Inkhead, you make a good point about the ADA. **In the world of software, it recently has been the little guys that have been walking all over the larger companies (Paypal, Skype, Digg, MySpace, YouTube etc..) etc..**
Competition is great too. *I am very happy that you are in a sucessful Mac oriented business. We are a community and facing hard times. We both have to work together to get our marketshare up so we can get more shelf space. The amount of non-game software space is very dismal.* To buy a $2500 desktop Mac pro and see very little shelf units can be a hard purchase versus going into Best Buy and seeing rows of PC software.*
Back to the core issue, *money.. ***XCode and GCC and Interface builder are free..* Obviously someone like Delicious Monster or OmniGroup has tons of resources, they can get free Interns and have the connections.* Wil and Ken Case were presenters this year.* *Wil said in his student talk, Delicious made $54000 in profit the first day..* *
So, where does that leave independent shops like us?* I want to kick Delicious Monster's butt bad at the 2007 ADA as Wil said they are presenting Version 2 of Delicious Library.. Stuff like OmniPlan is coming out..*
The reality:*
*I am a nobody at the conference. But I have a dream and one idea that I think is fresh enough to compete and possibly sell. Its all up to me to implement it and ship it. Steve Jobs said - "Real artists ship."* *Part of the problem is my fault and some of it is not.. *The reality for my situation is obviously better than some and worse off than others.*
As developers we need:
1) *development environment (XCode, IB, etc), APIs, sample code and docs
2) *time
3) *skill*
4) *customers or audience
5) *ideas , features, a purpose for the applications / systems
The only issues that are currently variable between you, me , and general Mac developer population (750K+ according to the keynote)* are 1 and 2.
#3 is based on #1 and #2 and we are all coding to the same APIs here using the same tools.
* * I work for a lavery large insurance company and idiot PHB and alot of time after working as corporate drone can't work on my independent app when I come home.. I'm done from being in the office all day doing .Net development or maintaing others crappy code.* Plus its just me.. I am the only mac developer I know.* I did meet some at the conference, but they were from IT depts or large companies like Watcom.* Not many people want to talk to me at WWDC, I look boring and didnt have any company on my badge. *I would argue that anybody can have the same skill if given enough time to work on a problem.* Alot of successful products such as Delicious Library or this years ADA winners like Line Form were simpler apps compared to something like Modo.
So,* how do I get more time?*
*1)* I took off another week of PTO so I can sit at home and bang away on my computer all week. Thats a very limited resource unless I want to quit job and live on rice on beans and find a part time job 3rd shift somewhere so I can code more.
*2)* Use Apple technologies to the fullest such as Core Animation and QTKit and AppKit and ObjC.. *I do not have time to figure out how to get NSViews on OpenGL views for example, so i will just use the provided documentation.. Im using XCode 3.0, new stuff in ObjC..
A good application is like a good song.* It can be played unplugged on acoustic guitar or electric guitar.* Between Tiger and Leopard is not as wide as the marketing suggests.* Some applications do not need a glossy Core Animation interface. Animations can be done in others ways.. Look at Omnidazzle or FrontRow or use OpenGL stuff on Tiger.* Look at Photobooth.. This is such a simple application, but it works.
Reading this forum.. *I live in Austrailia, I have bad injury/medical condition, I am a student etc, too poor etc.. * yes, it sucks!! Trying to make a living as a software developer nowdays is not easy.* I hear you brother.. Everyone thinks they are a developer just because they can write a web page or have XCode or Visual Studio installed or programmed a couple hello world apps in VB or Java.*
I need the tools like Core Animation ASAP and ObjC features so I can spend more time adding features to my app.* In reality, we really only have until late Spring to get our apps ready for te release of Leopard and until maybe late May until submission for ADA. **That gives us maybe 6 months. *
Back to the money issue..* Apple cannot give away Leopard seeds for free.. *It eats into Tiger and Leopard sales too much. It breaks too many Applecare when people screw up installing Leopard etc.. Preview seed blew up my Tiger partition i had.. I had to do a clean install
* Microsoft doesnt do that even.. you have to buy MSDN for that..* There has to be a fee for the conference.* It costs alot to setup and for the 1000 engineers on site etc.. *If the fee isn't high enough, then 20,000 people would show up. I felt WWDC was not code specific enough as it is.. Too many IT tracks and less code samples and sample code released.*Too many people steal Apple's ideas.. Apple spent alot of time at the Keynote going over this.. **So, Apple this year decide to help developers by giving us a seed and having* alot of Leopard sessions and exclusive Leopard documentation.. A lot of documentation is not on the seed and exclusive for WWDC attendees.***
So, I want everybody to use Leopard feature Z, because it helps Apple because Leopard makes Apple money.. i want more people to buy macs to buy my product, and it pushes for faster hardware (we all love new Apple hardware).
There is a fine line with what Apple provides.. last year (2005) it was Developer Transition kit.. there wasnt any way to compile/test for Intel unless you had that and was like $1000 until the first Intel based comptuer came out.* Before that it was the same story.. Tiger seed given out at WWDC 2004.. so no way to do Core Data or Core Video unless you had that.*
There is always going to be dangling carrots like new CPUS or OS versions.* Apple is extremely secretive, they didnt annouce even that they were giving out the seed until it leaked out the day before the conference.
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To answer your question.. what about people that can't afford even the ADC Select? People poorer than myself.* I have ADC Select..* You are asking to let 750K people download Leopard the way Microsoft has done with Vista RC1.*
My answer.. That doesnt help me with issue #1 and #2 above that I talked about.. Now everyone has all the same tools/docs (unless you are top company like Aspyr, you will always know more NDA stuff) .. So #1, is balanced and drops off.* leaving time #2 as the only difference between me and the other companies. My skill is largely based on time, because I am new to the APIs (partly why I went to WWDC to learn more about QTKit etc..)
Applications will be won based on time alone.. Small shops like me who are doing this on PTO and nights/weekends will lose..* I need all the help I can do to win the ADA against products from OmniGroup, Deleicious Monster and you and others.. These companies have the seed to.. But really helps me out by letting me catch up agaisnt the unknowns small shops like the guy that wrote F-Script (Phillipe ???) or that Line Form App..*
If I can go to WWDC sessions to learn and walk away with beter tools and APIs its awesome.. It helps me and Apple benefit.. It just sucks for the people who cannot commit and have to wait 4-8 weeks for the same stuff.* That will be me next year, i am not going to be able to go next year.. I am in the same boat and hear you brother.* I am just the lttle guy here competing against these serial ADA winners....*
Sorry for the lecture..* I loved your feedback.
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