Re: Why are Xcode "updates" so friggin' big??
Re: Why are Xcode "updates" so friggin' big??
- Subject: Re: Why are Xcode "updates" so friggin' big??
- From: Laurence Harris <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 12:02:42 -0500
On Nov 2, 2006, at 11:06 AM, Sean McBride wrote:
On 2006-11-02 06:13, Andy O'Meara said:
I second that. We're all developers here, so it's not
unreasonable to
require a broadband connection.
I don't see the connection. Does a developer have to live in a 1st
World urban area?
Yes.
What about people in rural areas?
Those people are called farmers.
Okay, just kidding on the last two. ;-)
What about poorer
people that can't afford broadband? Not all "developers" work for
Fortune 500 companies in office towers with T1s.
You hardly have to work for a Fortune 500 company to have broadband,
at least not in places like the U.S, Canada, Japan, Europe and
others. Over 50% of the people with Internet access in the U.S. have
a broadband connection. People use cable modems, DSL, and even
satellite services to get broadband connectivity. I can get DSL for
$20/month, and that hardly qualifies as available only to the ultra
rich. I hear high speed cable access in Canada is even cheaper than
it is here.
Note that I'm _not_
arguing that Apple should provide delta updates, I'm just saying that
developer != rich 1st Worlder with bandwidth up the wazoo.
True, but at the same time you don't need to be rich to have
broadband in most places in the developed world.
But look, we're talking about Mac development, which means they need
a Mac, and that probably cost a few pennies too, especially one with
reasonable performance when using Xcode. Developing Mac software is a
choice, and it doesn't come with any guarantees that it will be cheap
or convenient. Does anyone remember back when people were trying to
develop with 10.0 or 10.1 on Macs running 300MHz G3s? It was awful,
painfully slow, and the most common suggestion for addressing that
was to buy a faster Mac. A Select membership is $500. A DTS incident
is $200. This isn't like shooting hoops at your local schoolyard.
Apple is primarily focused on professional developers as far as I can
tell, and professionals are expected to supply themselves with the
tools they need.
FWIW, I thought Apple in the past would do a one-time mailing of this
stuff for a minimal charge. Is that no longer the case? Or is my
memory faulty?
A delta update for Xcode would be a nightmare for both us and the
Xcode team
if you think about it.
The OS team manages somehow.
That doesn't mean it would be worth the effort for the Xcode team. As
Rosyna suggests, I think you'll find that the percentage of
developers with high speed connections is much higher than that of
the general Mac OS X user population. Furthermore, the number of
people updating their OS is significantly larger than the number of
people upgrading Xcode.
Maybe you should think of delta updates for the OS as a benefit for
paying for it. Mac OS X is a major revenue source for Apple. Xcode is
not. I 'll bet if you could talk the tools group into charging $300
for major releases of Xcode you could convince them to do delta
updates. ;-)
Larry
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