[Openmcl-devel] Mac App store: will CCL apps fly?

[rm at tuxteam.de]

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 03:32:11PM -0400, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> 
> On Oct 21, 2010, at 2:12 PM, Ron Garret wrote:
> 
> > I could be wrong.  I hope I am.  But I don't see any other way these tea leaves could be read.  Jobs has telegraphed is intentions pretty clearly.
> 
> 
> Well Jobs was pretty explicit about what he expects the future to be. In an interview a few months back he compared general purpose PCs (i.e., Mac OS X as UNIX) to trucks, and touch devices (Mac OS X as iOS) to cars. The overwhelming majority of people use cars (iOS devices) but some still need to use trucks (Mac OS X qua UNIX).
> 
> It's difficult to see how Apple could ever get rid of Mac OS X as UNIX entirely - there's a whole market segment of scientific computing and developers who really need direct access to the file system, etc., the kind of things iOS lacks.

That might well be - but that won't be a market for Apple. 

> Mac OS X won't go away  - it will become like Mac OS X Server is now - i.e., largely irrelevant to consumer computing. If you write apps for the general market going forward, you'll be targeting primarily iOS  (or Mac OS X LOLCat - I don't doubt that such a fusion is in the Jobsian tea leaves) not Mac OS X. But you'll most likely be doing that development on a MacOS X qua UNIX machine, not an iOS device.

And why should apple spend a single penny on something "largely irrelevant to consumer computing" ? Scientific computing never was Apples domain (lots of Suns  iirc),
Apple was (is?) well-known in the media market (mostly thanks some early good applications and former good design) but they have lost a lot of customers there
(I can mostly talk about audio production - users start to wonder why the same hardware should cost so much more with an apple logo on it. Firewire  anyone?
Oh, just dump your audio interfaces , from now on we do usb2 ...)

> I think this is Jobs' view of the world: Consumer computing should be appliance computing - closed, walled garden computing; general purpose computing should only be available to niche, specialist users like developers and the scientific market, not the general public. Note that graphic designers, musicians, etc. currently think they're exempt "power users" but, like you, I think they're in for a surprise going forward (i.e., they'll be migrated to become iOS/Mac OS X LOLCat users going forward).
> 
> This leaves lisp in an awkward position. Apple's latest relenting on developer tools for iOS makes ecl  or gambit a safer bet than ccl for example imho simply because these lisps compile to c, and c is a citizen in good standing in the Jobsiverse. But even the lisp-as-c-library approach may eventually be off limits. For now it seems safe enough though.

I wouldn't bet on Mac OSX being arround in five year.


Cheers, Ralf Mattes

> 
> warmest regards,
> 
> Ralph
> 
> 
> Raffael Cavallaro
> raffaelcavallaro at me.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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