In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 01:39:03PM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote: > > [...] and putting a knife through developers' prospects. I imagine > he's done a good job of doing exactly that, though. > Really? > Porting doesn't seem that hard.
Is it expected that developers will just be able to cross-compile all their apps and blindly hope for the best? If developers should be testing and/or profiling their apps on the target platform, that doubles the testing and doubles the hardware required. I haven't read the porting document, but given past experiences (again, Solaris comes to mind), it does seem a bit naive to assume that porting is no problem (even if Apple's high-level interfaces "should" make it painless). Also, producing "fat" apps means larger distribution sizes. (I realise this becomes less of a problem with the increasing use of DVDs, ADSL and cable modems.) I haven't read whether there will be an inverse-Rosetta for PPC Macs, but I can't imagine it's a particularly promising idea. Again, all the same problems as transitions from 68k to PPC, OS9 to OSX, etc. The transitions are entirely plausible, but still painful, and Apple makes the pain keep on coming. For example: Apple's been rather "stupid" recently and been selling new Macs that only run Tiger, i.e. not Panther. This is a stumbling block for anywhere that uses a standard operating environment. I don't know what the resolution, if any, has been. Although, it's *plausible* that sites will make a transition from Panther to Tiger, when Tiger matures, Apple's not giving people much chance to catch their breath or lick their wounds. I can't remember what the timeline is, but surely it's a can of worms in any case.
