121–130 of 401 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question in my mind is what they will do with Xcode for OSX Lion. I don't use Xcode itself, but I always install it to get the tools and libraries I need to compile other software. If Lion requires users to pay $5 to get the necessary dependencies to build other free software tools, this will be a step back from the status quo.
Xcode has normally shipped with OS X install DVDs (though a lot of folks download it anyway, as this gets you the latest version). I'm wondering if they'll ship it with Lion. I'm guessing that they will not.
Once the old free Xcode 3 has vanished, this neatly puts an end to stuff like Homebrew or MacPorts. I really don't care about paying the $4, but for many people without credit cards or unwilling to use iTunes/the app store, OSX just has become a lot less useful.
Visual Studio: $549.00 Flash Builder: $699.00 TextMate: $56.00 Coda: $99.00 BBedit: $99.99 Xcode 4: $4.99
Seeing this reminded me of a Microsoft focus group I was invited to be a part of a few years ago. As a CTO who had decided to build everyone on top of free software, they wanted to know what it take to make me to switch to a Microsoft stack. I told them they were 10 years too late. You see, I made the decision to use LAMP stack not because it was cheaper, but because it's what I knew. And the reason I knew LAMP stack…
And while, $5 is still well within the average teenagers reach, it's still a lot more friction than free. Smalltalk companies did this to themselves, but with a smaller userbase and bigger fees. (Which is worse in both dimensions!) With $5000 seats, the friction was hella high. Then Java came along with tools that weren't 100th as cool, but which were frictionless and free. It's kinda the playbook for being a superio…
That's one hell of an understatement...
For the convenience of being able to download Xcode through the mac store and get the updates automatically, I'll gladly pay $4.99.
I'm not sure if this applies to Xcode, but at least with Coda, even if you purchase it outside the App Store, it has an 'Installed' label and presumably gets updated through the App Store as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
iTunes gift cards are not abundant resources everywhere.
They're a lot more abundant than the Mac you need to run Xcode on, though. iTMS cards are purchasable at every 7-Eleven and nearly every major supermarket, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Target or what-have-you in the USA. You can buy Xcode with $5 in nickles if you have access to a Coinstar machine. Let's be realistic, the hardware demands are much more serious than $5 on an iTunes card. The problem here is the message Apple is…
Outside the USA, what do you do?