Jeff Massung wrote:
Most importantly, as it likely pertains to Rev and other middle-ware
developers working with Apple on their TOS:
"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of
software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in
sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.
If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools,
they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third
party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a
third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available
to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform
development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one
platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms.
Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of
features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked
from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available
on our competitor’s platforms."
Read into it what you will.
True, most Java-based apps look pretty crappy, but that's not because
Swing doesn't exist but merely because many Java developers are too lazy
to use it well.
And it's also true (at least last time I used it) that Flash is almost
entirely devoid of native-looking controls, so it's well nigh impossible
to make truly HIG-conformant apps with it unless you carefully craft
every control yourself.
But tools like Rev and even RealBASIC are used by people who care about
how well their apps conform to the GUI conventions of their target
platforms, and make a good effort to do so.
Lumping all high-level multi-platform tools together is shortsighted.
Moreover, in the vertical markets my company builds apps for, we're
pretty much the only vendor addressing the Mac at all. If not for the
cost-effectiveness of multi-platform RAD tools, there would not be a Mac
version in those categories from anyone.
Win developers simply don't bother doubling their development expense
just to gain an additional 10% market potential. We build on Mac
because we enjoy it, and subsidize it with proceeds earned from our
Windows customers.
The availability of cross-platform tools is one of the reasons the Mac
has much software at all. Can you imagine how few games there would be
if game developers didn't use their own cross-platform engines?
Mr. Jobs may prefer that the world drop their plans for viability and
write everything for OS X's 10% market share in Objective-C. But more
sober people realize that will happen on a timeline somewhere between
hell freezing and pigs flying.
In the meantime, apps built for OS X with Rev look and feel a heckuva
lot better on a Mac than Win apps running under Bootcamp.
And when one consider the cost-effectiveness of development options,
whether he recognizes it or not that's really what he's asking for
there: the continued marginalization of Apple's user base.
Moreover, in spite of his best efforts both desktop OSes and mobile OSes
are becoming increasingly commoditized. But that's a whole other thread....
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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