Live data from Hacker News

Wozniak calls for open Apple

itnews.com.au

101–110 of 151 posts

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#101
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$599 for a mini would be stopping me for me one. Since I'm not getting paid to do mobile development $599 is money that could get me a holiday or a used car, I'm not trying to make angry birds here; just a few tools to make my life easier. Besides it seems silly to spend all that money on a low spec Mac when I already have a perfectly serviceable workstation that I have invested in. Even if it cost them a fair amount…

Nope. Xcode and the entire stack behind it do not run on Windows or Linux. It would take a team of engineers months to pull it off, then another team to continuously support it. In those months, the feature set of Xcode and the compilers will have improved again and there would never be a stable version for a different platform. Porting Xcode to Windows or Linux would probably be the worst idea Apple ever made.

Xcode is just the IDE right? No particular need to port that if you can just use Eclipse or the command line tools. The simulator could come later as long as you can test on a device so all your really looking at is a objC compiler and a linker.

Whilst I'm sure it's not a trivial task something tells me that there is more to this than technical limitations.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#102
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahem, if you are registering from something like India. You will have to fax some documents to them for review. There is no option to even pay online. In fact, this song and dance is so time consuming that, I haven't bothered to register an account myself.

I have no idea whether you are talking about Apple or Google.

It was for Apple obviously. Only apple can require you to pay $99 and fax them your proof of identity just for running a app on your own device (actually, I no longer remember which document they asked, but I remember I didn't had time or motivation to scan and fax those documents).

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#103
1. Make the things cost nothing, and you will lost the simple value of the thing. The value of the things comes with people caring about it. The simplest way to make people care about something is money.

2. Make the AppStore open and censorship-free and half of the apps will not be able to launch.

3. You need to get rid of script kiddies and lovers of fun and former middle-tier managers and game magazine review writers etc etc to have something that is close to a quality thing. Behold: native development and steep learning curve.

So, keep talking.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#104
post #38

Here is a nice comparison. Buy a mobile device and try to use the standard developer tools to put Hello World on it. Android: Download Eclipse (Windows, Linux or Mac) and the Android SDK (Windows, Linux or Mac) - no accounts or registration needed for either of these. In your phone menus enable development and connect via USB. In Eclipse make your hello world project, and hit Run or Debug. Enjoy. Apple: You must buy…

For WP7: - Download the SDK (free), which includes Visual Studio (For Windows Phone) Express IDE. It also includes an emulator tool. http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started Obviously only runs on Windows. - To deploy to your phone, you'll need to become an app hub member ($99 per year). Or there's numerous ways to unlock your phone for app deployment (if you search hard enough). And then you can just deploy…

I would add: born in right country OR be prepared to do that in other complicated ways.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing xcode is staggeringly more pleasant than installing eclipse in my experience People saying that don't really know what they are talking about. Installing Eclipse involves these steps: 1) install Java, which on my Ubuntu is just " sudo aptitude install openjdk-6-jdk " and that's it 2) download an archive from Eclipse.org and unzip it somewhere 3) there is no step 3 Installing the Android plugin is equally e…

XCode : open the app store, search xcode, click install. Done.

After you registered on the app store, which requires giving them name, sex, email, address, phone number and going through the account validation email and "password must contain X special characters and you need six different security questions" hoops.

Last time I checked, Java SDK or Eclipse didn't want my A/S/L.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing xcode is staggeringly more pleasant than installing eclipse in my experience People saying that don't really know what they are talking about. Installing Eclipse involves these steps: 1) install Java, which on my Ubuntu is just " sudo aptitude install openjdk-6-jdk " and that's it 2) download an archive from Eclipse.org and unzip it somewhere 3) there is no step 3 Installing the Android plugin is equally e…

XCode : open the app store, search xcode, click install. Done.

Eclipse: open Ubuntu Software Centre, search eclipse, click install. Done.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#107
A big part of Apples success has been its closed platforms.

Would the devices be as compact and look good if they had a bunch of removable slots in the back? No.. no they wouldn't.

The thing that differentiates Apple from everyone else is that they make simple, classy products which are easy to use. If Apple open up they move into competition with the likes of Dell. This is something they simply don't need to do.

I recently switched back to Windows and the difference! My Windows computer came with a list of dos and don'ts. If I want to keep my warrenty intact I need to keep the box. I shouldn't smoke around it. I should do a yearly inspection to check for dust build ups! With a Mac you plonk it on the table, attach your mouse and keyboard and off you go. I was messing around with cables for ages with my Windows computer.

Look at Apple now. Jobs was right, Woz was wrong. Would it be nice if Apple products were more open? HELL YES! Should Apple do it? No... because then they loose a big chunk of what makes Apple, Apple.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never quite understood why they require a Mac for development. Surely it wouldn't be insurmountable to port the tools to Windows/Linux? They might sell a few more Mac desktops this way but I can't see it being a large number in the grand scheme of things. One of the reasons I bought an Android instead of an iPhone was because I can develop for it using the computer I already have.

Porting XCode and emulators to windows/linux is probably a huge undertaking, the technology stack is completely different. In addition, the cost of a Mac for development ($599 for a mini) is not stopping anybody, and most iOS developers will already have one, so there's little return to be had.

> Porting XCode and emulators to windows/linux is probably a huge undertaking

Apple doesn't need to port their software to Windows or Linux at all but simply allow to use OSX in an emulator. Even this is forbidden by Apple (it's not a surprise).

I think it was a huge mistake of Apple to allow iOS development on Macs only. If they hadn' make this mistake almost all people would develop for iOS mobile devices now, and Android wouldn't have had any chance to win. In some sense Steve Jobs himself was the main reason that Android became so successful :-)

> In addition, the cost of a Mac for development ($599 for a mini) is not stopping anybody,

It has stopped me. I have a pretty good PC, and I never accepted that I would have to buy an additional Mac solely to fed my iphone. It's a waste of room and money. For that reason I use Android.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#109
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maemo (as used on the Nokia N900) : On the device, tap the menu button, then tap "Xterm" Type in 'nano helloworld.py' Enter the text 'print "Hello, World!"' Ctrl-x, ctrl-s to save the file Enter 'python helloworld.py' and press enter Of course, as Maemo is based on Debian, you can easily install Ruby, PHP or even a C compiler.

To bad nokia is fucking stupid, they had pure gold there.

Still using that phone, really is brilliant.

They had a 'dev only' successor to it, the n950 but I think the chances of nokia releasing another is slim at best.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#110

Here is a nice comparison. Buy a mobile device and try to use the standard developer tools to put Hello World on it. Android: Download Eclipse (Windows, Linux or Mac) and the Android SDK (Windows, Linux or Mac) - no accounts or registration needed for either of these. In your phone menus enable development and connect via USB. In Eclipse make your hello world project, and hit Run or Debug. Enjoy. Apple: You must buy…

I've never quite understood why they require a Mac for development. Surely it wouldn't be insurmountable to port the tools to Windows/Linux? They might sell a few more Mac desktops this way but I can't see it being a large number in the grand scheme of things. One of the reasons I bought an Android instead of an iPhone was because I can develop for it using the computer I already have.

The reason a mac is required for development is that iOS and OS X are essentially the same operating system - they just have different user interfaces. When you run your app under the iOS "simulator", it is actually running as a native OS X app, linked against a version the iOS user interface libraries that have been compiled for OS X.

For Apple to support development on other platforms, as far as I can see the only practical option would be to provide an alternative to the simulator which runs a variant of iOS inside a virtual machine. While this is certainly technically feasible to do, and you could make the argument that they should provide such a tool, it does involve a lot more than simply porting a few user-space tools to run on a different OS. Android also benefits in this regard from using Java, which already has compilers available for all major platforms.

It is also worth nothing that the Android emulator, at least last time I checked, is extremely slow to the point of being unusable. When I was developing for Android I found the only realistic option was for me to test on a real device. The speed of the iOS simulator is one of the main things I prefer about iOS development in comparison to Android.

Post reply on HN