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Why I Develop For The Mac

evanmiller.org

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Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#31

Post by sreitshamer »

imechura wrote: post #14

Developers, please take note of the authors statement below.... "Many developers assume that everyone wants their data to be “in the cloud”, but that's actually not true for a lot of my customers. Professional researchers often sign agreements in their children's blood stating that their data will be stored on an encrypted disk, won't leave their laptop, and will be destroyed when the research project is completed. “…

But what if the app stored the data in your own AWS account, encrypted with a key only you know? (That's what we're building at Filosync)

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#32

Post by kalms »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #11
sergiotapia wrote: post #6

I would love to make Mac applications but the prospect of having such a small potential userbase makes it a non-option for me. Imagine, 10% of desktops have Mac OS, of that only 20% will buy my application; that's a very small user base.

There are 75 million Mac users, many of whom have iTunes accounts and credit cards on file – they can buy from the Mac App Store with a single click. 20% of 75 million is 15 million. 15 million copies of any paid app is huge. Also, let’s not forget that Mac sales has been growing for years, while the PC market as a whole has been shrinking. Today, there are 3 times as many Mac users than 5 years a go.

Also, it would seem that Mac users tend to spend more money on software, than the general PC user. [citation probably needed, but whatevs]

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#34

Post by marssaxman »

kalms wrote: post #32
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 75 million Mac users, many of whom have iTunes accounts and credit cards on file – they can buy from the Mac App Store with a single click. 20% of 75 million is 15 million. 15 million copies of any paid app is huge. Also, let’s not forget that Mac sales has been growing for years, while the PC market as a whole has been shrinking. Today, there are 3 times as many Mac users than 5 years a go.

Also, it would seem that Mac users tend to spend more money on software, than the general PC user. [citation probably needed, but whatevs]

From my observation that relation has held true since the '80s.

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#35

Post by pcwalton »

> Browser vendors with cross-platform drawing kits just don't invest the same kind of effort into drawing lines and circles. As a result, large areas seem laggy on most browsers, whereas native apps “just work”. (“Are the graphics pre-computed?”)

This is incorrect. Firefox and Safari use Core Graphics (Quartz) just as Mac native apps do. Things like lines and circles go through the exact same SSE-accelerated routines. I don't know off the top of my head whether Chrome uses Skia or Core Graphics on the Mac, but either way, its blitting routines use SSE optimizations as well.

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#36

Post by rimantas »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #16

Having a hard time phrasing this without being a jerk, but many of these "native is better than web" psuedo-rants contain misinformation or seem to be lacking in an understanding of the current state of web technologies like persistance, app caching, etc, etc.

Sorry, but I guess you lack in the understanding of both. Yeah, app caching looks nice in theory. Now implement it reliably in practice. What will you use in the place of Core Data? Local storage? IndexedDB(with no support in default browser both on iOS and Android)? How will your replacement for UITableView with reusable cells look like? How about the same combined with UIFetchedResultController? I am not even talking about Core Graphics, animation, etc, etc. Sorry, but anyone really wanting to advance web tech on mobile should first learn what native SDKs really offer. And then think long and think hard about an answer to this question: "Should we?Why?". How about finding the way finally to serve responsible images on the web instead of fighting wars against native apps?

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#37

Post by zenocon »

rimantas wrote: post #27
zenocon wrote: post #4

I'm going to take a wild stab at the primary reason he develops on the Mac is his own comfort and expertise with it - which is fine, of course. With the advancements made in web tech today, I don't think all the performance reasons he listed ring entirely true. See for example Google Refine https://code.google.com/p/google-refine/ which is a similar tool to his Wizard tool, with a web front-end.

> his own comfort and expertise with it - which is fine, of > course. With the advancements made in web tech today Do you have any expertise developing for desktop/native mobile? I have a lot of expertise developing for the web—I've spent 4x as much being the web developer before switching to iOS programming full-time and every time I see someone presenting web tech as a superior way to build apps I have a hard time…

You've mis-read my statement as some sort of attack on native development and counter-attacked accordingly - even personally? I never said web tech was superior. I'm simply presenting a counter-argument to those that continue to deride web development and claim it can't hold a candle to native apps. There are endless examples of web applications done right that have compelling experiences and perform on par with native apps. I've provided a couple of examples in this thread, but there are countless others. I'm simply claiming web apps can be done right.

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#39

Post by drivebyacct2 »

rimantas wrote: post #36
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #16

Having a hard time phrasing this without being a jerk, but many of these "native is better than web" psuedo-rants contain misinformation or seem to be lacking in an understanding of the current state of web technologies like persistance, app caching, etc, etc.

Sorry, but I guess you lack in the understanding of both. Yeah, app caching looks nice in theory. Now implement it reliably in practice. What will you use in the place of Core Data? Local storage? IndexedDB(with no support in default browser both on iOS and Android)? How will your replacement for UITableView with reusable cells look like? How about the same combined with UIFetchedResultController? I am not even talki…

I'm well aware of what native SDKs offer. I don't know why you assumed I'm unfamiliar with native development.

As for the last statement, and much of the others, I'm not even sure what you're asking. If you want a nice syntax for it, then yeah, wait for the spec to be finished. Otherwise, you're probably implementing that logic yourself. The same as if you want a native app to pull in different assets (unless we're talking about UI assets and a sane OS, but still, it's not like that's a compelling lacking feature).

Look, I'd be happy to be wrong but there are half a dozen inaccuracies in this very article about what is possible with web technology and how browsers themselves work.

Am I suggesting Angry Birds in web tech (even though it's already been done): No. Am I suggesting that shit basic apps like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc make more sense as simple, functional, accessible webapps? Absolutely.

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#40

Post by checker659 »

pcwalton wrote: post #35

> Browser vendors with cross-platform drawing kits just don't invest the same kind of effort into drawing lines and circles. As a result, large areas seem laggy on most browsers, whereas native apps “just work”. (“Are the graphics pre-computed?”) This is incorrect. Firefox and Safari use Core Graphics (Quartz) just as Mac native apps do. Things like lines and circles go through the exact same SSE-accelerated routines…

Yes, Skia makes use of SSE2/3. He pulled that right out of his ass.
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