[aramp]

For all those MS critics. May I just remind you that both iTunes and Finder are still Carbon applications. For about 8 years Apple was not able to convert them into Cocoa (they will, however, become Cocoa in Snow Leopard).
Of course Pages, Keynote and Numbers look pretty compared to MS Office counterparts. But go give them a real heavy-lifting. I just did a test: created a text document 1200 pages long (that is a a size of typical large product User's Guide). Try it. Copy the above article into Pages, then repeate Cmd-A, copy, Esc, Enter, Paste. The text will double itself on each step and soon you get a document large enough. Then scroll to the middle of the document and do PgUp PgDown for a while. Observe the speed. Then export as Word document, open in MS Word 2008 and do the same for a while. Feel the difference? These things does not come easy. That is about years and years of work. Besides, we are talking about Word 2008, which was just converted from CodeWarrior/PowerPC architecture to Xcode/GCC/Intel without much time for optimization. Expect it become even faster in the next release.

[digginestdogg]

"These things does not come easy. That is about years and years of work."
First, they have been working on it for years at MS and this is the best they could do.
Second, they did it for Windows so they should be able to produce a decent office suite for the Mac.
Third, Apples apps teams are much, much smaller than the Mac Office team.
Fourth, Vista sucks too. MS is just inept once they cannot cheat and strong arm competitors--they've been most successful by leveraging their monopoly not by making great software.
I didn't upgrade to Mac Office 2008 because of decreasing compatibility between Windows and Mac Office suites. This is not an accidental occurrence. Apologize all you want for MS--few of us buy it.

[aramp]

First of all, MS Office 2008 if by far the best office suite for Mac. Neither OpenOffice, nor even iWork come close.

Secondly, MS Office for Windows is by far the best office suite in the world.

Vista fault has nothing to do with MS Office. These products are developed by totally different teams that just happen to work in the same company.Mac BU team is not the largest in Microsoft, but is not the small team at all. It is quite large, actually, as large as many rather known companies. Besides, when blaming MS for Vista, recall AppleTV version 1. That was a terrible failure. Any company may sometimes make big mistakes.

I think I know why my opinion differs from yours. I know people in Microsoft (I happen to have a several people working in different teams in MS). I am also leading software products development as my main job, so I can compare. With all the hickups Microsoft has avery strong teams and very good product development culture.They have to improve on strategy, move away from some of the old stamps and get better in talking to the community. From what I can see they are trying hard.

[webraider]

MorrisTheCat said:

Word only takes 10 seconds to come up for you? Consider yourself lucky! In the time it often takes me to open Word, I can launch Pages and create and save a new document, and Word would still be loading.

Quote

I don't know what the deal is with Word. Excel isn't as bad, but Word feels like a drugged sloth.

I agree with you as far as loading is concerned. It takes about 15-20 seconds before I can start using word. It will load in about 2-5 seconds, but then the cursor freezed for like 10 seconds. When I see it flashing, I know it's finally ready to use.

I know this complaint is 10 years old but to me there is No excuse good enough for Microsoft to get rid of Access. Legacy code doesn't do it for me. It can be ported.. they just don't wan to.

[Steve_S]

robco said:

Um, OS X has been in development for over fifteen years. Bear in mind that it began its life as NEXTStep in the company Steve founded after being unceremoniously booted from 1 Infinite Loop. And even then, it's based heavily on BSD. Obj-C was also in development before then.

Yes, both Apple and Microsoft have a mountain of legacy code to maintain. What's your point?

>Quite a bit of technology such as Quartz (Display PostScript) is licensed.

You're trying to list all of Apple's technologies and trying to diminish Apple's involvement in them by suggesting Apple doesn't really have to do any work to make OS X work or to migrate it to another platform. You're off base. Yes, Apple does use many open source technologies. The difference between Apple and someone like Microsoft is that Apple openly admits it. (Take NT's TCP/IP networking for example). Also, Quartz is not the same as Display Postscript. As I understand, Apple no longer wanted to pay the license fee to Adobe for Display Postscript, so they reverse engineered it and took it much further. Likewise, it's a bit disingenuous to categorize Quartz as something Apple has to license. I don't believe that's the case. If you're aware of something to the contrary, I'd like to read about it.

Quote

And as Apple admitted, they'd been compiling OS X on alternate platforms (Intel) for years. Apple had a lot of work done for them - they didn't rewrite OS X in a few years - far from it - it's been in the works for quite some time. This is not a bad thing.

You also don't know how much Apple had done in advance regarding the Intel transition. Also, you've severely trivialized Apple's contribution with OS X as a complete operating system. XNU <> BSD. On top of that, there are layers of frameworks and APIs that you fail to mention in order to somehow make a point.

Quote

The problem is that OS X is a completely different OS than OS 9 and it takes a while to completely rewrite a codebase that's million of lines long. Not to mention that messing with working code gives more than ample opportunity to introduce new bugs. All I'm saying is that companies like Adobe and Apple who have supported the Mac from the start have a lot of legacy code. First it was moving to PPC. Then to OS X. By the time they'd migrated using Carbon, it was time to throw that out and use Cocoa - and new development tools - to make the transition to Intel. That is an awful lot of work.

Yes, it is a lot of work, but lets be honest here. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe had the choice of biting the bullet right up front and port to Cocoa for OS X, or take the easier path up front (doing Carbon ports) and delaying the move to Cocoa to a later date. It's a pay me now or pay me later situation. Carbon only exists on OS X because Adobe and Microsoft pressured Apple into such a temporary solution. In the mean time, Apple has had to maintain two different frameworks for each OS update. That's a lot of additional and unnecessary work for Apple that you fail to mention.

Quote

It also doesn't help that Apple is extremely secretive and hence developers had no advance warning that many of these major platform changes were coming. Apple accelerated the Intel timetable by six months.

If Apple were only a software company, this would be a legitimate gripe. Unfortunately, Apple makes it's living by selling hardware. The moment Apple announces a move to Intel, sales of PPC suffer. Apple knew this would happen. Yet, people like you act surprised when Apple moves the timetable up in order to keep making money.

Quote

Apple changes the rules of the game at the last minute - oops, no Carbon 64-bit - so no 64-bit Photoshop for the Mac.

Which was the right decision to make, but I'd agree Apple should have made that decision sooner and communicated it accordingly. This is the only way to possibly hope for a consolidation of frameworks. In the long run, this will be better for the platform.

Keep in mind, if companies like Microsoft and Adobe followed Apple's guidelines (hint, wink, etc.) and moved to Cocoa much earlier in the process and moved to XCode from CodeWarrior, etc. the move to Intel would have been trivial, just as the move to 64bit would have been much easier. Again, Microsoft and Adobe chose to take the long and painful path as opposed to biting the bullet right up front. There is nothing wrong with such choices, except that they sort of lose the right to complain about the changes Apple is making along the way.

Undoubtedly MS and Adobe are moving toward Cocoa - their new products are Cocoa. But retooling a huge, complex app to run reliably on a completely new OS and platform isn't easy. Cut them a little slack.

No doubt, it's a huge effort. However, the move to Cocoa was inevitable. My lack of sympathy comes from the fact that I believe both Adobe and Microsoft knew this. They forced Apple to support multiple frameworks, but they had to know this would eventually come back and bite them in the end. Had they made the move right up front, the initial release of native OS X software would have been delayed. But, it's not as if their products wouldn't have worked under emulation in the interim.

[Steve_S]

aramp said:

For all those MS critics. May I just remind you that both iTunes and Finder are still Carbon applications. For about 8 years Apple was not able to convert them into Cocoa (they will, however, become Cocoa in Snow Leopard).

In Apple's own words, this was done to demonstrate that "Apple eats it's own dog food". This was not done because it was easier for Apple, etc. It was done as a demonstration of commitment to developers that Carbon would have equal footing on OS X, at least initially. Now, many years have passed, it's time to start move on and consolidate the frameworks.

[Steve_S]

aramp said:

First of all, MS Office 2008 if by far the best office suite for Mac. Neither OpenOffice, nor even iWork come close.

My biggest criticism for OpenOffice would be the interface. However, functionally, it is equivalent to MS Office. On the Mac side, it may even be more functional than Office 2008 due to the lack of VBScript support. As for iWork, that was intended to be a replacement for Appleworks, not really to be a direct competitor to MS Office. Yet, Keynote is better than Powerpoint. In many respects Word 2008 was playing catch up to Pages with respect to page layout capabilities. As a general word processor, Word is more "full featured". Excel is definitely better than Numbers, but that should be expected for a 1.0 product. Honestly, I don't get the impression that Apple is really putting much effort into iWork. For Microsoft, that should be embarrassing considering the functional differences between the two products aren't nearly as great as you may think. iWork doesn't have a database, but then, neither does the Mac version of MS Office.

Quote

Secondly, MS Office for Windows is by far the best office suite in the world.

Fine. But, how does that justify the size of the Mac business unit? Isn't that what this discussion was about?

Quote

Vista fault has nothing to do with MS Office. These products are developed by totally different teams that just happen to work in the same company.

Agreed. But, it has everything to do with Microsoft as a whole. This includes corporate culture, project planning methodologies, leadership, etc.

>Besides, when blaming MS for Vista, recall AppleTV version 1. That was a terrible failure. Any company may sometimes make big mistakes.

AppleTV, even version 1 isn't exactly a terrible product. It's just not the product I'm looking for. There is a difference. Also, why are you comparing software products to hardware products? Has there been any "media extender" product to take the market by storm? No. Likewise, your point is moot.

Quote

I think I know why my opinion differs from yours. I know people in Microsoft (I happen to have a several people working in different teams in MS). I am also leading software products development as my main job, so I can compare.

I know you weren't responding to me directly, but I also manage large IT projects and understand the work effort is generally not realized by others. However, that doesn't mean companies aren't responsible for what they do or do not deliver as compared to their competition. Microsoft brags about being the largest Mac software developer outside of Apple. That's all well and good, but that would only mean something if Microsoft's output of products for the Mac community were proportional to that claim. That's not even close to being the case. Take Adobe for example. They have an extremely large code base to support, more products with apparently less Mac staff than Microsoft.

>With all the hickups Microsoft has avery strong teams and very good product development culture.They have to improve on strategy, move away from some of the old stamps and get better in talking to the community. From what I can see they are trying hard.

Look, I wish them well and don't disagree that they are trying hard. We all want them to be successful and produce great Mac products. That said, Office 2008 was a disappointment for power users as they dropped support for VBScript. When you combine this with the fact that the Mac business unit isn't spending time supporting freebies like IE for the Mac or Outlook Express, etc. one has to ask, what the heck ARE they doing with all of those Mac based developers? Again, I look at iWork which seems to be a relatively small work effort for Apple and wonder what Microsoft is doing. I also wonder if it's worth buying Office in the future. Microsoft claims to be working on bringing VBScript support back. That's good news, because, after a few more revisions of iWork, that might be the only reason to justify buying Office for the Mac.

[robco]

{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}Yes, both Apple and Microsoft have a mountain of legacy code to maintain. What's your point?{quote}The point being that it's not always easy to rewrite mountains of legacy code while simultaneously introducing new features into the product.
{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}You're trying to list all of Apple's technologies and trying to diminish Apple's involvement in them by suggesting Apple doesn't really have to do any work to make OS X work or to migrate it to another platform. You're off base. Yes, Apple does use many open source technologies. The difference between Apple and someone like Microsoft is that Apple openly admits it. (Take NT's TCP/IP networking for example). Also, Quartz is not the same as Display Postscript. As I understand, Apple no longer wanted to pay the license fee to Adobe for Display Postscript, so they reverse engineered it and took it much further. Likewise, it's a bit disingenuous to categorize Quartz as something Apple has to license. I don't believe that's the case. If you're aware of something to the contrary, I'd like to read about it.{quote}Not at all, simply pointing out that Apple doesn't do all the heavy lifting themselves. BSD and NEXTStep were originally written for Intel, Apple simply maintained that. Apple also contributes a lot back to open source. But the point is that not every piece of code or technology in Apple's software - including OS X - was written by the fine folks at 1 Infinite Loop. I was merely using Quartz as an example. It's not unusual for developers to take an existing tech and build on it. Why reinvent the wheel?
{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}You also don't know how much Apple had done in advance regarding the Intel transition. Also, you've severely trivialized Apple's contribution with OS X as a complete operating system. XNU <> BSD. On top of that, there are layers of frameworks and APIs that you fail to mention in order to somehow make a point.{quote}Again, not all is Apple technology. I'm sure they've made several optimizations and creating UBs for everything probably wasn't easy - not to mention porting their own Carbon apps. I'm not saying there weren't challenges, but it wasn't like they had to rewrite the entire OS.
{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}Yes, it is a lot of work, but lets be honest here. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe had the choice of biting the bullet right up front and port to Cocoa for OS X, or take the easier path up front (doing Carbon ports) and delaying the move to Cocoa to a later date. It's a pay me now or pay me later situation. Carbon only exists on OS X because Adobe and Microsoft pressured Apple into such a temporary solution. In the mean time, Apple has had to maintain two different frameworks for each OS update. That's a lot of additional and unnecessary work for Apple that you fail to mention.{quote}Companies like Adobe and MS also have a bottom line. It takes a lot of dev time and effort to completely rewrite millions of lines of code to support a new API framework. I also doubt it was just Adobe and MS that wanted Carbon. Carbon needed to be there otherwise there would have been zero third-party apps when OS X launched, not to mention lots of annoyed users that couldn't run any of their old apps.
{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}If Apple were only a software company, this would be a legitimate gripe. Unfortunately, Apple makes it's living by selling hardware. The moment Apple announces a move to Intel, sales of PPC suffer. Apple knew this would happen. Yet, people like you act surprised when Apple moves the timetable up in order to keep making money.{quote}The point being that even when Apple does give information, it's not accurate. Devs thought they had more time to get Intel apps out the door. Sure, Apple needs to sell hardware, but also understand that not all third-party devs can just turn on a dime after every Stevenote. The Intel transition created a lot of headaches. This is not the way to win developers over.
{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}Which was the right decision to make, but I'd agree Apple should have made that decision sooner and communicated it accordingly. This is the only way to possibly hope for a consolidation of frameworks. In the long run, this will be better for the platform.{quote}Indeed they should have decided earlier. MS is having the same issue trying to unload Win32. Too many apps depend on it though.
{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}Keep in mind, if companies like Microsoft and Adobe followed Apple's guidelines (hint, wink, etc.) and moved to Cocoa much earlier in the process and moved to XCode from CodeWarrior, etc. the move to Intel would have been trivial, just as the move to 64bit would have been much easier. Again, Microsoft and Adobe chose to take the long and painful path as opposed to biting the bullet right up front. There is nothing wrong with such choices, except that they sort of lose the right to complain about the changes Apple is making along the way.{quote}Um yeah, that's the extreme arrogance of Apple. It is not Apple that dictates Adobe or MS's production and release schedules. And you've obviously never used XCode. It's a mediocre IDE at best. Not to mention devs were told to optmize the hell out of their apps for the G4/G5 (indeed they needed to since they were so slow) and then had to rip all that out and replace it with SSE optimizations instead - again not a trivial task.

Completely switching hardware platforms while also changing tools and workflow at the same time is a nightmare - it isn't trivial either.
{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}No doubt, it's a huge effort. However, the move to Cocoa was inevitable. My lack of sympathy comes from the fact that I believe both Adobe and Microsoft knew this. They forced Apple to support multiple frameworks, but they had to know this would eventually come back and bite them in the end. Had they made the move right up front, the initial release of native OS X software would have been delayed. But, it's not as if their products wouldn't have worked under emulation in the interim.{quote}Yes, the move was inevitable, and I'm sure the move was planned. But combined with everything else, not to mention trying to keep up with new OS versions every eighteen months takes a lot of effort. It's good that Apple is taking a time out with Snow Leopard.

Adobe and Microsoft should and are moving to Cocoa. But it will take time. You don't just wave a magic wand and it's all better. Also realize that MS offers much richer tools for developers. XCode is clunky and Obj-C is a kludge. If it weren't for the fact that the Mac has come back and is selling well, many devs would likely leave the platform.

[heisetax]

But the Mac versions of MS Excel & Word needs to be feature compatable with the Windows version. Even with VB support back in there are so many features eliminated from the Mac versions of Excel & Word that much work has to be done with the Windows version or not done at all. With the words said about the Windows version having items that can be done online with Safari or the Mac version of FireFox the hope of the Mac version really being updated as it needs to be has been greatly diminished
.

[aramp]

Steve_S said:

Quote

In Apple's own words, this was done to demonstrate that "Apple eats it's own dog food". This was not done because it was easier for Apple, etc. It was done as a demonstration of commitment to developers that Carbon would have equal footing on OS X, at least initially. Now, many years have passed, it's time to start move on and consolidate the frameworks.

I would not trust Apple's own words for 100%. iTunes was bought by Apple, and was originally written for OS9. Rewriting the whole thing would delay time to market. I believe Finder was also hard to make in Cocoa, because architecturally it had to do many compatibility things and thus had to carry along a lot of code from former OS9. They ate their dogfood once, why should they have to keep it like that for another 8 years? And why choosing the key part of OS, Finder, for that? Also, Cocoa needed as much commitment from Apple as Carbon did, because if Mac OS was initially lame, then because of lack of API on the Cocoa side, not on the Carbon side.

[Steve_S]

robco said:

{quote:title=Steve_S wrote:}Yes, both Apple and Microsoft have a mountain of legacy code to maintain. What's your point?{quote}The point being that it's not always easy to rewrite mountains of legacy code while simultaneously introducing new features into the product.

Yes, agreed. But, that's simply stating the obvious and far different from your initial rant.

Quote

Not at all, simply pointing out that Apple doesn't do all the heavy lifting themselves. BSD and NEXTStep were originally written for Intel, Apple simply maintained that. Apple also contributes a lot back to open source. But the point is that not every piece of code or technology in Apple's software - including OS X - was written by the fine folks at 1 Infinite Loop. I was merely using Quartz as an example. It's not unusual for developers to take an existing tech and build on it. Why reinvent the wheel?

I don't think anyone ever said every piece of code was written by Apple. At the same time, I don't think you even understand what "heavy lifting" even means as you continue to trivialize the code Apple does maintain. Based on your characterization, even things like the file system or the rendering system are not part of the "heavy lifting" according to you. As mentioned, your use of Quartz as an example was a poor example, because Apple is not licensing technology for that. It's widely understood that Quartz was reinventing the wheel so to speak in order to avoid the licensing associated with Display Postscript. Quartz happens to do considerably more than Display Postscript did for that matter. My point is that this is just another example of you over simplifying a technology and Apple's contribution. You seem to imply that OS X is just a bunch of third party technologies slapped together with little input from Apple. Further, even when Apple did use open source technology like BSD, much of it had to be customized in order to work properly with the rest of the OS.

Quote

Again, not all is Apple technology. I'm sure they've made several optimizations and creating UBs for everything probably wasn't easy - not to mention porting their own Carbon apps. I'm not saying there weren't challenges, but it wasn't like they had to rewrite the entire OS.

No, they didn't have to write it all from scratch, but I'd wager there is very little code that could go untouched. Even the kernel was significantly modified. Just because the Cocoa APIs kept their NS naming convention, doesn't mean they weren't modified. Creating Carbon was significant work, converting to PPC was significant work, creating entirely new APIs was significant work, creating a new rendering system was significant work, transplanting the file system was significant work, etc., etc. the list could very easily go on.

Quote

Companies like Adobe and MS also have a bottom line. It takes a lot of dev time and effort to completely rewrite millions of lines of code to support a new API framework. I also doubt it was just Adobe and MS that wanted Carbon. Carbon needed to be there otherwise there would have been zero third-party apps when OS X launched, not to mention lots of annoyed users that couldn't run any of their old apps.

I disagree. Carbon was the shortest path to getting "native" applications. I do agree with that. But, honestly, if the Cocoa ports came 6 months to a year later than they did, what impact would that really have made? OS X wasn't even ready for the masses until Jaguar at least. Some would say OS X wasn't ready for prime time until the Panther release. Yes, without native apps, Apple would have to have had dual boot systems for a bit longer. It wouldn't have been the end of the world. Most apps ran fine under emulation. It wasn't ideal, but it worked well enough to carry early adopters through the transition.

Quote

Um yeah, that's the extreme arrogance of Apple. It is not Apple that dictates Adobe or MS's production and release schedules. And you've obviously never used XCode. It's a mediocre IDE at best. Not to mention devs were told to optmize the hell out of their apps for the G4/G5 (indeed they needed to since they were so slow) and then had to rip all that out and replace it with SSE optimizations instead - again not a trivial task.

Who said Apple has to dictate Adobe or MS's release schedules? Do you remember how long OS X was in development? Are you trying to tell me that developers didn't have an opportunity to learn Cocoa along the way? Sure, not everything was ready, but they had time to work with Apple. Also, I'd find it hard to believe that Apple wouldn't give Microsoft or Adobe special treatment and technical assistance if they needed it. As for XCode, yes, I've used it and no, I never said it was the best IDE. Regarding optimizations, yes, it's unfortunate for those who heavily optimized their PPC code. However, it's also obvious that not everyone heavily optimized their Intel ported code either. Heavy optimizations don't have to occur with the first release either. Just moving to native code will usually provide significant performance gains in and of itself.

Completely switching hardware platforms while also changing tools and workflow at the same time is a nightmare - it isn't trivial either.

Nobody ever said it was trivial. The point is, when you're switching to an entirely new platform, that's sort of a natural time to make that kind of a transition. Again, you either get with the program right up front, or you pay the price along the way. Neither choice is necessarily right or wrong, but once you make your choice, you live with it and stop your whining. Again, the move to Cocoa was inevitable. If you didn't see the writing on the wall, you were blind. Now, you get to play the victim to... oh, that mean Apple is so arrogant for changing hardware on us. boo hoo... If you'd followed Apple's advice along the way, the transition would have been much smoother.

Adobe and Microsoft should and are moving to Cocoa. But it will take time. You don't just wave a magic wand and it's all better. Also realize that MS offers much richer tools for developers. XCode is clunky and Obj-C is a kludge. If it weren't for the fact that the Mac has come back and is selling well, many devs would likely leave the platform.

Again, you either make the effort up front, or you stop your whining along the way. It's a choice you made. Deal with it. While XCode isn't as good as Eclipse or even Visual Studio, it's not exactly terrible either. Objective C isn't a kludge. Please explain that comment. What are you comparing it to? C (that's a kludge), C# ?

[Steve_S]

heisetax said:

But the Mac versions of MS Excel & Word needs to be feature compatable with the Windows version. Even with VB support back in there are so many features eliminated from the Mac versions of Excel & Word that much work has to be done with the Windows version or not done at all. With the words said about the Windows version having items that can be done online with Safari or the Mac version of FireFox the hope of the Mac version really being updated as it needs to be has been greatly diminished

True, but unfortunately, overall, it's probably still the best overall solution for the Mac. Didn't Ballmer say something recently which suggests Macs don't get the "real Office", etc. Yeah, Microsoft has crippled the Mac versions of their products for years, but that's sort of understandable as they are direct competitors. When Adobe does it, that's harder to accept.

[Steve_S]

aramp said:

I would not trust Apple's own words for 100%.

Generally speaking, that's probably sound advice. Though, unless you have something specific other than speculation, I'm not sure what value it adds.


>iTunes was bought by Apple, and was originally written for OS9.
Sound Jam was bought by Apple and it was reworked into iTunes 1.0 Since iTunes made its debut before OS X was released, of course it was written for OS 9.

>Rewriting the whole thing would delay time to market.
Obviously. However, at any point and time, it could have been converted.

Quote

I believe Finder was also hard to make in Cocoa, because architecturally it had to do many compatibility things and thus had to carry along a lot of code from former OS9.

Huh? Are you suggesting it would have been technically unfeasible to write the Finder in Cocoa? If so, then what about products like Pathfinder?

Quote

They ate their dogfood once, why should they have to keep it like that for another 8 years? And why choosing the key part of OS, Finder, for that? Also, Cocoa needed as much commitment from Apple as Carbon did, because if Mac OS was initially lame, then because of lack of API on the Cocoa side, not on the Carbon side.

There is no technical reason any of Apple's Carbon based products couldn't or still can't be moved to Cocoa. The existence of a Cocoa based Finder product, Pathfinder has demonstrated this for years. Further, if Apple needed something on the API side, they could have easily done so very early on in the OS X development process. Apple seems to agree with you in that 8 years is long enough. Snow Leopard will have a Cocoa based Finder. That won't magically make the Finder a better product in and of itself though. But, it will drop the reliance on the legacy Carbon framework. I'd expect the remainder of Apple's Carbon apps to be migrated to Cocoa within the next release or so.

[robco]

It's good that Apple uses open source code instead of always reinventing the wheel. That's the path MS is heading down and it sucks. If you don't like the Quartz example, how about Bonjour - Apple's implementation of zeroconf. Not all born and bred Apple. Apple does do nice implementations of many ideas. They've pulled off a great feat of taking BSD and making it user-friendly. My only point being however that not all the underlying tech is all Apple's. Again, this is a good thing. Take a look at some of the videos of NEXTStep back in the day - or even GNUStep now and it's very similar to what we have now. A good thing - Apple didn't need to completely reinvent the wheel.

Unfortunately Apple's whims change. Java was one of the original programming languages for Cocoa. Now that's been deprecated and the current implementation of Java on the Mac is behind every other platform. iSync has pretty much been an orphan since the iPhone debuted.

The point being that Apple is fickle and trying to keep up with all the new features and constant releases is tiring. If it were so easy, where are the 64-bit versions of Aperture, Logic, Shake and FCP? Apple should have rewritten them all from scratch by now. I'm not saying that Adobe and MS shouldn't adopt new technologies like .NET and Cocoa when they become available, but it's not something easily done. Everytime the code is touched, there is the chance of introducing new bugs.

As for Obj-C, it's C with extensions. It has just enough Smalltalk tacked on to make it OO. Hell, up until very recently, there wasn't even garbage collection - and there still isn't on the iPhone. Oh, and only Leopard can run Obj-C 2.0 apps. Funny, XP can run .NET apps just fine - they're not exclusive to Vista. Want the latest graphics drivers? If you're still using Panther or Tiger, too bad - only Leopard users get them in updates - but only when Apple feels you're ready.

The Mac is a nice platform for many reasons, but it does have its drawbacks. Apple is a nice company that has some talented engineers, but their products aren't perfect. Some of the decisions make it very difficult for developers who want to support the platform. Microsoft is committed to the Mac - but they also want to maintain cross-compatibilty. Likewise Adobe wants to maintain feature parity between both platforms - that means not implementing Mac-only or Windows-only features. You or I may not agree with that decision.

All I'm saying is cut MS and Adobe a little slack. Just because they haven't optimized every single line of code or implemented every new feature Apple has come out with (indeed, even Apple hasn't) doesn't mean they're purposely trying to screw over Mac users.