Re: Apple's Tools Strategy
Re: Apple's Tools Strategy
- Subject: Re: Apple's Tools Strategy
- From: Turtle Creek Software <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:27:06 -0700 (PDT)
Chris,
Wow. Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I have no doubt that
Apple is TRYING to develop great developer tools. Maybe this
can be the start of a group dialog that will help actually
create them.
Here are some random thoughts/questions:
1. Apple wouldn't need to BUY the Codewarrior source, just
license its interface code. Seems like that would be free
money for Freescale, since it wouldn't change or compete with
their existing market. So it might be a good deal for Apple.
Apple would sure get a 5-year jolt of extra loyalty from some of
us developers, if we could keep using an interface we're used
to and productive in! I suppose there might be some good
stuff in the compiler code too.
2. If the above can't happen, then just steal as much of the
CW interface as is possible, or license the "look and feel".
It would be fine to make improvements, just make sure they
are improvements that the users want!
3. I'd be happy to pay money for a better development system.
Free and mediocre is not a good deal when it reduces the
productivity of a $100K programmer. Giving them an extra 1%
translates to $1K a year, and I think a good environment does
more like 10%. An XCode Pro would generate some revenue
to keep the bean counters happy. And hey, it would make
Apple's programmers more productive too.
4. I think most great software is launched by just one person
or a small team. 100 people is fine for maintaining a mature
product, but XCode isn't to that stage yet. If you can't do #1
or #2, I'd suggest finding the rare individual(s) who can
invent a great new development environment, and give them the
space to do it. Give them some testers, then throw in the big team
afterwards to polish it.
5. Who wrote CodeWarrior 1.0?
6. Fortunately, small companies can be profitable in places where large
ones can't. So even though Apple can't turn a profit on the
next great IDE, I have faith that some smaller folks eventually will,
a la Metrowerks. However Apple could make it happen faster, and the
company does seem to have a good history of innovation. Now that OSX
is starting to get past the "extended beta" stage, it's time to give us
better tools!
7. I'd be curious what % of developers used/use PowerPlant? We would
sure appreciate having an improved version of that for OSX, so we can
concentrate on coding features within our product niche, rather than
basic system functions.
8. And as an extension of the above, being able to reduce the effort to
develop cross-platform would also be great. We actually build Mac
9/Mac X/Win versions from the same code base now, using a modified
PowerPlant. But that puts the burden on us to rewrite it for each new
OS and processor, and it seems like that would be better handled by
someone larger. Remember Bedrock?
Thanks,
Dennis Kolva
Turtle Creek Software
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