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Are Third Developers Leaving the MAC?

eclipse525

eclipse525

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 5, 2003
854
4
USA, New York
With all the new software from Apple in recent years. Titles such as Final Cut Pro, Safari, Keynote, etc. Do you see more and more developers(mainstream)leaving the Mac platform. What do you think is Apple's strategy for the mass market? I have no clue and it doesn't look good. Just some thougts.


~e
 
Quite the opposite is happening. The open source movement has increased software developers interest in the Mac.

Thanks to projects like XonX, XFree86 and Fink, Unix programmers are becomming quite interested in the Mac.
 
Isn't Linux the open source of choice. I'm constantly reading how much momentum Linux has but never hear much about Unix/OS X open source. Perhaps I'm just interpreting it wrong. I hope so.<LOL>
 
I don't think Linux will ever be a widely viable alternative for consumers or even for the enterprise desktop. Linux showed up to the party too late. Even at this point, it's difficult to find drivers for common hardware.
 
Originally posted by Daveman Deluxe
I don't think Linux will ever be a widely viable alternative for consumers or even for the enterprise desktop. Linux showed up to the party too late. Even at this point, it's difficult to find drivers for common hardware.
Click to expand...

I agree. I think Linux will do good when it is someplace where geeks can customize/tweak it, but as a daily use OS for the typical computer user it has a long way to come.


Lethal
 
Originally posted by Daveman Deluxe
It's difficult to find drivers for common hardware.
Click to expand...

i dunno man - i installed Mandrake 9 on my peecee and it set up and installed ALL my hardware correctly without me even having to lift a finger. XP Pro found problems with:

My network card
My modem
My graphics card
AND (get this) my M$ Intellimouse Optical.

It was so unbelievably crap. For me to get the drivers for all of the above, i had to go on the net because i didn't have driver cds. I couldn't get on the net thru' my pc because my modem/ethernet weren't working, so i used my iBook and had to burn a friggin' cd with 100kb's of data on it. Waste of fudging time.

I had to install the drivers for all of the above before they worked properly.
 
Apple's intention with software branching, at least in the case of free iApps, is to encourage competition in a sector that's not developing well... No decent web browser for Mac? Make one, see what the others come up with too. Apple's one of the few companies that seems to invite competition like this, knowing that it helps them develop their products as much as it gives consumers a choice. 3rd party developers seem to be increasing in a lot of places, there are days on versiontracker that it seems like half the titles are developers first foray into Mac...

pnw
 
Originally posted by eclipse525
Isn't Linux the open source of choice. I'm constantly reading how much momentum Linux has but never hear much about Unix/OS X open source. Perhaps I'm just interpreting it wrong. I hope so.<LOL>
Click to expand...


You'll find among other Mac OS X links, many links to open source sites for Mac OS X on my webpage:

http://www.macmaps.com/macx.php
 
I hardly think 3rd party devs are leaving, I think were getting more and more.

We have a huge base of cocoa devs, with cocoa being so great to work with. We have unix developers and all those coming from linux and unix. And also Java developers who love Mac OS X and Java.

I think the developer list is great
 
many 3rd party developers are coming. its just apple has stepped on some toes, but thats only because they felt they could do it better and honestly they do. keynote, safari, final cut and much much more. its just apple shouldnt get to carried away, just encourage more development. just like with ichat. instead of apple making there own little ichat .mac only, they worked with AOL on it and came out with something. and because of that pc and mac users can add .mac names the their buddy list and still be on the standard for instand messaging.

iJon
 
I agree on apple hurting developers. They hurt audion (panic) with itunes. They hurt Power-on software with ical. they hurt M$ with Safari. They like stepping on toes but if apple products are better ( in this case they are) then so be it, its a small price to pay
 
Originally posted by mac15
I agree on apple hurting developers. They hurt audion (panic) with itunes. They hurt Power-on software with ical. they hurt M$ with Safari. They like stepping on toes but if apple products are better ( in this case they are) then so be it, its a small price to pay
Click to expand...
Umm how did they hurt M$ with Safari? As I recall IE is a free application.

Although if they had hurt M$, that would be a good thing in my opinion.
 
Originally posted by mac15
I agree on apple hurting developers. They hurt audion (panic) with itunes. They hurt Power-on software with ical. they hurt M$ with Safari. They like stepping on toes but if apple products are better ( in this case they are) then so be it, its a small price to pay
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, Apple needed to do all these things to position itself against Windows. iChat, iTunes, Safari, iCal, and Mail all place OS X and Windows on a level playing field because these items are essentially included in each OS. iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, and DVD player all take OS X to a higher playing field than windows (unless you're talking about Media Player addition or whatever the hell they call it).
 
Originally posted by mac15
I agree on apple hurting developers. They hurt audion (panic) with itunes. They hurt Power-on software with ical. they hurt M$ with Safari. They like stepping on toes but if apple products are better ( in this case they are) then so be it, its a small price to pay
Click to expand...


Hurting Developers is good. Competition is not for the weak.

Panic- Audion- Umm I don't want to pay for a MP3 player when Winamp has been free for years.

Power On- MUCH more features over iCal but their marketing sucks.

IE- Sucks period if it wasn't Safari it was Camino.


Apple's new campaign should be "Bad Software Sucks" of course they are also offenders with iMovie 3.0 among others. OSX has ushered in so many new apps it's unfortunate that the "Old Guard" has lost it's way. It's only going to get better with X11 and Port Manager. More and more stuff will be coming. Competition is great.

You must over function and value and you will be successful. Look at Lemke and Graphic Converter or Dan Wood. Look at those ultra hip guys at Rogue Amoeba. I got no problem seeing the companies that don't want to "earn" my business fall by the wayside.

Trust me we've Gained far more applications than we've lost ...cough...Maya.... We're sitting pretty. Apple just needs to start shipping some damn boxes.
 
We've lost tons of apps that won't be missed for the most part.

The boon of geek apps is great if you're a geek, but not if you're a basic consumer.

While we can usually find software to "do the trick", the lack of drivers for the full range of consumer digital devices limits our choices. 3rd parties, like the makers of Vuescan, can't come to everybody's rescue.

If all the PC apps out there were available for the Mac at the same price point, I'm sure I'd buy more and be on the computer more of the time. In that case, a lack of support is a good thing.

- j
 
Here's an interesting article concerning why we should pay attention to Apple.

http://businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2003/tc2003085_7303_tc112.htm


......BUT after reading the article, I'm still stratching my head as to how the heck you can increase your market share in general. I mean....as much as I love the whole underdog/elite Mac club thing(for good reason). The ultimate goal is to increase your market share and for the very least linger in the 25%-50% realm. Is Apple or Microsoft the anwser OR is going to be some future idea from someone's basement/garage? Hmmmm..........

~e
 
Just from a Third Party Developer.

I think the Mac OS X platform at least is far and away better in terms of the number and quality of applications than Mac OS 9 was. Even looking into the enemy waters, we can see that the overall quality is still not as high over there.

We developers simply have the tools to make what we want in the shortest period of time. That means in one day I can move from an app idea into a working app and polish for a few days and release it. Its impossible to do the same with visual studio.

As for the open source stuff....we are seeing more and more wrappers over the command line geek tools that will allow the average user to access it easily. Apple again supplied us developers with the tools to do this.

As long as Cocoa is around (and man Xcode is rubbish) then we shall have no problem developing quality software for the Mac.
 
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