expanding the universe
Last night, I popped into MacRumors to see what's up. There's nothing new and exciting there: rumours about potential new iTunes content, rumours about the next hardware to get revved to MacTel, etc. I noticed that they picked up on Adobe's recent FAQ about the MacTel conversion, wherein Adobe states that they'll go Universal on their next release. I didn't think anything of it until I noticed the ratings for that particular posting [1] were overwhelmingly negative. Many of the comments in the thread were amazingly vitriolic, although there were a few voices of reason.
I just don't get the vitriol. Making a Universal Binary is less than trivial, especially when you're dealing with a codebase of an appreciable size. If the code isn't already in Xcode, then there's the additional (and significant) overhead of switching from [whatever they were using previously] to Xcode. This isn't a complaint about Xcode, it's just a fact of life when switching IDEs. If you're going to have to handle that kind of overhead porting code, not to mention that you've already started your development cycle for the next version, of course you're going to release the newest binaries on the next version.
On the other end of the spectrum, I've seen people in other forums starting to get worried about the size of the Universal Binaries, and complaining about the wasted disk space. Maybe I'm just lucky that I have a big hard drive. (Not to mention the terabyte of storage connected to my home server.) But that never even occurred to me as a concern for the transition to the MacTels.
The transition to MacTel is a big one. It's interesting to watch it play out, both in terms of the technical challenges and in terms of the users' expectations of the transition.
[1] If you're not aware, MacRumors allows users to rate postings, a simple binary positive or negative.
Comments
- Anonymous
February 06, 2006
I really wasn't surprised by the reactions (I don't agree with the vitriol, but I can see where they're coming from).
At WWDC Jobs stood on stage and announced a very big change. Adobe bounced up on stage immediately and said (to the best of my recollection) "What took you so long?". That set up an expectation in a lot of people's minds that Adobe is making the transition a priority.
And now, a month after Apple shipped the first Intel Mac, Adobe puts a PDF up that says they won't be releasing a universal binary for another year. That's pretty much the opposite of the expectation people had, hence the intensely negative reaction.
Compare Adobe's message with Microsoft's: MS has consistently said they're going to support the new machines and that they're working on it. They've just asked for a bit of time since it's a lot of work. A perfectly reasonable stance that hasn't garnered any flak.
Or look at Quark, I can't remember hearing anything from Quark about the transition and they've pretty much proved 'out of sight, out of mind'.
That said, it is a lot of work, and it will take them a while. But to go from "Yes! It's about time!" to "We'll release a new version in a year or so and it'll cost full price," seems like a big change in opinion. Add to that that the black helicopter crowd drawing up conspiracy theories around Lightsource and Apeture, and the 'rumourati' are going to turn on the company.
At least, that's my opinion; I might be wrong. - Anonymous
February 06, 2006
There are people who really don't get what's involved in this, for just the workflow alone, much less the actual code. - Anonymous
February 07, 2006
When this whole announcement happened everyone seemed to get all their "it's no big deal" shtick from developers working on Cocoa applications that are in their 1st and 2nd versions of the product. This kind of transition takes time and serious effort. The fact that Apple has been working on it for 5 years before announcing it I think says something about the effort required for large software systems. - Anonymous
February 07, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
February 07, 2006
To be accurate, Steve never said there wouldn't be Intel machines UNTIL June 2006. He said that the transition would start BY 2006. There's a difference.
And when it comes to killing developers, MS is far more guilty. But MS DOES take FAR better care of IT than Apple. - Anonymous
February 09, 2006
I wouldn't worry about the size of Universal binaries - someone will come up with a little app to make fat binaries thin, much like the shareware programs that became available during the PPC transition. - Anonymous
February 09, 2006
I find the comments by "eponymous coward" incredibly one-sided. Much of the API chaos occured when Apple's management was in turmoil. What do you expect? Apple isn't a sentient being, it's only as good as the people running it. Things have settled down considerably since 1997.
I also don't agree that Microsoft is somehow more "oriented" towards developers. They are more than happy to compete with third party products if it suits their business goals. The only difference is that Microsoft only has to maintain status quo. Apple's ability to thrive depends on having unique apps like Final Cut Pro, iDVD and so on.
Apple doesn't indiscriminately enter new software markets. Looking back, it's clear that they only enter markets that are underserved or markets that have apps that don't exploit the full potential of Mac OS X APIs. I think that's more than reasonable if your goal is to boost Mac OS X. Apps come and go, but all developers are better off in the long run when Mac OS X's value is increased. - Anonymous
February 10, 2006
Much of the API chaos occured when Apple's management was in turmoil. What do you expect? Apple isn't a sentient being, it's only as good as the people running it. Things have settled down considerably since 1997.
Right, which is why Adobe and Microsoft got very, very little lead time to find out about Intel.
And why we've gone from AIAT to SearchKit to Spotlight as the Official Apple Search API in the space of a few years.
Are things better? Sure- it's far better than it was a few years ago. No doubt a more successful company instead of an imploding one has helped.
As for my comment on the difference between Apple and MS on developers, I'm going to defer to Joel Spolsky here, who says it better than I can- who also points out that MS isn't as good as they once were...
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html - Anonymous
February 11, 2006
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February 13, 2006
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February 14, 2006
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February 14, 2006
Obviously Asam isn't out to make others feel loved on Valentine's Day. Le sigh. - Anonymous
February 14, 2006
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February 14, 2006
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/02/14/windows.xp.on.os.x/
that's called putting yer money where yah mouth is, that's how we Mac people solve our problems - we're waiting for various Intel Mac shipments and we'll start using them, and if your product isn't ready, we'll find several alternatives while you loose market share very rapidly - all before you even blink. - Anonymous
February 14, 2006
Who's losing market share? The contest is about dual-booting. If you want to buy a license of Windows and dual-boot your MacTel, I don't see a loss there. - Anonymous
February 14, 2006
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February 15, 2006
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February 15, 2006
Aperture isn't a competitor to Photoshop. They fill very different needs. Adobe's competitor to Aperture is Lightroom, which is currently in beta. The Lightroom beta is a universal binary, so there went your argument about losing market share because you're not already at a universal binary.
I might suggest that if you're going to try to debate, you should have some idea of the topic that you're actually debating. If you think that Aperture is a competitor to Photoshop, you don't have any idea what professionals actually do with these two applications. - Anonymous
February 15, 2006
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February 15, 2006
You need to stick to one story here. You've gone from losing market share for apps that aren't universal binaries the instant that new machines were shipped (even though Steve said during the keynote that no-one knew that they were going to make the new MacTels available at MWSF) to talking about switchers. These two arguments are almost wholly unrelated.
Mr and Mrs 2.5 Kids are unlikely to be using any Adobe products, and certainly not Photoshop. A switcher who's Joe Average User isn't going to understand the whole thing about universal binaries, so whether something is available as a universal binary isn't going to affect their decision to move to a Mac. - Anonymous
February 15, 2006
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February 15, 2006
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February 16, 2006
I figured it out, actually: Asam is really Tom Yager.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/
So, Nadyne, how's that port of .NET you're collaborating on with Apple coming along? I know the Sooper Sekrit MacBU plans are to have Office for Windows run on a Mac...you can let us all in on it now...
I especially like:
Office 2004 for Mac is a set of MacOS/Carbon CodeWarrior C++ standalone executables, legacy on legacy on legacy, all deprecated by Apple. Through some seriously heavy hauling, Microsoft manages to make this feel (mostly) like OS X software.
Because, you know, it's not like Apple considers Carbon to be a peer to Cocoa as an API set to use...except the opposite of that.
So, yeah, that's my theory- Asam = Tom Yager at Infoworld.... - Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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February 16, 2006
Maybe Yager's the 2.0 Turing upgrade to Asam's blog version of being an Eliza chatbot?