Not only they're about to move desktops/laptops into the App Store's walled garden, they are showing they can drop support for major technologies like Java or Flash if they feel like it. This is not good news for anyone but Apple, certainly not anyone calling themselves "Hacker".
Apple aren't about to "move desktops/laptops into the App Store's walled garden", but rather they're about to add an optional place to purchase apps. It's an addition that I think may have some benefit for some users and smaller indie developers. I can see it becoming the way most people purchase most of their apps in time, but I can never see it becoming the only way to do so on the mac.
They also haven't dropped support for either Flash or Java. The new MBAs aren't shipping with Flash installed; so what? OSX is the only OS I'm aware of that does ship with Flash. Java? Well, Java's not going anywhere either.
As for Java, I knew this one was coming, Jobs and Ellison are good friends and Apple and Oracle are the only two companies that either are not at war with, they really don't compete in each other spaces. So I think Jobs is comfortable with Oracle providing the JVM for their platform.
I am sure that Steve has resigned any worry in his head that Java is going to achieve desktop dominance so it is not a Trojan horse to his platform where it will be used to provide OSX apps in preference over the native OSX development technologies.
Giving it back to Oracle means that the developers get the latest JVM at the same time as everyone else not waiting up to a year as the cycle comes around itself. I think it is a good move on both companies parts. I just wonder why Steve always has to be so vague. I think his showmanship has become so ingrained that he just can't come right out and say it everything has to be a big announcement. I guess I cant fault him, it's his trademark and has served him well.
The App Store will most definitely become the most popular way to find and install applications. Therefore if your app is not in the app store it may as well not exist. The regular user is going to search for the best application within that garden to fulfill their needs which puts all developers at the mercy of Apple to get their app in the store.
I wonder that if this model gains popularity on the desktop, how long it will be before users click that app store icon to find an application they need vs. click the browser icon to find a service on the web that may fit that need.
With strong shift towards web based apps over the past few years it's interesting that a move like this may re-invigorate the desktop app!
People do want native apps (for a bit of humor http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/21/beltzner )because connectivity is not 100% and the fit, finish, and speed of native apps are better. I don't think your wrong, I guess twitter clients kind of prove the point.
You may be able to do what you want on your own machine given enough knowledge/time. The issue arises when a business based on a Mac Java app becomes redundant when Apple feels like it, or when it will become very hard to make a living selling an app Apple doesn't feel is right for the Store.
Once upon a time there was a company called Microsoft who controlled a popular OS. People who called themselves "hackers" generally didn't like it, since they asserted this power to control the product space as well, changing APIs or bundling software to eliminate competition. Apple has gone beyond Microsoft's wildest dreams, and are on track become comparably widespread - I don't think they get a pass just because the standby light has the same frequency as a human heartbeat.
Even if Oracle would provide java, would anybody put so much trust into Oracle, to base the future of his/her software company onto this? Apple again has proven to be unreliable.
I think, this is a serious blow either for java or for Apple itself. Probably we may have to fall back to c, fortran or delphi?
No, but I do know a lot of developers that write Java code that runs on banking infrastructure, that do.
At the last big Weblogic project I worked on, the (many) developers worked on Windows in VMs, on Windows boxes. One advantage being that we could use VM images pre-configured with Eclipse and whatnot set up just right.
Yes, because as we all know, SUN has been a bright example of RELIABILITY in regards to Java et al...
The collapse of SUN, the Swing for the Desktop/JSF/Java FX fiascoes, the Oracle takeover and the recent JCP fights, totally inspire confidence in Java...
They don't want to have to manage complex dependencies in the app store.
Therefore no optional or deprecated packages.
This move doesn't really support the conspiracy theory of an Apple lockdown strategy, although it certainly doesn't give any confidence that such a strategy is not in the making.
I think App Store is a great solution for most users and developers. But not for the particular minority I define as hackers.
That would be suicidal.
Oracle, if the Apple's platform is attractive enough. Note that Sun fought Microsoft to effectively take over Java on Windows. I know, MSFT one was not "pure," still that was the result. And one has to wonder if Apple would be sued the same way, since they also have OSX specific bindings.
The current bet is: OSX just became interesting enough to let Oracle maintain Java on it, if they want and are capable.
As far as I understand, the Java applications that were not already using OSX specifics weren't by any measure successful, and the only famous one is that FTP client, which is actually not a "write once works everywhere" Java app, but an OSX app accidentally written in Java. And it's an open source app. Can you please name some examples for "business based on a Mac Java apps?" Especially those that don't use OSX specifics.
I don't understand this question.
Either it's a Java app (no platform specified), or it's a Mac Java app that does use OSX-specific code.
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-1997/jw-10-lawsuit....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine
As far as I understand Java license doesn't allow you to make a platform specific Java implementation.
So who's then to bet his business on Mac Java apps? The only potentially "safe" approach is not to depend on Mac specifics. But is there any example of a profitable Java app (which made profit by targeting OSX customers) applying the mentioned "safe" approach?
And AFAIK specs are made for "write once run everywhere."
> it would mean you could never distribute the JRE together with any sort of extra libraries.
You can as long as you are using only what Sun (now Oracle) approves.
> Even the Sun/Oracle runtime ships with non-standard extensions
They make the rules, so what they do can't be used as an argument.
Yes, my understanding was that the MS implementation did not pass all the compatibility requirements. Adding extra functionality is entirely orthogonal to that point.
IBM's, Azure's and all the J2ME implementations come with proprietary extensions and are blessed by Sun/Oracle. I don't follow your argument.
I don't have anything more to add than to quote you (the keyword is blessed) and also point to my previous posts. As long as you're forced to get the blessing before you introduce the interface to your own platform (or be forced to leave something out because you know it won't be blessed) why should it be in your interest to maintain the technology of others if you have your own technologies and a platform that's attractive even by itself?
- .class files compiled on Apple's JVM work fine on other JVMs
- Source code written for Apple's version of javac will compile fine on other Java compilers.
To my knowledge, Microsoft's JVM violated both of these requirements, which was Sun's bone of contention. (Android's Dalvik is in similar violation, but doesn't pretend to be "Java" - they're being sued based on patents IIRC)
Technically, you don't need to compile "on JVM" but "for JVM." And it doesn't seem to be as you describe for most of the cases (in Sun's words, 98%).
> Microsoft's JVM violated both of these requirements
AFAI understand it was far more subtle: the language (the source form representation) was extended with the features which functioned only on Microsoft's implementation, and only such classes were affected. See
http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/deploymen...
for a list of issues of switching from Microsoft VM based upon Java 1.1 to Sun's 1.4.2. The list appears to be very unimpressive.
What Microsoft did was extend the language to include an annotations feature (making it source-incompatible), and extending the JVM spec to include new opcodes (which crashed everyone else's JVM). Had they extended Java the conventional way there would not have been a problem.
They have Java based apps for the Film industry. I have to support them on OS X. They are hideous to use, hideous to install and maintain. I don't know if they use OS X Java specifics, but some how I doubt it.
They were broken by Snow Leopard. Took them months to fix.
My experience, purely as a sysadmin and user, is that cheap and cheerful cross platform apps seem to be much nicer when written for Adobe Air.
gcc is GPL, so they can at best make it difficult to get them free, but clang is racing ahead and it is BSD.
I just hope that my faith in Apple that they won't do something ugly like giving free dev tools when they needed developers and switch to charging for them when they got the app market they wanted.
I think there is now room in the market for a company with good design sense to make Ubuntu machines!
Not only they're about to move desktops/laptops into the App Store's walled garden, they are showing they can drop support for major technologies like Java or Flash if they feel like it. This is not good news for anyone but Apple, certainly not anyone calling themselves "Hacker".
The problem is that you're jumping to some serious conclusions. Nothing about the mac app store demo showed banning of applications from a different source. You're assuming that's their plan, but I don't think it is. The app store makes perfect sense from an end user perspective. One of the great things about linux are the package managers. A central location with lots of software that I can install from AND get updates from.
There is no flash on the iPhone for many well document reasons, so I'll guess you're referring to no flash on the new MBA. Given that any version of flash is out of date and a huge security hole as soon as it's installed, it makes complete sense to force users to go get the latest version when they buy their machine. It wasn't long ago that the shipping version of flash on osx had a huge security hole that made Apple look bad.
What I would like to see if Apple let Adobe put their flash player into the new mac app store. This lets Adobe manage the updates like any other 3rd party developer.
As a 'hacker' I look at what is. Right now my MBP works great and has all the support I need. If Apple does end up going down the path of locking out all other software and/or the ability to hack and develop I'll switch back to linux. At this point though, it's much ado about nothing.
I'm confused by people being upset with the mac app store when FOSS has been doing the same thing for years with package management software. Heck, Cydia is even based off of a *nix package manager.
I don't want to call it fanboyism because I know you have other reasons for disliking their new app store but after seeing how well it works in Ubuntu, why could this possibly be a bad idea?
Hey, you've got 90 days to ship a competing app store for the Mac. Valve has already done so with Steam on Windows and Macs, it isn't insurmountable. What's going to make your one better than theirs?
Not shipping Flash on the MacBook Air was pretty understandable given the noise Adobe made about the OS X 10.6 release version of Flash. The whole build & release cycle seems to take longer than it takes Adobe to patch Flash. So, it is probably a good thing to train users to go to Adobe's site and get the newest Flash.
Dropping an Apple version of Java will probably be a good decision and actually help Java developers. If Oracle is actually taking over then OS X will most probably (given Oracle's catalog of OS X software) be at the same version as all the other platforms instead of the current delay.
Every time I reinstall an OS, Mac or otherwise, I find myself having to update Flash. If I've got to do that, I may as well install from scratch.
2. They're not dropping support for Java, they're just not making it anymore. If Oracle makes a version of Java for the Mac, then it will be supported. If not, then losing Java must not be that big a deal right?
BUT you could argue that the announced OSX features are more or less Ubuntu Software Center + some bits of Gnome Shell.
The status quo is powerful. There was no status quo on phones, that’s why Apple could just come up with one. It would not be in Apple’s best interest to change the rules so radically on the Mac.
It don’t know what Apple will do in a decade but I’m fairly confident that there will be no rapid change in what Apple allows you to install on your Mac. Steve Jobs already said that you will be able to install whatever you want on OS X Lion which keeps OS X safe at least until about summer 2013. I think it’s a bit premature to complain now.
Steve Jobs did not outlaw manual installs of any software on desktop Macs..he just made the MacApp store feel Boutique or exclusive to consumers..