From: "Duane" <macastronomer@mac.com>
Date: November 19, 2007 12:23:46 AM MST
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Imaging Source Abandoning FireWire?
I for one appreciate solid software, and respect those of you who code (because I can't
stand it). There are different perspectives here though.
ASTRO IIDC doesn't have much for competition and Milton doesn't have to worry about his
program being spied and copied. Apple has Microsoft breathing down it's back and
copying everything they possibly can. We're also talking about a whole OS here that has to
be compatible with "everything". There are going to be issues.
Anybody installing Leopard (or any other OS X upgrade) should do an archive install if you
want a smooth running system without the hassle of re-installing everything. I would
never do an upgrade any other way. I've done a couple dozen Leopard installs without any
issues—all archive installs.
Now that Leopard is out, Apple should be helping their developers get their apps up and
running on it. It's in everybody's best interest.
I'm curious how Microsoft handles itself in this situation. I know Vista broke a lot of things
and many remain unfixed.
I sure like Leopard (and I sure hate Vista).
Duane
PS. Will version 4 be a paid upgrade? If so, how much will the full price be compared to the
upgrade?
--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Milton Aupperle <milton@...> wrote:
Hi Ralph;
On 15-Nov-07, at 10:37 AM, Ralph Megna wrote:
Milton, with all due respect — and I do appreciate your
frustrations as a developer with Apple — none of this is a likely
scenario. Ask any stock analyst (or stockholder like me), and they
will tell you that what is driving Apple's stock price upwards
these days is the growth in Mac sales. From a lousy 2% or 3% for
years, the Mac's current US retail market share is at least 6%, and
may be higher. There is evidence that in laptops, Apple's US
retail market share is somewhere between 16% and 20%. These
figures are reinforced by considerable casual evidence — my office
is located on the edge of a major university and the number of
MacBooks at the Starbucks and other gathering places has exploded
in the last year or so.
Agreed they are selling more MacBooks. I'm not 100% sure they are all
running OSX though. Quite a few developers I know have removed OS X
and have installed Linux / Windows on them, mainly because they
wanted the HW features on that Laptop or Mini that were offered but
with a different OS's.
Steve Jobs has always maintained he would do whatever he can to make
money and he's an opportunist by nature. Nothing wrong with that and
he's doing what is best for Apple, not end users or developers. If he
finds that sales of iPods / iPhone are where he gets the biggest bang
and gratification, he'll expand on that and dump other things. Where
is the Newton today?
As for the "fiasco that is Leopard," I have to strongly disagree as
a user. It may be causing you development fits — again, this is
something I can appreciate but don't personally know — but there is
absolutely no question that this is the best OS I have ever used on
a personal computer, and my experience goes back nearly 30 years.
Leopard has been snappy and stable on my MacBookPro and, except for
some weird behaviors from Microsoft Office 2004 (which is having to
run under Rosetta), all of my work applications are behaving just
fine. Its initial adoption by the market — over 2 million copies
sold the first weekend — equal to the sales of Vista the first few
days — clearly suggests that this will be the preferred OS for Mac
for the next few years.
That's your situation which is great for you. However I've read
numerous other accounts that are not as complementary and in some
case down right dangerous with data loss. For example a significant
percentage of people had Leopard DVD's that would fail half way
through the install, leaving them with nothing bootable (the most
likely situation for a successful installation now is to have it wipe
your drive then re-install everything from scratch and avoid any
install that over writes the existing OS in place). Others now can't
use their keyboards, many USB HID devices (including the GPUSB) are
now broken, FireWire is screwed up and tons of 3rd party applications
that worked fine in Panther and Tiger are now broken in Leopard.
Here is a fast collection of links outlining some of the issues
people are finding.
http://www.robhyndman.com/2007/11/14/ive-been-attacked-by-a-leopard/
http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/15/no-software/
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/leopard/index.html#d15nov2007
http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/compat.html
http://www.macfixit.com/
I'll lay bets that sales of Leopard will have slowed dramatically
until Apple fixes these problems, which they will eventually.
And as for iPhones and iPods, it might be useful to remember that
all iPhones and a growing number of iPods are running OSX, and it
will soon be clear that Apple sees these computing platforms, too.
Having millions and millions of additional devices running the same
core OS as a Mac will only strengthen the overall Apple/Mac ecosystem.
That only applies if they actually allow developers access to the OS
and have documentation for it. So far they haven't opened it up
except for writing browser plugins that only work in Safari and no
one knows what the final product will be. So January will be
interesting to see what they come up with - but I'm pretty
pessimistic given their track record. Apple has made a tonne of
changes to Leopard without telling anyone that they were doing it and
many apps that were beta tested up until the final release were
broken in the last GM release.
I have been begging for documentation for 5 years now, and Apple
still insists that 3 lines in a header file is all that is needed for
documentation. That may be true IF the guy who wrote the code your
using is beside you in Cupertino, but for most developers we are
totally screwed and waste a ton of time fumbling around trying to
make this stuff work. And then they arbitrarily obsolete APIs they
don't like and come up with something "new" to replace it, except it
doesn't replace it at all and is just a dumbed down derivative that
has less features.
There is little doubt that Apple is experiencing some growing pains
associated with its surprising string of successes, and I am not
advocating blind allegiance over reality. But it is useful to
understand that Apple's struggle to address some of these problems
is as basic as getting buildings constructed in Cupertino to house
the additional people needed to develop and support its products.
Apple's core commitment to ship great products remains and as best
as I can tell, it is delivering.
Well Leopard is certainly not best of breed yet. Maybe it will be
better in 10.5.03, but the current 0.0 / .01 release is causing lots
of people and developers headaches. And there is no need for it if
they actually test with 3rd party products and do some meaningful
Q&A. But they shoved a late stage beta out the door and inflicted
chaos on the Mac community.
And on a positive note, I have just completed the port of Astro IIDC
4 to x86 this week and will be seeding it to my Alpha testers late
tomorrow, assuming my testing goes well today and tomorrow. My Alpha
testers have been testing the PowerPC Astro IIDC 4 for 8 months now,
so it's going to be a solid feature packed well tested release.
Talk to you later..
Milton J. Aupperle
President
ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting
Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist
#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.
Calgary Alberta T2R0N5
1-(403)-229-9456
milton@...
www.outcastsoft.com
Proud Supporter of the "Party of Alberta"
http://www.partyofalberta.org/
Proud Supporter of the "Wild Rose Party"
http://www.wildroseparty.ca/