Re: Apple and Developers (was lots of different subjects)
Re: Apple and Developers (was lots of different subjects)
- Subject: Re: Apple and Developers (was lots of different subjects)
- From: Sherm Pendley <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 16:33:44 -0500
On Sunday, March 24, 2002, at 01:07 AM, Andrew R. Mitchell wrote:
all Mac developers seem to be unhappy with how they and their
respective preferences are being treated by Apple.
Please don't presume to speak for all of us. I, for one, am not at all
unhappy with Apple. This is a difficult transition, and they have a very
difficult balancing act to perform. I think they're doing as well as
could be expected, all things considered.
Besides which, it's all relative. Apple may be less than perfect - but
who isn't? Have you tried the alternatives recently? Certainly, Carbon
and Cocoa have a few issues - but would you rather be using GTK+ or even
(shudder) MFC instead? I wouldn't.
1) Tools/Languages - Clearly we all have our favorites. And we all feel
Apple is slighting us.
Again, no, we don't *all* feel that way.
3) Performance - we are all tired of seeing, and having our users see,
the now infamous spinning ball.
Again with the "we" - you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I
for one don't share it.
I have a very long history with computers. In every case where someone
has come to me saying "my computer is really slow," "my computer crashes
a lot," or something along those lines, whether they've been using some
kind of Windows, MacOS Classic, OS/X, or whatever, I've been able to
diagnose the problem and fix it.
What *I* am tired of is end users who blame the OS for all their
troubles. In my experience, in 99 cases out of 100, it's either a
configuration error, a misbehaving or badly optimized application, or a
hardware malfunction that's the cause, *not* a badly-optimized OS.
Now in all honesty it is probably impossible for Apple to bring
everything we want back, but they should make every effort to give to
the community (ie Open Source) any of the "needed" technologies that
they can't support themselves.
I'm 100% with you on that one.
5) Support - we feel
"We" again.
7) Cost - Some of us are professional developers, some of us are
hobbyists, and some of us fall somewhere in between. Apple needs to
make sure we all have the ability to make great software for the
platform. (One of my requests would be to have WWDC webcast.)
I don't understand how cost could possibly be an issue. The developer
tools are free, as is ADC membership. True, WWDC is rather expensive,
but it's hardly a necessity.
8) Respect - When it comes right down to it, this is probably the root
of most problems, we feel Apple doesn't respect us.
Quite the contrary, in fact. After more than fifteen years of costly
development tools and horrid, byzantine APIs, Apple is finally
delivering world-class development tools and an outstanding API, all for
free. It's my opinion that, after years of having no respect for
developers, Apple is finally coming around.
In his keynote at MWSF, Jobs said that what makes the computer so great
is that it enables everyone to be an author. I think that, after years
of "not getting it," Jobs is finally realizing that that applies to
developers as much as it does to writers, artists, and musicians. After
years of being the computer for "the rest of us," the Mac is finally
becoming the computer for *all* of us.
This kind of change in philosophy won't happen overnight, of course, but
the attempt is being made, and they're showing some progress. So give
'em a break already - they're trying.
While I'm sure we all made fun of Steve Ballmer's appearence at the
Microsoft Developer conference, and probably most of us laughed at the
video that later appeared (Developers, developers, developers,
developers. ...)
I'll give you the "we" on that one... I laughed my butt off... ;-)
the point is we don't see that type of enthusiasm coming from Apple.
Not that we want Apple to become Microsoft mind you.
Apple may not be talking the same kind of talk - but they're walking the
walk. They're quietly delivering where it counts, with free tools and
tons of free documentation.
MS, for all of its talk of supporting developers, still charges quite a
lot of money for their Visual Studio products. Developers, to MS, are
simply another customer segment, and Ballmer's cheerleading session was
simply another marketing ploy. MS has no more respect for the developers
who use VC++ than it does for the secretaries who use Word. Both are
just a source of revenue.
sherm--
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