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Apr 12, 2001
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MacRumors, AppleInsider, and Apple-x.net have been handed information pointing to a possible WebObjects 5.3 update in the near future. WebObjects is the software Apple uses to create its web site, as well as build the framework for the iTunes music store.

In the submission:
A major update is on the way, set for January. However, due to the fact that inventory has literally dried up, it may ship earlier. Originally, we wanted to ship it with Xcode 2 and updated dev tools (i.e., Java 1.5). There may be no choice but to ship it earlier, it risk losing some devs.
 
Macrumors said:
MacRumors, AppleInsider, and Apple-x.net have been handed information pointing to a possible WebObjects 5.3 update in the near future. WebObjects is the software Apple uses to create its web site, as well as build the framework for the iTunes music store.

In the submission:
Why would Apple be forced to ship WebObjects 5.3 earlier than planned if inventory has "dried up"? I don't see the connection here, nor do I see how Apple would lose developers by shipping WebObjects early.
 
nor do I - which when put together with the lack of any other information about it leads me to believe they're working on something, but probably not to be released "early" as this poster would suggest.

hence page 2
page 3 if we had it...
 
The really exciting part...

WebObjects has a good reputation, but I use the open source framework Tapestry (http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry) which in some respects was inspired by WebObjects.

But a January release date for Tiger (Java 1.5) is great news, and almost certainly implies January for Tiger (10.4) as well!
 
Macrumors said:
it risk losing some devs

I believe "it risk losing some devs" is refering to the inventory (of the previous version) being dried up and not the new version shipping it early. Basically, not having the product availible will make devs go elsewhere, hence why they want to ship it early.

The other option, which i would hate to see, is making more copies of the old version to sell so close to the update.
 
With 5.2 released years back for Windows 2000 SP3 and using a derivative of Cocoa - and with 5.3 accessing new frameworks in OS X, I wonder if WebObjects 5.3 will be released for Windows XP?

If there is any effect on cocoa development for Windows XP (even if this is only something used by Apple apps - such as WebObjects, iTunes/Quicktime, Appleworks, etc. If Cocoa for Windows works largely, any Apple Cocoa app is easily ported (as in the Openstep days).
 
Is webObjects actually poular? the participation in this thread would suggest otherwise :confused:

I'm thinking of learning it (the educational price is very low), but I dont really want to learn something that isn't particularly widespread..

any advice?
 
asif786 said:
Is webObjects actually poular? the participation in this thread would suggest otherwise :confused:

I'm thinking of learning it (the educational price is very low), but I dont really want to learn something that isn't particularly widespread..

any advice?

it's a great development tool once you know how to use it. it does have quite a steep learning curve, but once you get the hang of it development is very quick.
i've been looking for an update to WO5.2. i was hoping it would be released at WWDC '04. better late than never!
 
RE: Release date... Updates to WebObjects have in the past followed releases of the OS software, not preceded them. I would expect any major update of WO to be after the OS release.

RE: 5.3... I would almost expect a 5.2.4 version before I would expect a 5.3 release -- especially given how the last point.point release was to make WebObjects compatible with Panther development. Otherwise, since version numbers don't mean much for some products, why not just make it arbitrarily 6?

RE: Learning curve... I develop on WO every day. I would say that there is a learning curve for it only because it is a programmer's tool. But I don't believe the learning curve for WebObjects is any more steep than any competing product such as Struts, or other J2EE programming environments; actually it's a lot easier. Like many things it has its idiosyncracies. Fortunately, many of these, such as collection classes, are similar to those encountered developing for the Macintosh using Cocoa.
 
Whoa. Back up a moment.

I had to support Openstep Enterprise for Windows at NeXT so let me make this clear:

Openstep Enterprise that morphed into YellowBox is Objective-C. It is not Java.

Knowing that QuickTime for Tiger has been re-written in Cocoa (i.e., Objective-C and probably ObjC++) the interesting idea for this long delay could be directed to the return of WebObjects for Objective-C that got shelved in the 4.x days.

If I were still working at Apple Enterprise Software (AES) I wouldn't be writing this but it makes no sense that Apple continue to invest funds into WebObjects Java when it really hasn't made a dent into the Dynamic AppServer market that it once did when NeXT lead the market and innovation.

I do know several highly talented Cocoa developers now work at Apple and some are in the WOF Team. My best guess would be that Apple would release WOF 6 for Cocoa and that would be a unified support for ObjC/Java/ObjC++ and leverage all the recent improvements to the Cocoa frameworks.

If that happens (one can dream) then it would mean a fresh version of Enterprise Object Frameworks (EOF) would be included and Apple would finally be admitting it is serious about Enterprise Web Services and data centers.

One can hope.

Regarding Windows XP support I would think they'd put it into legacy mode and encourage, through discounts, folks to work in a purely UNIX environment on OS X.

We never had a huge demand for WOF on NT/2k/XP like we thought and I would think that Linux support would be more interesting to Apple via Deployment strategies.

GregA said:
With 5.2 released years back for Windows 2000 SP3 and using a derivative of Cocoa - and with 5.3 accessing new frameworks in OS X, I wonder if WebObjects 5.3 will be released for Windows XP?

If there is any effect on cocoa development for Windows XP (even if this is only something used by Apple apps - such as WebObjects, iTunes/Quicktime, Appleworks, etc. If Cocoa for Windows works largely, any Apple Cocoa app is easily ported (as in the Openstep days).
 
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