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Wozniak calls for open Apple

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Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#131

Post by glenra »

ricardobeat wrote: post #65
rogerbinns wrote: post #21

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…

That's a brutal over-simplification of what you need before developing for Android. "Downloading the Android SDK" is actually a dozen steps of installs, updates, add-ons, setting up emulator devices and so on. The Apple dance takes a couple minutes to do and costs $99/year.

> The Apple dance takes a couple minutes to do

You either got lucky or did the Apple dance a lot more recently than some of us. When I did the Apple dance, I had to wait more than a month before my application to be a developer was "approved", then it took weeks to figure out how to get the certificate stuff working. Even after I got it working it was fragile - my ability to put an app on the phone was never something I could expect would just work - it would spontaneously break with a cryptic error for no apparent reason.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#132

Post by lolcraft »

peterkelly wrote: post #110
jiggy2011 wrote: post #61

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.

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…

For the sound of it, the job would be compiling a cross-target version of GCC/LLVM and putting QEMU, an iOS ISO and some libs in a TGZ. Could hardly be called a major feat of engineering.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#133

Post by yardie »

StuffMaster wrote: post #56
Tloewald wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative at the time was to buy an mp3 player with no way for normal people to load or buy music. It's precisely because of the lack of hoop jumping that iPod took off. Don't confuse the customer experience with the developer experience. Apple has always considered ease of use for end users a top priority and ease of use for programmers to be a distant nth.

Whoah there, iTunes is not ease of use. I had an MP3 player before the iPod was ever relased and it was most definitely easier to load music onto.

I had an MP3 player before the iPod as well. It was a 64MB Rio and it held ~10 songs.

The thing was iTunes wasn't designed to be a music loader, it's a music manager. This became evident when they introduced smart playlists.

A few of my friends had Nomads, they were large, heavy and the UI was archaic in comparison.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#134

Post by slowpoke »

Tloewald wrote: post #35
oldschooltaper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. Apple is all about hoop jumping. Remember your first iPod? Chances are you were forced to use something called iTunes. Now people do not think twice about iTunes. But back then there was just no sensible reason, from the user's perspective, not to let a user add/remove music from an iPod without jumping through an additional hoop. People had to spend countless hours deciphering the protocol in order to bui…

The alternative at the time was to buy an mp3 player with no way for normal people to load or buy music. It's precisely because of the lack of hoop jumping that iPod took off. Don't confuse the customer experience with the developer experience. Apple has always considered ease of use for end users a top priority and ease of use for programmers to be a distant nth.

No matter how much you might try to excuse it, there is no greater user friendliness than a device simply identifying as data storage to the OS. It's ridiculous to have to use a separate program when you could just use your file manager.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#135

Post by bitwize »

primecommenter wrote: post #34
bitwize wrote: post #32

Not gonna happen. Apple devices are abstractions with well-defined interfaces (sets of operations you can perform on them). Not only should the implementation not matter, it is anathema that anyone should know the implementation because that would break the abstraction at a fundamental level. It's absurd for a bunch of hackers to think about, but this is what has made Apple billions of dollars, and it's what made the…

This is nonsense. It's absurd for you to argue that the difficulty of writing "Hello world" on an Apple device is somehow a good thing for Apple or anyone else on the basis of a wishy-washy concept like "abstraction".

It used to be effectively impossible for anyone outside Apple to develop anything for the iPhone.

The device was still a zillion seller.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#136

Post by ricardobeat »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #101
anextio wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Along with XCode comes the iOS simulator, debug tools, publishing/packaging and certificate handling. And of course there is more to it: diminishing returns.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#137

Post by rogerbinns »

ricardobeat wrote: post #83
rogerbinns wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that joining Eclipse and the Android SDK is not as seamless as it should be. Technically you don't need Eclipse and the SDK can create Hello World for you in addition to building and deploying it. (Another minor difference I noticed between Android and Xcode/iOS is that a auto-created Android project printed "hello project" on the screen while the iOS one was blank.) These are the Android SDK instructio…

There is a "iOS Provisioning Portal" and the "Development Provisioning Assistant", a 4-step wizard that guides you through creating the necessary profiles, but they are behind a login. There's a few SSs over at PhoneGap docs: http://www.adobe.com/fr/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/phonegap...

I cannot find any way of doing this other than handing over $99 to Apple. See for example this page https://developer.apple.com/programs/start/ios/

The provisioning portal is supposedly at http://developer.apple.com/ios/manage/overview/index.action but it won't let you in until you hand over money for annual membership.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#138

Post by freehunter »

slowpoke wrote: post #130
freehunter wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides paying the $99 for a dev account (that allows you to publish to the marketplace), you can pay ~$10 for a personal app account, which allows you to load 10 apps of your own creation onto your device. Much cheaper if you just want to put your own app on your own device.

Please tell me this is a joke. I have to pay to load applications I wrote myself on my own device ? This is even more ridiculous than just locking down the platform. This is a slap in the face. Good thing WP7 is failing to reach the mass market so far. I seriously hope it stays that way.

You're paying for an affordable, restricted developer account. This is better than iOS. Don't feign outrage or spew hyperbole just because it's not 100% of what you demand. You can't defend your argument that a $10 dev account is somehow worse than a $99 dev account.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#139

Post by userdeveloper »

parasubvert wrote: post #129
userdeveloper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true simplicity actually lies below those abstractions. It seems reasonable to assume that people would not buy Apple products if they were too difficult to use. It seems reasonable to assume people do not buy them for ease of use. Other competing systems are also easy to use. It seems reasonable to assume they buy them because they "look cool", much more so than any competing product. It seems reasonable to assu…

Things can seem reasonable and not be true. Lots of hackers continue to use Apple laptops because the software and hardware has combined what they perceive as the best quality in the industry. They don't do this because they look cool. One can't also assume the iPad is the only runaway tablet success because of a cool factor or hardware design. The iPad was laughed at on first release by most geeks and pundits. But t…

As I said, we have no way to say whether the assumptions are true or not unless consumers are given the choice.

As you admit, no one can predict what consumers will choose.

However, a company can actively work to limit consumer choice. They can attempt to control how a consumer uses a product so as to benefit the company, not necessarily the consumer.

I ask you, "What would hackers do if they had choice?"

It's easy to look upon "success" after the fact and conclude a company is good at what they do.

Apple has failed many times. And they may fail again in the future.

I'd like to buy stuff from a "fearless company", not one that places ridiculous restrictions on users (fear of competition?), even when they are at the top.

Hackers use Apple products and endure the annoyances because there are no other choices.

Apple is the new Microsoft.

Success?

Maybe.

But at what cost to the consumer and the computing world at large?

Apple is trying to prevent people from freely programming and experimenting. Sure, people will still buy and use their products, but Apple cannot stop competition. Arguments that hackers should just accept Apple as the new Microsoft are good for a laugh.

Keep them coming.

Re: Wozniak calls for open Apple

#140

Post by userdeveloper »

oldschooltaper wrote: post #28
rogerbinns wrote: post #21

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…

Precisely. Apple is all about hoop jumping. Remember your first iPod? Chances are you were forced to use something called iTunes. Now people do not think twice about iTunes. But back then there was just no sensible reason, from the user's perspective, not to let a user add/remove music from an iPod without jumping through an additional hoop. People had to spend countless hours deciphering the protocol in order to bui…

s/protocol/database format/
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