There's a difference between being it being LEGAL to do something and it being RIGHT to do something.
When someone goes to court and testifies that Apple intentionally made tweaks to their OS specifically to break Adobe Photoshop so they can sell more copies of Aperature, then we'll talk.
I'm referring to the "DOS isn't done until 1..2..3 won't run." saying that came out during the Microsoft anti-trust trial.
Also, when Apple steals some else's code to put in their own product we'll talk.
I'm referring to the incident where a consultant who had access to QuickTime For Windows was caught giving that source code to Microsoft where it ended up as part of their "Video for Windows" product. The related lawsuit was only dropped when Microsoft threatened to cancel Office for Mac.
I can't think of any incident where Apple has mis-treated third party vendors. The closest one I can think of is the guy who created Frontier(I think I'm remebering it right) which was a thing that was similar to AppleScript in some ways. He released it right before Apple introduced AppleScript which of course killed his potential market and he crief foul. The thing was that obviously Apple had spent years on AppleScript and it was a superior solution to Frontier, so despite his claim I don't think they stole his idea. It was just bad timing (for him).
Even when they were starting iTunes, Apple approached the various small 3rd party vendors who were doing stuff with MP3 and offered to buy them and given them jobs at Apple. The ones who didn't accept the offer got steamrolled by iTunes, but how is that Apple's fault?
My advice, buy a product near the end of its life cycle. Buy the ram yourself from a cheap vendor. I always buy my machines with as little ram as possible and then max them out by installing RAM myself on the first day. I usually buy from one of the low price vedors on RAM Seeker.
When I have bought Mac computers near the end of the life cycle (sometimes right after the model has beeen canceled and I get it on close out), I have always gotten a rock solid Mac. And by buying last year's mid range model, I usually pay a price that is near the current low end model and get approximately the same specs.
I have a TiBook that I bought maybe a week before the aluminum models were introduced. It has been rock solid whereas other TiBooks that I've had through work which were bought early in the model's history had problems. I had the same experience with a PowerMac 7100 that I bought right after they were discontinued which was a supers solid machine. I had a PowerMac 7200 at work that was very similar in speed and capabilities (I didn't pick it out), but it crashed constantly.
What will happen to make it turn, and who will do it? No idea. Really no idea at all. But something will.
The most likely thing would be cell phones that also are music players. I think I read something yesterday that claims that based on the number of cell phones sold that can play music vs. the number of ipods and other music players, Apple only has 14% market share for music players (with phones being dominant).
I think that is a little unfair since most of these phones are very poor music players and are not really used that way. The phone in my pocket can play MP3s, but I'm listening to an iPod right now as I write this.
Apple will probably come out with something to address this. My guess is that they will create an iPod/Phone that is actually compelling to use (unlike the ROKR which can only store some very small number of songs). Possibly an Apple branded phone with iTunes That has been a rumor for some time now and it will probably come to pass eventually because it is fundamentally a good idea.
To be fair, most people who lost their jobs because the company moved the job overseas weren't asked "would you be willing to take a [whatever percent] paycut to keep your job". There was even a case reported on Slashdot of a programmer who, after being told his job was going to India, tried to keep his job by offering to MOVE TO INDIA and take a paycut. The reply he got was "we don't hire americans".
On a macro level, I agree with what you are saying, but I still have sympathy for individuals who lose jobs through no fault of their own.
The retailer really doesn't care, but the manufacturer* probably does care. If people can't buy the units at retail and the only place they are available is eBay at an inflated price, it probably doesn't help the launch of the platform. It probably isn't helpful for game developers either. In the long run, it probably hurts them quite a bit because they waste their initial momentum. It gets perceived as a "bungled launch".
*I realize that the term "manufacturer" probably isn't the right term anymore since pretty much all consumer electronics are made by contract manufacturers. But in the case of the PS2/3, I mean Sony. I guess maybe a better term would be "platform owner", but it sounds awkward and confusing.
If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible
Right, the movie companies want me to NOT look at their movie. My suggestion is that instead of wasting our time with DRM, they should just stop making movies completely. That would be OK with me. I think that would stop people from pirating movies.
I tend to disagree a bit with you. I think Nintendo is doing the right thing with the Wii - trying to make a cool console that will appeal to someone.
It seems to me that with the PS3, Sony is making an assumption that they will be the market leader and then building a console around the question "How can we cash in and also gain leverage into other areas of business with our console that we assume will be #1?"
I think Sony's approach with the PS3 takes their eyes off the prize. Since they already had market domination with the PS2, they started to look elsewhere instead of trying to figure out how to hang onto their dominance. Because of this, I think it is likely that the PS3 will not be the #1 console.
I hear you. I've been developing for Mac since System 7 and I have been through all of the changes you describe.
If I owned my own business or whatever and felt like maintaining my products was a burden, I guess I'd probably be upset too. Since I am a developer who works for other people and I get paid for solving other people's development problems (often by the hour!), it does not bother me at all.
Oh, and to the trolls who say 2% or whatever... I get paid to write Mac software. Paid by people who have money to spend for my services. I enjoy programing the Mac for a variety of reasons. I have been fortunate enough to be able to command a higher salary than most Windows programmers. Unlike many of the people I worked with who were experts in programming Windows, my services stayed in continual demand during the economic downturn of 2002-4 which caused many of my colleagues to be unemployed for months.
I like using the Mac and I like creating quality software that has a Mac "polish" to it that I would want to use myself. Keeping my skills current is something I enjoy.
I have programmed in the Mac Toolbox, MacApp, Carbon, Qt, PowerPlant, Cocoa, and with a variety of other technologies (including the Newton and including Windows). If you open a mail order catalog for Mac stuff (MacMall, MacConnection, etc), I could point to several products that I wrote. If it weren't fun, I'd hang it up and do something else. Right now it is fun. Apple just had a great quarter and sales of Macintoshes grew 12% over the same quarter last year. I'm not totally sure how that compares to the rest of the industry, but my guess is that it means Apple gained some ground. It is sure a lot more fun than it was in 1997. However, even back then, I had no trouble finding a job.
Apple isn't going away. But if you hate Apple, I have good news for you: Microsoft isn't going anywhere either and no one is ever going to force you to use a Mac or develop for a Mac if you don't want to. So instead of bashing Apple and insulting Mac users, why not just count your blessing that unlike most Mac users, YOU can use your favorate OS pretty much all the time and never have to think of anything else except when maybe an Apple ad comes on TV.
This is probably one of the stupidest posts I have read this side of GNAA.
You can program the Mac without using Cocoa or Objective-C at all. The core APIs are C based APIs. Cocoa is merely a toolkit similar to Qt (TrollTech), MFC, PowerPlant,.Net, etc. If you want to program with C/C++ APIs you can.
No, Apple will not "go out of business" if they don't "dump Objective-C right now".
that's probably just because I'm not familiar with it.
Right. You aren't familiar with it. Objective-C is like everything else dealing with computers - when you know how to use it, you tend to like it much better than things you don't know how to use. However, the syntax for Objective-C message sending actually does have a very good reason behind it.
First, if we were to use something like what you propose, it would make it harder when you are programming with Objective-C++ (a quite common case!). In Obj-C++, you are allowed to mix objective-C and C++ code provided you follow some basic rules that I won't go into here (the rules for mixing are pretty easy to understand). By having different syntax, it makes it easier to see which parts are which.
Also, in Objective-C, you aren't calling a method - you are sending a message to an object. That is a very different thing. The reason is that the message is interpreted at runtime. Not compile time. The syntax that you were using says to me "compile time". Also, Objective-C objects are ALWAYS accessed via pointers. You can't create one on the stack. So, there is no nead to distinguish between pointers and objects. You can do truly dynamic things with Obj-C objects such as having an object that poses as an instance another class, etc. C++ fundamentally works different than this because when I call foo->bar() the COMPILER decides which bar method gets called. In Objective-C when I call [foo bar] the RUNTIME environment decides which bar gets called and will raise a runtime exception is bar is not implemented. (However, they do provide a compiler warning if the compiler can't see a "bar" method.
I can call [foo performSelector:@selector(bar)] which is equalivalent to [foo bar]. I can have code that uses some logic to decide which selector to pass to the performSelector: method. I could even have the user type in a string, convert it to a selector, and then call the selector on an object that I don't know what it is - perhaps it came from a plugin. Doing this kind of thing in C++ is much harder because it really isn't a dynamic language. (Although the RTTI, type_info stuff gives it some dynamism, but obviously not to the same level.)
I'm not saying Objective-C is perfect or the best tool for all situations, but it does have some cool characteristics that come from various traditions (C, SmallTalk, etc.) and it is a nice programming language. A language isn't BAD simply because it has different syntax that whatever language you happen to be familiar with and like.
Truly, the answer to this problem is an obvious plan:
1. Immediately cancel your gym membership. You need to spend more time "sitting" and "staring". 2. Immediately quit volunteering at church. In fact, quit church. (You are going to need to start sleeping in on the weekends.) 3. Begin consuming large quantities of "junk food" and spend your time reloading the Slashdot main page. 4. Once you gain some weight, stop bathing for a while, and get really slothful your other problem of being married will take care of itself. 5. Now you have time to watch your movies!!
Re:saturation or I just dont undestand marketing
on
Strange iPod Accessories
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, this does happen. That's when the business changes from being a very valuable and covetted business to being a "mature" business. If you want to have a "hot stock", you need a good rate of growth.
For example, look at Microsoft. They are very profitable, but because they have now reached the status of "mature business", their growth rate isn't as high as it once was. This has caused their stock price to remain very steady for a while now. Back when they were growing their revenues rapidly, the stock price was climbing along with that.
The reason why you are hearing so much about growth is that Apple was able to dramatically grow their revenues with iPod sales and iPod sales were growing. If iPod sales STOP growing, Apple's stock will be stagnate unless/until they come up with something else to drive growth.
I tried the service. First, the movie took forever to arrive, and then it was the wrong movie (wrong DVD in the correct sleeve). So, I just canceled the account and gave up.
I'm not a UK citizen - never been there (and thanks to this new law I'll never visit!), but in the US the government has clearly proven that they can't use their existing power in a reasonable and prudent manner. In fact, they can't do much of anything right. It is pretty sad when the only difference between the two parties is that one will tax you to get lots of money so that they can waste it, while the other will borrow the same amount of money so they can waste it on slightly different things. Freedom has been over in the US for a long, long time.
If police and judges are not abiding by the rules of society, why do they expect criminals to?
They do the same thing in the US with drug cases. They can seize all kinds of property merely be saying it might have drugs on/in it. They can bypass due process. It has been that way since the 80s. It is the reason I have no respect for the US government.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a difference between being it being LEGAL to do something and it being RIGHT to do something.
When someone goes to court and testifies that Apple intentionally made tweaks to their OS specifically to break Adobe Photoshop so they can sell more copies of Aperature, then we'll talk.
I'm referring to the "DOS isn't done until 1..2..3 won't run." saying that came out during the Microsoft anti-trust trial.
Also, when Apple steals some else's code to put in their own product we'll talk.
I'm referring to the incident where a consultant who had access to QuickTime For Windows was caught giving that source code to Microsoft where it ended up as part of their "Video for Windows" product. The related lawsuit was only dropped when Microsoft threatened to cancel Office for Mac.
I can't think of any incident where Apple has mis-treated third party vendors. The closest one I can think of is the guy who created Frontier(I think I'm remebering it right) which was a thing that was similar to AppleScript in some ways. He released it right before Apple introduced AppleScript which of course killed his potential market and he crief foul. The thing was that obviously Apple had spent years on AppleScript and it was a superior solution to Frontier, so despite his claim I don't think they stole his idea. It was just bad timing (for him).
Even when they were starting iTunes, Apple approached the various small 3rd party vendors who were doing stuff with MP3 and offered to buy them and given them jobs at Apple. The ones who didn't accept the offer got steamrolled by iTunes, but how is that Apple's fault?
My advice, buy a product near the end of its life cycle. Buy the ram yourself from a cheap vendor. I always buy my machines with as little ram as possible and then max them out by installing RAM myself on the first day. I usually buy from one of the low price vedors on RAM Seeker.
When I have bought Mac computers near the end of the life cycle (sometimes right after the model has beeen canceled and I get it on close out), I have always gotten a rock solid Mac. And by buying last year's mid range model, I usually pay a price that is near the current low end model and get approximately the same specs.
I have a TiBook that I bought maybe a week before the aluminum models were introduced. It has been rock solid whereas other TiBooks that I've had through work which were bought early in the model's history had problems. I had the same experience with a PowerMac 7100 that I bought right after they were discontinued which was a supers solid machine. I had a PowerMac 7200 at work that was very similar in speed and capabilities (I didn't pick it out), but it crashed constantly.
What will happen to make it turn, and who will do it? No idea. Really no idea at all. But something will.
The most likely thing would be cell phones that also are music players. I think I read something yesterday that claims that based on the number of cell phones sold that can play music vs. the number of ipods and other music players, Apple only has 14% market share for music players (with phones being dominant).
I think that is a little unfair since most of these phones are very poor music players and are not really used that way. The phone in my pocket can play MP3s, but I'm listening to an iPod right now as I write this.
Apple will probably come out with something to address this. My guess is that they will create an iPod/Phone that is actually compelling to use (unlike the ROKR which can only store some very small number of songs). Possibly an Apple branded phone with iTunes That has been a rumor for some time now and it will probably come to pass eventually because it is fundamentally a good idea.
Actually their stock went up like 8 dollars yesterday based on the earnings news.
i was referring to /my own personal experience
That much was obvious because the things you were saying had so much shit on them that we could all tell that they were coming from out of your ass.
There is no such thing as a comparably equipped PC! And there never will be until you get Mac OS running on a PC.
To be fair, most people who lost their jobs because the company moved the job overseas weren't asked "would you be willing to take a [whatever percent] paycut to keep your job". There was even a case reported on Slashdot of a programmer who, after being told his job was going to India, tried to keep his job by offering to MOVE TO INDIA and take a paycut. The reply he got was "we don't hire americans".
On a macro level, I agree with what you are saying, but I still have sympathy for individuals who lose jobs through no fault of their own.
Why do they always mod it "flamebait" when you Speak Truth to Power?
The retailer really doesn't care, but the manufacturer* probably does care. If people can't buy the units at retail and the only place they are available is eBay at an inflated price, it probably doesn't help the launch of the platform. It probably isn't helpful for game developers either. In the long run, it probably hurts them quite a bit because they waste their initial momentum. It gets perceived as a "bungled launch".
*I realize that the term "manufacturer" probably isn't the right term anymore since pretty much all consumer electronics are made by contract manufacturers. But in the case of the PS2/3, I mean Sony. I guess maybe a better term would be "platform owner", but it sounds awkward and confusing.
Deposits for PS3 consoles? Are they good or are they whack?
If you have something you want to keep out of prying eyes, you should be free to protect it in any way possible
Right, the movie companies want me to NOT look at their movie. My suggestion is that instead of wasting our time with DRM, they should just stop making movies completely. That would be OK with me. I think that would stop people from pirating movies.
I tend to disagree a bit with you. I think Nintendo is doing the right thing with the Wii - trying to make a cool console that will appeal to someone.
It seems to me that with the PS3, Sony is making an assumption that they will be the market leader and then building a console around the question "How can we cash in and also gain leverage into other areas of business with our console that we assume will be #1?"
I think Sony's approach with the PS3 takes their eyes off the prize. Since they already had market domination with the PS2, they started to look elsewhere instead of trying to figure out how to hang onto their dominance. Because of this, I think it is likely that the PS3 will not be the #1 console.
I find otool to be something I use all the time.
I hear you. I've been developing for Mac since System 7 and I have been through all of the changes you describe.
If I owned my own business or whatever and felt like maintaining my products was a burden, I guess I'd probably be upset too. Since I am a developer who works for other people and I get paid for solving other people's development problems (often by the hour!), it does not bother me at all.
Oh, and to the trolls who say 2% or whatever... I get paid to write Mac software. Paid by people who have money to spend for my services. I enjoy programing the Mac for a variety of reasons. I have been fortunate enough to be able to command a higher salary than most Windows programmers. Unlike many of the people I worked with who were experts in programming Windows, my services stayed in continual demand during the economic downturn of 2002-4 which caused many of my colleagues to be unemployed for months.
I like using the Mac and I like creating quality software that has a Mac "polish" to it that I would want to use myself. Keeping my skills current is something I enjoy.
I have programmed in the Mac Toolbox, MacApp, Carbon, Qt, PowerPlant, Cocoa, and with a variety of other technologies (including the Newton and including Windows). If you open a mail order catalog for Mac stuff (MacMall, MacConnection, etc), I could point to several products that I wrote. If it weren't fun, I'd hang it up and do something else. Right now it is fun. Apple just had a great quarter and sales of Macintoshes grew 12% over the same quarter last year. I'm not totally sure how that compares to the rest of the industry, but my guess is that it means Apple gained some ground. It is sure a lot more fun than it was in 1997. However, even back then, I had no trouble finding a job.
Apple isn't going away. But if you hate Apple, I have good news for you: Microsoft isn't going anywhere either and no one is ever going to force you to use a Mac or develop for a Mac if you don't want to. So instead of bashing Apple and insulting Mac users, why not just count your blessing that unlike most Mac users, YOU can use your favorate OS pretty much all the time and never have to think of anything else except when maybe an Apple ad comes on TV.
This is probably one of the stupidest posts I have read this side of GNAA.
.Net, etc. If you want to program with C/C++ APIs you can.
You can program the Mac without using Cocoa or Objective-C at all. The core APIs are C based APIs. Cocoa is merely a toolkit similar to Qt (TrollTech), MFC, PowerPlant,
No, Apple will not "go out of business" if they don't "dump Objective-C right now".
Objective-C categories and "protocols" partially make up for the fact that it doesn't support multiple inheritence.
I'm so sick of this "we christians are such victims" crap. "war on christmas" crap.
The REAL war on Christmas was when it turned into "spend all the money you possibly can" day.
that's probably just because I'm not familiar with it.
Right. You aren't familiar with it. Objective-C is like everything else dealing with computers - when you know how to use it, you tend to like it much better than things you don't know how to use. However, the syntax for Objective-C message sending actually does have a very good reason behind it.
First, if we were to use something like what you propose, it would make it harder when you are programming with Objective-C++ (a quite common case!). In Obj-C++, you are allowed to mix objective-C and C++ code provided you follow some basic rules that I won't go into here (the rules for mixing are pretty easy to understand). By having different syntax, it makes it easier to see which parts are which.
Also, in Objective-C, you aren't calling a method - you are sending a message to an object. That is a very different thing. The reason is that the message is interpreted at runtime. Not compile time. The syntax that you were using says to me "compile time". Also, Objective-C objects are ALWAYS accessed via pointers. You can't create one on the stack. So, there is no nead to distinguish between pointers and objects. You can do truly dynamic things with Obj-C objects such as having an object that poses as an instance another class, etc. C++ fundamentally works different than this because when I call foo->bar() the COMPILER decides which bar method gets called. In Objective-C when I call [foo bar] the RUNTIME environment decides which bar gets called and will raise a runtime exception is bar is not implemented. (However, they do provide a compiler warning if the compiler can't see a "bar" method.
I can call [foo performSelector:@selector(bar)] which is equalivalent to [foo bar]. I can have code that uses some logic to decide which selector to pass to the performSelector: method. I could even have the user type in a string, convert it to a selector, and then call the selector on an object that I don't know what it is - perhaps it came from a plugin. Doing this kind of thing in C++ is much harder because it really isn't a dynamic language. (Although the RTTI, type_info stuff gives it some dynamism, but obviously not to the same level.)
I'm not saying Objective-C is perfect or the best tool for all situations, but it does have some cool characteristics that come from various traditions (C, SmallTalk, etc.) and it is a nice programming language. A language isn't BAD simply because it has different syntax that whatever language you happen to be familiar with and like.
Truly, the answer to this problem is an obvious plan:
1. Immediately cancel your gym membership. You need to spend more time "sitting" and "staring".
2. Immediately quit volunteering at church. In fact, quit church. (You are going to need to start sleeping in on the weekends.)
3. Begin consuming large quantities of "junk food" and spend your time reloading the Slashdot main page.
4. Once you gain some weight, stop bathing for a while, and get really slothful your other problem of being married will take care of itself.
5. Now you have time to watch your movies!!
Yes, this does happen. That's when the business changes from being a very valuable and covetted business to being a "mature" business. If you want to have a "hot stock", you need a good rate of growth.
For example, look at Microsoft. They are very profitable, but because they have now reached the status of "mature business", their growth rate isn't as high as it once was. This has caused their stock price to remain very steady for a while now. Back when they were growing their revenues rapidly, the stock price was climbing along with that.
The reason why you are hearing so much about growth is that Apple was able to dramatically grow their revenues with iPod sales and iPod sales were growing. If iPod sales STOP growing, Apple's stock will be stagnate unless/until they come up with something else to drive growth.
I tried the service. First, the movie took forever to arrive, and then it was the wrong movie (wrong DVD in the correct sleeve). So, I just canceled the account and gave up.
Sorry, you can't work at McD either because the cash registers and fry cookers are technical computers now.
Instead you will be sleeping in an alley and begging for spare change.
I'm not a UK citizen - never been there (and thanks to this new law I'll never visit!), but in the US the government has clearly proven that they can't use their existing power in a reasonable and prudent manner. In fact, they can't do much of anything right. It is pretty sad when the only difference between the two parties is that one will tax you to get lots of money so that they can waste it, while the other will borrow the same amount of money so they can waste it on slightly different things. Freedom has been over in the US for a long, long time.
In Mitnick's case, the crime had very little to do with computers and far more to do with lying about his identity over the phone.
If police and judges are not abiding by the rules of society, why do they expect criminals to?
They do the same thing in the US with drug cases. They can seize all kinds of property merely be saying it might have drugs on/in it. They can bypass due process. It has been that way since the 80s. It is the reason I have no respect for the US government.