Re: Testing universal binary one the cheap
Re: Testing universal binary one the cheap
- Subject: Re: Testing universal binary one the cheap
- From: Uli Kusterer <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:32:17 +0100
Am 21.12.2005 um 11:22 schrieb Stefan Pantos:
I'm currently developing an application for a company. The
application is to run off a CD and so cannot have updates to it. It
needs to be perfect(Or as close to, as humanly possible). I'm a
student without the financial ability to buy a Select or Premium
membership never mind a Intel Dev kit. Is there anyway I can get
access to an Intel based Mac in the UK to test my app. I'm 90% sure
it will work perfectly(The same as the PPC version bugs and all)
but I would be much happier if I could test it.
Don't bother.
The Developer Transition Kits are nowhere near what the final Intel
Macs will be like, and Apple is still working on the OS version to be
shipped with the first Intel Macs. So, even *Apple* doesn't know how
an Intel Mac will look and behave. They have been known to completely
change how Intel-Mac programs are stored in ways that broke existing
Intel-Mac applications. There's no way you can ship a working Intel-
Mac application that is guaranteed to work when the next Mac OS for
Intel pre-release comes out.
If you burn an Intel-Mac application on a CD now, it's very likely
that, by the time your users get an Intel-Mac, the ABI is so
different from the DTK's that they'll launch your app and it will
simply crash on launch. Just create a PowerPC version of your app
that they'll (hopefully) be able to run in Rosetta, and do the Intel
version when there are actual Intel-Macs.
The DTK is there to allow developers to port their applications over
while Apple is still fleshing out some details. The idea is that, by
the time the final version is available, the developers can simply
recompile their application and be able to ship a mostly-tested and
ported application out into a final round of testing. The apps you
see right now that are released as Universal Binaries are generally
tools used by developers, who don't mind getting a new version when
the ABI changes.
Finally, I don't think the NDA most developers signed when they
rented their DTKs allows them to let anyone not from their company
run code on these machines. I'm not a lawyer, but don't be
disappointed if nobody steps forward to offer running your app on a
DTK. They may not want to risk getting sued over this by Apple.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
http://www.zathras.de
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