Are you saying that workers in Silicon Valley aren't being slaved to working 14 hours a day? Last time I checked with my friends there, they did that AND work on week-ends.
I'm a Mac guy, primarily, but I develop on both Mac and Windows. If I can use one machine for both (preferrably a laptop) the better for me. I can carry my laptop with me in client meetings and still only need one machine for both kinds of projects.
Running both Windows and OS X on the same machine is more useful than most people think. Especially when you're a techie. In my case, I do both Palm OS (on Mac) and Pocket PC (on Windows) development, plus desktop software, some of which is fully cross-platform. I can't imagine a better world than one where my Mac runs both OSes at the same time, and both at full processor speed!
Can you justify that please? Stack allocation has many performance benefits - it's only an instruction of two to allocate or deallocate memory, and the stack is usually hot in the cache.
Sure, stack alloc is fast but is limited to the current function. Using an autorelease pool, your objects are destroyed only when the current pool is released. This has a lot advantages. Depending on what you're doing, either one can be more suitable.
It's certainly not hard to add refcounted objects to C++ using smart pointers and the like, it's a very common technique.
Sure. You can add most of the Objective-C features to C++. But then it's not built in the language, you need to explicitely do it. I think Obj-C enforces a certain way of thinking and designing the code that leads to high productivity. I've been coding in C++ for over 10 years and I don't see this level of productivity there.
In no sense is the auto-release pool equivalent to garbage collection. For one, you still have to think hard about memory management in any complex application - for temporary objects that are just part of the internal works of a function, they work OK, but then stack allocation works better
No, it's not at all like stack allocation. It's an order of magnitude better. I think the retain / release mechanism in Objective-C is quite intuitive. Moving to using it requires to change the way you think code (and this alone is a major benefit). And once you've tasted refcounted objects, you don't want to look back (I wonder how I could survive all these years of C++ without them built in the language).
There are two major good things with NSAutoreleasePool. First, you have full freedom to use it or not. You can choose to release your objects when you want it, instead of deferring to the current autorelease pool. Second, if you choose to autorelease, you know that the final collection is going to happen soon (before the end of the current event cycle) and maybe even sooner.
though I would agree that a language which forces you to use GC for everything is not suitable for implementing desktop applications
That's exactly my point. Objective-C and Cocoa give you the best of both worlds: the convenience of garbage collection, and the flexibility and freedom of manual memory management.
I stick by what I said: NSAutoreleasePool is garbage collection done right. Instead of relying on the system (which will eventually have to stop your application for a certain length of time to collect the zillion of objects that stick in memory), you are guaranteed that collection happens at very close and regular intervals.
It's not full garbage collection the way it is done in other languages like Java and C# and IMHO this is a major benefit.
Overall, objective c message call performance is comparable to Javascript.
You haven't written any real code with Objective-C, have you ? I have a couple commercial apps written in full Obj-C and I can tell you that what you're saying is plain wrong. The message dispatcher is fast, uses caching techniques, and in case you have a really tight algorithm that neeeds to send millions of messages to perform some computation, you can always get the IMP pointer to the final address instead of going through the dispatcher. But I certainly never felt the need for that.
A dumb developer will write bad code in ANY language. And of course, he'll blame the language;-)
Now, of course you can just call C functions, but then what is the point of objective C?
... or what's the point in any OO language, when you can code in straight C? Exactly the same: designing and structuring your code. The single selling point with Objective-C / Cocoa is the NSAutoreleasePool mechanism. This mechanism is like a garbage collector finally done right.
Modern languages like Java, C# provide all the dynamsism of objective C, but do it effciently thougth vtables and reflection.
Reflection is insanely costly to use. Actually MS recommends to avoid it if you can, especially on mobile platforms. Besides, are you saying that Java or C#, both JITted languages, are faster than Objective-C ? Think twice. Microsoft itself says that C# is slower than the less optimized C compiled code you can find. And I have yet to see a Java app doing anything significant that is not slow as molasses.
Mac OS X is a BSD system, so you have access to the wide variety of Unix-ish open source software. Whatever your favorite language is, if there's a BSD interpreter/compiler/whatever, it probably also runs on OS X.
Apple gives away free development tools. GCC is the base compiler on Mac OS X. XCode is a development environment that can do pretty much everything. I also highly recommend Shark from the free CHUD package (check out the Celestia optimization tutorial). It makes wonders when it comes to analyzing your app's performance problems.
Oracle 10g was recently released for Mac OS X Server (download here).
There are also zillions of OSS packages that work on OS X (check out DarwinPorts and Fink for example).
... or maybe did Apple save money on this one. Because if you really changed your mind, chances are that you'd have returned the unit on shipping (maybe after not even opening the box), therefore incurring additional shippind and handling costs.
I say it's better for Apple you didn't purchase in the first place;-)
You mean, running scripts as a user would cause security holes? come on... it's just an evolved version of "cron"! And it only runs AppleScripts, so unless you script it to enter the administrator password, or do other silly things, well... you can always do stupid things with a script;-)
Sure... Who still believes that people's emotions are not being used to manipulate them?
Making people think that Saddam was associated with 9/11 was one very emotional way to win hearts for a caseless war. The Jessica Lynch story is another forged one made specifically to play with emotions. There are hundreds of other examples...
Also, gloryfiying the army while refusing to show dead soldiers is another way to play with emotions, or actually prevent them.
Let it be clear: as much as any others, Americans are being manipulated by their politician AND mainstream media. You'd better prepare for it to get worse in the next two months..
Yet, it's much better than other stores have been doing.
Back in the early 80's, you could look at the penetration of computers in businesses and deduce that it was not world changing. Look at where it's at now. You could also ignore the CD revolution in the 80's, until it became so hard to find vinyl records.
My point is that Apple found a way to kickstart online music sales, and that it's working way better than previous attempts. And it's only the beginning, IMHO.
Maybe just because iTMS matches users needs? It's not just because it's Apple, otherwise the world would be 80% Mac.
iTMS is (as are all Apple products) extremely well designed and they managed to produce exactly what people were waiting for. The complete chain (iTMS iTunes iPod) is perfectly integrated and even my mother can use it.
iTunes is already "localized". Depending on the country you access it from, you get a selection of international & local artists. Plus they show an interface localized to the customer country's language.
You are right, reading the patent makes it clear that it is directed to handhelds. The patent talks about "long press or multiple presses of a hardware button", ie the Address Book button on a handheld.
And there is very obvious prior art: on Palm handhelds, a long press of the Address Book button starts beaming your business card. This has been there since the beginning (1996/1997) so this largely predates this specific patent.
The problem is that the US military want to control equipment which is not theirs. And I, as a European, refuse that they can do this. The "ennemy missile" argument doesn't hold one minute. It is likely that if the military see the missile on their radar, they'll destroy it instead of simply trying to jam its gps signal (heck, a missile can very well do without gps, thank you!)
No the real threat has been highlighted by the recent actions of the US military: the US government doesn't hesitate to do whatever it wants, even against the rest of the world, under the most fallacious arguments.
Its very clear that if they can jam a galileo signal, they will be able to jam the signal used by a European country's military. This is not acceptable. We don't care whether it pleases Rummy or not, we do not want to be tied to the absurd decisions and the dirty political games of the freaking US government.
Yes Apple does use XCode for Mac OS X development. It was using Project Builder before. In fact, most of the complexity / power in XCode stems from the fact that Apple itself uses it for complex project. Not bad to have them eat their own dog food...
Also, note that the XLC compiler doesn't support Objective-C. Therefore, only the C/C++ portions of Mac OS X can benefit from the optimized compiler...
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Are you saying that workers in Silicon Valley aren't being slaved to working 14 hours a day? Last time I checked with my friends there, they did that AND work on week-ends.
I'm a Mac guy, primarily, but I develop on both Mac and Windows. If I can use one machine for both (preferrably a laptop) the better for me. I can carry my laptop with me in client meetings and still only need one machine for both kinds of projects.
Running both Windows and OS X on the same machine is more useful than most people think. Especially when you're a techie. In my case, I do both Palm OS (on Mac) and Pocket PC (on Windows) development, plus desktop software, some of which is fully cross-platform. I can't imagine a better world than one where my Mac runs both OSes at the same time, and both at full processor speed!
Sure, stack alloc is fast but is limited to the current function. Using an autorelease pool, your objects are destroyed only when the current pool is released. This has a lot advantages. Depending on what you're doing, either one can be more suitable.
Sure. You can add most of the Objective-C features to C++. But then it's not built in the language, you need to explicitely do it. I think Obj-C enforces a certain way of thinking and designing the code that leads to high productivity. I've been coding in C++ for over 10 years and I don't see this level of productivity there.
No, it's not at all like stack allocation. It's an order of magnitude better. I think the retain / release mechanism in Objective-C is quite intuitive. Moving to using it requires to change the way you think code (and this alone is a major benefit). And once you've tasted refcounted objects, you don't want to look back (I wonder how I could survive all these years of C++ without them built in the language).
There are two major good things with NSAutoreleasePool. First, you have full freedom to use it or not. You can choose to release your objects when you want it, instead of deferring to the current autorelease pool. Second, if you choose to autorelease, you know that the final collection is going to happen soon (before the end of the current event cycle) and maybe even sooner.
That's exactly my point. Objective-C and Cocoa give you the best of both worlds: the convenience of garbage collection, and the flexibility and freedom of manual memory management.
I stick by what I said: NSAutoreleasePool is garbage collection done right. Instead of relying on the system (which will eventually have to stop your application for a certain length of time to collect the zillion of objects that stick in memory), you are guaranteed that collection happens at very close and regular intervals.
It's not full garbage collection the way it is done in other languages like Java and C# and IMHO this is a major benefit.
A dumb developer will write bad code in ANY language. And of course, he'll blame the language
Mac OS X is a BSD system, so you have access to the wide variety of Unix-ish open source software. Whatever your favorite language is, if there's a BSD interpreter/compiler/whatever, it probably also runs on OS X.
Apple gives away free development tools. GCC is the base compiler on Mac OS X. XCode is a development environment that can do pretty much everything. I also highly recommend Shark from the free CHUD package (check out the Celestia optimization tutorial). It makes wonders when it comes to analyzing your app's performance problems.
Oracle 10g was recently released for Mac OS X Server (download here).
There are also zillions of OSS packages that work on OS X (check out DarwinPorts and Fink for example).
... or maybe did Apple save money on this one. Because if you really changed your mind, chances are that you'd have returned the unit on shipping (maybe after not even opening the box), therefore incurring additional shippind and handling costs.
;-)
I say it's better for Apple you didn't purchase in the first place
Yeah, the submitter is certainly a writer for GWB speeches as well. "Be afraid, people, be very afraid! scare, scare!"
You mean, running scripts as a user would cause security holes? come on ... it's just an evolved version of "cron"! And it only runs AppleScripts, so unless you script it to enter the administrator password, or do other silly things, well... you can always do stupid things with a script ;-)
Sure... Who still believes that people's emotions are not being used to manipulate them?
Making people think that Saddam was associated with 9/11 was one very emotional way to win hearts for a caseless war. The Jessica Lynch story is another forged one made specifically to play with emotions. There are hundreds of other examples...
Also, gloryfiying the army while refusing to show dead soldiers is another way to play with emotions, or actually prevent them.
Let it be clear: as much as any others, Americans are being manipulated by their politician AND mainstream media. You'd better prepare for it to get worse in the next two months..
At least he asks questions and raises concerns. Maybe you're expecting Rush Limbaugh to ask them? Hrmm...
Yet, it's much better than other stores have been doing.
Back in the early 80's, you could look at the penetration of computers in businesses and deduce that it was not world changing. Look at where it's at now. You could also ignore the CD revolution in the 80's, until it became so hard to find vinyl records.
My point is that Apple found a way to kickstart online music sales, and that it's working way better than previous attempts. And it's only the beginning, IMHO.
Maybe just because iTMS matches users needs? It's not just because it's Apple, otherwise the world would be 80% Mac.
iTMS is (as are all Apple products) extremely well designed and they managed to produce exactly what people were waiting for. The complete chain (iTMS iTunes iPod) is perfectly integrated and even my mother can use it.
iTunes is already "localized". Depending on the country you access it from, you get a selection of international & local artists. Plus they show an interface localized to the customer country's language.
You are right, reading the patent makes it clear that it is directed to handhelds. The patent talks about "long press or multiple presses of a hardware button", ie the Address Book button on a handheld.
And there is very obvious prior art: on Palm handhelds, a long press of the Address Book button starts beaming your business card. This has been there since the beginning (1996/1997) so this largely predates this specific patent.
The problem is that the US military want to control equipment which is not theirs. And I, as a European, refuse that they can do this. The "ennemy missile" argument doesn't hold one minute. It is likely that if the military see the missile on their radar, they'll destroy it instead of simply trying to jam its gps signal (heck, a missile can very well do without gps, thank you!)
No the real threat has been highlighted by the recent actions of the US military: the US government doesn't hesitate to do whatever it wants, even against the rest of the world, under the most fallacious arguments.
Its very clear that if they can jam a galileo signal, they will be able to jam the signal used by a European country's military. This is not acceptable. We don't care whether it pleases Rummy or not, we do not want to be tied to the absurd decisions and the dirty political games of the freaking US government.
Yes Apple does use XCode for Mac OS X development. It was using Project Builder before. In fact, most of the complexity / power in XCode stems from the fact that Apple itself uses it for complex project. Not bad to have them eat their own dog food...
Also, note that the XLC compiler doesn't support Objective-C. Therefore, only the C/C++ portions of Mac OS X can benefit from the optimized compiler...