Xcode now costs US$ 4.99 • Hacker News Board

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#211

Post by josso » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:34 PM UTC

arnorhs wrote: post #47

ori_b wrote: post #15

This is somewhat strange pricing - it seems ridiculously cheap if they're trying to make significant profits off of it, but pricey enough to prevent tinkerers who don't really know about coding but feel like trying it from getting a start in xcode.

Some pirated software and cracking patches rely on gdb. So a user has to have xcode installed in order for the cracks to work. At least, it's often a requirement. This might be to make that harder and to thwart software piracy up to a point.

Cracking software often (not always) require GDB, but running cracked software doesn't require anything but the .app

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#212

Post by merijnv » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:34 PM UTC

iloveponies wrote: post #38

adsr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it put an end to macports? And why would that be neat?

OS X without Xcode installed doesn't have a compiler - if you can't compile, you can't use macports or homebrew. It would be "neat" as in clean. No drama on Apple's behalf. Just put a price tag on the only real compiler, and it's over. Unless someone solves that issue.

Uh...OSX just uses gcc as a C compiler and all the Apple specific changes are open source as well (GPL license and all that), so what's stopping me from just distributing a binary (Apple patched) gcc?

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#213

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:35 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #187

rbanffy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Java came along with tools that weren't 100th as cool That's one hell of an understatement...

That's one hell of an understatement... I just want to relate the experience, not start a flame war. Java tools are pretty darn cool nowadays.

Still, Smalltalk is seriously cool.

I think the pricing was only one factor of Java's success. Smalltalk, for the C programmer, is pretty alien. No source files, no compiler... That takes some to get used to. Java provides a nice path towards OOP that's more forgiving than C++, yet, it's aesthetically compatible with C.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#214

Post by uxp » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:35 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #198

ori_b wrote: post #15

This is somewhat strange pricing - it seems ridiculously cheap if they're trying to make significant profits off of it, but pricey enough to prevent tinkerers who don't really know about coding but feel like trying it from getting a start in xcode.

According to the LLVM lead dev (Chris Lattner on IRC), this is due to Apple's accountant's interpretation of SOX (Xcode 4 is too different from Xcode 3 to be considered an update, they see it as a new product): > it is due to some bizarro accounting rule. xcode4 is sufficiently new that it doesn't count as a free update or something. paid adc members should get free access. yeah, clearly we're trying to monetize it..…

Here is the Wikipedia article on SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) for anyone that needs a refresher:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#215

Post by arnorhs » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:36 PM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #145

arnorhs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some pirated software and cracking patches rely on gdb. So a user has to have xcode installed in order for the cracks to work. At least, it's often a requirement. This might be to make that harder and to thwart software piracy up to a point.

Cracked software is pre-patched. Otherwise, they just distribute keys, and use the software unmodified. Xcode and gdb aren't a factor in piracy.

Well, I'll just paste instructions from a crack a friend of mine needed me to help him with:

Install Instructions for Protools 9

• 0. Make sure you have gdb installed. Test by typing “gdb test” into terminal.

1. Uninstall any versions of Pro Tools that are already installed

2. Install Pro Tools, Complete Production Tookit 2 and HEAT (in the optional installers folder) from the full iso

3. Use the [K]‘ed installer to overwrite the necessary files

4. Launch Pro Tools from the loader and everything should work as expected

This crack requires Xcode to be installed. Xcode can be downloaded for free from developer.apple.com. Also, DO NOT REPLACE THE LOADER. The loader included with the new release (loader version 1.1) was designed for this release as a background process which is what people wanted. It also now breaks on ptrace so there is no need for the anti-ptrace extension posted later in the topic. To use Pro Tools launch the loader and wait a few seconds. Nothing will show while it does some work in the background and then it will launch the main Pro Tools app a few seconds later. Big thanks to unsanity, simblism, and XVX for their respective contributions.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#216

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:36 PM UTC

ojilles wrote: post #185

rbanffy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iTMS cards are purchasable at every (...) or what-have-you in the USA. Outside the USA, what do you do?

Either buy the gift card in your country, or alternatively get a US gift card on eBay.

See the kind of convoluted procedures this silly price is making people do?

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#217

Post by aaronbrethorst » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:36 PM UTC

joshfraser wrote: post #58

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…

Which is one of the biggest reasons why Microsoft's Developer Division created and gives away the Visual Studio Express product line[1], and supplements it with websites like the Beginner Developer Learning Center[2].

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/ [2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#218

Post by potatolicious » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:36 PM UTC

jonursenbach wrote: post #93

potatolicious wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to think of what would've happened if I had to ask my parents for their credit card every time I had to download some tool when I was a kid just messing around with programming. I probably wouldn't working in the field today, that's for sure.

I definitely agree with you, having grown up on free tools, but $5 is a lot easier to ask a parent for than $99/year to get access to this kind of stuff.

The $99/year thing is not terrible. I remember saving money from my paper route to buy tools/lib licenses to some specialized things I really wanted.

Selling your parents on a single $99 purchase is a lot easier than trying to sell a $5 purchase every week. 'Tis just the way it is.

jarin below mentions he wouldn't hesitate buying his kid Xcode for $5... that only works if the parent is in the field also. How many, say, accountants or lawyers would buy their precocious coder-child a bunch of tools or understand the importance of it?

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#219

Post by masklinn » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:37 PM UTC

pornel wrote: post #10

kylelibra wrote: post #2

For the convenience of being able to download Xcode through the mac store and get the updates automatically, I'll gladly pay $4.99.

Automatic updates should be obvious standard feature, not a premium. I don't like paying Apple for solving problem they've created themselves by putting download behind pointless registration and releasing minor updates as 4GB bundle of everything.

Don't worry, updates will still be 4GB bundles of everything, last time I updated iTunes to 10.2.1 Apple still hadn't found out about bsdiff.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#220

Post by aperiodic » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:38 PM UTC

lurker19 wrote: post #180

theoretical wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I develop iOS apps on a hackintosh. It's of equivalent spec of a recent Mac Pro, apart from it's an i7 instead of a Xeon.

Could you share some more info on the hackintoah. The amount of info I have read about hardware compatibility fickleness and dsmos security code has terrified me.

I recently put together a Hackintosh, and it went much more smoothly than anticipated. Just get any Intel processor, and make sure your motherboard and graphics card, or a closely related model, are on one of the recent OSx86 hardware compatibility lists[1]. Then, just follow TonyMacx86's install guide[2]. Post-install, you'll probably want to install a few additional kexts (for example, the sleep-enabler kext). If one of the kexts causes your box to kernel panic on boot, then just boot off of the install DVD again, and use the Terminal (under the "Utilities" menu) to remove the kext(s) in question. If you get stuck, use your google-fu–there's a pretty healthy hackintosh community, so chances are somebody else has encountered the same problem as you.

[1] http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page [2] http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/04/iboot-multibeast-inst...