WWDC2k5 and ROI
WWDC2k5 and ROI
- Subject: WWDC2k5 and ROI
- From: Joseph Graham <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 11:33:58 -0600
Hello,
Sorry if this is Off-Topic but I am trying to invoke a technical as well as
business discussion here.
Have been wanting to throw out a few observations about the WWDC and Apple's
plans for Return on Investment for Cocoa developers. With respect to the
WWDC it appears they are really pushing "Tiger APIs", bringing out the chief
engineers, hands-on labs etc..
In my humble opinion this is really great. My attempt at Cocoa development
has found the platform incredibly productive. But I think that Cocoa is a
steep learning curve to many veteran IT developers who are not versed in
ObjC. Also Cocoa is still not "portable" because of licensing issues
associated with desktop applications development on WO. This is also to say
that even if there weren't any such issues it is extremely unlikely Apple
would even consider maintaining the Cocoa APIs on other platforms.
I know that other platforms and technologies such as Mono, Ruby, J2SE, and
PHP are actively embracing other operating systems and platforms (i.e. Web,
desktop, mobile, handheld). I know these technologies are mostly available
for OSX and they are not mutually exclusive. I think that by adopting these
technologies for development projects have relatively massive ROI because of
deployment scenarios available. I am not trying to introduce arguments
about "debugging everywhere" et. Al. rather I am saying that this gives
stakeholders options to control their deployment costs (i.e. Licensing
platform technologies and related contributions).
So my main question is what is Apple's ROI plan for Cocoa? Why would anyone
put forth a huge investment in Cocoa such as massive Cocoa-Native projects?
Every large application I have seen from Macromedia to Alias uses J2SE or
Carbon bridging technologies. I know they are rolling out amazing new and
highly productive new Cocoa APIs such as Spotlight and their new multimedia
libraries. What is Apple serving to protect by not releasing their Cocoa
technologies to the open source community why other technologies continue to
evolve and reap the massive benefits? There are already so many open source
multimedia APIs and even searching/indexing APIs that have liberal open
source licenses that even my first choice wouldn't be Cocoa if I knew I
could deploy the application elsewhere. How does Apple quantify
"productivity benefits" vs. keeping their technologies closed? What about
the would-be Linux and uSoft migrators who still have an investment in those
platforms seeking new, more productive technologies?
This also brings about other questions such as is Apple only seeking to
maintain its foothold in the multimedia and film industry niche? Shouldn't
they offer a technology migration plan that serves the financial interests
of those making the biggest investment of all which is adopting a new
platform? What is Apple serving to protect by keeping Cocoa a closed
technology? (Quartz?) Why couldn't Cocoa and projects such as GNUStep
"converge" at some point?
** DISCLAIMER **
This is not an attempt to start inflamed discussions nor is this an attempt
to degrade any technology or approach. Correspondence involving marketing
approaches, historical and technical reasoning, for adopting Cocoa for
desktop applications development are most welcome. Citations from Apple's
marketing and business research division are even more welcome.
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