Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?

>> Sorry, but this simply doesn't follow. People attend WWDC for a variety
>> of reasons, but it's not a hugfest. Presumably the most common and
>> important reason is to gain information, hopefully more than your
>> competitors. I don't see what this has to do with being happy with
>> Apple, other than they aren't so unhappy that they've abandoned the
>> platform. More people going to WWDC tells me that one or both of two
>> things are true: More developers feel they need the information
>> provided at WWDC and/or more people can afford to go.
>
> You are conflating "happy with Apple" and "happy Mac developer". They are
> vastly different and Greg is only talking about the latter AFAIK.

I'm not sure exactly how you define "happy Mac developer," but I've
been talking about the way developers feel about the way Apple has
treated them, specifically in regards to:

- The lack of documentation. No one I know thinks Apple's documentation
is stellar. It continually gets better, but it used to be awful and
it's still weak. I've talked with *Apple engineers* who don't think
there are enough tech pub writers. Why do people think the engineers
started adding documentation to the headers? Because they had spare
time on their hands and couldn't think of anything else to do? When I
hear people talking about actually trying to *use* the documentation,
they are not impressed and that carries more weight with me than
someone saying the docs must be good because there's lots of Mac OS X
software.

- The number of bugs Apple has happily shipped for us to work around.
Many bugs clearly indicate that some features or APIs were never even
tested. Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) recommends one QA engineer for
every two coding engineers. Adobe has one QA engineer for every two
coding engineers. Last I heard, which was a year or two ago, Apple had
one QA engineer for every *30* coding engineers (that's right, 1:30).
Apple is saving money and we're wasting ours working around their
problems as a result.

- The sheer volume of bugs means they can't fix as many as they should.
I know a lot of developers who aren't happy that the bugs they've
reported haven't been fixed.

- The lack of support for Interface Builder as evidenced by no bug
fixes in IB in the entire lifetime of the Panther version, way too many
consistent bugs, and too many limitations (like the inability to import
'MENU' resources, among others).

I have talked with a lot of Mac developers who were not so happy with
the way Apple has handled Mac OS X. Apple's taken a lot of shortcuts at
the expense of developers. The people who hold Apple up on a pedestal
and believe Apple and Steve can do no wrong always whitewash the
problems, but I have my eyes open. Greg is basically claiming the
increase in the number of people at WWDC proves these problems don't
exist or that they don't bother developers and I'm saying it does
nothing of the kind.

Larry

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Does Apple have an OS X update up its sleeve at WWDC?
    ... iPhone apps, or an entirely new iPhone itself is anybody¹s guess. ... spend a lot of time detailing Apple¹s iPhone plans to developers on Monday. ... Unofficial Apple Weblog and Infinite Loop anyway?that developers will ... support PowerPC processors. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.apps)
  • Re: Adobe apps languish under Rosetta.
    ... before making the new Intel Macs available? ... There are many third-party developers -- and Adobe seems to be ... UNTIL Apple starts shipping Intel machines. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Missing Features in Excel 2008!?
    ... Come on now you mean to tell me that MS puts as much money and effort in MacBU as other portions of their company. ... I don't care of it is UNIX, Linux, Mac or even windows/DOS. ... Far from being forced to have "as few a developers as possible", MacBU has spent a significant fraction of the last few years trying to hire more competent Mac developers. ... And of course, if Apple were to fail, ALL Mac software developers will rather quickly shut down. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.excel)
  • Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?
    ... > with those bugs, management made those decisions, and we can't change ... If developers act like those things were no big deal, ... developers want to make excuses for Apple and just keep hoping Apple ... bug fix updates. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior)
  • Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?
    ... > At the WWDC Keynote SJ noted there were more developers than in some time, ... It's not a matter of "liking" Apple. ... People don't develop Mac software ... The state of documentation is getting better as time goes ...
    (comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior)