“Apple has grown the size of its global developer community by 2 1/2 times over the past two years, with much of the credit going to its switch to the Unix-based OSX operating system. Apple’s entry into the open source community has also helped spur developer interest. ‘That’s one place where we did a lot of work,’ Apple’s visiting worldwide head of developer relations Ron Okamoto says, citing the Safari web browser as an example,” Chris Jenkins reports for Australian IT.
“Apple is ‘not necessarily’ competing with Linux for users switching from traditional BSD Unix, Okamoto says. Linux ‘gives people another motivation to examine their platform choice,'” Jenkins reports.
Full article here.
The Mac is a great platform for bioinformatics investigation and programming.
Mac OS X is for those who want UNIX stability with a full array of commercial software. LINUX is still heavily dependent upon Open Source (GIMP, Open Office, etc). All the advantages of LINUX without the headaches.
When will Apple open ipod devel? Apple supports Open Source, but they are half assed.
the iPod is barely an infant dude, i wouldn’t say that it’s matured yet for them to send it out into the world just yet… I would say another two years or so before they release it to the wild…
A buddy of mine just gave up a Dell laptop with Linux in favor of a new iBook. He’s happy he’s got access to his favorite command line tools.
Somewhere along the line I got the impression that Linux on the desktop was to be a competitor to Windows, but good Lord what I saw last week was a plain yet confusing interface.
Another example of Steve’s vision kicking in. This is also why it is important to have market share go up some.
As for developers for the iPod, it is my understanding that they want to keep control for a while to make sure that they can assure a great user experience. If they just opened it up there could be lots of stuff developed that didn’t work quite right. I think that after they have totally dominated the market they will probably open it up to lock it in as the de facto standard. It is really fun to see M$ sucking air in this field by the way. I hope that this means that good guys can finish first some of the time.
So where are 2.5 times more programs for the mac????
Or did they just get a good deal on an Apple developer�s kit…and are now classified as developers…
the old numbers accounting game…
Actually, an increase of 250% is 3.5 times as many developers…
okay So where are 3.5 times more programs for the mac????
If you do Unix there is way more than 3.5 times the programs available on OS 9.
Way more.
…and OS X in 2001 featured less that 1500 sw titles.
So Seahawk prefers quantity to quality … duhh! 😎
Eye Cee:
“okay So where are 3.5 times more programs for the mac????”
Patience is a virtue, needed by many, learned by few…
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but it takes *time* to write applications, no? Plus I bet some of the “developers” are writing in house code for specific applications.
Anyone know where we can look at a graph showing the growth of Apps available native on OS X?