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OS X Isn't for Developers

zachholman.com

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Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#191

Post by flomo »

nl wrote: post #110
statictype wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about iTunes? Why don't they have to charge for iTunes?

Because the whole "SOX accounting theory" is made up by people who don't know what they are talking about. In its defense it was initially put forward as speculation ("what about this theory"), but now is being taken as fact.

SOX became the trendy IT excuse for anything.

As an example from a few years ago, when I hired a contract developer, the company required a "Contractor Request Form". Fine. There's payroll to setup and so on. But then one day the form was renamed to be the "Contractor SOX Compliance Request Form".

I suspect this exercise was only so that some bean counter could show the outrageous costs of "SOX compliance".

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#192

Post by rbarooah »

tvon wrote: post #83
e40 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its rather obvious its about SOX. To you, but obviously not to a lot of us. Please explain.

Yeah, I hear the "it's about SOX" comment a lot, and I hear the "it's about greed" comment a lot, neither of which make any sense to me... I'd love to get a real explanation.

The sox comment has been explained in numerous places. Basically because Xcode comes with a purchase of a new Mac or OSX it's considered to be part of the value delivered with that purchase. If they update it later, it is regarded as delivering additional value to the original purchase. I.e. Some of the money you paid originally is accounted as having paid for the upgrade. This means that the original transaction wasn't complete until they delivered the upgrade. This means that Apple can't record all of the 'incomplete' transaction on their balance sheet as revenue. They could work around this by holding back a percentage to cover later updates but this would be stupidly complicated and they'd still have the problem of not being able to declare it complete until they were certain of never shipping any new update. Much easier to just charge a nominal fee.

Obviously this seems like a Byzantine regulation, but it's not aimed at Apple - it's intended to stop certain kinds of fraud involving counting money received as revenue even though there is still a lot to deliver.

As for 'it's about greed' - well they do make a lot of money and that leads people to accuse them of greed. It's just a subjective judgement.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#193

Post by rbarooah »

nl wrote: post #110
statictype wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about iTunes? Why don't they have to charge for iTunes?

Because the whole "SOX accounting theory" is made up by people who don't know what they are talking about. In its defense it was initially put forward as speculation ("what about this theory"), but now is being taken as fact.

If you know what you are talking about then you'll be able to tell us the reason why it can't be true.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#194

Post by flomo »

bonch wrote: post #113
dasil003 wrote: post #69

It's a legitimate point, but the linkbait title just irritates me. This is something that developers only have to deal with once every year or two. $5 is not a lot of money for a 4.5GB development package, regardless of whether you think it should be free. It certainly shouldn't be any kind of tipping point in platform choice for developers.

> It certainly shouldn't be any kind of tipping point in platform choice for developers. It won't be. After the usual anti-Apple trolls have had their say, everyone will have forgotten about this phony "controversy" by next week.

I don't think so.

The article makes a very valid point that people download XCode not because they care about Mac/iOS development, but only because Unix systems assume you have a compiler available as part of the software installation process. Folks like Ruby developers and MacPort users will not be happy to have to pay $5 to install something, when the equivalent Windows binaries are available for free.

This is going to cause major disruption in how certain Mac software is distributed. The problem will not simply "go away" as trolls are distracted.

Most likely Macs will move to a Macs move to a Windows-like model of binaries instead of build-scripts. However, someone could recreate the Mac toolchain and distribute it for free in an easy to install package. That's a lot of work to save someone $5 however, so there will be a lot of bitching-and-moaning in the short term.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#195

Post by rimantas »

dizm wrote: post #150
zenocon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, every time I see one of these articles with even a hint at criticism towards Apple, I cringe slightly before I click the comments link...because I know what's coming next. Not that you care, but I'm also tired of Apple hi-jinks, T's & C's, and just general unfriendliness toward devs and I'll stick with Win7/Ubuntu from now on.

Right, because Windows comes with gcc?

Perl, Python, Ruby, rails…

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#196

Post by albemuth »

avdempsey wrote: post #130
nl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its been demonstrated many times that Apple charges these $5 fees for previously free tools and applications because of SOX compliance laws... Its rather obvious its about SOX. No, it's not at all. The only "evidence" for that is a bunch of uninformed developers speculating about things they know nothing about. OTOH, there is quite a bit of evidence that this isn't the case: 1) Why didn't they charge before? They've…

You could always get the dev tools for free* because they always came with some other purchase. That seems like it would cover the "SOX" compliance to me. Examples: you bought a copy of Mac OS X (the dev tools were in the box), you bought an ADC membership (dev tools are included with your membership). Now, XCode 4 from the App Store is the first time you could get them standalone. And they charge for it.

Updates used to be free as well.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#197

Post by jad »

albemuth wrote: post #196
avdempsey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could always get the dev tools for free* because they always came with some other purchase. That seems like it would cover the "SOX" compliance to me. Examples: you bought a copy of Mac OS X (the dev tools were in the box), you bought an ADC membership (dev tools are included with your membership). Now, XCode 4 from the App Store is the first time you could get them standalone. And they charge for it.

Updates used to be free as well.

Only minor updates. Major updates were always bundled with new OS versions. If memory serves, Xcode 3 shipped with Leopard, Xcode 2 with Tiger, etc.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#198

Post by actf »

geuis wrote: post #62

I disagree with all of the OP's points, except for one. Yes, Macs are incredibly popular with developers. 1) The reason I have always liked Macs since I was a kid is they basically come with what they need, and its easy to install extra stuff if you need it. Just because many developers like Macs doesn't mean that most Mac owners are developers. Most are just normal people who would wonder what is eating up extra spa…

Say that for Visual Studio or Eclipse which aren't as polished in some aspects, crash frequently, or run on platforms that crash frequently. (I'm not saying that VS or Eclipse share all 3 of those properties, and the crashing bit refers to Windows).

I've never used Xcode, but I do use Visual Studio everyday, on Windows 7. In the 5+ years I've been using Visual Studio I've been very happy with it as an IDE. Prior to 2008 there were definitely some quirks and stability issues, but as of 2010, I very rarely encounter any issues. I have lots of unix experience, and I can honestly say that Visual Studio is an excellent piece of software, and a pleasure to write software with.

As for your point about Windows crashing, I've never once seen Windows 7 blue screen or become unresponsive to the point where I had to reboot a machine. Disliking Microsoft and Windows are fine, but without some real evidence that Windows 7 is less stable than OSX, or any other OS I think this is a baseless claim.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#199

Post by bobwaycott »

holman wrote: post #183
bobwaycott wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who hits the need for gcc is no longer a casual user by any average use of that term. A casual user rarely moves past opening a .dmg or .zip with an installer pkg. A casual developer might be a different class of user ... but anyone who hits the point of writing code & installing libraries instead of applications has adequately stepped outside the role of user. And even granting that, it is still not a firm en…

I define it as a casual user of my libraries. Designers are the best example: they're usually hooked into the development world and would be interested in a clever command line tool, but they normally don't have an entire build chain under their belt.

In my neck of the woods, a designer's tool chain rarely extends to anything outside Adobe tools. That's what developers are for ;)

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#200

Post by mnutt »

Terretta wrote: post #156
mnutt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's arguing that asking somebody else to spend an hour of their time to install a gem is placing extra barriers to people experimenting with the software that came with their computer.

Which is where he loses me. If that person wants to deal with gcc, they're not casual, and spending an hour grabbing latest libs and tools is how they roll, Xcode or no. Any time I'm on CPAN I end up updating 50 other things and 3 hours later wonder what I was looking for in the first place.

I think the point might have been that there are some more casual uses (homebrew, rubygems, python eggs, etc) that aren't as hardcore as writing c but that have gcc as a dependency.
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