Does New Development For Mac OS X Make Sense?

DLWormwood wonders: "As a long time Mac developer, originally as a hobbyist and then a professional, I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the platform now that Apple is embracing Intel and abandoning the few remaining 'Mac' technologies (like the PowerPC and OpenTransport) left to the platform. With the high likelihood that these new Macs will offer a full speed version of Virtual PC and (what I think is) the almost assurance that some clever hacker will make 'X for x86' run on commodity hardware, I'm doubting the willingness of most IT and development houses to even give the Carbon and Cocoa APIs a first glance. (If it wasn't for the poor past performance of VPC, I would not have gotten my first Mac programming job.) Can anybody with a more optimistic view think of a scenario where a modern development house will do Mac development in an age where the help desk will just say either 'switch boot to Windows/Linux' or 'run Virtual PC?'"

Re:Couldn't you just use a different Kernel

[nsayer]

1. There's no need to use a different kernel. Darwin is available for x86 and is open source. Apple is sure to try to tie the binary-only portions of OS X down to their specialized hardware, but just getting the machine to boot Darwin x86 is already a done deal.

2. You can't replace Darwin with some other kernel without an extensive syscall compatibility layer of some sort. That's not to say it's impossible - take a look at the Linuxulator in FreeBSD for an example of that sort of thing. Wine is another example.

Re:Now is THE Time To be a Mac Developer

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it will, because Leopard is going to come with an Intel virtual machine that can run Windows just like Tiger comes with Classic. You'll double-click a "Windows" icon and a window will open showing you Windows booting in a virtual machine. Just like Virtual PC, only it'll be part of the OS and you'll be able to run Intel programs natively.

The code name for this part of the OS has been resurrected from the Rhapsody days. The code name is "Redbox."

Re:Apple is now a staid, conservative corp

[BitGeek]

I see what you're saying, but I think you're missing an important point: A Cell Processor does not have a PowerPC.

Or, put another way, all the features that are important to the Desktop marketplace, are not important to the games space. A cell processor may have 3 "PowerPC" cores, running at 3.2GHz, but that doesn't mean that its the same as having 3 PowerPC G5s in it. More like it has 3 PowerPC 601s in it (G1). There's a lot of features that are needed in a desktop processor that just aren't there in the cell processor, and it remains to be seen whether the cell processor is going to be viable or not.

I think part of Apple's deal with intel is going to be rights to the intel instruction set. If, in the future, Apple is not able to derive sufficient innovative features then they can go to an external fab..... what apple moved to was not so much the intel CPUs, but the intel instruction set.

And basically, that instruction set is dominant-- it gets apple a LOT of credibility and brings it out of the cold of being the fringe.

The marketplace has spoken and unfortunately, innovation is not their priority (otherwise Apple would be dominant and Microsoft would be long gone.)

Apple will continue to innovate, but on this issue, where they have to bet the company, they have to bet it on the safest thing.

Remember, also, that Apple does not control the CPU--its core competancy is not there. So, either this gives them more control over their CPUs, or it removes their vulnerability at not having control over that critical piece... or both.

They were hurt by the PowerPC, and they are eliminating that threat to their business.

I see it as a good move, though I think tis going to be confusing to the marketplace for awhile.

Re:Excuse me?

[SteeldrivingJon]

It seems like every chapter is written to explain that the x86 architecure contains pitfall after pitfall that will make an app crash where I wouldn't on a PPC box.

I used to work on trading systems at a big Chicago bank. On OPENSTEP, on Intel. This was the late 90s after the Apple/NeXT merger, so this was as close as you could get to Cocoa development at the time.

No special extra-cautious error-handling code was required. Crashes weren't a problem. Debugging was no more onerous than when I worked on NeXTSTEP on a 86k. Or, for that matter, on OS X. In all my time using NeXTSTEP or OpenStep on Intel, crashes were never any more frequent than they've been on OS X. And they were no more likely to bring the machine down than is the case on OS X.

If the document sounds scary, it's probably to notify programmers who might be playing fast & loose with their code, or being messy, relying on the PowerPC's characteristics in non-portable ways.

Most programmers aren't going to be relying on such tricks in their code. Apple's just being thorough, and telling the tricksy programmers to knock it off, or they'll be sorry.

Re:rebooting is annoying

[WatertonMan]

OS/2's problem was no free development tools, little native software all the while everyone was developing for Windows. Further it was very mismarketed. Apple certainly can screw this one up. But anyone who has used OSX knows there is no shortage of software. And some of the best is from Apple. (FCP, iLife, iWork, DVDStudioPro, etc.) Likewise Adobe/Macromedia is porting their stuff. Microsoft is porting their stuff. Then there are the native developers like Omni with excellent software. The OS/2 comparison really is a false one.

Re:Now is THE Time To be a Mac Developer

[a2800276]

>In any case, if a beige box (or PC laptop) ran OS X
>for $1500 less than my Mac cost...

What kind of Apple hardware are you using? You can get quite alot of Mac for $1500. Say a dual 2GHZ G5 Powermac costing $2000. If you really need that type of workstation, I'd be really suprised if you could come up with any comparable beige box costing only $500. Actually, I don't see any Mac that has a $1500 premium on it.
-tim