I heard rumors about a technology Apple was considering to include in OS X early on called "Red Box" which emulated the Windows operating system simular to way Classic is done now.
I guess Apple realized that would be stupid like you said, and it would probably be dog slow like VPC anyway.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As I recall Red Box was the equivelent of Blue Box, aka "Clasic" which would only be implemented on Intel hardware version of the OS. This would be much faster than VPC becouse they are not emulating the Intel hardware.
But coming down to earth, I agree, I more realistic David's stone would be for Apple to develop an Office suite that would be 100% compatible with MS Office. That would really remove the need for Apple to depend on MS. That is the biggest thing MS has over Apple (directly). Of course MS also has their monopoly which can put pressure on other developers, but that mafia-type move would be hopefully watched closely by the justice department.
If they gave it out free, maybe as an iApp (iOffice) and it could save and read Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs... that would be something else. However, to be 100%, what would they do about the VisualBasic components and requirements?
For it to be a real Goliath killer, it would have to be 100% compatible.
It would tie nicely into the switch campaign though!
I don't know about you guys but that whole "glove" thing could be your "David's Stone". Apple could make up the difference on hardware sales. Didn't Jobs compare M$ pricing for the Justice Dept settlement was like pennies to the dollars. I don't think Apple would lose that much, crap, they give away all the iApps now, why not the OS.
Man, that is the one and might be the only place M$ CANNOT go! Its also the one place Dell, Gateway, and others CANNOT go either! The more I drool over this glove thing the more I think this is your David's Stone.
Think about this, this has got to be your David's Stone! Dell makes their money on hardware sales ONLY (minus some support) So does Apple. M$ makes on software sales ONLY. So does Apple, but its soft money from OS sales. People are pissed at paying more and more for software everytime M$ does an upgrade. Buy 300 Macs and you never have to pay for OS upgrades! This is a brilliant gamble. Apple has nothing to lose, do they? You can't get much lower than 5% marketshare, can you?
Mind you, that Apple can always build in hardware requirements for next-gen OSes to make you want or HAVE to upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware. Like with Jaguar working better with new graphics cards
<strong> I agree, I more realistic David's stone would be for Apple to develop an Office suite that would be 100% compatible with MS Office. That would really remove the need for Apple to depend on MS. That is the biggest thing MS has over Apple (directly). Of course MS also has their monopoly which can put pressure on other developers, but that mafia-type move would be hopefully watched closely by the justice department.
If they gave it out free, maybe as an iApp (iOffice) and it could save and read Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs... that would be something else. However, to be 100%, what would they do about the VisualBasic components and requirements?
For it to be a real Goliath killer, it would have to be 100% compatible.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It wouldn't really have to be that compatible. I doubt that a number of Mac users ever use the VisualBasic portions of Office, seeing as how most have never used VisualBasic. And I've long forgotten QBasic. That, and I honestly don't know anyone who uses VisualBasic inside Office on the Windows side either, but I'm sure some must use it for Excel.
If they screwed compatibility w/ Word except for imports and limited exports, no one would really care as long as the program was decent enough. This really wouldn't be all that hard, it's clear that Microsoft puts next to no development in it (I don't realize a difference between the Word 97 I use at school and the Word X I use at home except for some Aqua changes). So it wouldn't be hard at all for Apple to pull out a version 1 (or AppleWorks 7) w/ most of the functionality, and completed the functionality w/ a .5 or a version later. And then we jsut have to wait for MS to release a new feature for once.
Also, Apple could redesign Office and make the GUI far superior. I mean, look at the preferences in Word for the grammar check. Having a bunch of popups "disabled" because you don't need that many options for that language is just sleazy... they could at least hide them if they didn't want to shrink the window to size.
Wow, I went off on a tangent. Anyway, back to VisualBasic, Apple could use AppleScript. Applescript is something that just feels like Apple ignores it... it's kinda slow and it seems to have gotten harder to do certain things (or I just don't use it enough to know what I'm doing which is more likely). But if Apple put all of their spreadsheet functions into an AppleScript module (or whatever their buzzword for their plugin's are), it would be a great boon to have a large math and logic library. And AppleScript would be significantly more useful than to most Mac users, and not cost enormous licensing fees. That, and Apple or a third party could probably provide a converter which converted VisualBasic code to APpleScript like REALbasic has.
[quote] Also, what if David's Stone is a full version of Jaguar ported and running on an Athlon, with propriety ROMS so that you couldn't run MacOSX on generic PC boxes. <hr></blockquote>
That's just sleazy. Seriously, that would be a horribly unethical business practice. That's far worse than Region Codes on DVDs. That's something so drastically wrong that if Apple were to do that, I would lose all respect for them, and keep in mind that I'm a highly avid Mac user who is happy even if Apple does fall behind speedwise.
<strong>I'm very surprised that nobody has mentioned David's stone being a developer application that is a true turn-key solution to compiling MacOS X apps from Win code. Yes, I know such developer apps exist, but don't they still require quite a bit of work and tweaking to get a MacOSX application ported?
IF, Wintel developers could port their Windows apps to OSX in house with very little man-hours and have the product be solid, couldn't this be a big deal for MacOSX software avaliabilty? Possibly the app could even translate drivers as well for hardware? If the biggest problem the Mac faces is the lack of software, this would seem to be a pretty big deal.
Why wouldn't a software company want to pick up extra sales if the cost of bringing the appliation to the Mac was a matter of less than a week worth of man-hours?
It seems that this would be more reasonable from a Windows deveopers view than having to re-train and re-tool to develop software using Cocoa and writing apps for OSX that would also run on Windows. Apple needs to go after the Wintel centric developers and get them to port/write versions for the mac. I think it would be a tough sale to get them to switch developer envirenments even if the envirenment has advantages and compiled for Windows as well. I don't think you could get most to get away from MS developer tools.
So what's needed is a turnkey superduper set of porting tools that takes MS developed applications and almost instantly turns them into fully functioning good MacOSX applications.
Crazy?</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is essentially what Apple did with Carbon for Classic apps. While this would help bring apps over, the would second class apps, not nearly on par with Cocoa or Carbon apps. The conversion would be exponetially more difficult that converting Carbon apps.
<strong>No, the major thing about moving Cocoa to Windows XP now is no imaging model! Display Postscript is a comfortable fit inside the GDI in Windows. You get a blank window using normal API's in Windows and then hand that space to a Postscript interpreter to render the image inside the window.
Not so with Quartz, which is conceptually different to the GDI/Postscript because the ultimate image is a composite of all the images below.
Quartz, love it or not can't be done in Windows without major rocket science ( and probably having the Windows source). Cocoa (or more correctly Core Services) is built assuming Quartz. I bet they can't be seperated easily.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I was under the impression that Yellow Box applications were meant to take advantage of whatever OS features were offered. ie Protected memory, virtual memory, SMP, etc would be offered as offered by the OS. I thought this was also true of the application imaging.
I was under the impression that Yellow Box applications were meant to take advantage of whatever OS features were offered. ie Protected memory, virtual memory, SMP, etc would be offered as offered by the OS. I thought this was also true of the application imaging.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, it was true at the time. Yellow Box would have brought display postscript to windows. And I have to agree with JRG regarding Quartz. It's just not manageable, and besides, if Apple effectively promotes Quartz Extreme, any applications that use it will completely suck when moved off the Mac because I doubt they'd let that technology leave the platform.
Remember folks, the point of QZX is *not* faster drop shadows - it's real-time Photoshop quality compositing effects. If Adobe uses QZX, the keynote bake-offs will be absurdly one-sided.
<strong>...more realistic David's stone would be for Apple to develop an Office suite that would be 100% compatible with MS Office.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Can't be done.
Office file formats are container based, which means you can cram whatever dumb-ass content in there that you want - pictures, spreadsheets, databases, you name it. You can get most of it, but you'll never get it all.
The marketing challenge is that people will always wonder what might have been in that file that you don't know was lost. That doubt will plague the product.
If Apple wants to move into this space, they need to address the collaboration and workflow space first. That's the real problem these days and MS isn't doing much to solve it that doesn't involve shoving more virii around the office.
Virus problems will always surround Microsoft, no matter what the product. Look at all the latest - they involve Windows, Outlook, SQL, Media Player, etc. Problem with MS and virii is that MS has always been of the mindset to keep everything open and let the end user patch the holes, in regards to security. Need to look no further than shares and NTFS. Horrible!
And and Apple Office Suite compatible with MS isn't going to happen ever. Lots of Corps are just now coming around to the realization that Mac Office:X IS compatible with the Windows version and thus they can use Macs. Businesses wouldn't buy a single Mac if they only had Apple's promise of compatibility.
On another note, I can't wait to see the AD client that will debut soon. Should be interesting to see if an OS X Exchange client and SMS type client is going to come down soon too - I know Apple's Job site lists several Network App positions that require knowledge of Exhange and AD so here's hoping.
no reverse engineering (lets take this sucker apart to see what makes it tick) is illegal. reengineering (starting from scratch using a public set of specifications) is legal.
everybody else:
sorry for the off topic discussion. i'll stop now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Reverse engineering IS reengineering from a set of specifications. If you don't believe me, how about the Supreme Court:
[quote] A trade secret law, however, does not offer protection against discovery by fair and honest means, such as by independent invention, accidental disclosure, or by so-called reverse engineering, that is by starting with the known product and working backward to divine the process which aided in its development or manufacture. (416 U.S. 470)<hr></blockquote>
<strong>So, if we can call a truce on the authenticity of the code name, I would appreciate it, and for now, and for the sake of argument, let's just call it "David's Stone." (Not quite as poetic as "Priam's Arrow," but then again, Achilles was not a lumbering giant.)</strong><hr></blockquote>
Off-topic aside: Shouldn't that be "Paris' Arrow"? ("Priam's Arrow" sounds better, though.)
couple of points about porting the cocoa frameworks and runtime.
-this is a great idea, and something that apple renigged on back in the day.
-porting the cocoa runtime to windows would be a great idea, because it would "reward" cocoa developers for their hardwork by giving them a larger audience
-the cocoa frameworks are optimized for altivec, it is unlikely that x86 cocoa will be any faster than their ppc counterparts
-any speed differences between x86 and ppc will be negligible in the next year
That's just sleazy. Seriously, that would be a horribly unethical business practice. That's far worse than Region Codes on DVDs. That's something so drastically wrong that if Apple were to do that, I would lose all respect for them, and keep in mind that I'm a highly avid Mac user who is happy even if Apple does fall behind speedwise.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I disagree. I'm not talking about just putting in a ROM check in OSX, which wouldn't install/run unless it was an Apple. I'm talking about NOT making a PC. Apple has every right to not support their software running on brandX hardware. The big push is integration, and opening their OS to the PC soup would be an integration nightmare. (integration meaning software/hardware).
As far as Visualbasic goes. I'm not talking about the ability to code in visualbasic, but there are many macros and templates which use visualbasic. I think for Apple to really get rid of the need for MS cooperation in developing Office they need to be able to open 99.99% of Word,Excel and Powerpoint documents. And, of course, save .doc/.ppt/.xl documents.
VisualBasic (macros) are used in more documents than you might think. And, of course, footnotes and TOC documents should be import/exportable.
This is essentially what Apple did with Carbon for Classic apps. While this would help bring apps over, the would second class apps, not nearly on par with Cocoa or Carbon apps. The conversion would be exponetially more difficult that converting Carbon apps.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, this is what they did with Carbon for Classic apps.
This is why I think it would be a great thing to do for MSWin developed apps --> Carbon Apps. Well, you wouldn't need the Windows ported apps to be on par with Cocoa or Carbon apps. Yes, ported apps show the difference in elegance between Windows apps and slick MacOSX apps, but at least you'd increase your software base and remove the arguement that the software isn't avaliable on the mac. Almost all popular games on the mac are Windows ports. What if 90% of Windows games were avaliable on the Mac? Yeah, the games wouldn't be as slick as they would be designed from the ground up.... but at least the public would see them as avaliable on the Mac. They wouldn't even have to bother buying them. It's the "idea" of lack of software that gets a lot of people turned off the mac. Not the actual lack of software. If people saw the OSX icon on the boxes of 90% of the software on the shelves or advertisments, it would go very far in removing the myth that there isn't enough software for the mac. I'm babbling, but do you see my point?
Also, yes, it would be exponentially more difficult... That is why I would consider it a big break through. If it was trivial it would have already been accomplished, if not by Apple by MacSoft... or Metroworks.
[quote]IF, Wintel developers could port their Windows apps to OSX in house with very little man-hours and have the product be solid, couldn't this be a big deal for MacOSX software avaliabilty? Possibly the app could even translate drivers as well for hardware? If the biggest problem the Mac faces is the lack of software, this would seem to be a pretty big deal.
Why wouldn't a software company want to pick up extra sales if the cost of bringing the appliation to the Mac was a matter of less than a week worth of man-hours?
<hr></blockquote>
you're not thinking big enough. i think the x team wants X to be the premiere dev platform. they're already pushing this with java. they want ALL dev's to develop on X, and deploy elsewhere. Just like webobjects, and just how the Openstep runtime used to be--except this time, you'll develop on a mac instead of an intel or sun machine running the openstep os. the only issue these days is that java is huge right now, as far as codebase goes, and MS is aiming to emulate the openstep runtime with the .net initiative. however, anyone who has programmed a serious in app in java and obj-c (specifically using the NS frameworks the cocoa APIs) will tell you that obj-c is much better and is far superior of a RAD perspective. With respect to C# and .net, we shall see what comes to pass. I suspect that people (especially some of the higher profile geeks like O'Reilly and such) will not readily embrace that initiative, due to onerous business and licensing prcatices by MS--witness James Gosling's purchase of a powerbook and his reasoning behind it.
you're not thinking big enough. i think the x team wants X to be the premiere dev platform. they're already pushing this with java. they want ALL dev's to develop on X, and deploy elsewhere. Just like webobjects, and just how the Openstep runtime used to be--except this time, you'll develop on a mac instead of an intel or sun machine running the openstep os. the only issue these days is that java is huge right now, as far as codebase goes, and MS is aiming to emulate the openstep runtime with the .net initiative. however, anyone who has programmed a serious in app in java and obj-c (specifically using the NS frameworks the cocoa APIs) will tell you that obj-c is much better and is far superior of a RAD perspective. With respect to C# and .net, we shall see what comes to pass. I suspect that people (especially some of the higher profile geeks like O'Reilly and such) will not readily embrace that initiative, due to onerous business and licensing prcatices by MS--witness James Gosling's purchase of a powerbook and his reasoning behind it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, yes, the idea of X being the premeire developer platform is bigger and better! No doubt about it. It would defintely be better for the Mac community. And it could very well be better for the Windows/Palm/Linux/etc communities. I do understand the concept.
However, I just think it may be unrealistic to get the software houses to dump their current development platforms. A lot of people who aren't that big on MS Windows as an OS, are big on the MS Development tools and developer support.
APple seems to have a bad rep in this area, and I think people would be reluctant to use APple as their core developer envirenment for their large Windows based projects. Especially since they know what MS does to other developer envirenments and how they screw with their OS to break other developer envirenments.
Anyway, I just don't see non-Mac houses dumping their Wintel develop envirenments for OSX.
This would work great for companies already developing for both platforms. And Apple could use these companies as nice examples! Showing that Adobe develops using OSX, compiles for Windows and the end product is a great Windows product. Yeah, if Apple could convince people that they've changed their ways in the world of developer support.... it would be great. I'm just not holding my breath.
oh i agree, i meant premiere as in premiere "cross-platform" dev environment. if only apple and connectix would work together to give VPC some deeper hooks, to speed up VPC, what heaven OS X would be.
Reverse engineering IS reengineering from a set of specifications. If you don't believe me, how about the Supreme Court:</strong>
quote: A trade secret law, however, does not offer protection against discovery by fair and honest means, such as by independent invention, accidental disclosure, or by so-called reverse engineering, that is by starting with the known product and working backward to divine the process which aided in its development or manufacture. (416 U.S. 470)<hr></blockquote>
Exactly! How do you think DOS was created by Microsoft?
Y'all are thinking too small. Think big! Not Apple ants more market share big, or run windoze apps. big, think revolutionize computing.
The first generation of the information age is at an end. Apple is at the forefront to lead the next evolution, and will, starting on Wednesday. This will be bigger than new PowerMacs, or DDR.
Exactly! How do you think DOS was created by Microsoft?
[ 07-12-2002: Message edited by: Jeff Leigh ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
It wasn't; MS bought DOS from a small Seattle company called CP/M, if i'm not mistaken. They bought it AFTER they got the contract to produce the OS for the IBM PC.
Comments
<strong>
I heard rumors about a technology Apple was considering to include in OS X early on called "Red Box" which emulated the Windows operating system simular to way Classic is done now.
I guess Apple realized that would be stupid like you said, and it would probably be dog slow like VPC anyway.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As I recall Red Box was the equivelent of Blue Box, aka "Clasic" which would only be implemented on Intel hardware version of the OS. This would be much faster than VPC becouse they are not emulating the Intel hardware.
But coming down to earth, I agree, I more realistic David's stone would be for Apple to develop an Office suite that would be 100% compatible with MS Office. That would really remove the need for Apple to depend on MS. That is the biggest thing MS has over Apple (directly). Of course MS also has their monopoly which can put pressure on other developers, but that mafia-type move would be hopefully watched closely by the justice department.
If they gave it out free, maybe as an iApp (iOffice) and it could save and read Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs... that would be something else. However, to be 100%, what would they do about the VisualBasic components and requirements?
For it to be a real Goliath killer, it would have to be 100% compatible.
It would tie nicely into the switch campaign though!
Man, that is the one and might be the only place M$ CANNOT go! Its also the one place Dell, Gateway, and others CANNOT go either! The more I drool over this glove thing the more I think this is your David's Stone.
Think about this, this has got to be your David's Stone! Dell makes their money on hardware sales ONLY (minus some support) So does Apple. M$ makes on software sales ONLY. So does Apple, but its soft money from OS sales. People are pissed at paying more and more for software everytime M$ does an upgrade. Buy 300 Macs and you never have to pay for OS upgrades! This is a brilliant gamble. Apple has nothing to lose, do they? You can't get much lower than 5% marketshare, can you?
Mind you, that Apple can always build in hardware requirements for next-gen OSes to make you want or HAVE to upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware. Like with Jaguar working better with new graphics cards
Let me dream...........
<strong> I agree, I more realistic David's stone would be for Apple to develop an Office suite that would be 100% compatible with MS Office. That would really remove the need for Apple to depend on MS. That is the biggest thing MS has over Apple (directly). Of course MS also has their monopoly which can put pressure on other developers, but that mafia-type move would be hopefully watched closely by the justice department.
If they gave it out free, maybe as an iApp (iOffice) and it could save and read Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs... that would be something else. However, to be 100%, what would they do about the VisualBasic components and requirements?
For it to be a real Goliath killer, it would have to be 100% compatible.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It wouldn't really have to be that compatible. I doubt that a number of Mac users ever use the VisualBasic portions of Office, seeing as how most have never used VisualBasic. And I've long forgotten QBasic. That, and I honestly don't know anyone who uses VisualBasic inside Office on the Windows side either, but I'm sure some must use it for Excel.
If they screwed compatibility w/ Word except for imports and limited exports, no one would really care as long as the program was decent enough. This really wouldn't be all that hard, it's clear that Microsoft puts next to no development in it (I don't realize a difference between the Word 97 I use at school and the Word X I use at home except for some Aqua changes). So it wouldn't be hard at all for Apple to pull out a version 1 (or AppleWorks 7) w/ most of the functionality, and completed the functionality w/ a .5 or a version later. And then we jsut have to wait for MS to release a new feature for once.
Also, Apple could redesign Office and make the GUI far superior. I mean, look at the preferences in Word for the grammar check. Having a bunch of popups "disabled" because you don't need that many options for that language is just sleazy... they could at least hide them if they didn't want to shrink the window to size.
Wow, I went off on a tangent. Anyway, back to VisualBasic, Apple could use AppleScript. Applescript is something that just feels like Apple ignores it... it's kinda slow and it seems to have gotten harder to do certain things (or I just don't use it enough to know what I'm doing which is more likely). But if Apple put all of their spreadsheet functions into an AppleScript module (or whatever their buzzword for their plugin's are), it would be a great boon to have a large math and logic library. And AppleScript would be significantly more useful than to most Mac users, and not cost enormous licensing fees. That, and Apple or a third party could probably provide a converter which converted VisualBasic code to APpleScript like REALbasic has.
[quote] Also, what if David's Stone is a full version of Jaguar ported and running on an Athlon, with propriety ROMS so that you couldn't run MacOSX on generic PC boxes. <hr></blockquote>
That's just sleazy. Seriously, that would be a horribly unethical business practice. That's far worse than Region Codes on DVDs. That's something so drastically wrong that if Apple were to do that, I would lose all respect for them, and keep in mind that I'm a highly avid Mac user who is happy even if Apple does fall behind speedwise.
<strong>I'm very surprised that nobody has mentioned David's stone being a developer application that is a true turn-key solution to compiling MacOS X apps from Win code. Yes, I know such developer apps exist, but don't they still require quite a bit of work and tweaking to get a MacOSX application ported?
IF, Wintel developers could port their Windows apps to OSX in house with very little man-hours and have the product be solid, couldn't this be a big deal for MacOSX software avaliabilty? Possibly the app could even translate drivers as well for hardware? If the biggest problem the Mac faces is the lack of software, this would seem to be a pretty big deal.
Why wouldn't a software company want to pick up extra sales if the cost of bringing the appliation to the Mac was a matter of less than a week worth of man-hours?
It seems that this would be more reasonable from a Windows deveopers view than having to re-train and re-tool to develop software using Cocoa and writing apps for OSX that would also run on Windows. Apple needs to go after the Wintel centric developers and get them to port/write versions for the mac. I think it would be a tough sale to get them to switch developer envirenments even if the envirenment has advantages and compiled for Windows as well. I don't think you could get most to get away from MS developer tools.
So what's needed is a turnkey superduper set of porting tools that takes MS developed applications and almost instantly turns them into fully functioning good MacOSX applications.
Crazy?</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is essentially what Apple did with Carbon for Classic apps. While this would help bring apps over, the would second class apps, not nearly on par with Cocoa or Carbon apps. The conversion would be exponetially more difficult that converting Carbon apps.
<strong>No, the major thing about moving Cocoa to Windows XP now is no imaging model! Display Postscript is a comfortable fit inside the GDI in Windows. You get a blank window using normal API's in Windows and then hand that space to a Postscript interpreter to render the image inside the window.
Not so with Quartz, which is conceptually different to the GDI/Postscript because the ultimate image is a composite of all the images below.
Quartz, love it or not can't be done in Windows without major rocket science ( and probably having the Windows source). Cocoa (or more correctly Core Services) is built assuming Quartz. I bet they can't be seperated easily.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I was under the impression that Yellow Box applications were meant to take advantage of whatever OS features were offered. ie Protected memory, virtual memory, SMP, etc would be offered as offered by the OS. I thought this was also true of the application imaging.
<strong>
I was under the impression that Yellow Box applications were meant to take advantage of whatever OS features were offered. ie Protected memory, virtual memory, SMP, etc would be offered as offered by the OS. I thought this was also true of the application imaging.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, it was true at the time. Yellow Box would have brought display postscript to windows. And I have to agree with JRG regarding Quartz. It's just not manageable, and besides, if Apple effectively promotes Quartz Extreme, any applications that use it will completely suck when moved off the Mac because I doubt they'd let that technology leave the platform.
Remember folks, the point of QZX is *not* faster drop shadows - it's real-time Photoshop quality compositing effects. If Adobe uses QZX, the keynote bake-offs will be absurdly one-sided.
<strong>...more realistic David's stone would be for Apple to develop an Office suite that would be 100% compatible with MS Office.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Can't be done.
Office file formats are container based, which means you can cram whatever dumb-ass content in there that you want - pictures, spreadsheets, databases, you name it. You can get most of it, but you'll never get it all.
The marketing challenge is that people will always wonder what might have been in that file that you don't know was lost. That doubt will plague the product.
If Apple wants to move into this space, they need to address the collaboration and workflow space first. That's the real problem these days and MS isn't doing much to solve it that doesn't involve shoving more virii around the office.
Maybe .mac can be of some help...
And and Apple Office Suite compatible with MS isn't going to happen ever. Lots of Corps are just now coming around to the realization that Mac Office:X IS compatible with the Windows version and thus they can use Macs. Businesses wouldn't buy a single Mac if they only had Apple's promise of compatibility.
On another note, I can't wait to see the AD client that will debut soon. Should be interesting to see if an OS X Exchange client and SMS type client is going to come down soon too - I know Apple's Job site lists several Network App positions that require knowledge of Exhange and AD so here's hoping.
<strong>amorph:
no reverse engineering (lets take this sucker apart to see what makes it tick) is illegal. reengineering (starting from scratch using a public set of specifications) is legal.
everybody else:
sorry for the off topic discussion. i'll stop now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Reverse engineering IS reengineering from a set of specifications. If you don't believe me, how about the Supreme Court:
[quote] A trade secret law, however, does not offer protection against discovery by fair and honest means, such as by independent invention, accidental disclosure, or by so-called reverse engineering, that is by starting with the known product and working backward to divine the process which aided in its development or manufacture. (416 U.S. 470)<hr></blockquote>
That should settle that.
<strong>So, if we can call a truce on the authenticity of the code name, I would appreciate it, and for now, and for the sake of argument, let's just call it "David's Stone." (Not quite as poetic as "Priam's Arrow," but then again, Achilles was not a lumbering giant.)</strong><hr></blockquote>
Off-topic aside: Shouldn't that be "Paris' Arrow"? ("Priam's Arrow" sounds better, though.)
/me gives props to theivery_corp
couple of points about porting the cocoa frameworks and runtime.
-this is a great idea, and something that apple renigged on back in the day.
-porting the cocoa runtime to windows would be a great idea, because it would "reward" cocoa developers for their hardwork by giving them a larger audience
-the cocoa frameworks are optimized for altivec, it is unlikely that x86 cocoa will be any faster than their ppc counterparts
-any speed differences between x86 and ppc will be negligible in the next year
<strong>
That's just sleazy. Seriously, that would be a horribly unethical business practice. That's far worse than Region Codes on DVDs. That's something so drastically wrong that if Apple were to do that, I would lose all respect for them, and keep in mind that I'm a highly avid Mac user who is happy even if Apple does fall behind speedwise.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I disagree. I'm not talking about just putting in a ROM check in OSX, which wouldn't install/run unless it was an Apple. I'm talking about NOT making a PC. Apple has every right to not support their software running on brandX hardware. The big push is integration, and opening their OS to the PC soup would be an integration nightmare. (integration meaning software/hardware).
As far as Visualbasic goes. I'm not talking about the ability to code in visualbasic, but there are many macros and templates which use visualbasic. I think for Apple to really get rid of the need for MS cooperation in developing Office they need to be able to open 99.99% of Word,Excel and Powerpoint documents. And, of course, save .doc/.ppt/.xl documents.
VisualBasic (macros) are used in more documents than you might think. And, of course, footnotes and TOC documents should be import/exportable.
<strong>
This is essentially what Apple did with Carbon for Classic apps. While this would help bring apps over, the would second class apps, not nearly on par with Cocoa or Carbon apps. The conversion would be exponetially more difficult that converting Carbon apps.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, this is what they did with Carbon for Classic apps.
This is why I think it would be a great thing to do for MSWin developed apps --> Carbon Apps. Well, you wouldn't need the Windows ported apps to be on par with Cocoa or Carbon apps. Yes, ported apps show the difference in elegance between Windows apps and slick MacOSX apps, but at least you'd increase your software base and remove the arguement that the software isn't avaliable on the mac. Almost all popular games on the mac are Windows ports. What if 90% of Windows games were avaliable on the Mac? Yeah, the games wouldn't be as slick as they would be designed from the ground up.... but at least the public would see them as avaliable on the Mac. They wouldn't even have to bother buying them. It's the "idea" of lack of software that gets a lot of people turned off the mac. Not the actual lack of software. If people saw the OSX icon on the boxes of 90% of the software on the shelves or advertisments, it would go very far in removing the myth that there isn't enough software for the mac. I'm babbling, but do you see my point?
Also, yes, it would be exponentially more difficult... That is why I would consider it a big break through. If it was trivial it would have already been accomplished, if not by Apple by MacSoft... or Metroworks.
Why wouldn't a software company want to pick up extra sales if the cost of bringing the appliation to the Mac was a matter of less than a week worth of man-hours?
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you're not thinking big enough. i think the x team wants X to be the premiere dev platform. they're already pushing this with java. they want ALL dev's to develop on X, and deploy elsewhere. Just like webobjects, and just how the Openstep runtime used to be--except this time, you'll develop on a mac instead of an intel or sun machine running the openstep os. the only issue these days is that java is huge right now, as far as codebase goes, and MS is aiming to emulate the openstep runtime with the .net initiative. however, anyone who has programmed a serious in app in java and obj-c (specifically using the NS frameworks the cocoa APIs) will tell you that obj-c is much better and is far superior of a RAD perspective. With respect to C# and .net, we shall see what comes to pass. I suspect that people (especially some of the higher profile geeks like O'Reilly and such) will not readily embrace that initiative, due to onerous business and licensing prcatices by MS--witness James Gosling's purchase of a powerbook and his reasoning behind it.
<strong>
you're not thinking big enough. i think the x team wants X to be the premiere dev platform. they're already pushing this with java. they want ALL dev's to develop on X, and deploy elsewhere. Just like webobjects, and just how the Openstep runtime used to be--except this time, you'll develop on a mac instead of an intel or sun machine running the openstep os. the only issue these days is that java is huge right now, as far as codebase goes, and MS is aiming to emulate the openstep runtime with the .net initiative. however, anyone who has programmed a serious in app in java and obj-c (specifically using the NS frameworks the cocoa APIs) will tell you that obj-c is much better and is far superior of a RAD perspective. With respect to C# and .net, we shall see what comes to pass. I suspect that people (especially some of the higher profile geeks like O'Reilly and such) will not readily embrace that initiative, due to onerous business and licensing prcatices by MS--witness James Gosling's purchase of a powerbook and his reasoning behind it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, yes, the idea of X being the premeire developer platform is bigger and better! No doubt about it. It would defintely be better for the Mac community. And it could very well be better for the Windows/Palm/Linux/etc communities. I do understand the concept.
However, I just think it may be unrealistic to get the software houses to dump their current development platforms. A lot of people who aren't that big on MS Windows as an OS, are big on the MS Development tools and developer support.
APple seems to have a bad rep in this area, and I think people would be reluctant to use APple as their core developer envirenment for their large Windows based projects. Especially since they know what MS does to other developer envirenments and how they screw with their OS to break other developer envirenments.
Anyway, I just don't see non-Mac houses dumping their Wintel develop envirenments for OSX.
This would work great for companies already developing for both platforms. And Apple could use these companies as nice examples! Showing that Adobe develops using OSX, compiles for Windows and the end product is a great Windows product. Yeah, if Apple could convince people that they've changed their ways in the world of developer support.... it would be great. I'm just not holding my breath.
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Reverse engineering IS reengineering from a set of specifications. If you don't believe me, how about the Supreme Court:</strong>
quote: A trade secret law, however, does not offer protection against discovery by fair and honest means, such as by independent invention, accidental disclosure, or by so-called reverse engineering, that is by starting with the known product and working backward to divine the process which aided in its development or manufacture. (416 U.S. 470)<hr></blockquote>
Exactly! How do you think DOS was created by Microsoft?
[ 07-12-2002: Message edited by: Jeff Leigh ]</p>
The first generation of the information age is at an end. Apple is at the forefront to lead the next evolution, and will, starting on Wednesday. This will be bigger than new PowerMacs, or DDR.
Watch Steve Carefully.
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Exactly! How do you think DOS was created by Microsoft?
[ 07-12-2002: Message edited by: Jeff Leigh ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
It wasn't; MS bought DOS from a small Seattle company called CP/M, if i'm not mistaken. They bought it AFTER they got the contract to produce the OS for the IBM PC.