Mac OSx cripples non apple software

[mzkhadir]

Vlad1 blog

 

[erikistired]

learn2code?

 

[Kmax82]

If that is the case, how do all these other independent software companies make great software? I don't buy it. Panic, Ambrosia, BareBones, etc... are not crippled because of OSX.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
If that is the case, how do all these other independent software companies make great software? I don't buy it. Panic, Ambrosia, BareBones, etc... are not crippled because of OSX.

The point her is Apple is using undocumented/private API's. Microsoft got into trouble for this before I believe. This basically means they aren't letting developers have full potential, and thus, crippling them.

Now, whether or not this is true, or if there's some legitimate reasoning behind it, is the real question.

 

[Nothinman]

After reading the Ars article the feeling I get is that the APIs being talked about depend heavily on internals that aren't meant for public consumption so using them is a bad idea and that the Apple devs who did use them in Safari are cheating by using them since they know about those internal designs. And it's funny because that never works out well, as soon as one of those internal structures changes they'll have to run out and fix Safari to work with the new API. So they'll either end up with a mess of versioned dependencies or someone will get the fun duty of going back and cleaning it up and doing it right using the correct, public APIs.

Whether the functionality that they're misusing should be exposed in a consistent and publicly available fashion is a separate issue.

 

[KeithP]

From the article...

Slashdot seems to have picked up on this, and in typical style, has completely misunderstood the post. To be clear, I do not think that Apple is in any way trying to purposely "cripple" non-Apple software. I also do not think that undocumented APIs give Safari any kind of "significant performance advantage" (as Firefox 3 should show!). However, as I said, the undocumented functionality could be useful for Firefox and other apps to implement things in an simpler (and potentially more efficient) manner. I don't think this is malicious, it's just an unfortunate cutting of corners that is way too easy for a company that's not fully open to do.

-KeithP

 

[erikistired]

firefox 3 has bigger probs than hidden apis anyway. it still gives me errors with yahoo mail and i can't drag album art to itunes (which works fine with ff2 and safari), among other things. it was my browser of choice, but i've since gone back to ff2 again.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: fisher
firefox 3 has bigger probs than hidden apis anyway. it still gives me errors with yahoo mail and i can't drag album art to itunes (which works fine with ff2 and safari), among other things. it was my browser of choice, but i've since gone back to ff2 again.

heh, well, it is still beta

 

[erikistired]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: fisher
firefox 3 has bigger probs than hidden apis anyway. it still gives me errors with yahoo mail and i can't drag album art to itunes (which works fine with ff2 and safari), among other things. it was my browser of choice, but i've since gone back to ff2 again.

heh, well, it is still beta

i know. i'm just sayin!