It is for ease of use, people don't want to set up a base station or server, it's just another thing then need to have.
Exactly: "it's just another thing [they] need to have." It's an entire extra product that these companies could be selling them (and profiting from!), but aren't. The question you should be asking yourself is "why are they foregoing that profit?"
Because people know they don't need to pay for it, they could sell you all kinds of different dependent devices if they wanted to but it's a bit ridiculous to do that and the barrier to entry is that much higher so you have less customers. High volume rather than high margin.
The answer, of course, is "they aren't." The violation of privacy is more valuable!
Could you detail that more accurately, how exactly is this "violation of privacy" - does anybody really give a shit about who knows when they use electricity? especially when your utility company already has this information - is so beneficial? Also why it's not simply high volume rather than high margin?
First of all, my electric company is a monopoly, so that alleged benefit is irrelevant.
Yes it was an example, it wasn't meant to be tailored directly to you.
Second, have you ever heard of the term "confusopoly"? I don't really want to have to choose between 10 different electric companies with 10-different time-of-day-varying rate plans (none of which will actually match my usage pattern, of course).
And precisely the point is that you can save significantly if you want to expend the effort, or you can use a service to do it for you.
I already have to choose between natural gas providers, and it's a pain in the ass!
So something like this resolves that issue.
Third, I don't want Google to know about my hypothetical grow-op, Bitcoin mine, particle accelerator, or whatever the fuck I'm using the electricity for, not only because it's none of their damn business as a general principle, but also because I don't want them to report me to the DEA, SEC, or Department of Energy (respectively)
Oh of course, because your energy company totally doesn't have that information already.
I don't want them showing embarrassing ads (for drug paraphernalia or plutonium) in my browser search results at work!
Plutonium? Really? Why the hell would they be doing that? That's just reductio ad absurdum. But even if I take that seriously the answer is just don't log in to your personal google account or use an ad blocker. Really really really simple stuff here.
Fourth, but not least, I don't want Google to know about my lack of electricity use, either.
Again, this information is not private, your utility company has this information too and you're kidding yourself if you actually believe they aren't using third parties to aggregate that data.
The last thing I need is some Googler using his "20% time" to develop "Google Burglary," a tool for criminals to find out when I'm not using electricity and thus probably on out of town.
If you're hanging the security of your house on the perceived obscurity of your energy usage data then you're very stupid indeed.
It is for ease of use, people don't want to set up a base station or server, it's just another thing then need to have. However there are people - like me and probably you - that don't mind setting up a server to connect these things, that want to set up a raspberry pi to control the lights and heating/cooling and we can do that.
Then there's the other side of it, if you're using a thermostat connected to Google then the data about when you use and don't use energy could be used to recommend an energy company that gives you the best rate for those times. How is that a bad thing?
Or write one for whichever sse has interesting instructions and a fallback mode in C.
How does that equate to "squeezing every bit of performance out of a system"?
For embarrassingly parallel image processing divide your image in nbcores sub image and call your engine with each. No need to provide more.
I don't think that's the kind of thing he's talking about, we all know this and I'm not sure there's many image processing programs that don't do that.
All apple core are ARM, write one with NEON also or better for one core.
This is again targeting the lowest common denominator rather than optimizing for the features you have available, exactly what the GGP was arguing against.
I remember doing image processing on a 4MHz 8088, in 1986, in assembly
And nowadays would you write a separate version in assembly for x86_64 processors with SSE instruction support, then one that exploited the benefits of SSE2, then one that used SSE3, then one that used SSE4 then one for AVX and then one for each of those targeting 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 cores to squeeze "every bit of performance out of a system"? Then take a look at all the custom Apple chips and all the custom ARM chips and write individually optimized versions for those as well? Of course you wouldn't.
Sure you could do that but is the performance gain (if there is one at all) worth it over writing it in C and targeting these platforms using different compilers/compiler flags? I'm curious as to what you're actually suggesting should be done here.
Hand optimization has its place when you know what you're targeting and there is a measurable performance advantage to doing so whilst not having considerable maintenance debt, tuning shader algorithms for various GPUs and their specific extensions is certainly still done for example. But most software these days needs to target many architectures, configurations and software platforms and the benefits of hand optimization simply aren't there vs the cost.
It's not really that programming has become inefficient, it's that in the old days we targeted specific machines and setups but the industry has changed and those development methodologies are not practical anymore. A lot of the software written back then doesn't run on any modern system anymore so people want to avoid making that mistake again, this means abstraction layers. I could write an application in assembly for every CPU architecture and operating system combination I want to target and re-write it every time a new one comes along but that would be a bit ridiculous. So instead the tradeoff comes in the form of a runtime inefficiency due to an abstraction layer, but as we've seen with the progress of Java even that overhead is diminishing.
You sure? Have you actually installed another OS to a Firefox-based TV?
No I haven't, in theory it should be possible though. Still I don't see how users are "locked in", it's no different to any other device or appliance, if you don't like it then you can replace it, why can't you do that with these TVs?
Messages on the phone uses SMS, which works even on dumb phones.
That's just the fallback option, he's talking about iMessage. If you use Messages on your Mac for example (or any non-cellular device) does it use SMS if iMessage isn't available?
You realize you just said "You can microsoft on your microsoft with anyone who has microsoft" in defense to Apple apple-ing only with Apple
Yes but his point is obviously that you can use Skype on Microsoft platforms or on Android, iOS, OSX, Ubuntu, etc... Whereas the equivalent Apple product is Facetime which only works on Apple products. Same goes for Airdrop and iMessage.
Porsche has a car that is actually a VW (Porsche belongs to VW, but this car is marketed as either Porsche or VW - it is not just a "shared platform", but the same car, build in the same factory... NOTHING different, except for the brand!)
I know the VW Golf and Polo are used as shared platforms for a lot of cars, underneath they are the same but all the body, interior, wheels and branding is different. What Porsche and VW vehicles differ only by the brand?
The biggest giveaway that Apple were working on a watch came when they went from the 6th to 7th generation nano after all these people were putting them in watch-band cases.
Thats a horrible idea - those cars would get vendor locked to apple.
From Apple's perspective it's a great idea! Want your phone to integrate with your car? Better get an iPhone then...oh and while you're at it make sure you replace that smartwatch with an Apple Watch too.
Well GP (which I quoted) was saying that in the context of DRM from Adobe. But as for what other operating systems can you install? Well since Firefox OS uses a Linux kernel probably any Linux-based OS would work.
for Apple I'm guessing it's about 50% cool electronic jewellery and 50% ecosystem
I've never understood this, the iPhone is the most common smartphone in the world, if what you're looking to do is make "a social statement" with your choice of smartphone then the iPhone (and probably the Galaxy) would be last on the list.
It is exactly as easy to part me from my money as it is. No more, no less.
That's a completely redundant statement that says nothing.
When advertising doesn't work, there's no issue. It's when it does - and you KNOW it does, else it wouldn't exist - that something has gone wrong.
What exactly has "gone wrong"?
Are you trying to pretend that (all) the debt-load people in developed nations have is because they've just fallen behind temporarily?
No.
Or do you actually get it that people buy crap they don't need?
Yes of course, most people don't live a purely utilitarian existence consisting of nothing beyond the most basic needs. What's wrong with that?
Specific itemized examples from my life aren't useful... they're just anecdotal evidence.
Evidence of the extent of your inability to exercise self-control, just because you see an ad for something and buy it doesn't mean anybody else will.
That advertising exists, and has existed for a long time, is empirical evidence that the practice is profitable on average.
Yes it is hard to get people to know about your product or service if you rely purely on them seeking you out and asking if you offer such things.
It doesn't matter who is, or is not "too weak-willed to spend wisely".
Of course it does.
What does matter is that active advertising is an inherently predatory act.
Only if you're intent on simply existing. Advertising does indeed help to find things that make my life easier that I didn't know about before, I just have the ability to measure the value of the advantage, something you obviously do not have.
While yes, I get something for my money, it's not what I really want, which is my money, which I would still have were I not advertised to.
Seriously? It's actually that easy to part you from your money? It's pretty clear the problem here is you, not the people trying to sell stuff. You make the decision, if what you really want is your money then why are you trading it? You already have what you want.
What are some actual examples of when this has happened to you?
Gates and Zuckerberg do not care where their workers come from but how much they cost as they run businesses and not charities. In fact it is in their best interest to 1. train domestic talent 2. import foreign workers 3. domestic salaries are now depressed 4. profit.
Take a look at the mantra pushed in stories on slashdot. Sure not everybody agrees but in general you see the pontificating that software-as-a-service is bad, that paying a subscription fee for software is bad, that software should be free and that you should be able to pass it around free of charge, internet advertising is bad and you should be cutting off that revenue stream for companies by using ad-blocking software, etc...
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with espousing those values but you have to understand that this reduces the ability for these companies to make a profit thus they need to reduce their costs as well. The cost of software and IT infrastructure has been driven down drastically so obviously the costs must be cut too.
It's the first thing I wrote, your habit of making up things rather than reading what was written is getting pretty ridiculous:
"Well you're going to have a hard time writing for iOS9 if the iOS9 SDK doesn't come with Objective-C bindings for the API. If they do that then practicality will dictate that you use Swift or a cross-platform language & toolchain."
You claimed special marshaling and unmarshaling code is necessary.
Which depends on the language you are working with, obviously. Remember how you said "You can call any API from any language"? Well depending on the language you may need marshaling code but in any case you need a language-specific definition of the objects you want to work with.
Swift and C are binary compatible
I don't see where I limited this to C, in fact not only are you making up things and claiming I said them but you can't even remember what you wrote! You can call any API from any language.
Making "Swift binary incompatible" makes absolutely no sense, so while Apple could do that, they very certainly won't do that.
Nobody suggested that at all, again you're making up something to argue with. Why are you now creating strawmen?
Why do you think so? The Swift compiler generates a SomeClass.h file.... actually a no brainer.
Swift doesn't require them though, that exists as a legacy to support Objective-C, obviously if they are going to try to force people away from Objective-C then they will remove that, and - as I said at the start - it will make it harder since you will have to create relevant definitions for each language manually.
Again - since you're really struggling with this - I never said you can't, I said they can make it harder to the point of being impractical.
And that would be pointless as you simply can write the relevant header files yourself, I don't get why you argue about stuff like this.
That's what I said from the beginning! I have said that all along. I never said you can't do it, I said they could make it impractical and having to "write the relevant header files yourself" is exactly that.
You're tired of arguing with yourself because you're not reading, you keep arguing against points that I'm not even writing. Clearly it doesn't matter what I write because you aren't reading it anyway.
Of course there is, you don't have a C declaration of SomeClass, in C you don't know what that object is... take it one step further in your "You can call any API from any language" and you're also not going to understand what SomeClass is in VBScript or C#.
Swift code and C/Objective-C code can call each other without any problems.
If you have the language-specific definition of what the object is, otherwise it is just a block of memory. This is really basic stuff, I gave you the exercise and you simply suggested casting it to a pointer to a type you have no definition for, so you failed.
This is why you can't complete the exercise, casting the UnsafeMutablePointer<SomeClass> to a SomeClass * will not compile because you don't have a Obj-C or C declaration of SomeClass (be it a class, struct or whatever). This is really basic CS stuff, it's not that complicated so you really should educate yourself on this.
Like I said, Apple can easily make it highly impractical to use another language with their API by not providing other language-specific declarations of their Swift structures.
You haven't completed the exercise: I said, modify it's members or call member functions on it. You have cast it to a pointer in C but it's just a chunk of memory. Are you seeing the problem yet?
Ok you're obviously having too much difficulty understanding this so I will provide you an exercise:
Suppose an API function is provided that returns a UnsafeMutablePointer<SomeClass>, now the SDK provides a Swift definition (an interface at the least) of "SomeClass" so I can manipulate its members, call functions on it or whatever. So now explain to me how you are going to manipulate this object in the language of your choice.
There is nothing special about "swift structures and types"
Of course there is, there is no implicit cast from a T **, for example, to any Swift type, the appropriate explicit cast would be to a AutoreleasingUnsafeMutablePointer<Type>. Most basic types in C don't have an implicit Swift equivalent.
Actually stuff like that is not covered in CS courses
Perhaps not in whatever pedestrian one you've taken.
Secondly: you are wrong. A language does not need first class citizen pointers to support pointers.
No, it's not wrong at all. You need to marshal the pointer to an appropriate type, you've just proven that what I said was exactly right. But you probably don't know it, re-read what I've written, I didn't say you "can't" call an API from a different language, but that you need to marshal the relevant types and as such people are more likely to just use Swift than bothering to do that.
It's pretty clear you don't even know what point you're trying to make and you're now arguing against something you've made up.
What application types are there that would likely draw a viably wide desktop audience?
I think it's a combination of professional aspects: CAD, CAM, CAE, Simulation, Image/Audio/Video Production, 3D Modeling/Animation, Desktop Publishing, Application/Web Development, Database/Spreadsheet Office Applications, Data Presentation Applications, etc...
And then all the hobbyist and educational sectors that also utilize some or all of those application categories.
Sure you will lose some of the home computer market to tablets but those people for whom a tablet will suffice probably haven't needed to update their computer in last 5-10 years anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly: "it's just another thing [they] need to have." It's an entire extra product that these companies could be selling them (and profiting from!), but aren't. The question you should be asking yourself is "why are they foregoing that profit?"
Because people know they don't need to pay for it, they could sell you all kinds of different dependent devices if they wanted to but it's a bit ridiculous to do that and the barrier to entry is that much higher so you have less customers. High volume rather than high margin.
The answer, of course, is "they aren't." The violation of privacy is more valuable!
Could you detail that more accurately, how exactly is this "violation of privacy" - does anybody really give a shit about who knows when they use electricity? especially when your utility company already has this information - is so beneficial? Also why it's not simply high volume rather than high margin?
First of all, my electric company is a monopoly, so that alleged benefit is irrelevant.
Yes it was an example, it wasn't meant to be tailored directly to you.
Second, have you ever heard of the term "confusopoly"? I don't really want to have to choose between 10 different electric companies with 10-different time-of-day-varying rate plans (none of which will actually match my usage pattern, of course).
And precisely the point is that you can save significantly if you want to expend the effort, or you can use a service to do it for you.
I already have to choose between natural gas providers, and it's a pain in the ass!
So something like this resolves that issue.
Third, I don't want Google to know about my hypothetical grow-op, Bitcoin mine, particle accelerator, or whatever the fuck I'm using the electricity for, not only because it's none of their damn business as a general principle, but also because I don't want them to report me to the DEA, SEC, or Department of Energy (respectively)
Oh of course, because your energy company totally doesn't have that information already.
I don't want them showing embarrassing ads (for drug paraphernalia or plutonium) in my browser search results at work!
Plutonium? Really? Why the hell would they be doing that? That's just reductio ad absurdum. But even if I take that seriously the answer is just don't log in to your personal google account or use an ad blocker. Really really really simple stuff here.
Fourth, but not least, I don't want Google to know about my lack of electricity use, either.
Again, this information is not private, your utility company has this information too and you're kidding yourself if you actually believe they aren't using third parties to aggregate that data.
The last thing I need is some Googler using his "20% time" to develop "Google Burglary," a tool for criminals to find out when I'm not using electricity and thus probably on out of town.
If you're hanging the security of your house on the perceived obscurity of your energy usage data then you're very stupid indeed.
It is for ease of use, people don't want to set up a base station or server, it's just another thing then need to have. However there are people - like me and probably you - that don't mind setting up a server to connect these things, that want to set up a raspberry pi to control the lights and heating/cooling and we can do that.
Then there's the other side of it, if you're using a thermostat connected to Google then the data about when you use and don't use energy could be used to recommend an energy company that gives you the best rate for those times. How is that a bad thing?
Or write one for whichever sse has interesting instructions and a fallback mode in C.
How does that equate to "squeezing every bit of performance out of a system"?
For embarrassingly parallel image processing divide your image in nbcores sub image and call your engine with each. No need to provide more.
I don't think that's the kind of thing he's talking about, we all know this and I'm not sure there's many image processing programs that don't do that.
All apple core are ARM, write one with NEON also or better for one core.
This is again targeting the lowest common denominator rather than optimizing for the features you have available, exactly what the GGP was arguing against.
I remember doing image processing on a 4MHz 8088, in 1986, in assembly
And nowadays would you write a separate version in assembly for x86_64 processors with SSE instruction support, then one that exploited the benefits of SSE2, then one that used SSE3, then one that used SSE4 then one for AVX and then one for each of those targeting 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 cores to squeeze "every bit of performance out of a system"? Then take a look at all the custom Apple chips and all the custom ARM chips and write individually optimized versions for those as well? Of course you wouldn't.
Sure you could do that but is the performance gain (if there is one at all) worth it over writing it in C and targeting these platforms using different compilers/compiler flags? I'm curious as to what you're actually suggesting should be done here.
Hand optimization has its place when you know what you're targeting and there is a measurable performance advantage to doing so whilst not having considerable maintenance debt, tuning shader algorithms for various GPUs and their specific extensions is certainly still done for example. But most software these days needs to target many architectures, configurations and software platforms and the benefits of hand optimization simply aren't there vs the cost.
It's not really that programming has become inefficient, it's that in the old days we targeted specific machines and setups but the industry has changed and those development methodologies are not practical anymore. A lot of the software written back then doesn't run on any modern system anymore so people want to avoid making that mistake again, this means abstraction layers. I could write an application in assembly for every CPU architecture and operating system combination I want to target and re-write it every time a new one comes along but that would be a bit ridiculous. So instead the tradeoff comes in the form of a runtime inefficiency due to an abstraction layer, but as we've seen with the progress of Java even that overhead is diminishing.
You sure? Have you actually installed another OS to a Firefox-based TV?
No I haven't, in theory it should be possible though. Still I don't see how users are "locked in", it's no different to any other device or appliance, if you don't like it then you can replace it, why can't you do that with these TVs?
I want a blank screen with lots of keyboard shortcuts, some basic autocompletion, perfect syntax highlighting, maybe some Git support, etc.
So you say you want an environment into which much of your development tasks are integrated.
Messages on the phone uses SMS, which works even on dumb phones.
That's just the fallback option, he's talking about iMessage. If you use Messages on your Mac for example (or any non-cellular device) does it use SMS if iMessage isn't available?
You realize you just said "You can microsoft on your microsoft with anyone who has microsoft" in defense to Apple apple-ing only with Apple
Yes but his point is obviously that you can use Skype on Microsoft platforms or on Android, iOS, OSX, Ubuntu, etc... Whereas the equivalent Apple product is Facetime which only works on Apple products. Same goes for Airdrop and iMessage.
Porsche has a car that is actually a VW (Porsche belongs to VW, but this car is marketed as either Porsche or VW - it is not just a "shared platform", but the same car, build in the same factory... NOTHING different, except for the brand!)
I know the VW Golf and Polo are used as shared platforms for a lot of cars, underneath they are the same but all the body, interior, wheels and branding is different. What Porsche and VW vehicles differ only by the brand?
No, that's the iPod nano.
The biggest giveaway that Apple were working on a watch came when they went from the 6th to 7th generation nano after all these people were putting them in watch-band cases.
Thats a horrible idea - those cars would get vendor locked to apple.
From Apple's perspective it's a great idea! Want your phone to integrate with your car? Better get an iPhone then...oh and while you're at it make sure you replace that smartwatch with an Apple Watch too.
Well GP (which I quoted) was saying that in the context of DRM from Adobe. But as for what other operating systems can you install? Well since Firefox OS uses a Linux kernel probably any Linux-based OS would work.
for Apple I'm guessing it's about 50% cool electronic jewellery and 50% ecosystem
I've never understood this, the iPhone is the most common smartphone in the world, if what you're looking to do is make "a social statement" with your choice of smartphone then the iPhone (and probably the Galaxy) would be last on the list.
Except for the newly-introduced Firefox DRM from Adobe that is.
Don't you love the new double-speak.
Can you explain how this causes users to be "locked into one proprietary ecosystem or brand"?
It is exactly as easy to part me from my money as it is. No more, no less.
That's a completely redundant statement that says nothing.
When advertising doesn't work, there's no issue. It's when it does - and you KNOW it does, else it wouldn't exist - that something has gone wrong.
What exactly has "gone wrong"?
Are you trying to pretend that (all) the debt-load people in developed nations have is because they've just fallen behind temporarily?
No.
Or do you actually get it that people buy crap they don't need?
Yes of course, most people don't live a purely utilitarian existence consisting of nothing beyond the most basic needs. What's wrong with that?
Specific itemized examples from my life aren't useful... they're just anecdotal evidence.
Evidence of the extent of your inability to exercise self-control, just because you see an ad for something and buy it doesn't mean anybody else will.
That advertising exists, and has existed for a long time, is empirical evidence that the practice is profitable on average.
Yes it is hard to get people to know about your product or service if you rely purely on them seeking you out and asking if you offer such things.
It doesn't matter who is, or is not "too weak-willed to spend wisely".
Of course it does.
What does matter is that active advertising is an inherently predatory act.
Only if you're intent on simply existing. Advertising does indeed help to find things that make my life easier that I didn't know about before, I just have the ability to measure the value of the advantage, something you obviously do not have.
While yes, I get something for my money, it's not what I really want, which is my money, which I would still have were I not advertised to.
Seriously? It's actually that easy to part you from your money? It's pretty clear the problem here is you, not the people trying to sell stuff. You make the decision, if what you really want is your money then why are you trading it? You already have what you want.
What are some actual examples of when this has happened to you?
Gates and Zuckerberg do not care where their workers come from but how much they cost as they run businesses and not charities. In fact it is in their best interest to 1. train domestic talent 2. import foreign workers 3. domestic salaries are now depressed 4. profit.
Take a look at the mantra pushed in stories on slashdot. Sure not everybody agrees but in general you see the pontificating that software-as-a-service is bad, that paying a subscription fee for software is bad, that software should be free and that you should be able to pass it around free of charge, internet advertising is bad and you should be cutting off that revenue stream for companies by using ad-blocking software, etc...
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with espousing those values but you have to understand that this reduces the ability for these companies to make a profit thus they need to reduce their costs as well. The cost of software and IT infrastructure has been driven down drastically so obviously the costs must be cut too.
You where not saying that from beginning.
It's the first thing I wrote, your habit of making up things rather than reading what was written is getting pretty ridiculous:
"Well you're going to have a hard time writing for iOS9 if the iOS9 SDK doesn't come with Objective-C bindings for the API. If they do that then practicality will dictate that you use Swift or a cross-platform language & toolchain."
You claimed special marshaling and unmarshaling code is necessary.
Which depends on the language you are working with, obviously. Remember how you said "You can call any API from any language"? Well depending on the language you may need marshaling code but in any case you need a language-specific definition of the objects you want to work with.
Swift and C are binary compatible
I don't see where I limited this to C, in fact not only are you making up things and claiming I said them but you can't even remember what you wrote!
You can call any API from any language.
Making "Swift binary incompatible" makes absolutely no sense, so while Apple could do that, they very certainly won't do that.
Nobody suggested that at all, again you're making up something to argue with. Why are you now creating strawmen?
Why do you think so? The Swift compiler generates a SomeClass.h file .... actually a no brainer.
Swift doesn't require them though, that exists as a legacy to support Objective-C, obviously if they are going to try to force people away from Objective-C then they will remove that, and - as I said at the start - it will make it harder since you will have to create relevant definitions for each language manually.
Again - since you're really struggling with this - I never said you can't, I said they can make it harder to the point of being impractical.
And that would be pointless as you simply can write the relevant header files yourself, I don't get why you argue about stuff like this.
That's what I said from the beginning! I have said that all along. I never said you can't do it, I said they could make it impractical and having to "write the relevant header files yourself" is exactly that.
You're tired of arguing with yourself because you're not reading, you keep arguing against points that I'm not even writing. Clearly it doesn't matter what I write because you aren't reading it anyway.
There is no problem.
Of course there is, you don't have a C declaration of SomeClass, in C you don't know what that object is ... take it one step further in your "You can call any API from any language" and you're also not going to understand what SomeClass is in VBScript or C#.
Swift code and C/Objective-C code can call each other without any problems.
If you have the language-specific definition of what the object is, otherwise it is just a block of memory. This is really basic stuff, I gave you the exercise and you simply suggested casting it to a pointer to a type you have no definition for, so you failed.
This is why you can't complete the exercise, casting the UnsafeMutablePointer<SomeClass> to a SomeClass * will not compile because you don't have a Obj-C or C declaration of SomeClass (be it a class, struct or whatever). This is really basic CS stuff, it's not that complicated so you really should educate yourself on this.
Like I said, Apple can easily make it highly impractical to use another language with their API by not providing other language-specific declarations of their Swift structures.
You haven't completed the exercise: I said, modify it's members or call member functions on it. You have cast it to a pointer in C but it's just a chunk of memory. Are you seeing the problem yet?
Ok you're obviously having too much difficulty understanding this so I will provide you an exercise:
Suppose an API function is provided that returns a UnsafeMutablePointer<SomeClass>, now the SDK provides a Swift definition (an interface at the least) of "SomeClass" so I can manipulate its members, call functions on it or whatever. So now explain to me how you are going to manipulate this object in the language of your choice.
There is nothing special about "swift structures and types"
Of course there is, there is no implicit cast from a T **, for example, to any Swift type, the appropriate explicit cast would be to a AutoreleasingUnsafeMutablePointer<Type>. Most basic types in C don't have an implicit Swift equivalent.
Actually stuff like that is not covered in CS courses
Perhaps not in whatever pedestrian one you've taken.
Secondly: you are wrong. A language does not need first class citizen pointers to support pointers.
No, it's not wrong at all. You need to marshal the pointer to an appropriate type, you've just proven that what I said was exactly right. But you probably don't know it, re-read what I've written, I didn't say you "can't" call an API from a different language, but that you need to marshal the relevant types and as such people are more likely to just use Swift than bothering to do that.
It's pretty clear you don't even know what point you're trying to make and you're now arguing against something you've made up.
What application types are there that would likely draw a viably wide desktop audience?
I think it's a combination of professional aspects: CAD, CAM, CAE, Simulation, Image/Audio/Video Production, 3D Modeling/Animation, Desktop Publishing, Application/Web Development, Database/Spreadsheet Office Applications, Data Presentation Applications, etc...
And then all the hobbyist and educational sectors that also utilize some or all of those application categories.
Sure you will lose some of the home computer market to tablets but those people for whom a tablet will suffice probably haven't needed to update their computer in last 5-10 years anyway.