MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Mar 11, 08 - 03:16 pm Comment from: shen

it is THE platform now....

....just wait till it has a more powerful CPU and more storage. in 5 years people will be wondering how they lived without one.

Apple is moving up +6.5% today! MDN = "respect"

we welcome Don into the fold

Mar 11, 08 - 03:24 pm Comment from: Bunsen Honeydew

(fifty voices in sync in that drab mono-sounding poly-tone)

"hi Don"

Mar 11, 08 - 03:25 pm Comment from: Lazy European

I guess someone named babcock deserves to be in the fold ...

Mar 11, 08 - 03:26 pm Comment from: ChrissyOne

"Apple iPhone now THE platform for the future of mobile computing"

I mean, who could have seen that coming? (rolls_eyes)

That's what I love the most out of all of this....all the 'haters' that will now need or want to develop for the iPhone/iPod Touch will have to get a Mac to do it.

"Of course, we do know the opposite feeling well. It's Pavlovian with us; just tuning on a Windows PC gets the obscene language flowing. We still can't believe people subject themselves to that garbage for 8+ hours of that per day. It's just plain sick! We couldn't take 8 minutes a day."

That's EXACTLY why I took early retirement!

Mar 11, 08 - 03:34 pm Comment from: JAYGEE

I remember my first encounter with a Mac. It was at college a few years ago. I had no clue how to use them. In fact, I had never heard of them. I didn't like the Mac at first, because I was used to Windows. After a while, I loved the Mac and use Macs at home now. I don't dislike Windows, but it's to slow.

Mar 11, 08 - 03:37 pm Comment from: Ampar

Witness the birth of a Mac fan boy. Sans messy placenta.

Mar 11, 08 - 03:37 pm Comment from: ron

Keep us informed on your epiphany Don.

As more and more windows developers move to the apple platform, the software offerings on Windows will slowly grind to a halt and we shall soon see a reversal of the old myth. Then there will be "no software for Windows 8"

Mar 11, 08 - 03:45 pm Comment from: mike_in_helsinki

Don ... a hearty welcome.

Its all over for you and Windows et al. Trust me.

Greed is good.

I think most of this people are looking at is, if they produced a software for an iPhone that all future 10 millions customers (plus whatever iPod Touch amounted too) are going to buy, even at $1 a software, you are looking at at least US$700,000.00 in your pocket. Woot! Just create a program and let Apple and iTunes do the rest.

mdn magic word, go "figure"

I'm not sure how many of you are developers... Macs really are great to use... fantastic. And Java has its limitations, for sure. But before getting too excited about development on the mac, bear in mind that the iPhone/mac dev environment is all in Objective C, an odd fusion between C and smalltalk... build on libraries from the NextStep workstations (if you are old enough to remember then...)

I'm not saying this is bad... but it wont feel like you died and went to heaven... more like you missed your bus and walked to work...

Enjoy the pounding audio ad as you're
clicking off the pop-up window...
What a bunch of fucking losers.

Mar 11, 08 - 04:06 pm Comment from: Wun Dum Gai

DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!

Mar 11, 08 - 04:07 pm Comment from: ElderNorm

@ Chris,
"
I'm not saying this is bad... but it wont feel like you died and went to heaven... more like you missed your bus and walked to work..."

ER did you read his full article. He is a java programmer and yet he thinks it will be easy to learn C and the Apple apps to program the iPhone. Hmmmmmmmmm.

en

Mar 11, 08 - 04:33 pm Comment from: bond co. stooge

"In 5 years people will be wondering how they lived without one..."

Already there, my friend, already there...

"We couldn't take 8 minutes a day."

8 minutes !?! I can't stand even 30 seconds on a PC. Blech ack! Twisted tiny obfuscating illogical time-wasting brain-sucking POS! Revulsion!

Mar 11, 08 - 04:45 pm Comment from: grok

I've got a feeling (a hope, maybe?) that there will be a lot of iPhone companion apps to existing mac apps that can sync back to the mothership. Bento and Filemaker come to mind - I'd like to be able to do mobile inventory with photos. Listening, FM?

@Chris

Sorry Objective C is not an odd anything. It is a very logical OO extension to C.

C++ on the other hand IS an odd set of OO ideas mashed on top of C.

And the Next class library IS the reason any of this is possible. It's also the reason nobody, not even Linux hackers, will be able to "touch" Apple's technology lead for quite a while.

Apple didn't stumble on the future of computing, they actually planned this. That's what's amazing.

ElderNorm,
You're right, a good article which I did read.
I was actually talking about the website,
(because these guys should know better.)

"Witness the birth of a Mac fan boy. Sans messy placenta."

There's never a Placenta because Mac Fanboys come from the other orifice.

Mar 11, 08 - 05:41 pm Comment from: Spark

MDN: We've been Mac users since there have been Macs, so we'll never know the ultra-epihany you're about to get after subjecting yourself to Windows for a decade or so (shudder!) and then discovering Mac."

The epiphany you are talking about is NOTHING like the epiphany I experienced coming from a CP/M environment in 1985.

Mar 11, 08 - 06:02 pm Comment from: Big Al

@ ER,

Are you telling us you don't know how to block pop-ups?

And you are calling us losers?

Mar 11, 08 - 06:10 pm Comment from: Big Al

Speaking of epiphanies, I came from drafting and lettering by hand to doing it all on a Mac Plus with MacDraw in 1984/5.

That was like laying down my wooden club and picking up a Glock 10 mm.

Interesting observation MDN, put me in front of a Windows PC and the language is blue within seconds.

And if Ballmer were close enough I'd have to flatten him...

Objective C is to some extent a red herring in all of this. It's a different language from C but the differences are minimal. The same can be said for Objective C++ (note to self: try compiling Objective C++ on the iPhone SDK) the differences from stock C++ are minimal.

That said, syntactically, Objective C is simple to pick up. The capability it affords you however, and how best to take advantage of that, is something that takes longer to properly understand.

The two-week demos done by various companies for the iPhone SDK show last week will perhaps strike non-programmers as incredible, and will likely strike programmers familiar with other SDKs as borderline-unbelievable, but that's what Objective C is about.

Take an experienced software developer, sit him or her down for a day or two to get the syntax of the extensions to C or C++ down, along with high-level concepts, then the process of becoming familiar with the language is a scalable thing. Objective C code can be mostly C with a few objects thrown in, and Objective C++ can be mostly C++ with a few Objective C objects thrown in as you become more comfortable with the language and what it buys you.

The developers of Spore and Super Monkey Ball certainly didn't write the engine of their games in Objective C - but with 2 weeks of learning and gluing - they ported something workable into an Objective-C based environment.

That's a strength of the language and by association, the iPhone SDK that bases itself on that language.

I'm expecting big things from Intel's "atom" line of processors. I'm personally hoping for a mactablet. Just take the screen of the macbook and cut in half or make it 1.5 times the size of the iphone, stick in either the macbook air c2d processor or an intel "atom" and 2 gigs of ram. A docking station for stuff like an external monitor, keyboard, mouse would be nice. Stick on a modified version of the OS X.

It would sell.

@Big Al.
Not at all.
But be sure to turn the volume up
the next time you visit the site.
I really love audio ads...

Mar 17, 08 - 04:17 pm Comment from: iPhoneCzar

Thanks for the welcome guys! I heard my article got quoted over here so I thought I'd come see how it went. Thanks for the "flowers" too. Yep. I'm a fan of the Mac now, even if my first one was the iPhone. My next one will probably be a MacBook. Here's a bit more info by way of an epilogue to the article.

I just completed my SECOND iPhone webapp and submitted it to Apple's site 5 days ago (Thursday 3/13) it only took them a day to review and post it and it even garnered a "staff pick" (it's an app that allows you to do X10 Home Automation control from the iPhone. details at http://www.ayefon.com if interested.) Here's the point though, it had two sales within literally HOURS of it's posting and it was early morning. That weekend I had a bunch more. So in five days I've made more real money with the Apple marketing proposition than I ever did trying to do J2ME with any of the majors (like Cingular/ATT.) You can read THAT sorry story at the blog that chronicles it: http://www.j2mesecrets.com ) . Mind you these are just web apps and I can't wait to port them to native using the SDK where I'll have more interesting UI parts to play with (like sliders and odometer controls.) What I'm saying is that if the webapp thing works as well as it does today then the model where Apple puts an "app store" icon on every phone and allows you to buy and install apps over the air or via iTunes should be stellar. By the way, when I looked into doing a deal with Cingular/ATT last year their deal was a 60/40 split. Apple's deal is better at 70/30 (I keep $7 out of every $10) and the CLEARLY excel in the marketing realm if my experience is any indicator. It will take some time for the hide-bound US telcos to "get it" But Apple is forcing their hands. Europe and Asia are much better (that's why most of the cool mobile sites are overseas.) Apple is lightyears ahead of the rest of the world in terms of promoting development for their mobile device. RIM is probably the next best but Steve Jobs just blew their doors off (IMHO).