October 10, 2002
Nice review of OSX in Tidbits.
There's a nice overall review of OSX in the current issue of Tidbits,
here. It gives individual grades to it in different areas (hardware compatibility, ease of software development, etc.), altho I think they may be a bit too high. Mostly B's and B+'s. Especially liked this section on how Apple has moved away from encouraging people to make their own applications, which is almost certainly the reason for the almost infinitesimal market share and rapidly declining stock price and profits. When will they learn that the whole point is to make it usable by the users?
"Programmability -- Ever since Apple decided that HyperCard smells funny, the company has avoided implying that users could use the Mac to create their own applications. It was a shame, since giving users programming tools is a bit like giving fire to early humans. Thankfully, with Mac OS X, Apple seems to be reversing course, making development tools available for free and offering numerous different programming targets. Though no one should be writing Classic applications anymore, developers can choose among Carbon, Cocoa, Java, and Unix. Plus, the new AppleScript Studio lets developers write true Cocoa applications in AppleScript. Third parties bolster this story as well, with products such as Runtime Revolution, the Java-focused Tekadence Magik, and the well-known REALbasic. (REAL Software recently announced their next version will run on Windows as well as the Mac, which should increase the number of applications developed using REALbasic, and which in turn could increase the number of Windows applications made available for the Mac.) The two flies in the ointment are that Apple still thinks HyperCard smells funny, and the company seems to have developed an odd aversion for AppleScript, with AppleScript support in too few of Apple's own applications."
It really may not be accurate to say that "Apple" doesn't like Hypercard. My impression is that there are plenty of people at Apple who love it, and who would like to see products like that out there. It seems to be only Mr. Jobs who doesn't like it, and of course, if Jobs doesn't like something then no one else has the right to like it either. But with the rapid meltdown of Apple's stock, profits, marketshare, and every other statistical measure of business, I can't see him being there much longer. The "cult of personality" and pictures on Time magazine notwithstanding, he's killing the company. Slowly but surely bringing it from a billion a month company to a billion a year one. Sad, to say the least.
I know the "faithful" don't want to believe this, and want to believe that fancy-dancy technology is saving it, but the figures just don't tell that story. And yes, I realize that the entire computer industry is having troubles, but if you look at the statistics Apple's decline is worse than the rest, and at a time when they have stunning new products out, and at a time when the anger at Microsoft has never been higher, and there's never been more opportunity to encroach on their territory. Why they don't have a new, killer OS for x86 machines is beyond me. But I guess, it's the same as Hypercard. Jobs doesn't want it, then it just doesn't matter.
