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Why Developers Are Switching To Macs
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Nov 17, 2008 04:19 PM
from the because-we-mostly-can-expense-them dept.
from the because-we-mostly-can-expense-them dept.
snydeq writes "Programmers are finding themselves increasingly drawn to the Mac as a development platform, in large part due to Apple's decision to move to Intel chips and to embrace virtualization of other OSes, which has turned Mac OS X into a flexible tool for development, InfoWorld reports. The explosion of interest in smartphone development is helping the trend, with iPhone development lock-in to the Mac environment the chief motivating factor for Apple as a platform of choice for mobile development. Yet for many, the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development, with developers citing its virtual memory system's poor performance in paging data in and out of memory and likening use of the default-network file system, AFS, to engaging oneself with 'some kind of passive-aggressive torture.' What remains unclear is whether Apple will lend an ear to this new wave of Mac-based development or continue to develop products that lock out uses programmers expect."
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Linux: Red Hat CEO Questions Relevance of Desktop Linux 615 comments
snydeq writes "Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst questioned the relevance of Linux on the desktop, citing several financial and interoperability hurdles to business adoption at a panel on end-users and Linux last night at the OSBC. 'First of all, I don't know how to make money on it,' Whitehurst said, adding that he was uncertain how relevant the desktop itself will be in five years given advances in cloud-based and smartphone computing, as well as VDI. 'The concept of a desktop is kind of ridiculous in this day and age. I'd rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now.' Despite increasing awareness that desktop Linux is ready for widespread mainstream adoption, fellow panelists questioned the practicality of switching to Linux, noting that even some Linux developers prefer Macs to Linux. 'There's a desire [to use desktop Linux],' one panelist said, 'but practicality sets in. There are significant barriers to switching.'"
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Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the Windows paging system? Has the author used a Windows OS lately? Swapping is a *bleeping* killer! Especially when you have more than enough memory not to swap. :-/
So don't use it. Macs support CIFS/SMB pretty darn well these days. I keep hoping that someone will come up with a better replacement, but CIFS/SMB will continue to work until that day comes.
Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Informative)
It's Infoworld. What do you expect? They are a Windows-centric publication.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Funny)
Yea it is kinda like saying how bad Dells are because they still have Serial Ports which are so slow compared to modern USB ports that are on Lenovo's
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to weigh in on this, but maybe I'm the anti-first-post guy, there were no comments when I came back from the article and I was trying to compose my thoughts.
I don't think there's anywhere to go with this other than a biased writer grudgingly writing a story about a platform he hates because he needs to pay the bills this month.
The article makes me want to go through it with the "wikipedia editing brush" like a schoolmaster grading the entries that appear on the site:
"Yet for many [who?], the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development [citation?].."
Move along, nothing to see here folks.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yet for many [who?], the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development [citation?].."
who? Me, for one.
citation? I agree with that assessment. Mac's are sluggish. There are plenty of theories as to why, from the threading model it uses, to the woeful inadequacies of 'Finder'. Frankly, my gut is that its just the desktop environment and finder itself that suck. Because when you look at benchmarks of optimized applications and servers or big tasks like video encoding etc, OSX tends to hold up just fine... but yet I find every mac I've ever used has always been 'sluggish' to actually use. Its the little things like opening a program, resizing a window, navigating the file system, always feel a bit sluggish... or I'll see the dreaded pinwheel come up and prevent me from doing anything at all time and again for seconds on end.
There are non-'performance' related mac-ism idiocies too... like having a global menu bar instead of a per 'application menu'. (seriously, with large dual monitors, its pretty retarded when you have a 2x2" window down in the bottom right of the 2nd monitor, and you have to go to the TOP of the OTHER monitor, to access its disembodied file menu. It was fine on a sinle 15" or 17" screen... but its just demented on dual 24" displays. Basic HCI defect at this point, imo.
There are a lot of things OSX does REALLY well. But at the same time the rigidity of the platform REALLY can get under the skin of a Linux or even Windows guy who wants to be able to do things a certain (non-Apple) way.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:4, Interesting)
Try maximizing a window on a mac. Minimize a window, then alt-tab back to that app. You get the app, with no window! You then get the 'pleasure' of moving the mouse to the menu bar, selecting the window menu, and hopefully finding the window you wanted.
I couldn't reproduce this. Which app?
OSX server (both tiger and leopard) fail in such spectacular manners that it would make your head spin.
I've been administrating a 10.4 server box for nearly 2.5 years. Setup sucked and I had to reinstall, but after that, it's worked flawlessly ever since. I only need to pay attention to it after power outages. Except for a perfectly defective dhcp server/nat router, I couldn't be happier with it.
If you install FileMaker server on OSX Server
There is your problem. I'll hint to the fix: postgresql.
On some Apple made apps closing the main windows does not close the app, on others (still made by apple) it does.
Yes, it would be nice if Apple made their admins read the Apple user interface guidelines. I think the cake-taker was netinfo manager.
As for the sluggishness of Aqua--yup. Four major upgrades later, a tripling of processor speeds, a quintupling of memory, and nearly two orders of magnitude of hard drive sizes later, you still need to wait six minutes to resize a window in Firefox. I don't know whose fault that is, but it needs improvement.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't reproduce this. Which app?
Because I couldn't do it you must be lying. Glad you're not my tech support guy. Seriously, if I came back at my boss (or client) and said this, I'd be out on my arse, so top marks in customer service.
"Which app?" means "which application?" What I mean to say is which program does this? I'm curious to know. Macs have a lot of quirks. I don't use Spaces because it sucks hard with quirks, so I'm not going to argue with you about the possibility of quirks. In fact, if I could reproduce what you are saying, I'd have fun demonstrating the behavior to my friend who thinks that macs are "just toys". Never mind that my mac mini (aka "The Doorstop") can run circles around his AMD fedora box.
But now that you have copped a defensive attitude, I'm wondering if you aren't just making this stuff up. I actually believed you for a while there. Then I realized that you don't alt-tab through apps in OS X, you command-tab through them--bullshit flag #1. Also, the behavior you mention is reminiscent of something I've observed in windows, where you can minimize a window and not get it back easily. The application just sits in the task bar but has no windows--you can't even "maximize" them into existence. Bullshit flag #2. Also a google for Traffic Office manager os x yields no identifiable results. Bigtime bullshit flag #3. Yup, only *now* that I've had time to contemplate it, I know you are bullshitting. Good try.
The question is whether you think your trollish bullshit is actually amusing, because if there were a plonk file for slashdot, I'd put you right in it.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Informative)
First, if you're really using a mac, you wouldn't say "alt-tab." It's Cmd-Tab.
Second, this has nothing to do with maximizing at all (you rarely ever need to maximize on a mac anyway... it's pretty multi-window friendly). If you minimize a window on OS X, it goes down to the Dock, period. If you want it back, just click on the window in the Dock.
If you didn't want to really minimize it, you could have hidden the application (Cmd-H), and then Cmd-Tabbing to that application or clicking on its icon in the Dock would bring everything back exactly as it was. Or you could put stuff in different spaces. Or you could use Expose to switch between windows.
Same with whether or not closing a window closes the application as well. It's pretty simple... if the application only ever uses 1 window and there's nothing to do when the window is closed, closing the window quits the application. Otherwise it stays open. If you don't like it, you can always Cmd-Q quit everything, which would be the same regardless. And seriously... what are you possibly "fighting" with here? It sounds like you're just compiling a list of old rants, rather than saying anything relevant.
And btw, who seriously installs the update for iTunes on their server? You could just ignore the update (or better yet, delete iTunes from your server... what's it even doing there?)
If you don't like FileMaker, complain to them, or use something else... they're not Apple (yes, I know it's a subsidiary, but it's independently operated).
You're simply used to a Windows paradigm, nothing more. Just because you're used to something one way doesn't make a different paradigm wrong.
Rule of Thumb: 9 times out of 10, if somebody spends their first sentence trying to convince you they're using a specific system they want to criticize, they're probably not using it.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows only sometimes closing an app? If it's a document-based application, of course it leaves the app running! That's how it is supposed to work. Preferences is not, so it's OK to quit. It only ever has one instance of its window.
Maximise adjusts the window to allow the contents to fit. I hate that too.
Minimise puts it in the dock. If you're on a Mac, you use cmd-h to hide all of an app's windows, rather than individually minimising each.
Every OS has a different interface. Learn it :)
Filemaker sounds like seriously bad engineering. Makes me want to slap it. I'm glad I don't need it. Have you tried reporting it as a bug?
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
"On some Apple made apps closing the main windows does not close the app, on others (still made by apple) it does."
Right, and there is a good reason for which one is which. Your point is?
Could you please explain to me the good reasons? Mail, iTunes and iCal don't quit when you close their main window even though these are basically single-window applications. iPhoto, Disk Utility and Calculator do.
Seriously, I'd like to know. I've been using Apple computers since before there was the Macintosh and the logic of it remains utterly opaque to me.
Maybe you can then explain to me why when you click on the controls of an application in the background, three different things can happen: with iTunes the controls work but the application stays in the background; with Quicktime Player the controls work and the application pops to the front and with iCal the application pops to the front but doesn't register the action.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:4, Informative)
I keep hoping that someone will come up with a better replacement, but CIFS/SMB will continue to work until that day comes.
It's called NFS v4 [nfsv4.org]. Kerberos for authentication, encrypted traffic, lower overhead, no passwords or password hashes sent -- ever.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Informative)
Kerberos for authentication, encrypted traffic, lower overhead, no passwords or password hashes sent -- ever.
Kerberos authentication, encrypted traffic, and "no passwords sent" apply also to NFSv2 and NFSv3; that's all done at the ONC RPC layer.
And all of those are supported by Leopard's NFSv2 and NFSv3 [connectathon.org] (krb5 = Kerberos 5 for authentication; krb5i = Kerberos 5 with a signature for integrity checking; krb5p = Kerberos 5 with encryption for privacy).
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey it was one programmer. And frankly if you are having issues with swap put more ram in.
I have to live this line.
"The sting of ka-ching
While the price of Macintosh hardware continues to be competitive with the best commodity laptops and desktops, Apple offers nothing in the rapidly expanding lower tiers. It's possible to build a quad-core PC running Eclipse and Gimp for less than $400 with refurbished hardware. At the time of this writing, the Mac Pro with one quad-core CPU begins at $2,300. Adding Photoshop and other tools can push the bill closer to $4,000."
Okay guess what folks? You can run GIMP and Eclipse on a Mac!
Not only that but it seems a bit unfair to compare a Mac Pro with a refurbished box!
Heck I a not an Apple fan but this seems very slanted to me.
Why do developers like the MAC?
1. It is Unix so if are doing Unix server work this is a piece of cake.
2. It will run Windows, Linux, BSD, and Mac OS/x so if you are going multi-platform on the PC it is the way to go.
3. It will run the Google Phone development stack and the Iphone/IPod stack.
It is just more flexible. Makes me want to get one now.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:4, Informative)
When developing a game for the most popular online phone game store will net you $250,000 in two months, as an independent developer:
http://toucharcade.com/2008/09/19/trism-developer-makes-250000-in-2-months/ [toucharcade.com]
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends on how you define Unix. Linux is Unix-ish. I consider any OS that is certified to be UNIX 03 [wikipedia.org] to be Unix. And why compile? Maybe I'm lazy, but I don't feel like doing any unnecessary steps. Just install it from the OS CD; It is not installed by default. Compiling it to me is like compiling a kernel. Sure, I could try to do that, but in the end, I did a lot of work that I may need to do. As for POSIX compliant software, there will be some that don't run on OS X just like there are some that don't run on Solaris, IRIX, etc. Now if you could provide an example, someone could probably help you fix it.
Wait a minute, proprietary OS on specifically designed platform? Haven't you just described Unix? Only recently has Sun opened Solaris to non-Sun hardware. IBM has never released AIX for anything but their own servers. So is OS X Unix or not because you have just contradicted yourself.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Informative)
X11 compiles just fine.
http://www.xfree86.org/current/Darwin.html [xfree86.org]
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/tools/X11.html [apple.com]
http://ftp.x.org/pub/X11R6.9.0/doc/html/Darwin.html [x.org]
My primary complaint is that most OSS developers expect all Unix systems to be Linux systems. Which means that I have to let Linux software get its hooks into my OS X system in order to get anything compiled. Since OS X is NOT Linux, this is quite an unpleasant process.
OS X runs Unix software. Period. I usually get a host of tools installed first thing on my Mac. Thankfully, this has become less and less necessary over time as Apple has started including many of the most useful utilities up front.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Unix-ish. Try compiling X11 (or any of hundreds of other POSIX compliant software packages) from source on a Mac. I'll wait.
Installing X11 from source on any *nix is painful.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Unix-ish. Try compiling X11 (or any of hundreds of other POSIX compliant software packages) from source on a Mac. I'll wait.
Seriously?
Have you tried compiling X11 (let's call it Xorg) on Linux, BSD, or any other architectures of late? HEADACHE.
There's a reason why essential and commonly used software often comes as a binary package for Linux, *BSD, and yes, OS X. Especially if it's a PITA to build.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, NFS is not safe since it trusts clients. If users need to have root or sudo on their individual machines, they can go out and read any file on the server (well, technically partition, but who has one partition per user on their server?). NFS comes from a time of big iron servers where no end user EVER had root access. The world has changed.
CIFS/SMB may be slow, but at least it got the per-user authentication right. If you want an alternative, something like the Andrew File System (the other AFS), or OpenAFS would be better. OpenAFS exists for Macs.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:4, Informative)
True, but this always works:
> su # to become root
> su otheruser # to become otheruser (no password required, since you are root)
> cd ~otheruser # access otheruser's files
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:4, Insightful)
Only because you've never used it at scale (or probably not OSX as a NFS server either). Their NFS performance isn't that hot and I would strongly advise against using OSX as a mission critical NFS server. I'll just leave my comments at that.
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Re:Strange Complaints (Score:5, Informative)
As others have mentioned, it's AFP, not AFS, but the point remains the same. It's slow because it sacrifices speed for goodies like hi-res icons, and remembering icon positions.
NFS is slower yet on OS X, both as a server and a client,
The funny thing is, though, that Mac OS X Server can serve out the same sharepoint over AFP, SMB/CIFS, and NFS. All at the same time. There's no conversion necessary. Just click the checkbox for the protocols you want to turn on. (This includes FTP also.) So why they complain about AFP, when there are other options available with a click of a mouse, is a little puzzling.
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Re:So, what would you pick? (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm... you realize you can format HFS+ case sensitive, right?
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The poor performance may get you down (Score:5, Funny)
But all that Mac gaming makes up for it.
Re:The poor performance may get you down (Score:4, Insightful)
As a PC fanboy for 20+ years, I have to say...when the games I play work natively on Mac, I'm switching.
Yes, I know I can buy a Mac now, buy Windows, and dual boot. But I don't want to do that, and I don't want to spend $100 on Windows when I just dropped $400 more than I'd pay for a Windows system to begin with.
I've priced it: comparable hardware with OS, the Macbook that meets my specifications is $400 more than the Dell equivalent. I can't justify spending $500 to do exactly what I do now. If I'm going to switch, it's a complete switch or not at all.
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Re:The poor performance may get you down (Score:4, Insightful)
On the downside, running PC games on the 360 isn't all that pleasant. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion *feels* like a port of a PC game: here's where you'd use a mouse. And here. And here. And here is where a keyboard would be really handy. And here.
I'm all for gaming on the 360 - and maybe it's just adventure games that suffer (or maybe suffer most). But there is still a place for a crap PC box for game playing.
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It is a good middle ground. (Score:5, Insightful)
OS X is really a good middle ground between Windows and Linux. OS X supports many of the Windows Protocols (a lot better then linux in some ways) as well there is a better selection of high quality closed source applications, then linux has. However being Unix based it it is more stable then Windows and less prone to viruses and other malware. Then combined with virtualization you can run Linux OS X and Windows all at the same time for cross testing your code.
It has a clean interface and performs well. You are not fussing with simple stuff. all in all it is good for development. (And the Apple keyboards have extended function keys that makes compatibility with old Vax systems much nicer too)
AFP not AFS (Score:5, Informative)
AFS is something else altogether.
Macs are UNIX 03 (Score:4, Insightful)
You would think that the fact that OS X is UNIX 03 certified [opengroup.org] might be of some interest to developers as well.
Sure, maybe not as much as the reasons stated above, but... it is worth mentioning. And just the fact that it is any flavor of Unix-like OS is attractive to many.
Now if only Apple would update their documentation (Score:5, Informative)
recently got into Cocoa programming and for the most part absolutely love it, Apple has obviously put a lot of effort into their system and it shows. However, Apple seemingly skimped on one of the most important, but usually easiest to implement parts of their system: good, up to date documentation!
For instance, in the QTKit documentation is just beyond abysmal. There is little documentation on how to do very common things, such as set your export settings. I had to do a lot of hackery just to figure that one out(and its still far from straightforward), they have typos that have been there for eons, even though I used their feedback form to tell them about it, and perhaps worst of all, they don't even mention many methods that are in the API.
On multiple occasions I have had to go into the header files just to find out what I could do with various classes. I shouldn't have to do this! Compare this experience with say, Javadocs and its night and day. While Javadocs are far from perfect, they are infinitely better than what Apple puts out.
Why would Apple do something like this? It costs them almost nothing to create a lot of these docs, and actually updating them once in a while could save developers tons of frustration. I guess maybe the paid ADC accounts are bit better? Thats really a low blow if they are though....
Furthermore, Apple tends to deprecate APIs without really replacing them with an API with the same functionality. Case in point is QTKit. Its a nice API for what its worth, but there are tons of occasions you either:
a) have to go down to the old Quicktime C APIs(which means your code won't be able to compile in 64 bit and may not work at all on Snow Leopard) or
b) Have to come up with some creative hacks to get the functionality you want.
For instance, in order to get an MPEG-4 formatted to anything but the default size you either have to use an atom container which is 32 bit only, or manually set up a Quicktime export with the settings you want, write some applescript to save that to a file, THEN read that file in as NSData THEN set that to be your export settings(which on Apple's website has the oh so helpful documentation:"Information to come."(That was over a year ago).
Re:Now if only Apple would update their documentat (Score:4, Funny)
Apple seemingly skimped on one of the most important, but usually easiest to implement parts of their system: good, up to date documentation!
Are you really a developer? :)
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Apple needs a mini tower not a over priced mini la (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple needs a mini tower not a over priced mini laptop with out a screen in a small box.
The mac pro is nice but $2300 and only a $30-$50 video card?
AIO also are not that good.
Where is the mini tower that can do dual display?
Re:Apple needs a mini tower not a over priced mini (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Apple needs a mini tower not a over priced mini (Score:4, Funny)
There's really nothing wrong with programming on a current iMac. Anodized aluminum, so people won't laugh at you.... No more embarrassing colors copied straight off a queer-pride flag
Yes indeedy. As a Serious Applications Developer, the first and only criterion I have for selecting a development box is the color of its case, and in particular whether or not people will laugh at it.
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Perfectly Good Dev Platform (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using a Mac as a development platform for years. Never had an issue. Just because it's an Apple system doesn't mean one has to use AFS or write Cocoa apps.
Hard to take someone seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)
AFP is not strange, twisted, or any sort of barrier for programmers. Over the years, I have found AFP performance (to netatalk) out of the box trounces Samba by almost a 1:2 margin on raw file transfer speed, and 10:1 on directory-intensive operations. It supports international character sets without fuss, and folder/file name restrictions are downright amazing compared to the shit that is SMB/CIFS.
Don't like AFP? Fine. Use SMB (and yes, you can turn off the "annoying dot files".) Or NFSv4. Or SSHFS with MacFusion, making any Unix box you've got a file server with the installation of one package. There are installers for AFS and (I may have this wrong) Coda.
Why Apple beat Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay first, about the title: All programmers are developers, but not all developers are programmers. Second, it isn't just developers, it's everybody. Vista exploded on the launch pad. Nobody's upgrading. So for the last several years who's been the only commercial manufacturer to be releasing new spiffy shiny? Apple of course. So, umm, HELLO? Of course people are switching, Apple is the only company offering anything new!
Microsoft wasn't advertising because they had nothing to advertise -- The only major products they've been pushing out are all incremental upgrades for commercial use. Now we see giant billboards about how great Vista is, but please... The media shot and killed that cow, now they're just trying to recoup their investment. As an aside, I've been waiting for this moment since I got into the industry! Now, whatever you want to say about Macintosh as a platform, you can't deny their marketing has been so good it's making history. That, and Apple has at least three batallions of lawyers ready to crush anyone who "Thinks different". And the only personalities Microsoft has is Bill Gates (now retired), and Balmer, better known as the amazing flying monkey boy.
Lastly, if we want to talk about developers, not just programmers -- which would include web and graphic designers, architects, etc., Apple has enjoyed huge market share here for one very simple reason: It's simple and it works. This is an industry where the software on a machine costs several times the cost of a system and people happily pay for it. Apple, and companies who develop for their platform, have made design a priority for years -- usability and simplicity. Everything else has come after that. Well, except for some serious QC issues on their hardware lines lately, for which they have not been publicly flogged enough over. Meanwhile, all the other players in the market are trying to be all things to everyone... Vista's DRM and horrible, horrible driver subsystem comes to mind as an example of "Trying to do it all".
Disclaimer: Not an Apple fangirl (personally, I despise macintoshes), but does work in graphic design and so I deal with it every day.
Nice platform, but... (Score:5, Informative)
I really like developing on my Apple machine for the most part, but it has a few issues that make it less appealing to me than Linux.
Currently, most of the development I'm doing is using Django and PostgreSQL. Installing PostgreSQL and the required Python libraries on OS X is tremendously painful. It was painful on Tiger and Leopard has made it more so. Macports tries to make it easier, but it could use a lot of work/testing/more work.
Installing the same tools on Linux is so easy, a Windows user could do it.
Re:Nice platform, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the fact you can get almost anything to run on OS X eventually, for most software it's much much harder to get up to date software versions then "apt-get install fizzbuzz" on Ubuntu or debian testing.
For my needs, Ubuntu is much closer to the "just works" ideal then OS X.
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ok. I'm one... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have linux boxes at home, I have *BSD boxes at home, I have colocated *BSD boxes around the world for other personal endeavors. I have a fairly extensive MythTV/Zoneminder network at home as well. So I'm not your average Mac weenie... To me, the mac is just a decent portal to all the other Unixy boxes I maintain. I've tried using a Linux desktop on a day to day basis and I've found it just too painful... Ever try getting a bluetooth keyboard working on Ubuntu? It doesn't "just work"; or at least not 6 months ago. It might now... But that's my point... Linux is always improving, but it never does everything I want, when I want it... And yes, I know, "patches welcome"... I contribute plenty to open-source. I can contribute more in my area of specialty and I can do it better sitting in front of a Mac. When I want to relax and watch TV, I don't want to have to hack MythTV to do it. I just want to plunk my fat ass on the couch and be entertained.
Xcode, UNIX 03, Cocoa (Score:5, Interesting)
These are the three reasons why I enjoy developing on the Mac:
Im a developer, working with numerous developers (Score:4, Insightful)
this article is absurd out of the scales. just check how belong sentences compare to each other :
"scientists now agree that evolution does not exist", as voiced by various creationist propaganda sources
and
"Programmers are finding themselves increasingly drawn to the Mac as a development platform", as voiced by the shitty article we are being made read. in its summary at least
Re:innovative (Score:5, Insightful)
once again macs seem to be innovating, the dual gpu thing
You mean the severely limited, non SLI-hydra-whatever GPU thing that requires a restart/logon-off cycle just to switch?
That thing was actually released on a few toshiba laptops (and sony laptops?) long before el-jobso did his magic.
Of course, the (software) inflexibility of that configuration is actually a feature, according to apple. So, I digress.
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Re:innovative (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Andrew File System??? (Score:5, Informative)
The author is a moron. He meant AFP, Apple File Protocol [wikipedia.org]. Macs do not support AFS out of the box.
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Re:MacOSX has awful Java support (Score:5, Informative)
Java 1.6 for OS X, has been available for months now. And JDK 1.7 will not be out in a few months either.
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Re:MacOSX has awful Java support (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:MacOSX has awful Java support (Score:4, Informative)
You're also stuck with 1.5 if you want to use SWT, the graphics toolkit behind Eclipse and some Java-based GUI applications. SWT uses native graphics libraries, and the current version uses Carbon. And since Carbon is 32-bit only, SWT has to be ported to use 64-bit Cocoa.
On the other hand, it's not like Apple has to provide the latest JVM/JDK and I'm not aware of any reason why someone else (even Sun) couldn't release one.
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Re:maybe in USA (Score:5, Funny)
Not to be a jackass, but outside of the USA, "people walking on the moon" is also a niche market.
What happens here technologically, propagates to the rest of the world in its due time.
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