The date was revealed on Wednesday by the well-connected John Paczkowski of Re/code, who referred to the device as a "new wearable" that will be worn on the user's wrist. He also reaffirmed claims that the device will tap into the new HealthKit and HomeKit functions of Apple's forthcoming iOS 8 mobile operating system update.
Why is it that so many people think that Apple is going to produce a single, wrist-wearble device? As I've said many times before, I believe that the "iWatch" will be in many versions (e.g. a sports band, a medical health monitor, a luxury timepiece, etc.) It is logical for the first device to be a sports/general health monitor as that is the easiest to produce. Unfortunately, I don't expect it to be functionally or visually much different than the current batch of Android watches. Better executed and more sophisticated technology, yes; really groundbreaking, no. That will come with the later models.
Rumours rumours and rumours!! The thing i know for sure is that Tim Cook said in early 2013 that "amazing new products" are coming next year. Third quarter of 2014 is ending and nothing yet! They may release too many things the next 2 months!!
Nothing screams mindless drone like people who govern their decisions in life by what other people are going to think of them
People like to say things like that because it makes them feel like they are free of the social constraints that society tends to adopt but in reality the opposite is true. Why do you think people dress up for important events? It is because they actually do care what other people think of them. That is normal.
Here in Blighty, a man once ate nothing but McDonalds for a month to see how it was like, and to get in the news, of course. I can't remember the exact outcome, but I recall that he put on a lot of weight and got chest pains.
Note another person lost weight only eating at McDonalds which just reenforces that you could convince people dihydrogen monoxide is a deadly poison with a slick enough presentation
Having said that, I can't resist a double cheeseburger.
As I understand it you can use Obj-C (instead of Obj-C++) to bridge between Swift and C++. Bridging Swift and Obj-C is straight forward.
Right, but Obj-C still isn't cross-platform. Try to write an application that works on both Windows and Mac using Obj-C. Even if you can find an Obj-C compiler for Windows which will build an application for you, you can't do much without having the Cocoa/AppKit/Foundation frameworks available. Trying to write Obj-C apps for Windows is like trying to write C# apps for Mac -- you can do it, but you won't get very far because each language is pretty-much OS-specific.
That's why C++ is useful for cross-plaform code (i.e. for the backend/data management logic of your application). However, you still need to load that data into your UI, and the only way to do that on Mac is with Obj-C++ (which is just a fancy term for Obj-C code that's mixed with C++ code). Once you've gotten your data into Obj-C++, then you can mix with Swift, but at that point, how much are you really gaining over just continuing with Obj-C?
I think I understand ...
Some questions:
1) Is the primary advantage of C++ that it is cross platform?
2) Does C++ have access to the underlying APIs/Frameworks of the platform like Objective-C does and Swift does on iOS/OSX?
3) If not, apparently Objective-C++ facilitates this on iOS/OSX -- what's the equivalent on Windows and 'Nix?
4) What other advantages than cross platform, does C++ provide?
Why do you think people dress up for important events? It is because they actually do care what other people think of them. That is normal.
What's normal is respecting social conventions.
Not wearing an iWatch because you are concerned you would be labeled a "fanboy" is just stupid and not on the same level as dressing appropriately for the occasion you are attending
4) What other advantages than cross platform, does C++ provide?
I dunno - with many programmers I have had the misfortune of dealing with on this subject, being able to wear it as a badge of honor seems to be the most important reason.
4) What other advantages than cross platform, does C++ provide?
I dunno - with many programmers I have had the misfortune of dealing with on this subject, being able to wear it as a badge of honor seems to be the most important reason.
Well Shee-it! I can play that game ...
I first learned to program in Octal-Absolute (or was it Bi-Quinary) on the IBM 650.
A guy in the class wrote everything by hand in machine language -- he did not trust those new-fangled symbolic assemblers like the IBM 650 SOAP (Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program).
The 650 had very limited main storage (tubes back then) -- the program and the data were stored on a 2K Drum ...
The "Optimal" in the SOAP Assembler, was there because the Assembler attempted to distribute the code and the data on the drum in such a way that when main storage was ready to read or write -- the drum was just rotating to the target location -- otherwise there would be a delay waiting for the drum to come around again ,,,
As I mentioned earlier, initial XIB implementations required so much extra work that many abandoned the new way for the known way -- do it in code!
A storyboard is just a fancy packaging for a bunch of XIB files. The UI design work you're doing on each part of the storyboard is exactly the same as you'd do for a XIB-based design. While it may be more satisfying to do up front, any OS X or iOS programmer that builds a UI completely in code is asking for a world of hurt down the road in maintenance work as OS versions change and they need to add/revise features.
"Swift generally gets you to the right way much quicker."
That's a cogent remark -- I will quote you on that!
Ha, it was off the cuff, but it does fit nicely. I've been through 3 or 4 major programming language transitions in my career and so I know that when a language is new/fresh, it feels clean and exciting (Obj-C was like that at one point). Unfortunately, for the main project I work on, I need to support computers which are up to 7 years old (education software), as well as work cross-platform, and so I can't make use of it right away. However, I'll likely give it a try for any side iOS/Mac projects where I can start afresh.
Not wearing an iWatch because you are concerned you would be labeled a "fanboy" is just stupid and not on the same level as dressing appropriately for the occasion you are attending
I'm not worried about being labeled an Apple fanboy because that is not a bad thing in my opinion. I'm probably not buying an iWatch because at this point I don't want one or need one. That said, if I see someone wearing one, I will know they are a fanboy too, because I think the buyers of an Apple iWatch will be a very niche market.
1) Is the primary advantage of C++ that it is cross platform?
In my eyes, yes. It's what I call a "guru" language because there is so much syntax and so many rules that it's difficult for new programmers to pick up and become productive in it quickly. The language specification itself is well over 1000 pages. I don't really like it, but it's a tool I need to know how to use for my trade.
However, I work with many people for whom it is their preferred language because they learned it first and know it well. However, those people generally don't work on UI-based code. They're working on back-end components which are shared across multiple cross-plaform projects.
2) Does C++ have access to the underlying APIs/Frameworks of the platform like Objective-C does and Swift does on iOS/OSX?
C++ on Windows generally has access to the much older APIs (Win32, ATL/MFC, etc). C# is the more modern programming language on Windows (much like Obj-C on Mac). It's a lot like Java, if you've ever used that. But there are plenty of pure C++ applications on Windows.
C++ on Mac only has access to CoreFoundation (which is just plain C), the lower-level UNIX/POSIX APIs, and other underlying system libraries. While it is possible to build a GUI application solely using CoreFoundation, no one in their right mind would do so unless the UI is very simple. However, many of the Foundation (Obj-C) APIs are "toll-free bridged" with CoreFoundation equivalents (NSString* can be interchanged with CFStringRef, etc).
C++ is generally the preferred programming language on UNIX systems (Linux, BSD, etc).
However, if you don't need to care about UI work, C++ has it's own cross-platform standard library which provides APIs for things like strings, data containers (maps/lists/vectors), file I/O, etc. Another big benefit to using C++ is that there are a ton of 3rd party cross-plaform libraries like boost, Xerces (XML parsing), ICU (internationalization), etc. Even Apple uses many of these libraries under the hood in iOS and OS X. It's been around for 35+ years, so there are a lot of libraries out there which are still only available in C++.
Quote:
4) What other advantages than cross platform, does C++ provide?
You have to consider that the Mac/iOS-only software market is only so big. If you truly want your software to be ubiquitous, you need to port it to other platforms at some point. For the major software I work on, Mac only accounts for about 15% of the sales, so there's no way the company would be as big as it is if we didn't make software available for Windows and Linux as well. Major cross-platform applications from companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, etc are all written predominantly in C++.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">1) Is the primary advantage of C++ that it is cross platform?</span>
In my eyes, yes. It's what I call a "guru" language because there is so much syntax and so many rules that it's difficult for new programmers to pick up and become productive in it quickly. The language specification itself is well over 1000 pages. I don't really like it, but it's a tool I need to know how to use for my trade.
However, I work with many people for whom it is their preferred language because they learned it first and know it well. However, those people generally don't work on UI-based code. They're working on back-end components which are shared across multiple cross-plaform projects.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">2) Does C++ have access to the underlying APIs/Frameworks of the platform like Objective-C does and Swift does on iOS/OSX?</span>
C++ on Windows generally has access to the much older APIs (Win32, ATL/MFC, etc). C# is the more modern programming language on Windows (much like Obj-C on Mac). It's a lot like Java, if you've ever used that. But there are plenty of pure C++ applications on Windows.
C++ on Mac only has access to CoreFoundation (which is just plain C), the lower-level UNIX/POSIX APIs, and other underlying system libraries. While it is possible to build a GUI application solely using CoreFoundation, no one in their right mind would do so unless the UI is very simple. However, many of the Foundation (Obj-C) APIs are "toll-free bridged" with CoreFoundation equivalents (NSString* can be interchanged with CFStringRef, etc).
C++ is generally the preferred programming language on UNIX systems (Linux, BSD, etc).b
However, if you don't need to care about UI work, C++ has it's own cross-platform standard library which provides APIs for things like strings, data containers (maps/lists/vectors), file I/O, etc. Another big benefit to using C++ is that there are a ton of <span style="line-height:1.4em;">3rd party cross-plaform libraries like boost, Xerces (XML parsing), ICU (internationalization), etc. Even Apple uses many of these libraries under the hood in iOS and OS X. It's been around for 35+ years, so there are a lot of libraries out there which are still only available in C++.</span>
4) What other advantages than cross platform, does C++ provide?
You have to consider that the Mac/iOS-only software market is only so big. If you truly want your software to be ubiquitous, you need to port it to other platforms at some point. For the major software I work on, Mac only accounts for about 15% of the sales, so there's no way the company would be as big as it is if we didn't make software available for Windows and Linux as well. Major cross-platform applications from companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, etc are all written predominantly in C++.
Thanks ... I do understand, and you presented the reasons well!
Time marches on ...
What if, a year or so, from now, Swift offers a superior solution [to all the advantages you mentioned] to C++ -- Could it be the lingua Franca you mention?
Considering the iWatch is an iPhone accessory....you couldn't be more wrong.
Time will tell.
To me ...let the iphone have the whole attention on the first event...
Then after a month introduce the iwatch on its own event..as an accessory or however they see fit !
This way neither will overshadow the other..
Apple gets more exposure through two seperate events !
Hopefully for the last time, there is not going to be an iWatch, next month or ever. Also, why is no one leaking or talking about the next iPhone being waterproof?
The Mac Pro was made in the US by well paid, professional, grown ups, not underpaid Chinese teenagers with questionable ethicswho steal parts...
I've given you a 'thumbs-up' for comments in the past, however this comment is abysmal, an affront to hard-working men and women on the assembly lines.
The "hockey-puck" mouse was useless crap. So was the Mighty Mouse. The mouse designed as a circle was useless. The Mighty Mouse trackball got dirty quickly and stopped working, requiring constant cleaning. Both were scrapped quickly. The Power Mac G4 Cube also falls into this category. Overpriced and eliminated after 1 year. The iPod Hi-Fi. The most useless product Apple ever made. The Newton. Failed at launch for being overpriced. The Palm Pilot succeeded at the time….smaller and cheaper. The eMate falls into that category too. The Newton/eMate was a niche product and then Jobs killed it immediately. The original iPod Shuffle and iPod Shuffle without buttons.
Indeed, a lot of crap products. With and without Steve at the helm. Good thing they are pround of the products they didn't release!
The original iPod Shuffle looked like a pregnancy test and the Shuffle without buttons was useless.
LOL! Plus they didn't put volume buttons on the iPod touch. Massive failure. The buttons were quickly added on the 2nd gen.
The iPad 16GB is still price gouging at $499, four years after introduction. Now look where the MacBook Air is priced. It is still underpowered, but at least it is considerably less expensive than the other MacBook Pros.
I don't think $499 is asking too much for the device. To me it's kind of an entry price point for a device that not only works great, but isn't simply a gadget, a music player. It's a real day to day use device, $499 is perfectly fine with me.
The MBA indeed saw its price drop, but I guess that is not only because it got more popular, causing component prices to drop (because competitors started to make clones) but also because at $1799 is entirely feasible to drop the price. The iPad at $499 can't really drop as it's an amount of money perfectly fine for the product. It far exceeds expectations, yet is half the price people thought (the iSlate) to be priced at.
Thanks ... I do understand, and you presented the reasons well!
Time marches on ...
What if, a year or so, from now, Swift offers a superior solution [to all the advantages you mentioned] to C++ -- Could it be the lingua Franca you mention?
It isn't cross platform so it can't. It's tightly coupled with iOS and mac now and with the cocoa frameworks. Even if some of it were ported its hard to see the advantage over C#.
As I mentioned earlier, initial XIB implementations required so much extra work that many abandoned the new way for the known way -- do it in code!
"Swift generally gets you to the right way much quicker."
That's a cogent remark -- I will quote you on that!
I think that is partially because Swift makes it difficult to drag legacy [programming] baggage forward -- it almost goads you into looking for a better way. Once you realize that, it's almost like embarking on a fresh, new adventure -- like learning to program for the first time.
Comments
Why is it that so many people think that Apple is going to produce a single, wrist-wearble device? As I've said many times before, I believe that the "iWatch" will be in many versions (e.g. a sports band, a medical health monitor, a luxury timepiece, etc.) It is logical for the first device to be a sports/general health monitor as that is the easiest to produce. Unfortunately, I don't expect it to be functionally or visually much different than the current batch of Android watches. Better executed and more sophisticated technology, yes; really groundbreaking, no. That will come with the later models.
People like to say things like that because it makes them feel like they are free of the social constraints that society tends to adopt but in reality the opposite is true. Why do you think people dress up for important events? It is because they actually do care what other people think of them. That is normal.
Supersize Me was a controversial publicity stunt turned "documentary": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me#Criticism_and_statistical_notes
Note another person lost weight only eating at McDonalds which just reenforces that you could convince people dihydrogen monoxide is a deadly poison with a slick enough presentation
Nothing wrong with anything in moderation.
I think I understand ...
Some questions:
1) Is the primary advantage of C++ that it is cross platform?
2) Does C++ have access to the underlying APIs/Frameworks of the platform like Objective-C does and Swift does on iOS/OSX?
3) If not, apparently Objective-C++ facilitates this on iOS/OSX -- what's the equivalent on Windows and 'Nix?
4) What other advantages than cross platform, does C++ provide?
What's normal is respecting social conventions.
Not wearing an iWatch because you are concerned you would be labeled a "fanboy" is just stupid and not on the same level as dressing appropriately for the occasion you are attending
I dunno - with many programmers I have had the misfortune of dealing with on this subject, being able to wear it as a badge of honor seems to be the most important reason.
Well Shee-it! I can play that game ...
I first learned to program in Octal-Absolute (or was it Bi-Quinary) on the IBM 650.
A guy in the class wrote everything by hand in machine language -- he did not trust those new-fangled symbolic assemblers like the IBM 650 SOAP (Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program).
The 650 had very limited main storage (tubes back then) -- the program and the data were stored on a 2K Drum ...
The "Optimal" in the SOAP Assembler, was there because the Assembler attempted to distribute the code and the data on the drum in such a way that when main storage was ready to read or write -- the drum was just rotating to the target location -- otherwise there would be a delay waiting for the drum to come around again ,,,
They didn't call it latency back then (1956).
Load Distributor
Add To Upper
Store Distributor
As I mentioned earlier, initial XIB implementations required so much extra work that many abandoned the new way for the known way -- do it in code!
A storyboard is just a fancy packaging for a bunch of XIB files. The UI design work you're doing on each part of the storyboard is exactly the same as you'd do for a XIB-based design. While it may be more satisfying to do up front, any OS X or iOS programmer that builds a UI completely in code is asking for a world of hurt down the road in maintenance work as OS versions change and they need to add/revise features.
That's a cogent remark -- I will quote you on that!
Ha, it was off the cuff, but it does fit nicely. I've been through 3 or 4 major programming language transitions in my career and so I know that when a language is new/fresh, it feels clean and exciting (Obj-C was like that at one point). Unfortunately, for the main project I work on, I need to support computers which are up to 7 years old (education software), as well as work cross-platform, and so I can't make use of it right away. However, I'll likely give it a try for any side iOS/Mac projects where I can start afresh.
I'm not worried about being labeled an Apple fanboy because that is not a bad thing in my opinion. I'm probably not buying an iWatch because at this point I don't want one or need one. That said, if I see someone wearing one, I will know they are a fanboy too, because I think the buyers of an Apple iWatch will be a very niche market.
1) Is the primary advantage of C++ that it is cross platform?
In my eyes, yes. It's what I call a "guru" language because there is so much syntax and so many rules that it's difficult for new programmers to pick up and become productive in it quickly. The language specification itself is well over 1000 pages. I don't really like it, but it's a tool I need to know how to use for my trade.
However, I work with many people for whom it is their preferred language because they learned it first and know it well. However, those people generally don't work on UI-based code. They're working on back-end components which are shared across multiple cross-plaform projects.
C++ on Windows generally has access to the much older APIs (Win32, ATL/MFC, etc). C# is the more modern programming language on Windows (much like Obj-C on Mac). It's a lot like Java, if you've ever used that. But there are plenty of pure C++ applications on Windows.
C++ on Mac only has access to CoreFoundation (which is just plain C), the lower-level UNIX/POSIX APIs, and other underlying system libraries. While it is possible to build a GUI application solely using CoreFoundation, no one in their right mind would do so unless the UI is very simple. However, many of the Foundation (Obj-C) APIs are "toll-free bridged" with CoreFoundation equivalents (NSString* can be interchanged with CFStringRef, etc).
C++ is generally the preferred programming language on UNIX systems (Linux, BSD, etc).
However, if you don't need to care about UI work, C++ has it's own cross-platform standard library which provides APIs for things like strings, data containers (maps/lists/vectors), file I/O, etc. Another big benefit to using C++ is that there are a ton of 3rd party cross-plaform libraries like boost, Xerces (XML parsing), ICU (internationalization), etc. Even Apple uses many of these libraries under the hood in iOS and OS X. It's been around for 35+ years, so there are a lot of libraries out there which are still only available in C++.
You have to consider that the Mac/iOS-only software market is only so big. If you truly want your software to be ubiquitous, you need to port it to other platforms at some point. For the major software I work on, Mac only accounts for about 15% of the sales, so there's no way the company would be as big as it is if we didn't make software available for Windows and Linux as well. Major cross-platform applications from companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, etc are all written predominantly in C++.
FlyOutMenu.com
Thanks ... I do understand, and you presented the reasons well!
Time marches on ...
What if, a year or so, from now, Swift offers a superior solution [to all the advantages you mentioned] to C++ -- Could it be the lingua Franca you mention?
Time will tell.
To me ...let the iphone have the whole attention on the first event...
Then after a month introduce the iwatch on its own event..as an accessory or however they see fit !
This way neither will overshadow the other..
Apple gets more exposure through two seperate events !
The Mac Pro was made in the US by well paid, professional, grown ups, not underpaid Chinese teenagers with questionable ethics who steal parts...
I've given you a 'thumbs-up' for comments in the past, however this comment is abysmal, an affront to hard-working men and women on the assembly lines.
All the best.
Love the surnames!
Indeed, a lot of crap products. With and without Steve at the helm. Good thing they are pround of the products they didn't release!
LOL! Plus they didn't put volume buttons on the iPod touch. Massive failure. The buttons were quickly added on the 2nd gen.
I don't think $499 is asking too much for the device. To me it's kind of an entry price point for a device that not only works great, but isn't simply a gadget, a music player. It's a real day to day use device, $499 is perfectly fine with me.
The MBA indeed saw its price drop, but I guess that is not only because it got more popular, causing component prices to drop (because competitors started to make clones) but also because at $1799 is entirely feasible to drop the price. The iPad at $499 can't really drop as it's an amount of money perfectly fine for the product. It far exceeds expectations, yet is half the price people thought (the iSlate) to be priced at.
Q.Why do most Swift developers wear glasses?
A.Because they cant C#
It isn't cross platform so it can't. It's tightly coupled with iOS and mac now and with the cocoa frameworks. Even if some of it were ported its hard to see the advantage over C#.
Bindings are a maintenance nightmare.