Two things that people don't often correctly perceive about Apple is how it has deliberately kept head-count down, and how it focuses very narrowly. Jobs is quoted in a 2008 Fortune interview <http:// money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/ 6.html> about focus:
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done." Now it's tragic when they de-focus on something you care about, like the gradual neglect of Java over the last 5 years or so. Honestly, I was in pain yesterday, reading about the Final Cut Pro guys on stage showing off rinky-dink iMovie for iPhone. But the results speak for themselves, don't they?. And so do the counter-examples: if this had been the philosophy of Sun in the 2000's, maybe we wouldn't have had any Project Darkstars or Project Looking Glasses, but maybe Sun would still exist. The reason that Apple is now the number two US company in terms of market capitalization is a perception of growth potential, and they're betting heavily on where they can grow, which is their iPhone OS devices. As a Mac owner, I'd like to see them fricking fix Snow Leopard already. As the owner of a few dozen shares, I get why they're throwing all their effort into iPhone/iPad. One last anecdote, to illustrate how they shift resources. Two years ago, I used a paid support incident to get help writing a web radio client with Core Audio (this is back before I had any idea what the hell I was doing with CA, or how anything in the C-based Core Foundation library worked). I got an initial response, and then nothing for like two months. I met up with the ADC support engineer at WWDC, and he apologized, saying that he and many other _support_engineers_ had been pulled off of support and added to the iPhone OS dev team to get iPhone 2.0 (the first one to support third- party apps) out the door. [Small world, BTW: this guy is now my co- author on the long-overdue Core Audio book] So that should tell you something about Apple's tight staffing, and their willingness to put all resources in one bucket. And it should be a reminder to not use a paid ADC support incident in the Spring. But silly me, I did another one this Spring, to get help with background install and startup of daemon processes, and after an initial ack from a support engineer... total silence. Bet you he's been cranking on iOS 4 all this time. --Chris On Jun 7, 8:13 pm, Michael Neale <[email protected]> wrote: > I remember back to the old "no java 6 for OS-X ZOMG !" days fondly. > But it seems OS-X isn't being neglected by apple for java so much as > just in general. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
