On 15 Feb 2006, at 00:35, Daniel L. Taylor wrote:
While we're at it, there are a ton of products killed by 68K -> PPC,
Toolbox -> Carbon, and OS classic -> OS X. You think Apple cared?
This hits
on a conversation I recently had with another developer where I
said that
I'm tired of building my house on sand, I want rock: standards and
API's so
stable that code I write today will run 20 years from now, and not in
"emulation" or "classic layers".
I think that's an unrealistic expectation. Computers change, chips
change, they wear out and need replacing. Expecting code to run for
20 years without change would result in a dinosaur OS (think
Windows!). This is *precisely* why Apple created OS X - the old
System had far too many legacy and outdated API's.
New chips, new computers and new OS's create more possibilities. Just
look at what Tiger can do compared with 6.0.7 for instance, or the
growth of the web, RSS, Wiki, creative commons etc all of which
didn't exist 3 years ago.
While we're at it what about hardware too? SCSI, NuBus, floppy disks.
These were all replaced by faster, better and more open successors.
I saw a post on another forum, by a guy criticising bloatware. Fair
enough. But he went on to add that he runs his business finances on
Apple II's using a program he wrote and he has no intention of
rewriting it. At which point you start wondering what planet he's on.
The most critical aspects of his business are run on 30 year old
computers which will fail one day and be irreplaceable, at which
point he and his business really will be up the creek without a
paddle...
I just can't help but laugh at this. Wait until Apple burns you on
an issue.
It doesn't happen too often. Let's see: QuickDrawGX, OpenDoc,
Newton OS,
68K, Copland, anything involving telephone API's, extensions, MPW,
numerous
Toolbox API's that are now dust, Carbon slipping behind Cocoa, PPC,
AltiVec.... I remember a very successful consultant telling me that he
admired Mac OS but wouldn't touch Apple because they had no
commitment to
legacy code and he didn't want to get burned, and this was BEFORE the
Copland fiasco!
Well okay, there's some truth to this, although there are good
reasons for a lot of them, not all Apple's fault. And how many
Windows developer's have been stuffed by MS? There's certainly all
the ones whose technology they ripped off, and paid the fine... Not
always do the best technologies win: think Betamax vs VHS for instance.
So let's see: QuickDrawGX: well good idea, but was not really
supported by printer manufacturers, and the print industry in general
is very loath to adopt new stuff. Time really is money for them and
they don't have time to wait for bug fixes etc. They had just gone
through tremendous problems getting TrueType fonts to work with their
rips and expensive imagesetters and didn't want to go through all
that again. Result: QuickDrawGX was not taken up and died.
Which leads us on to TrueType: that was developed jointly by Apple
and MS to force Adobe to publish the specs on Type 1 Postscript
fonts, which it did. So, task achieved, Apple forgot about it. MS
persevered, but in their usual way messed it up, producing bad fonts
that were buggy and incomplete...
OpenDoc: great concept, but hardly anything was written for it. And
of course the big boys didn't like it (though that was the whole
point). But how much pressure do you think was placed on a weak (at
the time) Apple by Uncle Bill, Adobe, Quark etc? Without their apps
on Mac, there would have been no MacIntel!
NewtonOS: well, that is now having a resurgence! People have written
wireless and ATA drivers for them, and modified 2100's will act as an
iPod on acid with all the stuff that stills kills Palm...
68K: well, I for one am glad I don't still use a 4Mb RAM 16MHz 68030!
Copland: well, there you go. It proved too difficult to implement on
all that amazing legacy code, hence the need for OS X...
Telephone API's: well, there's always been a problem with telephony,
as in most countries it's controlled very strictly by law. To connect
equipment to the telephone system, hardware examples have to be
submitted to testing and licensing authorities, different for each
country, even in Europe. There's a cost for that, waiting time too,
and approval can take a year to get. So that made it pretty awkward
when you release a new computer every 3 months or so...
I could go on, but you get the picture!
Tony Spencer
St Rémy de Provence (13) France
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jef Raskin, the Mac's original project leader before Steve Jobs took
the role, and the "father of the Mac": "In 1979, I specified a long
list that covered most of the things we would do with it [the Mac]
though I missed four major uses: gambling, pornography, sending spam
and spreading viruses."
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