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Why I Develop For The Mac

evanmiller.org

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Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#131

Post by leephillips »

bitwize wrote: post #113
shmerl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my point. Learning the language just to use some platform specific non portable technology like Cocoa? No thanks. Better to stick with what's reusable, like C++ and Qt.

Iron law of native desktop app development: Code to your platform's native GUI API -- no wrappers. Or your user base will notice and one-star that shit. You have less of an excuse on the Mac, which has literally the best GUI API in Cocoa that anyone has ever invented.

What is Linux's native GUI API?

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#132

Post by Wingman4l7 »

jgrahamc wrote: post #19
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. “…

I'm very much in the camp of not wanting my data in the cloud. I don't autoupload photos, for example, because I want control over them. What I would like is a home cloud server which would handle all the services I could get from the cloud with explicit sharing with chosen people (e.g. my family).

There are a couple of devices on Kickstarter that are targeting this niche:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transporterguy/transport...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintgc/space-monkey-tak...

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#134

Post by gte910h »

shmerl wrote: post #48

Objective C? What for, when there is C++.

C++ isn't a pure win. It's far more complex, and leaky abstraction wise than Objective C is. MOST people write mac and iOS apps in Objective C, and it works well, is predictable. It's also far easier to find people who do Obj-C well than C++ (in the mac environment, but this holds for all systems I've ever seen as well).

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#136

Post by zwily »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #132
jgrahamc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very much in the camp of not wanting my data in the cloud. I don't autoupload photos, for example, because I want control over them. What I would like is a home cloud server which would handle all the services I could get from the cloud with explicit sharing with chosen people (e.g. my family).

There are a couple of devices on Kickstarter that are targeting this niche: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transporterguy/transport... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintgc/space-monkey-tak...

SpaceMonkey stores your data on your home device, and then replicated across other users' devices for redundancy. If you have liability problems using something like Dropbox, SpaceMonkey may not solve them.

(But it's pretty cool. I'm an alpha user.)

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#137

Post by gte910h »

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.

Small, but moderately affluent userbase, who have a 30ish year history of paying for shareware and software at a far higher rate than windows users.

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#138

Post by millstone »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #115
millstone wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me scratch my head. Desktop apps have been accommodating multiple screen and window sizes since before the Internet existed. Do you think we hard-code a separate layout for every window size? I don't know if responsive design is "hard" or not, but I observe that on the web, fixed widths are still incredibly common, and even major sites break easily. I visit Google, and if my window size is not at least one…

So the same coded version of Office works on your tablet and phone and the UI adapts properly? That's pretty impressive. I wasn't implying desktop designers hard code everything -- but in fact many of them do or make assumptions that the app will NEVER be used on anything smaller than even the absurdly small 800x600. We're talking about mobile apps, responsiveness, the cost/benefit of targetting multiple devices with…

Neither Microsoft Office nor Google Docs "just worked" on tablets and phones without major reworking of their UIs. It's not obvious that the web has any advantage here - I just now visited docs.google.com and was encouraged to "download the Google Drive iOS app" so that I can "edit documents." (!)

If you target multiple platforms with one app, you get an app that works from OK to poorly on lots of platforms. Look at Light Table as an example: done entirely via web technologies, easy to port everywhere, but feels incredibly alien and _wrong_ on my Mac. (No offense Chris!)

Compare to Sublime Text 2, which to my understanding has lots of platform-specific code to make it feel native on each platform, but also a shared core (using Cairo, etc). So "six native apps" need not cost anywhere near six times a single native app.

So in the end, the cost of targeting multiple platforms with a single app is surely lower than targeting each platform individually, but that's just a classic cost/quality tradeoff - the web limits your polish. And what good is having your app on multiple platforms if it's inferior to native alternatives on all of them? I know as a Mac user, I'll pick the Mac app that feels like a Mac app every time.

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#139

Post by xtracto »

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. “…

What I have never understood is the willingness of people to accept ad ridden web services when some years ago everybody had their panties in a bunch when Opera or Getright had ads in their software.

Back when I was part of a EU research project, we could not use Skype, DimDim or any other video-conference platform because a lot of stuff we worked was protected as the author comments under a lot of privacy contracts.

Re: Why I Develop For The Mac

#140

Post by shmerl »

gte910h wrote: post #134
shmerl wrote: post #48

Objective C? What for, when there is C++.

C++ isn't a pure win. It's far more complex, and leaky abstraction wise than Objective C is. MOST people write mac and iOS apps in Objective C, and it works well, is predictable. It's also far easier to find people who do Obj-C well than C++ (in the mac environment, but this holds for all systems I've ever seen as well).

Qt for iOS will bring more C++ demand there hopefully.
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