Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 00:13:42 +0200 From: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com>, fredrik@speechcraft.com Cc: jmallett@xMach.org, dscheidt@tumbolia.com, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The desktop apathy Message-ID: <p05100312b737297fd4e3@[194.78.241.123]> In-Reply-To: <20010527121833P.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> References: <20010526152631Z.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> <Pine.LNX.4.21.0105271154420.148-100000@molly.telia.com> <20010527121833P.jkh@osd.bsdi.com>
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At 12:18 PM -0700 5/27/01, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
> If you write an application to the Carbon API, for
> example, it will run on both older and newer Macs.
I'm sure that you mean it will run under both MacOS 9 with the
CarbonLib extension, and under MacOS X, as well. While certainly the
ideal, even this statement is not true -- there are a number of
Carbon apps I know of that will not run under MacOS 9 with CarbonLib.
This is certainly the goal for Carbon, but there is still much
that Apple has yet to deliver.
I do not pretend that my knowledge begins to scratch the surface
of this issue, but I have read quite extensively in every single
major English-language Mac publication I know of (plus most of the
English-language Mac websites), and this is an issue that top
developers are still complaining about.
Of course, even though Apple hasn't delivered anywhere near as
much as they need to in the way of Carbon development tools and
libraries, they're already putting extreme pressure on developers to
not only carbonize their applications, but to do so in a manner that
is more optimized for MacOS X.
On the one hand, they say that between 52% and 82% (depending on
the sector) of Mac users will switch brands to the first product that
supports carbon (thus putting a hot poker up the butt of developers,
to paraphrase one company executive). Nevermind the fact that they
still haven't delivered all the most basic tools that many developers
need, now they make the situation even worse by insisting that they
can't just do a straight (and supposedly relatively simple)
conversion, it instead has to be converted and then optimized for
MacOS X.
I've been following what is now called MacOS X for many years.
Indeed, I've been waiting seventeen years for someone to take the
full power of the Macintosh UI and put it on top of the full power of
the Unix OS, and I've seen many aborted attempts along the way
(including Apple's own previous demon-spawn, A/UX).
The future of MacOS X does look very bright, but IMO Apple has to
do everything absolutely perfectly for the next couple of years (at
least), otherwise everything goes up in smoke. While they have some
incredibly bright people and they come out with some outstanding
products (witness the original iMac, the original Blue & White
PowerMac G3, the original PowerBook, the second-generation PowerBook
G3 in its many incarnations, the new "TiBook" G4, the iBook, the new
"iceBook"), I fear that they are not perfect and that they will not
be able to sustain their success rate long enough, and they will fail.
Anyone can bat a thousand on a single pitch. However, even the
best and most prolific hitters in history haven't been able to bat a
thousand for more than a very limited period of time.
--
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be>
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