Having used.Net and Cocoa I can say that I much prefer Cocoa and its integration with the Mac OS, but that's beside the point.
Macintosh users care about applications that work well on their platform. Things like Applescript support and user interface guidelines mean something to a lot of users. Emulated Windows applications will not have that and that means that a lot of Mac OS users will reject the application just from the screenshots.
My bet is that there will continue to be more Cocoa developers producing outstanding shareware and keeping the market very healthy. If things start going backwards, look for the Cocoa frameworks to reappear on Windows.
If "good enough" is fine by you then I hope you don't become used to it because good enough can turn bad really fast, especially with your current government in control.
I am Australian and everyday I see the US becoming more and more of an exact copy of the US. Did you see some of the DMCA act get passed with the Free Trade Agreement? I did and it disgusted me. Expect parts of the Patriot Act to follow, there is nothing that Howard and Co. enjoy more than sucking up to the American president and his draconian laws.
In all seriousness though the RIAA are making positive steps by allowing people to download music online. Do we really want to take steps back and move to physical media again? Of course not. Angering them like this is only going to make them want to retreat into their shell some more rather than "Thinking Differently" and perhaps working out that DRM is a bad idea.
This is obviously a rather well known thing but the ultimate form of advertising is word of mouth. Once you have the product, and a product that people will want, appreciate and purchase, they _will_ tell their friends.
There is one area you can go wrong though and that is by being impatient. Word of mouth will not bring about results immediately. Normal (read expensive) advertising will, but it is not guaranteed that your product is ready to be advertised. Word of mouth will only spread when the product is ready so while you are waiting you can tune and perfect your product and delivery methods.
Two quick examples are Google and Panic. Google of course appeared simply because people told each other. Phrases like "I will be right back, just Googling it" are what you want to hear. Panic, a Mac shareware house and a very successful one at that, have never advertised but their devoted fanbase is only too happy to advertise for them.
In Bizzarro Apple Land, only rich, Blaupunkt-owning, BMW-driving hipsters would be allowed to compute
So like the target market of the Mac mini?
developers would be expected to grovel for the supreme privilege of creating apps for the One True Operating System
So those free developer tools?
Businesses in non-sexy segments would be denied licenses
So like super computing?
I think you are basing your ideas off the Apple of old run not by dreamers but by boring businessmen. Apple has and is changing and at quite a rapid rate. They want everyone to experience and enjoy their products, a quick look at the drop in prices of all their product lines would indicate that. Not to mention of course that Mac OS X is the most accessible operating system out there now, no funky 3D interface, not strange and bizarre "elite" windowing system just plain system Desktop metaphor with reasonable consistency for joe user.
As a Macintosh developer I strive to produce consistency in my applications for Mac OS X as do most other small/medium sized developers. This consistency, from Transmit to OmniGraffle to NewsFire, allows me to learn an app quickly and interact with it at the speed of thought without having to work around the GUI nonsense that plagued me back on Windows.
As for Linux, I think the only thing holding it back is that consistency. Many apps have different widgets, there is no QA to work out how to make tasks flow into each other and no one spends the time to say "hey, you should do it this way as that's the way $insertWindowManager says it should be done". I think egos do get in the road when it comes to ease of use whereas in a corporation there is a focus to make it simple and easy for the user, well Apple based corporation. Linux should copy Apple not Micorosoft. OpenOffice should not be a hodgepodge like Word, it should be simple and effective like Pages.
As Dell continues to take over the entire market it will become the key to Microsoft's life or death.
Picture this if you will. Dell ends up with 60-70% market share and it starts to stagnate. As a company it wants profits so it pesters Microsoft to lower prices so that it will get more profit. Microsoft of course says no so Dell brings out the trump, Linux. If Microsoft doesn't lower prices then Dell gains a free OS and Dell wins. If Microsoft says yes, Dell gains more money and Microsoft starts to decline but Windows moves ever closer to extinction.
You never know though, Microsoft may give away copies of Windows and start providing tech support if Dell wants them to, simply to maintain their monopoly. All the while Windows turns even more commodity as Linux gets better and the same with the Mac OS.
Michael Dell is a smart man and he will be conniving when the time comes.
Apple pushed to get OS X released to the public and so they followed the belief of "make it work then optimise". Today we can see the fruits.
An example of this is Quartz. Quartz basically had all the components you needed in 10.0 to do some great on screen rendering and it was reasonably fast. Through each iteration of Mac OS X though it has improved. In 10.1 the speed of the code was improved. In 10.2 we had partial acceleration via the GPU. In 10.3 more optimising. In 10.4 we can see they have completely pulled apart sections of Quartz and rewritten it as well as buffering it all onto the graphics card. That is but one example though, there are plenty of others.
On the other hand, apps like iPhoto and GarageBand were really sluggish and the system reflected that. Mac users cried foul and now you have iPhoto 5 which is blazingly fast and literally all the apps have been following that trend. I know as a developer myself I spend a good 20-30% of my time optimising code simply so users get the speed that they are now used to. It's good, we needed it, especially when we were stuck on the G4's. Now with the G5's it's just icing on the cake.
5.5g for the Falcon I is fine as it only launches satellites. Have you seen the diagrams for the Falcon V though? It is a much larger rocket and has a much larger first stage that I can only assume holds more propellant.
Not really, check my website out. Apple supports our recovery software because we provide a service that they need. iPodDownload did not and it also broke the end user license agreement in the iTunes SDK.
Do you really think that little details like that can stop Steve's rage?
Well as Steve wasn't actually working there, he would probably be more annoyed that those guys weren't sneaking into his corporate headquarters and writing code for NeXTStep. It probably would have doubled the number of computers he sold, which really wouldn't have been all that hard.
From memory the pilot will be allowed to take naps on the flight. The aim with the jet was to allow it to fly high enough that it could reach the jet stream which would also take it over most of the turbulence. This will allow him to take naps of potentially up to an hour and if there is an issue that he needs to take care of, mission control will easily be able to wake him.
I hate to reply to my own posts, but did a Slashdot editor look at this? Not only was there the spelling error, "Price" but there was the complete and utter factual mistake with Fosset being named as the creator of SpaceShipOne. You would think that Burt Rutan would also be a household name on Slashdot, did Timothy even read it before posting it?
We all remember Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world in 1986 on one tank of gas. Now Voyager builder Burt Rutan plans to do it solo with the jet powered GlobalFlyer. This is the same Burt Rutan who also built the X Price Winner SpaceShipOne. See also New York Times article about it (registration required). The idea of the solo flight according to this story originated with the Voyager pilot Dick Rutan.
Please fact check your articles before posting.
The only problem with doing a copy like that is that it doesn't bring across your playlists, play counts or ratings. Also, songs that are.wav's do not have their meta data brought across as they cannot contain any.
Neither of the programs listed in the article seem to do either, and as a developer of this exact type of software, I know how valuable it can be.
Here are some of the options I find worthy (Mac OS X only):
- iPodRip - I wrote this, so it is a plug for me. Recovers everything. Ten unrestricted uses, so feel free to download it, recover and delete it.
- PodWorks - Cheaper than iPodRip but it contains restrictions. Does not recover all meta data.
- Senuti - Does not recover playlists or any meta data. Free, although if you wanted to recover for free, simply use iPodRip and throw it away.
In the end for most users it is all about ease of use and trust. You can't ask the developer of terminal or the Unix command line for assistance, but you can ask the developer of an application. You also may not feel safe in a CLI, where as a GUI can provide that comfort zone. Those apps only require a single button press and that gives users peace of mind.
Slashdot Mirror
It's all about the money.
Pretty and well thought out != cheap
Having used .Net and Cocoa I can say that I much prefer Cocoa and its integration with the Mac OS, but that's beside the point.
Macintosh users care about applications that work well on their platform. Things like Applescript support and user interface guidelines mean something to a lot of users. Emulated Windows applications will not have that and that means that a lot of Mac OS users will reject the application just from the screenshots.
My bet is that there will continue to be more Cocoa developers producing outstanding shareware and keeping the market very healthy. If things start going backwards, look for the Cocoa frameworks to reappear on Windows.
and now I have this image of the Queen rocking out in some sort of a shuffle-type fashion in my head
Don't imagine it, live it.
It's nowhere near the situation
If "good enough" is fine by you then I hope you don't become used to it because good enough can turn bad really fast, especially with your current government in control.
not totally morally corrupt
I am Australian and everyday I see the US becoming more and more of an exact copy of the US. Did you see some of the DMCA act get passed with the Free Trade Agreement? I did and it disgusted me. Expect parts of the Patriot Act to follow, there is nothing that Howard and Co. enjoy more than sucking up to the American president and his draconian laws.
So, US government is either too dumb for words or wants to be like Big Brother. Don't know which of the two is more scary.
Too late, the US government is already Big Brother and at the controls of this machine is someone too dumb for words, your President.
"You now have 9 gear changes left before you need to re-register your copies of MS CarWindows 2009 SP4".
Download, burn, rip, no DRM.
In all seriousness though the RIAA are making positive steps by allowing people to download music online. Do we really want to take steps back and move to physical media again? Of course not. Angering them like this is only going to make them want to retreat into their shell some more rather than "Thinking Differently" and perhaps working out that DRM is a bad idea.
This is obviously a rather well known thing but the ultimate form of advertising is word of mouth. Once you have the product, and a product that people will want, appreciate and purchase, they _will_ tell their friends.
There is one area you can go wrong though and that is by being impatient. Word of mouth will not bring about results immediately. Normal (read expensive) advertising will, but it is not guaranteed that your product is ready to be advertised. Word of mouth will only spread when the product is ready so while you are waiting you can tune and perfect your product and delivery methods.
Two quick examples are Google and Panic. Google of course appeared simply because people told each other. Phrases like "I will be right back, just Googling it" are what you want to hear. Panic, a Mac shareware house and a very successful one at that, have never advertised but their devoted fanbase is only too happy to advertise for them.
In Bizzarro Apple Land, only rich, Blaupunkt-owning, BMW-driving hipsters would be allowed to compute
So like the target market of the Mac mini?
developers would be expected to grovel for the supreme privilege of creating apps for the One True Operating System
So those free developer tools?
Businesses in non-sexy segments would be denied licenses
So like super computing?
I think you are basing your ideas off the Apple of old run not by dreamers but by boring businessmen. Apple has and is changing and at quite a rapid rate. They want everyone to experience and enjoy their products, a quick look at the drop in prices of all their product lines would indicate that. Not to mention of course that Mac OS X is the most accessible operating system out there now, no funky 3D interface, not strange and bizarre "elite" windowing system just plain system Desktop metaphor with reasonable consistency for joe user.
As a Macintosh developer I strive to produce consistency in my applications for Mac OS X as do most other small/medium sized developers. This consistency, from Transmit to OmniGraffle to NewsFire, allows me to learn an app quickly and interact with it at the speed of thought without having to work around the GUI nonsense that plagued me back on Windows.
As for Linux, I think the only thing holding it back is that consistency. Many apps have different widgets, there is no QA to work out how to make tasks flow into each other and no one spends the time to say "hey, you should do it this way as that's the way $insertWindowManager says it should be done". I think egos do get in the road when it comes to ease of use whereas in a corporation there is a focus to make it simple and easy for the user, well Apple based corporation. Linux should copy Apple not Micorosoft. OpenOffice should not be a hodgepodge like Word, it should be simple and effective like Pages.
Don't get me started on Microsoft...
As Dell continues to take over the entire market it will become the key to Microsoft's life or death.
:)
Picture this if you will. Dell ends up with 60-70% market share and it starts to stagnate. As a company it wants profits so it pesters Microsoft to lower prices so that it will get more profit. Microsoft of course says no so Dell brings out the trump, Linux. If Microsoft doesn't lower prices then Dell gains a free OS and Dell wins. If Microsoft says yes, Dell gains more money and Microsoft starts to decline but Windows moves ever closer to extinction.
You never know though, Microsoft may give away copies of Windows and start providing tech support if Dell wants them to, simply to maintain their monopoly. All the while Windows turns even more commodity as Linux gets better and the same with the Mac OS.
Michael Dell is a smart man and he will be conniving when the time comes.
My 2c if anyone wants it.
I think it's a bit of both.
Apple pushed to get OS X released to the public and so they followed the belief of "make it work then optimise". Today we can see the fruits.
An example of this is Quartz. Quartz basically had all the components you needed in 10.0 to do some great on screen rendering and it was reasonably fast. Through each iteration of Mac OS X though it has improved. In 10.1 the speed of the code was improved. In 10.2 we had partial acceleration via the GPU. In 10.3 more optimising. In 10.4 we can see they have completely pulled apart sections of Quartz and rewritten it as well as buffering it all onto the graphics card. That is but one example though, there are plenty of others.
On the other hand, apps like iPhoto and GarageBand were really sluggish and the system reflected that. Mac users cried foul and now you have iPhoto 5 which is blazingly fast and literally all the apps have been following that trend. I know as a developer myself I spend a good 20-30% of my time optimising code simply so users get the speed that they are now used to. It's good, we needed it, especially when we were stuck on the G4's. Now with the G5's it's just icing on the cake.
5.5g for the Falcon I is fine as it only launches satellites. Have you seen the diagrams for the Falcon V though? It is a much larger rocket and has a much larger first stage that I can only assume holds more propellant.
I did not get the beachball of death but a similar and expected result with the ActiveX plugin.
Not really, check my website out. Apple supports our recovery software because we provide a service that they need. iPodDownload did not and it also broke the end user license agreement in the iTunes SDK.
Do you really think that little details like that can stop Steve's rage?
Well as Steve wasn't actually working there, he would probably be more annoyed that those guys weren't sneaking into his corporate headquarters and writing code for NeXTStep. It probably would have doubled the number of computers he sold, which really wouldn't have been all that hard.
From memory the pilot will be allowed to take naps on the flight. The aim with the jet was to allow it to fly high enough that it could reach the jet stream which would also take it over most of the turbulence. This will allow him to take naps of potentially up to an hour and if there is an issue that he needs to take care of, mission control will easily be able to wake him.
I hate to reply to my own posts, but did a Slashdot editor look at this? Not only was there the spelling error, "Price" but there was the complete and utter factual mistake with Fosset being named as the creator of SpaceShipOne. You would think that Burt Rutan would also be a household name on Slashdot, did Timothy even read it before posting it?
Sorry mate, missed that one. Fortunately this article was not a dupe otherwise we could have had a field day.
We all remember Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world in 1986 on one tank of gas. Now Voyager builder Burt Rutan plans to do it solo with the jet powered GlobalFlyer. This is the same Burt Rutan who also built the X Price Winner SpaceShipOne. See also New York Times article about it (registration required). The idea of the solo flight according to this story originated with the Voyager pilot Dick Rutan. Please fact check your articles before posting.
Isn't that thanks for paying?
...and I wouldn't go around biting that either. :)
Frankly, how is this funny? It's scary to think you can laugh at something to serious.
The only problem with doing a copy like that is that it doesn't bring across your playlists, play counts or ratings. Also, songs that are .wav's do not have their meta data brought across as they cannot contain any.
Neither of the programs listed in the article seem to do either, and as a developer of this exact type of software, I know how valuable it can be.
Here are some of the options I find worthy (Mac OS X only):
- iPodRip - I wrote this, so it is a plug for me. Recovers everything. Ten unrestricted uses, so feel free to download it, recover and delete it.
- PodWorks - Cheaper than iPodRip but it contains restrictions. Does not recover all meta data.
- Senuti - Does not recover playlists or any meta data. Free, although if you wanted to recover for free, simply use iPodRip and throw it away.
In the end for most users it is all about ease of use and trust. You can't ask the developer of terminal or the Unix command line for assistance, but you can ask the developer of an application. You also may not feel safe in a CLI, where as a GUI can provide that comfort zone. Those apps only require a single button press and that gives users peace of mind.