"Companies participating in the Board of Directors are active participants of the format creation and key BDA activities... The board sets an overall strategy and approves key issues." (http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/association/membership/MembershipLevels.html)
From the Apple press release announcing their participation:
"The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting and further developing business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc" (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html)
It would seem Apple's participation in the BDA is limited to formats and advocacy. Not licensing terms.
"Apple famously refuses to put a Blu-ray drive in its Macs, as Jobs prefers to send people towards iTunes to download their entertainment"
The only explanation we've heard from Apple on the lack of Blu-ray is Jobs saying licensing it from Sony is a "bag of hurt" (http://www.google.com/search?q=jobs+blu-ray+bag+of+hurt). Yet another Sony technology killed by licensing.
I'm not saying he's wrong. He's absolutely right insofar as gamers buy PCs. That's likely what the developers of WAR (and LotR, and, until recently, EVE...) are thinking as well.
But even being right, Zekasu and EA Mythic are wrong because they are answering the wrong question. The market for MMORPGs like WoW and WAR is not gamers. A quick look at the subscription numbers of WoW vs. sales figures for any other game bears this out.
A non-gamer will not go out and buy new hardware to play a game. They will, instead, buy games that run on their existing hardware. Even if a non-gamer already owns a PC, it's likely a sub-$500 machine with no 3D acceleration that is probably not capable of running any of the current MMORPGs. But an increasingly large segment of non-gamers have Macs, all of which (except, perhaps, the lowest end laptop) have the guts to run, say, WoW.
The Mac users are the low-hanging fruit in this space. Blizzard understands this and is profiting from it. Everyone else is (and, it looks, will be) playing catchup.
If I may, I think everyone's surprise is the least of the things you're having trouble understanding.
It's not funny that these people develop for Windows. It's funny that the post was (mis)written to look as though features like high accuracy and reliability are only available on a platform best known for the absence of these traits.
Wait, so developers who have decades of experience in rasterized graphics are speaking out against a technology that would render said experience obsolete? How can this be?!
Given that what you're seeing is a KERNEL panic, I think it much more likely that you have broken/cheep/generic RAM in your machine. In my life as a Genius, 90% of all KPs we saw could be fixed by swapping RAM with known-good chips. As to why this started with Leopard? There's also a history of new big cats being more demanding of quality RAM than older versions. 10.2->10.3 and 10.3->10.4 both saw an increase in units people brought in suffering from KPs. The solution? See above.
They say they "nabbed a short interview with the Woz" -- as if they'd pulled of a coup of some sort. But I mean, honestly, who won't this guy talk to now?
"Apple Legend" or "Embarrassing Uncle You Hope Doesn't Stop By When You're Entertaining Guests"?
I know I made up my mind years ago (he's EUYHDSBWYEG, all the way), but why even troll for debate? Why not report facts instead of contentious, emotionally loaded rhetoric? Would this post be harmed in any way if the headline read "Apple Co-Founder Woz Blasts iPhone Price Drop"?
With Steve Jobs' recent announcement of his intention to fight off the independent iPhone developers, the question worth asking is:
"Why am I equating the 'cat and mouse game' of iPhone unlocking with fighting independent iPhone developers? It is blindingly obvious to everyone else that installing Lights Out on my phone is worlds away from unlocking the sim card. I must be a total jackass trolling for hits!"
Doesn't it seem more likely to anyone that this is just a gamma issue? Unless both Windows and OS X are calibrated to use the same color profile (I don't know if this is even possible in Winodows without third party software) then the same image on the same machine is going to display with different brightness and color cast when loaded in the different OSes. This could easily reveal more or less banding, and is not a fault in the OS or the hardware. It's the loose nut behind the keyboard.
...other than my excitement and general well-wishes for the NiD team. NiGHTS is probably the most under-appreciated video game of all time. Its controls were effortless and the gameplay so immersing -- and though, when you get to the final stage, you would have sworn there was no plot -- then BANG! It hits you with a subtle gold-plated Mack truck of brilliant-ness that manages to kick the whole experience up to a level that few games have achieved since. The Christmas version was pretty clever, too. Anyway, a sequel is long overdue.
I only hope that, now that the sequel is confirmed for Wii, the original gets ported for the online store? Please please please? My Saturn's optical drive finally died a few months ago, and I'm starting to get the shakes.
Yes it is possible, if you limit yourself to pretty much the old NeXT toolkit of 1994 or so...
Of course, by "old NeXT toolkit" you mean Cocoa — specifically Foundation and AppKit. Yes, I believe I said you would be "limiting" yourself to these frameworks. Of course, these are the same frameworks used to make 99% of all applications on the Mac, great and small, so they're not really as "limiting" as you insinuate.
Or alternatively if you use Carbon, or perhaps if you give up the fancy aqua GUI and move to X11
Why on earth would you do that? Do you have any concept of software development on the Mac? Carbon was a lightweight compatibility library bridging OS 9 and OS X. There's no reason to use it now. And X11? Are you serious? I'm glad it's there so I can run old unix apps when I need to, but apart from cross-platform development why would I make something new in it (and if I did want something cross-platform, why wouldn't I save myself the agony and use Java)?
but it is not dead easy
It really is. Want to make a program that runs on all copies of OS X? Write it in Cocoa and don't use extended libraries like Core Data. You won't need so much as an #ifdef. Sure, you'll loose some convenience, but that still doesn't make it hard. You'll have to manually code the functionality that Core Data usually provides, for example. But everybody on every other non-Appple platform like Windows and the unixies has had to do this all along anyway. And they don't normally describe it as "difficult".
You ever see the classic "make an OS X word processor in 15 minutes" demo? Fully backwards compatible. And easy.
far less so since the move to Intel, as Carbon is not compatible with Universal binary
Again, who would write a new app in carbon? If it's written in Cocoa (and you've encapsulated the endian-ness of your data like all good programmers should), compiling an Intel version is automatic. That is, in fact, the very definition of easy.
Remember it was a huge issue for Adobe, who was still using Carbon for its Creative Suite, and the main reason for not having a CS3 yet.
I think that's very charitable of you to assume the reason Adobe hasn't shipped a universal version yet is because it's difficult and not because they want to force and upgrade to CS3. But giving them the benefit of the doubt, if their code is written in carbon, that's their problem. As I've already mentioned, nobody should be writing in carbon anymore. Had they used Cocoa like I am suggesting (and as practically every Mac developer in the world does), they wouldn't have that problem.
In fact it is so not dead easy that very few OS/X developers maintain software that will run on 10.0.x
In my previous post, I laid out (with a pretty graph and everything) the reasons Mac developers don't support backwards compatibility: Mac users don't run old OS versions, so there's no market for it.
I think it's much more likely that software doesn't get made because there's no market than because of some vague and undefined technical challenge. Especially given that the only real barrier to backwards compatibility are features of some sort. Almost all of the software that's "10.4 only" is branded as such because it requires Spotlight, which wasn't available in earlier versions. If you were going to release a new version of your app, and the choice was "tie it to 10.4 and include Spotlight support" or "make it backwards compatible and forget Spotlight support", making it backwards compatible would actually take you less work (you wouldn't have to implement any extra Spotlight features). At the same time, supporting backwards compatibility would be a benefit to the < 1% of your users that are still on < 10.4. Supporting Spotlight would be of benefit to the other 99%! And the new feature may attract new users to your app.
The choice for developers is obvious, and it has nothing to do with difficulty.
And, guess what, nobody is _made_ to upgrade anything. The upgrades offer new features
Like the ability to run software that is still developed and marketed? I am under the impression that developers of applications for Mac OS X don't care as much about compatibility with old operating system versions as much as developers of applications for Windows.
In a sense you are correct. But it is clear from your tone that you have stumbled on to the truth quite unwittingly and are now misusing it for your own purposes. As Mac development is how I make my livelihood, l thought I might try to educate you.
First, it is perfectly possible — and, in fact, dead easy — to write software today on a beta of 10.5 that will run on every OS back to 10.0 on every machine capable of running 10.0. That's coming up on 8 years of hardware and 6 years of software that said app will run on. Applications on the Mac do not "require new frameworks" or any such thing. There is a robust groundwork of commonality in all versions of OS X that make it possible to build even the most advanced applications in a backwards compatible way.
That said, Apple sometimes releases a new version of OS X that not only provides enhanced features for users, but also throws some goodies at developers, too. These versions often include frameworks that make tasks that were possible-but-nontrivial in earlier versions as easy as falling off a log in the new one. Using these features often cuts associated programming time in half, so many developers are anxious to use them. But, as you at least hint at above, it's not possible to backport these frameworks. So by using, say, Core Data which was released in 10.4, you are limiting your audience to those who are running 10.4 or later.
So every developer has to weigh the increased convenience of new feature versus the size of the audience that meets the feature's minimum system requirements. This is a truism of software development in general and is not unique to the Mac. What is unique is that when a Mac developer does the market research, he finds that all of his customers are already using the latest version of the OS! There is literally no reason to make something backward compatible at the cost of features/time.
Compare this to your argument above. You say that Mac users are forced to upgrade so that they can run software that is now incompatible with their system. The truth is that Mac users upgrade to new OS versions without a thought to software. Then, later, when developers think about the next iteration of their product, they see the overwhelming number of users that are on the latest-and-greatest. They rightly conclude that they'd be stupid not to make use of the advanced frameworks offered.
The question might then be, "Why to Mac users upgrade willingly without thought to software." My experience and research suggest two answers:
1) Apple always offers users compelling features with each upgrade that justify the cost in and of themselves. 2) Apple's upgrades rarely have greater system requirements than previous versions and often increase the performance of even old machines.
Compare to Vista, which even reviewers predisposed to Microsoft claim offers no compelling reason to upgrade and will cost at least as much again in RAM and GPU to get the most out of it.
Wrong! You can burn a CD and re-import it until Apple decides you can't. And that mere possibility is more than enough to make it entirely unacceptable.
Exactly! I'm as big an Apple zealot as they come, and I honestly do believe the company can do no wrong. But just because we haven't seen any "beleaguered" headlines in a while doesn't mean their troubles are behind them. What if the next time Apple needs a Microsoft bailout, MS decides to just buy Apple lock, stock, and barrel? You'd have MS in charge of your DRM again — the exact situation we are trying to avoid.
There is no way to future-proof DRM, and thus adopting any technology that incorporates it will always be a gamble.
Of course, you'll pry my iPod out of my cold, dead hands... but for me that's because its general greatness outweighs the DRM risks, not because its DRM is somehow more friendly or ultimately less restrictive.
If one posts a reply that mentions a Mac outside of apple.slashdot.org, one should expect to be immediately be modded down to (-1, flamebait). This is true even if said post is true, relevant, on topic, and links to a previous discussion on/. itself.
Slashdot Mirror
From the BDA site:
"Companies participating in the Board of Directors are active participants of the format creation and key BDA activities ... The board sets an overall strategy and approves key issues."
(http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/association/membership/MembershipLevels.html)
From the Apple press release announcing their participation:
"The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting and further developing business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc"
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html)
It would seem Apple's participation in the BDA is limited to formats and advocacy. Not licensing terms.
"Apple famously refuses to put a Blu-ray drive in its Macs, as Jobs prefers to send people towards iTunes to download their entertainment"
The only explanation we've heard from Apple on the lack of Blu-ray is Jobs saying licensing it from Sony is a "bag of hurt" (http://www.google.com/search?q=jobs+blu-ray+bag+of+hurt). Yet another Sony technology killed by licensing.
The WOPR doesn't count as prior art?
I'm not saying he's wrong. He's absolutely right insofar as gamers buy PCs. That's likely what the developers of WAR (and LotR, and, until recently, EVE...) are thinking as well.
But even being right, Zekasu and EA Mythic are wrong because they are answering the wrong question. The market for MMORPGs like WoW and WAR is not gamers. A quick look at the subscription numbers of WoW vs. sales figures for any other game bears this out.
A non-gamer will not go out and buy new hardware to play a game. They will, instead, buy games that run on their existing hardware. Even if a non-gamer already owns a PC, it's likely a sub-$500 machine with no 3D acceleration that is probably not capable of running any of the current MMORPGs. But an increasingly large segment of non-gamers have Macs, all of which (except, perhaps, the lowest end laptop) have the guts to run, say, WoW.
The Mac users are the low-hanging fruit in this space. Blizzard understands this and is profiting from it. Everyone else is (and, it looks, will be) playing catchup.
Re-yawn.
Yawn.
If I may, I think everyone's surprise is the least of the things you're having trouble understanding.
It's not funny that these people develop for Windows. It's funny that the post was (mis)written to look as though features like high accuracy and reliability are only available on a platform best known for the absence of these traits.
...with very high accuracy and reliability (Windows only)
In a related story, Camspace also offers speakers with unmatched audio fidelity and dynamic range (only for use in a vacuum)
Wait, so developers who have decades of experience in rasterized graphics are speaking out against a technology that would render said experience obsolete? How can this be?!
Given that what you're seeing is a KERNEL panic, I think it much more likely that you have broken/cheep/generic RAM in your machine. In my life as a Genius, 90% of all KPs we saw could be fixed by swapping RAM with known-good chips. As to why this started with Leopard? There's also a history of new big cats being more demanding of quality RAM than older versions. 10.2->10.3 and 10.3->10.4 both saw an increase in units people brought in suffering from KPs. The solution? See above.
They say they "nabbed a short interview with the Woz" -- as if they'd pulled of a coup of some sort. But I mean, honestly, who won't this guy talk to now?
"Apple Legend" or "Embarrassing Uncle You Hope Doesn't Stop By When You're Entertaining Guests"?
I know I made up my mind years ago (he's EUYHDSBWYEG, all the way), but why even troll for debate? Why not report facts instead of contentious, emotionally loaded rhetoric? Would this post be harmed in any way if the headline read "Apple Co-Founder Woz Blasts iPhone Price Drop"?
With Steve Jobs' recent announcement of his intention to fight off the independent iPhone developers, the question worth asking is:
"Why am I equating the 'cat and mouse game' of iPhone unlocking with fighting independent iPhone developers? It is blindingly obvious to everyone else that installing Lights Out on my phone is worlds away from unlocking the sim card. I must be a total jackass trolling for hits!"
You can buy them from Carmen Sandiego.
The rest of us got it.
Doesn't it seem more likely to anyone that this is just a gamma issue? Unless both Windows and OS X are calibrated to use the same color profile (I don't know if this is even possible in Winodows without third party software) then the same image on the same machine is going to display with different brightness and color cast when loaded in the different OSes. This could easily reveal more or less banding, and is not a fault in the OS or the hardware. It's the loose nut behind the keyboard.
Microsoft expects AT&T, Yahoo, and other companies to join them
Wait. That's Microsoft, AT&T, Yahoo... one, two, three -- and others!
Sounds like there's plenty of competition in this space.
I may own a flower shop, but that does not grant me the right to deny service to blacks
I'm confused. Could you rephrase in the form of a car analogy?
...other than my excitement and general well-wishes for the NiD team. NiGHTS is probably the most under-appreciated video game of all time. Its controls were effortless and the gameplay so immersing -- and though, when you get to the final stage, you would have sworn there was no plot -- then BANG! It hits you with a subtle gold-plated Mack truck of brilliant-ness that manages to kick the whole experience up to a level that few games have achieved since. The Christmas version was pretty clever, too. Anyway, a sequel is long overdue.
I only hope that, now that the sequel is confirmed for Wii, the original gets ported for the online store? Please please please? My Saturn's optical drive finally died a few months ago, and I'm starting to get the shakes.
You ever see the classic "make an OS X word processor in 15 minutes" demo? Fully backwards compatible. And easy.Again, who would write a new app in carbon? If it's written in Cocoa (and you've encapsulated the endian-ness of your data like all good programmers should), compiling an Intel version is automatic. That is, in fact, the very definition of easy.I think that's very charitable of you to assume the reason Adobe hasn't shipped a universal version yet is because it's difficult and not because they want to force and upgrade to CS3. But giving them the benefit of the doubt, if their code is written in carbon, that's their problem. As I've already mentioned, nobody should be writing in carbon anymore. Had they used Cocoa like I am suggesting (and as practically every Mac developer in the world does), they wouldn't have that problem.In my previous post, I laid out (with a pretty graph and everything) the reasons Mac developers don't support backwards compatibility: Mac users don't run old OS versions, so there's no market for it.
I think it's much more likely that software doesn't get made because there's no market than because of some vague and undefined technical challenge. Especially given that the only real barrier to backwards compatibility are features of some sort. Almost all of the software that's "10.4 only" is branded as such because it requires Spotlight, which wasn't available in earlier versions. If you were going to release a new version of your app, and the choice was "tie it to 10.4 and include Spotlight support" or "make it backwards compatible and forget Spotlight support", making it backwards compatible would actually take you less work (you wouldn't have to implement any extra Spotlight features). At the same time, supporting backwards compatibility would be a benefit to the < 1% of your users that are still on < 10.4. Supporting Spotlight would be of benefit to the other 99%! And the new feature may attract new users to your app.
The choice for developers is obvious, and it has nothing to do with difficulty.
First, it is perfectly possible — and, in fact, dead easy — to write software today on a beta of 10.5 that will run on every OS back to 10.0 on every machine capable of running 10.0. That's coming up on 8 years of hardware and 6 years of software that said app will run on. Applications on the Mac do not "require new frameworks" or any such thing. There is a robust groundwork of commonality in all versions of OS X that make it possible to build even the most advanced applications in a backwards compatible way.
That said, Apple sometimes releases a new version of OS X that not only provides enhanced features for users, but also throws some goodies at developers, too. These versions often include frameworks that make tasks that were possible-but-nontrivial in earlier versions as easy as falling off a log in the new one. Using these features often cuts associated programming time in half, so many developers are anxious to use them. But, as you at least hint at above, it's not possible to backport these frameworks. So by using, say, Core Data which was released in 10.4, you are limiting your audience to those who are running 10.4 or later.
So every developer has to weigh the increased convenience of new feature versus the size of the audience that meets the feature's minimum system requirements. This is a truism of software development in general and is not unique to the Mac. What is unique is that when a Mac developer does the market research, he finds that all of his customers are already using the latest version of the OS! There is literally no reason to make something backward compatible at the cost of features/time.
Compare this to your argument above. You say that Mac users are forced to upgrade so that they can run software that is now incompatible with their system. The truth is that Mac users upgrade to new OS versions without a thought to software. Then, later, when developers think about the next iteration of their product, they see the overwhelming number of users that are on the latest-and-greatest. They rightly conclude that they'd be stupid not to make use of the advanced frameworks offered.
The question might then be, "Why to Mac users upgrade willingly without thought to software." My experience and research suggest two answers:
1) Apple always offers users compelling features with each upgrade that justify the cost in and of themselves.
2) Apple's upgrades rarely have greater system requirements than previous versions and often increase the performance of even old machines.
Compare to Vista, which even reviewers predisposed to Microsoft claim offers no compelling reason to upgrade and will cost at least as much again in RAM and GPU to get the most out of it.
...Apple should rename it the iPwn and be done with it.
There is no way to future-proof DRM, and thus adopting any technology that incorporates it will always be a gamble.
Of course, you'll pry my iPod out of my cold, dead hands... but for me that's because its general greatness outweighs the DRM risks, not because its DRM is somehow more friendly or ultimately less restrictive.
If one posts a reply that mentions a Mac outside of apple.slashdot.org, one should expect to be immediately be modded down to (-1, flamebait). This is true even if said post is true, relevant, on topic, and links to a previous discussion on /. itself.
I was ... disappointed (but not surprised) that no browser on my computer correctly renders the Acid2 test.
You're clearly not using a mac.