[DUG] iPhone

John Bird johnkbird at paradise.net..nz
Mon Sep 1 10:50:29 NZST 2008


Well you could take this argument further - in terms of openness yes MS has 
a lot of 3rd party developers using the OS,  and it is the de-facto 
standard.  But as far as quality of OS/multi-tasking/security  etc it is 
pretty crappy (thats a technical term) compared to the Unix and Linux kernel 
and security model - and thats a direct consequence of the OS being a closed 
system.

Apple did a shrewd thing basing OSX on Open BSD (an open version of Unix 
similar to linux).  BSD Unix came top of a security survey last year in 
being the most secure OS from boot to running with no holes or open 
vulnerabilities - most OS's including Windows and linux have at least parts 
of the networking come online and ports showing before the firewall kicks in 
fully.

The best summary I saw was the one saying that as far as programming API 
goes Win32 (and .net) are the best and most developed.  In terms of 
underlying kernel NT/XP/Vista is inferior, and the shrewdest idea would be 
for MS to abandon their kernel and put their API on top of Unix or linux as 
Apple did with OSX.  Don't like the chances of that ever happening though...

And even Unix/linux is not the most sophisticated OS around - those who can 
remember back to Dec VMS remember a very sophisticated and elegant OS with 
full security and versioning file-system built in from the beginning in the 
early 1980's  (VMS stood for Virtual Memory System).  Todays hardware would 
have been able to run such an OS easily.  One central CPU with 2MB Ram and 
550MB disk space used to run the entire Lincoln Univerity campus of some 60 
screens.

However - and I keep wishing for this - is Embarcadero or anyone working on 
a version of Delphi for OSX?   Now that would be make Delphi a  killer 
language.  Especially if they reawakened Kylix too.  As far as I can see 
there are few really developed cross platform GUI languages - the main ones 
seem to be QT,  XUL-Runner (Firefox and Thunderbird), some based on Open-GL, 
and browser based GUI's which all the comments are a pain to program in 
compared to say Delphi.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert martin" <rob at chreos.co.nz>
To: "NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List" <delphi at delphi.org.nz>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: [DUG] iPhone


> Hi
>
> I think apple makes very nice products with what seems like a nice
> interface.  However part of the ability to make things nice is that they
> also restrict what you can do (sometimes).
>
> I share a broadband connection with my Apple owning neighbour.  He
> bought his iBook (or whatever) over to diagnose a reception issue we
> were having.  In windows (XP) I could hover over the network connection
> (on the desktop) and see signal strength and speed (actual value).  In
> OSX we could see signal strength bars but it took about 15 minutes just
> to find what the actual connection speed was.  Also the Apple also
> automatically detected a stronger connection and defaulted to that !
>
> I think apple (still) lives in the proprietary world that a number of
> 80s computer companies also died in (Amiga, Atari, CPC etc).  The reason
> MS has been successful is its openness.  In the 80s they were a weak OS
> on avg / low performance hardware, Amiga and Atair had better CPUs and
> GUI interfaces.  The Amiga even had multitasking!
>
> Being open makes things more complex and introduces instability but in
> the end the openness is a plus.  Apple is having a resurgence with some
> nice hardware and a borrowed OS (the old OS was retarded in comparison
> to Windows - Virtual memory / multitasking etc).  It remains to be seen
> whether this will continue in the long term.
>
> Rob
>
>
>
> Richard Vowles wrote:
>> Being the owner of a MacBook, and mostly running on OS X (and using
>> VMWare for Windows when I need it and finding that it runs nice and
>> quickly), I would say that the difference between Apple and Microsoft
>> is attention to detail. Apple is all about detail and style - and OS X
>> is just simply nicer to use than Windows (Vista included). *Really*
>> nice ot use.
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> 2008/8/29 Robert martin <rob at chreos.co.nz <mailto:rob at chreos.co.nz>>
>>
>>     Agreed.  Apple is actually worse than MS.  Apple gets praise for 
>> doing
>>     things that MS would get anti trusts for.  Its a matter of size and
>>     marketing.
>>
>>     I personally think Apples current strength is marketing not Software 
>> /
>>     hardware.
>>
>> -- 
>> ---
>> Richard Vowles, Technical Advisor
>> Developers Inc Ltd
>> web. http://www.developers-inc.co.nz
>> ph. +64-9-3600231, mob. +64-275-467747, fax. +64-9-3600384
>> skype. rvowles, LinkedIn, Twitter
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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