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Re: Is Carbon Viable?


On Jun 28, 2007, at 3:28 PM, Tim Jones wrote:

On Jun 27, 2007, at 11:53 AM, Florian Dejako wrote:

On Jun 15, 2007, at 4:42 PM, Laurence Harris wrote:

[...] So now you can't just attend their church on Sundays, you have to give away all your possessions and move to their compound to be among the faithful.

Larry

To anyone reading this at Apple: Just because the number of people posting on this discussion list is relatively small, that doesn't mean that the number of people affected by your decision to axe Carbon isn't much, much higher.

I keep seeing comments like this and I don't understand them. In my discussions with Apple, the worst that I see is that Carbon isn't going to be 64 bit. At no time has anyone said that it's been given the "axe". Aside from supposition, does anyone have firm statements from Apple that Carbon is going away?

I'm seriously confused as how this has become such a hot-button. 

A few reasons:

- Some people really need 64-bit support to keep their Mac products competitive. Without it they'll probably kill their Mac products and tell the people who need their product to switch to Windows where they already have a 64-bit version.

- The lack of 64-bit support is not the only fuel feeding this fire. Apple also stated their intention to focus their engineering efforts on Cocoa, not Carbon. That, combined with the lack of 64-bit support and past statements that new features were only going to be provided in Cocoa (which you can access from within Carbon applications) sends the clear message that Carbon is not on par with Cocoa for developing Mac OS X applications. Cross-platform frameworks will switch to Cocoa or stop being supported, more people will choose Cocoa for new development, some cross-platform applications will lose their Mac versions, and the end result will be a further decrease in the number of developers using Carbon. Vicious cycles being what they are, this will give the powers that be at Apple even more reason to cut resources for Carbon until one day a few years down the road they decide to deprecate it and then discontinue supporting it.

- Carbon won't be going away any time soon because too many important applications are currently Carbon, but don't be surprised if in Leopard+1 there are new features Cocoa applications can incorporate but Carbon applications can't. For example, suppose they introduce a new style of window, or toolbars with variable heights instead of just two sizes, or any of a number of other features that won't be available to Carbon applications. Your application will still work, but it will gradually look more and more dated. Also, bugs in Carbon will likely get less priority, so a bug that might get fixed if it were in Cocoa won't get fixed in Carbon. (I think this has already been the case for a long time with Interface Builder.) Developer: "Feature A doesn't work. Please fix." Apple: "Switch to Cocoa."

- Part of the reason it's generated so much hostility is that it represents a complete reversal of what Apple promised at WWDC 2006 and have been telling developers right up until WWDC 2007. A number of people -- including a few posting here -- have invested a lot of time and energy preparing their code for the move to 64-bit only to be told "Oh, by the way, we changed our mind on that 64-bit Carbon thing."

I am not privy to what's going on inside Apple, but all of this seems to be pretty obvious based on what we've seen since Apple bought NeXT.

Larry
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References: 
 >Is Carbon Viable? (From: Rick Mann <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: "Tom Saxton" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: "stephen joseph butler" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: "Steve Mills" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: "stephen joseph butler" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: "Demian M. Nave" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Steve Christensen <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Rick Mann <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Steve Christensen <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Laurence Harris <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Tony Scaminaci <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Peter Lau <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Laurence Harris <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Florian Dejako <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Is Carbon Viable? (From: Tim Jones <email@hidden>)



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