[DUG] iPhone

Mon Sep 1 11:04:13 NZST 2008

Hi

Yeah I didn't want to argue OS's however If I recall correctly Windows 
NT was created from Scratch by Dave Cutler (?) a defector from VMS and 
his team, using there experience .  So Ironically NT and VMS probably 
have a lot of similarities.  Also I have read recently that NTFS is 
actaully a very advanced File system for its time and still leaves most 
for dead.  That did surprise me !

Re Delphi.  I think the smartest move would be to re work it so that it 
is the best language to write multi threaded apps in.  If someone made a 
language that was almost threaded by default they would have a winner.  
Multithreaded CPUS being the future and all.  Also 64 bit would be nice.

Rob

John Bird wrote:
> 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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>
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