Has Mac OS X Lost Its Value For Developers?
My last couple of blog entries have been about Apple. Some of the comments people have left got me thinking - has Mac OS X lost most of its value to developers?
For the last few years, Mac OS X has had a unique selling point (USP) that made it really attractive to developers. That is, the combination of a polished desktop graphical user interface with a powerful Unix command line. Developers loved this because it makes them really productive (or at least, makes them feel as if they’re being productive). Strategically, it’s always been a dubious decision to use Mac OS X as a development platform… but that’s another story. The point is: developers have been big supporters of Macs in recent years.
However, today, I suspect the value of this Mac OS X “developer USP” is rapidly diminishing. Firstly, Linux and Solaris (i.e “Unixy”) desktops are getting close to being “good enough” that you could call them “polished”; and secondly, top talent developers are spending more and more time inside graphical IDEs than ever before. So, if you’re a developer using a programming language where it still makes sense to use a plain text editor combined with use of the command line, then Linux and Solaris are becoming increasingly attractive. And if you’re a developer using a language where you spend all your time inside a graphical IDE (and graphical IDEs are making increasing sense for top talent developers all the time), Windows Vista is probably the best OS to use as your desktop development platform.
I wonder if Apple sees this as a risk. If developers start losing interest in Apple, then they’ll stop caring about making sure their applications work well on Macs.
Asam Bashir wrote:
I suppose most developers buying Apple hardware realise they have both hardware and virtualised options for every single OS they could imagine to develop for.
But yes, Java is something Apple needs to look at hard and long and must start increasing the size of their development teams to match the size of the company.
Where are the figures for percentage of top talant developers prefered development OS? Are these genuine concerns of the majority or a vocal minority afraid of Apple’s influence on Java’s future. Has Apple become so sucessful now that the Java community fears that without Apple on board and actively involved, they might get left behind…..
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 4:26 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Also, something else that confuses me, just how many Java developers are actually developing in Java 1.6 compared to 1.5 and even 1.4? Obviously Apple can’t release at the same time as Sun, it needs time to make it worthy of being on Mac OS X. Tiger shipped with 1.4 and 1.5 was released later once Apple had a chance to tinker with it. The same will happen for Leopard. Java development and roadmap must fit in with Apple’s plans for future Mac OS X development, not the other way round. Maybe it’s Sun fault here, they should work more closely with Apple in the future.
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 5:14 am ¶
simon wrote:
Re: %age figures of top talent developer’s preferred OS.
Honestly, I’ve have no idea - it’s probably an impossible thing to measure. The key thing, though, is that the only reason that Windows hasn’t totally wiped the floor in terms of market share, is that historically, great developers have needed the command line to get their jobs done quickly. That means Unix, Linux or Mac OS X.
However, as I say, I think that during the last couple of years, the value proposition for “text editor plus command line” software development has been fundamentally changing. It’s really a quantum shift. Graphical IDEs used to be aimed at mainly people that didn’t know how to program to a high standard. Today, though, they’re also aimed at the top talent…
The precise timing when this shift occurred/will occur depends on the particular language being used, because IDE support varies according to language. For example, today, if you’re a top talent developer coding in Java, C/C++, Flex or C#.NET you should really be either already using a graphical IDE, or at least have realised that you’re going to be switching soon.
If you’re coding in say Ruby or JavaScript, then great IDE support is a little behind… but it’s getting good pretty fast. Personally, I’d really recommend Netbeans 6 (currently in beta) for coding in Ruby… but obviously, not everyone will feel comfortable using a beta release of an IDE.
For PHP, or Perl or Python, I’m not sure… For some reason, programming languages beginning with the letter P have never really appealed to me enough that I’ve cared to understand the best environment to use for coding in them. I’ve always used text editors.. but really, I try to avoid these languages as much as I can (I think the last time I thought Perl was an even slightly interesting language was 1997), so I’m not the best judge.
Re: Is the Java community scared of Apple’s success?
On the whole, I suspect the answer is no. I think the truth is probably as Mr X put it. That is - because Mac adoption has been growing so fast, there are many Java developers using Macs that aren’t used to the “Apple way” of doing things e.g. zero communication about future roadmaps. That’s why they’re making so much noise. Anyone that’s been coding Java for Macs since the 1990s will have long since given up expecting good communication or timely releases.
So, I genuinely don’t think “fear” has anything to do with this. Java is all about being a high-volume platform (there are millions of Java developers targetting billions of Java devices). If the Java community needs to be “scared” of any company, I’d say it’s Adobe, not Apple. Apple has a long way to go before it succeeds as a serious volume platform for software developers; an it’s still quite possible it will never get there.
Today, Adobe totally dominates Java in some key areas such as with Flash/Flex as a RIA software platform on desktop computers. FlashLite deployment on mobile phones is now starting to catch up with Java ME. So, Adobe is a massive threat to Java.
Microsoft’s .NET platform is obviously an emerging threat across regular applications, and RIA (Silverlight), and Mobile. Silverlight has a way to go yet, but it’s actually a pretty fabulous platform. If I was Adobe, I think I’d be pretty concerned about what Silverlight is doing to be able to do.
The choice for the Java community, faced with the work that Adobe and Microsoft is doing, is to either give up… or redouble its efforts and compete in terms of consumer-facing stuff. So far, the evidence is that Java is going to try to re-invent itself, and compete. 2008 is going to be a big year for Java in the consumer space, and by the end of 2008, I think we’ll have a good idea of how successful it’s going to be.
2008 is also going to be a fascinating year for Apple. It’s the year when we find out for sure how successful iPhone is (right now, we’re still in the early adopter part of the curve); and also the year when we’ll see the responses to iPhone from the likes of Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson etc.
How many Java developers are using Java 6 cf. previous versions?
I would say most Java developers would like to use Java 6 for some things they do, even if it’s just to run their local IDE under Java 6. And many will develop new systems to run under the latest version. Clearly, though, there are huge numbers of systems running on older versions - that’s just the nature of developing computer systems that have lifetimes measured in years. I don’t have the stats to give accurate and precise numbers on this. However, in terms of downloads of the latest version of Java 6, this is running at about twenty million downloads per month.
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 9:22 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Thanks for those details, makes things a bit more clearer, but as you’ve illustrated, and with so many big companies competeting for dominance of their development platform, MS & Adobe, it’s clearly something Apple has to think very hard about before it commits it’s resources.
As a Java developer you wouldn’t want Apple to rush into things and put out a sub-standard deployment of Java 6 would you?
As long term Mac users we’ve learn’t to trust Apple with it’s secrecy, it’s one of the reasons it’s still here. If it wasn’t for the secrecy, then MS would have used that information and planned an attack on Mac OS X that it might not have made it through. Apple knows very well the tactics used by others against it in the past, and Java developers must be patient and learn to trust the secrecy.
Without a roadmap, look at past releases of Java on Mac OS X, and under those circumstances, Apple is on schedule with Java 6, and it will be as good if not better then it’s version of Java 5.
Posted 03 Nov 2007 at 4:25 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Is there more to all this? It would appear that the source of much of this Java developer-freakout appears to be Sun Microsystems itself - this is the way it tries to get Apple to add Java to the iPhone/iTouch/iPod ecosystems? When Sun made a imitiation iPhone running the Java OS it made Apple a competitor. Is this a case of Sun digging it’s own hole again? All Apple would need to do is start licensing OS X to third-party mobile manufacturers and it would wipe out JavaFX. Given Apple and Google’s close colaboration on many fronts, licensing OS X can be put on the table at anytime. I think this is what Sun is worried about, but using Java developers to start making noices is not going to get much attention from Apple. Apple and it’s ecosystem could live very happily without Java at anytime..
Posted 05 Nov 2007 at 12:13 am ¶
simon wrote:
Sure, there are some Sun people that are being pretty vocal about the Apple/Java situation e.g. calling for 13949712720901ForOSX to be put in blogs etc. There’s lots of non-Sun people doing this too, though. Not sure there’s any conspiracy here.
As for Java on iPhone… I think that ship has sailed. It looks like there will be no Java on iPhone. Looks like nothing anyone says will convince Apple; and people are pretty much past caring. Time will tell if Apple has the right strategy on this.
Today, I doubt that Apple (or anyone else) is worried about JavaFX Mobile… there are no JavaFX Mobile handsets released, and none are even announced yet. So, we’re probably at least 12 months from seeing a Java FX Mobile handset hit the market (if any ever do). Also, the entire JavaFX platform has a way to go before it’s useful.
Posted 05 Nov 2007 at 12:50 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
LOL, 13949712720901ForOSX, they must be hurting bad for some Apple lovin, but I think they should be utizilising the updated tools in Java 5 in Leopard for now, and showing us some usefull Leopard apps and a good understanding of Apple HI rules for Leopard…
Posted 05 Nov 2007 at 2:32 am ¶