nope. No it hasn't.
With Spotlight there's also fewer reasons to use it casually since you can just type into the search bar. With more complex stuff it's just about as easy to enter in to Wolfram Alpha, though there are still advantages to a local application with its own tape.
So yep - user of PCalc since the 90s. I still own the license, but it's barely touched now. Stop trying to make everything the same as a phone.
The one big thing Apple did better than anyone else was deploy a Unix-based operatimng system that users and developers both like.
I don't like it.
It's the OS that Linux might have become had it not been for all that poisonous bickering and fragmentation.
Please, fuck no.
This attitude is ruinin the experience of Linux. Linux was never going to be a better Apple than Apple, just as it wasn't a better Windows 95 than Windows 95 or a better XP than XP.
That was despite lots of effort. And it sucked. Instead of doing UNIX well, people keep chasing the latest fads and make Linux a shitty knockoff of whtever the currently most fashionable GUI is.
This sort of attidude is why the fuckwits at GNOME want to kill off middle click paste. Even though Apple have a crap version that only works in the terminal. but because Apple only have a crap version, Linux should too!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This sort of attidude is why the fuckwits at GNOME want to kill off middle click paste. Even though Apple have a crap version that only works in the terminal. but because Apple only have a crap version, Linux should too!
Huh? Apple doesn't have middle-click paste, it has command-v paste everywhere. The main thing I miss about macOS on other platforms is having the same copy and paste shortcuts in the terminal as everywhere else. Other platforms (including crappy X11 DEs that originated on '90s PCs, but not proper UNIX DEs that originated on machines that had a meta key) decided to overload Control-C for paste and therefore made something incompatible with any environment that uses control key combinations for sending control codes.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
RiscOS had a public release that did it in 1987, NeXTSTEP (the direct ancestor of macOS) had a public release that did it in 1988. Given how integral directories-as-files (a.k.a. bundles) was the the whole NeXT design, it's hard to imagine that they copied it so quickly. Given how obvious the idea is, it's more likely that it was invented independently. HFS (Apple, 1985) had resource forks, which let you have a directory inside a file. Bundles are simply the realisation that you don't actually need two ways of representing directories in the filesystem, you can just do it at the UI layer. On macOS, HFS+ introduced a one-bit flag in the metadata for a directory to indicate that it is a bundle, so it can be displayed as such in the Finder without the Finder having to be aware of every single possible bundle type, I don't remember what ADFS / RiscOS did.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
developers who asks money for an editor supports it! how does he do it? it boggles the mind!
now excuse me, while i enjoy my debian system...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Huh? Apple doesn't have middle-click paste,
It does, like I said, in the terminal only. Seriously try it in terminal.app. It works. But it's a very poor shadow of what we have on X.
The main thing I miss about macOS on other platforms is having the same copy and paste shortcuts in the terminal as everywhere else. Other platforms (including crappy X11 DEs that originated on '90s PCs, but not proper UNIX DEs that originated on machines that had a meta key) decided to overload Control-C
Yep. Old unixy things from m*tif etc used Alt-C Alt-V, which worked just fine and dandy in the terminal. But at that stage windows was the thing to chase so they went by the wayside. That was probably the earliest victim of the trend of chasing the most fashionable desktop OS.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Also a shout-out to Stick Software! Mojave fractured Fracture and Satori, my all-time favorite screensavers. I contacted the publisher and he said he would eventually fix them. [This is software I licensed over 10 years ago, mind you].
Linux was never going to be a better Apple than Apple,
It was. It totally was. With Emerald, Compiz, avant-window-navigator, and GNOME 2, Linux was a better Apple than Apple. I had literally every bit of mac lovers' beloved UI functionality, but it was also completely configurable in a way that MacOS will never be. You can't actually build Emerald any more, nor AWN. Well, you kind of can, but neither one works correctly. The versions of libraries they depend upon won't build any more, and they won't build correctly against the new versions because those libraries have broken backwards compatibility. Linux UI has regressed horribly over the years. Sad, really.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
HFS (Apple, 1985) had resource forks, which let you have a directory inside a file.
No, it didn't. It let you have structured data inside a file. That's not a directory, which is a filesystem element. And further, Apple only did this because they didn't put enough RAM into their computer, and they had to load things in tiny bits. Not just data, but the actual code had to be broken up into tiny pieces. (Their filesystem also stunk on ice, Macs always had poor filesystem performance all the way up until OSX.) Apple built a graphical computer with no graphics acceleration, nor enough room in memory for graphics, and hilarity ensued.
Also, it's worth noting that this was an idea left over from the mainframe days, with special structured files and API calls written to manage the structure. But the flat file mentality of Unix was a massive strength. It meant not needing to use special calls or functions whose functionality might change later to access data. Apple failed to understand Unix, so they invented files with special structure that caused everyone else in the world to rip their hair out when dealing with them for years and years.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
RiscOS required an Application name to start with an "!" character, e.g. !Edit. Then it was treated as an "executable" and a double click would start the "runme.bas" file (not sure about the name), which acted as a kind of shell script and started the real exe (if it itself was not the executable). You could also drag and drop files on the Application.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.