Re: State of Cocoa adoption
Re: State of Cocoa adoption
- Subject: Re: State of Cocoa adoption
- From: publiclook <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:52:36 -0500
On Sunday, March 16, 2003, at 07:31 PM, Greg Titus wrote:
On Sunday, March 16, 2003, at 03:18 PM, publiclook wrote:
There has been a lot of discussion (in this thread) about projects
that aren't being done with Cocoa because of missing database access
features (EOF) and substandard tools (limited auto-text expansion in
PB).
I miss EOF. But "substandard tools" is a little much. One limited
feature does not a substandard toolset make, especially when other
parts of that toolset are best-of-breed (Interface Builder, for one
example).
I agree. I am merely pandering to the group of posts that immediately
preceded this one. When I asked these questions, the only response was
that missing EOF and lack of code completion or whatever in PB were
obstacles. Perhaps I should have quoted "substandard."
What IS the state or rate of Cocoa adoption ? What IS being done ?
I don't think anyone can answer that question authoritatively. We can
make guesses, we can treat these as survey questions and give our
individual responses, but I doubt even Apple has hard numbers.
I like survey responses :)
100% of our new development is Cocoa, if that means anything, but
coming from someone at Omni, probably not. I say new development,
because porting PC games is obviously not Cocoa work - but where it
requires new code for various pieces, we almost always write Cocoa
code.
It means something. You guys produce great products. It doesn't have
much baring on adoption rates today though because you guys adopted the
technology many years ago.
How many people are working on freeware, shareware, or traditional
commercial Cocoa software ?
There are 2,774 members of our macosx-dev mailing list at the moment,
which is almost entirely
That is a good number to know.
Cocoa focused. (See
http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-dev). Make your own
estimate of the percentage of members that aren't really working on
Cocoa software (my guess: very low), and the percentage of Cocoa
developers that don't know about or don't care to be subscribed to
that mailing list (my guess: possibly pretty high).
I don't know... I suspect that nearly everyone doing Cocoa development
knows about the Omni lists. Some other numbers: WWDC attracts about
7500 people each year, but many of the people who attend WWDC are not
software developers. Based on Amazon rankings, I guess that neither
"Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, 2nd Edition" nor "Cocoa Programming
for Mac OS X" have sold more than 6000 copies. Considering that many
newbies buy both books, that suggests a number of new developers less
than 12000. However, I think any number in the thousands is a good
sign, and 1200 thousand would be awsome!
Are custom vertical applications being written with Cocoa ? (sounds
like the answer is mostly no)
Depends on how custom and and how vertical counts in your accounting.
To take last year's Apple Design Award winners as examples: is
animation a vertical market (Toon Boom Studio), is salon and spa
management (STX)?
Isn't Toon Boom a port from Openstep ? You make a good point though.
We are or have done consulting work on a couple of custom vertical
apps that are quite a bit narrower niche than these two examples, but
they aren't public. (But then, we did the development on STX, so again
we may be the exception.)
Out of curiosity, is STX a database application ?
Are games being written with Cocoa ?
Freeware and shareware games, sure. Just check versiontracker. Shrink
wrap games? You might find a couple of those too, but most game
developers can't afford to restrict themselves to such a small
potential market. All of our game ports link against Cocoa because
they end up having some Cocoa components. The line "written with X
framework" can really be quite blurry, especially with games, since
they nearly always sport completely custom interfaces and event
handling code.
All good to know. It is sad that shrink wrap game developers can't
afford to restrict themselves to the market for Cocoa.
What are the obstacles to using Cocoa for new projects (besides
missing EOF and limited auto-text expansion in PB) ?
Come on. Does lack of auto-text expansion in Project Builder
significantly limit your ability to use Cocoa for new projects? Are
you really saying that that might be the basis for a decision for or
against using Cocoa for some project?
I certainly hasn't been my basis for decision or even a factor at all.
I reflected the earlier posts as a concession in hopes that we wouldn't
have to keep beating that horse..
The primary obstacle has nothing to do with the technology. The
primary obstacle is market size. Doing your project in Cocoa restricts
you to selling only to those people running Mac OS X. (And yes, I
know about GnuStep. And it isn't really done (on the AppKit side) and
it doesn't significantly alter the equation here.)
Are there any substantial new projects or is the who Mac OS X
software field too mature and or stagnant for substantial new
projects ?
Anyone with a substantial new project is really unlikely to announce
it until it is near (or entirely) complete. And how could the OS X
software field possibly be "too mature" or "stagnant" when OS X itself
is so new?
Perhaps because the field is full of 800 pound competitors like
Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple ? I am not saying that is a bad thing.
Can I expect the new paradigm shifting killer-app to be a Cocoa
application ?
If anyone at all knew what the new paradigm shifting killer-app _was_
they might be able to answer this question.
Is cross-platform support an issue ?
Of course. See previous comments on market size and GnuStep.
- Greg
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