Ars' Peter Bright wrote an article today entitled "From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows user's conversion to Mac OS X", in which he explains why he believes "Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it". These are rather harsh words, but there is a definitive element of truth in it. The article is part one in a three-part series.In the article, Bright first explains how Microsoft developers were in a happy place in the latter half of the 1990's, whereas Apple was in big trouble due to the fact that its operating system was an old piece of junk (personally, I happen to like Mac OS 9, apart from its slowness). On Microsoft, Bright writes:
This was attractive to someone who programmed for a living. Developers felt valued, like the company cared about them. I enjoy programming, and I enjoy writing software. I did then; I do now. So for me, this is really a key piece of what a platform has to offer.
The Apple world wasn't as rosy as the Microsoft world back then. Apple's operating system lacked a lot of modern technologies like protected memory and preemptive multitasking. Apple started the Copland project to bolt these (and other) technologies onto what is now known as Classic, but they failed miserably. Promised developer releases were never released, it suffered from feature creep, and was ultimately cancelled. Consequently, Apple went shopping for another operating system to base the next generation Apple OS on, and after a brief flirt with Be, Inc., they purchased Steve Jobs' NeXT Software and its operating system, NeXTstep. The rest is history. As Bright writes:
It took a while before Mac OS X, released in 2001, became usable, but Apple continued to update the operating system, adding new frameworks and APIs, which enabled developers to easily make applications that not only looked great, but worked great too. Microsoft, in the meantime, had released Windows XP, and more or less left it unchanged for years until Windows Vista came along last year.
Bright continues to explain that these high quality frameworks and APIs in Mac OS X resulted in Mac applications that looked and worked great. This was not only a result of the APIs, Bright argues, but also because of the attitude of the developers using them; Mac developers seem more devoted, more willing to make an effort with their applications. Compare this to the bulk of Windows applications, which are "shoddy", as if Windows developers "just don't care". Bright attributes this to the fact that many Windows programmers work for the enterprise. Summing up, he states:
But it doesn't inspire me. Writing software for Windows is a pain. Much of the platform is clunky and badly put together, and it makes development much less enjoyable than it should be.
And that is the main argument Bright puts forth in his article. The Win32 API still suffers from design decisions made over 20 years ago, and it's huge, and, according to Bright at least, quite inconsistent. "It's inconsistent in every way imaginable."
Back in July 2007, I wrote something similar in an article in which I detailed how I think Microsoft should go about the development of Windows Vista's successor, Windows 7. One of my main points was that the NT kernel doesn't really need to be scrapped; it is the userland and APIs that need to be rebuilt from the ground-up, with backwards compatibility moved into a virtual machine, just like Apple did in Mac OS X with the Classic environment for old System 8/9 applications. Today's processors are fast enough for such a VM.
In addition, my article advised Microsoft to release betas and RCs often, free for the public to test and play with. After the release of this imaginary Windows 7, Microsoft should mimic Apple's behaviour after the release of Mac OS X 10.0: update the operating system as often as possible, preferably free of charge. Provide excellent documentation on the new APIs, allow easy access to bug-tracking systems, and create a good atmosphere for developers and users to interact with one another.
It is still too early to tell whether Microsoft will take such a bold step, but it seems as if I am not the only one advocating it. Which is a comfort.
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Well, this is good news. "Germany will not sign an international anti-piracy treaty, despite having already agreed to it in principal, government sources in Berlin said Friday, February 10." with Germany on the side of reason - for now - we're a huge step closer to stopping ACTA.
"Microsoft today issued a brief statement promising to make 'essential patents' available to competitors at fair and reasonable licensing rates, and promised not to sue companies making products that infringe these patents. The actual patents themselves weren't disclosed, but Microsoft joins both Google and Apple in making recent statements on so-called fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing terms. Such licensing terms designate certain patents as essential to complying with industry standards, making them available for licensing at (supposedly) lower-than-usual rates." This industry is dysfunctional.
"Like any space opera, the story of information technology is a very simple one. It is played out in a myriad of different ways by a revolving cast of characters, but it always has its loveable heroes, its predictably nefarious villains, innocent civilians to be saved, and bumbling bureaucrats that aren't inherently evil, but begin every story aiding the forces of darkness out of a misplaced belief they are preserving law and order in their corner of the galaxy." He might use Star Wars as an analogy (I strongly dislike Star Wars - Trekkie here), but it sums up very well how I feel about computing today.
"Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows graphics processing units and central processing units on a single chip to collaborate - boosting processor performance by an average of more than 20 percent."
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"People who have the latest Symbian Nokia smartphones can now update them to Nokia Belle - bringing a fresh look to their screens thanks to the latest user interface. Once you have installed Nokia Belle you will still have the same phone, but it will feel like new, with improved performance." Love the version name."Research in Motion has said the native software development kit for Blackberry 10 will be committed to open source. The firm, which has a history of basing its business on being a closed system, is shifting more and more to open source. Its upcoming Blackberry 10 native SDK will include many open source code resources."
Let this be a lesson. After posts by John Gruber and Shawn King, this happened to Violet Blue. "The misinformation gave a significant number of people fuel to stalk me, attack me for hours at a time, malign, insult me in disgusting ways, threaten me with weapon-specific violent death (an axe), and lead social media attempts to force me to lose my job over the matter. Many referenced John Gruber, and/or his post as they did this. Plans were openly made to make media to attack me - another Angry Mac Bastards podcast." Disgusting story, and sadly enough, this isn't the first time this has happened, as Blue notes in her article. I don't like talking about these matters (you don't want to know the kind of crap that gets thrown my way at times), but I can assure you my inbox has seen its share of pure vitriol after Gruber links to an OSNews piece. It ain't pretty.
