[rothomp3]

I feel like the Mac user base is changing. Right now it may be graphics professionals as the core market, but based on my personal experience with my geek friends, I predict the core market by the end of the year will be developers and geeks. Which means the following: lots and LOTS and LOTS of new applications, lots of bugfixes and enhancements contributed to Darwin, new innovations, new ideas, etc. Which leads to: many, many more users switching because of these apps and innovations. Which leads to even more developers, ad infinitum. Developers are the key to the survival of the platform, and programmers and geeks love Mac OS X. And we/they tend to buy even more hardware than graphics professionals, if that's possible.

[foobars]

Yes the duality that OSX presents is truly grand! Is there anything better than an OS that lets programmers and desingers work in harmony? The answer is no. OSX has a bright future- with OS9s armory of killer apps and Xs UNIX roots, how can it go wrong...

[osiris]

Well said foobars - once it takes to the air, the majestic beast will be an awesome sight to behold.

[clarkgoble]

It's true. Our company has primarily been PC based with a Sun used for most Unix development (then ported to Linux). Now many employees are using OSX for hacking and also Java development. My only complaint? I can't get the debugger working right in Project Builder.

(That and the fact our Mac's keyboard sucks for programming. I'm still trying to find the PC->Mac keyboard adaptor someone mentioned a while back)

[Terri]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
Mac's keyboard sucks for programming.

I'm not a programer so I have to ask. Why do Mac keyboards suck for programing?



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Terri Zamore

[gorgonzola]

Great as it is to be attracting a new market, I think it's absolutely critical that Apple not alienate its previous core market of graphics/film pros.

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the oddball newsletter
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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

[Milio]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Great as it is to be attracting a new market, I think it's absolutely critical that Apple not alienate its previous core market of graphics/film pros.

Thank you.

[This message has been edited by Milio (edited 05-08-2001).]

[Terri]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Great as it is to be attracting a new market, I think it's absolutely critical that Apple not alienate its previous core market of graphics/film pros.

You can add me to the list of users that feel left out. I'm a designer, not a programer or a geek.


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Terri Zamore

[davidski]

I'm a graphics professional, and happened to attend an Adobe seminar today. The Adobe rep reiterated that Adobe was in the process of carbonizing their programs and they were dedicated to OS X. And I don't think this is new, but he did briefly show InDesign running on OS X, something that is of great interest to me.

I think it's great if OS X attracts this new group of Unix type geek powerusers - your absolutely right that if this happens, it will give all kinds of new energy to the platform. I can't wait to see if this wave does gain momentum. But, I don't think I describe this as a shift away from the graphics base of the Mac, but a tremendous and valuable addition. Personally, I would sooner use a good ol' pencil than use Windows for any graphics work.

[This message has been edited by davidski (edited 05-08-2001).]

[Terri]

Originally posted by davidski:
Personally, I would sooner use a good ol' pencil than use Windows for any graphics work.
]

The problem is that I feel like I am using Widows when I boot into X. It does look better, but just like Windows I've got the task bar, no labels, no windowshade and find myself needing to go to the CLI to fix things.


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Terri Zamore

[iSoulBrotha]

Here's my .2. One of the areas that is of great interest to me because of my background is in the Enterprise segment. Apple has the opportunity to ease itself into the small to mid-size Enterprise market. I was in banking, and a friend of mine who works at a very well known regional bank who leads the MIS/IT Department, is very interested in OS-X & Darwin. He is impressed with its legacy and of course the Dev. Tools. He told me recently that their institution would have saved over quite a big-big chunk of change if they had such Dev. Tools at their finger tips to do allot of inhouse stuff. But, not to say that this is happening now, that their are a few big companies, non-graphics/entertainment oriented, who were NeXT/OPENSTEP customers at one time or who want something better than NT as a total solution, are probably knocking at Apple's door inquiring.

[iSoulBrotha]

Here's my .2. One of the areas that is of great interest to me because of my background is in the Enterprise segment. Apple has the opportunity to ease itself into the small to mid-size Enterprise market. I was in banking, and a friend of mine who works at a very well known regional bank who leads the MIS/IT Department, is very interested in OS-X & Darwin. He is impressed with its legacy and of course the Dev. Tools. He told me recently that their institution would have saved over quite a big-big chunk of change if they had such Dev. Tools at their finger tips to do allot of inhouse stuff. But, not to say that this is happening now, that their are a few big companies, non-graphics/entertainment oriented, who were NeXT/OPENSTEP customers at one time or who want something better than NT as a total solution, are probably knocking at Apple's door inquiring.

(That and the fact our Mac's keyboard sucks for programming. I'm still trying to find the PC->Mac keyboard adaptor someone mentioned a while back)
[/B]

Any PC USB keyboard will work on a Mac - why would you need an adapter?

Though, I don't understand why a Mac keyboard sucks for programming.

[mindwaves]

Although I have never used a "programmer's keyboard" before, I have heard that there are serveral keys that are missing on most keyboards today like the logical and ( ^ ) and the logical or ( upside down ^ I believe). Note that these are not the correct symobls for those keys but very similar I believe. Also, I am very aware that they could be done with the following keystrokes && and ||.

[Todd Madson]

I know this sounds odd, but I'm a graphic designer/musician/geek.

I spent 11 years in the design/prepress industry and made the lateral leap to the IS thing
because I couldn't ignore the big paychecks in the IT world was getting.

I've been into computers since 1978 in one form or another and always had an interest in
whatever was new and interesting. I've been into the Mac since its introduction and also
think that if they can retain the graphic/design aspect while attracting new users in the
form of programmer/geeks as well as the audio/music world we'll have good potential to
regrow significant marketshare.

[Ghoser777]

Originally posted by Terri:
and find myself needing to go to the CLI to fix things.

You don't have to use the CLI to fix things. You can't name one thing that you could do that was implemented in OS9 that is also implemented in OSX in the CLI that cannot be done via the GUI (atleast I can't think of anything). [If that was unlcear, I'm sorry - but I mean the intersection of the feature set between OS9 and OSX CLI AND OS9 and OSX GUI are equal] The CLI is just a tool for some people to use because they find it easy, convinient, etc. If you need a GUI app to do something that you have to use the CLI for, I'll write you an app that will do it.

F-bacher

[dogzilla]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Great as it is to be attracting a new market, I think it's absolutely critical that Apple not alienate its previous core market of graphics/film pros.

I'm pretty certain that the decision makers in Cupertino realize this. I think their strategy is to grow the Mac's appeal, not shift it and abandon the current core market.

[Millennium]

I'd say it's not that Apple is trying to change its core market as much as trying to add a new one. And I agree that Apple has to ensure that it doesn't alienate its traditional core markets in the process (though it's pretty much screwed itself over in the education market, considering how badly it's been treating them recently).

I do think people are severely overreacting to the lack of Labels and particularly WindowShade, and the automatic rejection of the Dock as evil because it remotely resembles a bad rip-off of a useful feature of an OS which Apple bought a while back. I won't deny that OSX has its flaws, and I've been complaining about these along with everyone else. But there's a fine line to walk when doing that.

As for using the CLI to fix things, I have never been forced to use the CLI to fix anything that I did not use the CLI to break. I do agree that Apple has to do more to ensure that this doesn't become more of a problem, but they can fix 99.9% of their problems in these areas with two very simple steps:

• Allow the changing of owner and group from the Inspector, as well as permissions.
• Add a "lock button" to all of those "you don't have enough access privileges" dialogs, to allow the user to supply an admin password and have the operation complete.

Just those two would completely obviate the need for the CLI for all but the most exceedingly rare tasks, the sorts of things which an ordinary user couldn't possibly do anyway (in fact, I can't think of anything at the moment).

[gorgonzola]

Originally posted by dogzilla:
I'm pretty certain that the decision makers in Cupertino realize this. I think their strategy is to grow the Mac's appeal, not shift it and abandon the current core market.

I'm sure they do, but I wasn't sure everyone in the thread had realized that attracting a new audience might very well mean losing another, as it's very hard to please everyone.

Hopefully, the graphics apps will come fast enough and the ports will be good enough that most graphics people will stick with X (or at least plan to upgrade at some point in the future).

Millenium: that's actually a very good idea, to have the lock authenticator button on those "not enough privileges" boxes. Never thought of that before...

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the oddball newsletter
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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

[juanvaldes]

I think that it's great that X is gainning attention in the programing world. programmers bring apps, apps bring users. The Mac platform needs users to stay alive and to continure to be a viable alternative to Winblows.

But, apple can not drop the ball on this one and they can not afford to piss off there loyal user base that has allowed them to stay in businesss this long...

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"Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name...without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art."
- Bill Gates, 1983 (New York Times, 25 Sep 1983, p. F2)

[gorgonzola]

Hey Bill, I just deleted two of your posts because they're completely OT and they come in the way (the AYBABTU, if someone missed it). If you do that every once in a while, it's OK as a joke or something, but twice in one thread?

I don't think so.

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the oddball newsletter
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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

Programmers keyboard: I think he was talking about the older, smaller keyboards without the forward delete key. Forward delete is easy to get use to and hard to loose. However, due to Project Builder supporting emacs key bindings, a little knowledge (which I don't have) of these hidden bindings will make even an iBook keyboard behave like a champ.

[Gee4orce]

I'm a programmer, and I disagree that Mac keyboards suck for programming - at least the UK layout. The only problem is that there is no # key (UK) - it's option-3 (in the UK, shift-3 is �). This is a pain for Perl programming where # is used for comments (ie a lot).

The other thing is the lack of forward delete (I think the newer 'pro' keyboards have this now) - although BBEdit lets you use alt-delete for this.

Apart from that , I actually prefer the Mac layout, because the ' and " are on the same key, instead of the " being on the 2.

Of course, this may all depend on your keyboard layour !

What I really want is for some enterprising manufacturer to develop a special 'programmers' keyboard - where things like : @#(){}[]*&^%$'"!`|/+ etc all have their own keys and I don't have to continually 'bridge' for them

[davesimondotcom]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:

(That and the fact our Mac's keyboard sucks for programming. I'm still trying to find the PC->Mac keyboard adaptor someone mentioned a while back)

Who needs an adapter? I use a Microsoft Natural keyboard with USB connection with my G4. Just use any USB keyboard...



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Dave Simon
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Windows are easily broken.

[davesimondotcom]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Great as it is to be attracting a new market, I think it's absolutely critical that Apple not alienate its previous core market of graphics/film pros.

Agreed. I'm lucky enough to have both a Computer Science background and a talent (and job) in graphics. I split the line. But I will be EXTREMELY disappointed with Apple if it doesn't UNDERSTAND it's market well enough to know why it dominates in the design world.

Apple needs to know what MacOS 9 does right for designers to get the same things right in X. And it needs to make sure that it expands on it's strengths. Having a crash proof OS is one thing, but not having great control of fonts, color matching, etc.



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Dave Simon
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Windows are easily broken.

[Milio]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
If you need a GUI app to do something that you have to use the CLI for, I'll write you an app that will do it.

F-bacher

How about one for configuring Apache? Things like setting mime types or password protecting areas?

[Hobbes]

I'm a web designer by trade, and personally, I'm thrilled by the potential that OS X brings to our market. I don't in any way think that it will hurt our profession, even though it may add a more geeks and programmers. All the major companies that make the software we use on a daily basis have repeatedly expressed their commitment to X. In fact, the impression that I've gotten from most developers, is that they are more enthused about developing for X than 9, since, with its Unix core, its a more standard operating system.

And with the plethora of Unix apps that are now available to us, rather than leaving behind the Mac's core user base, I think that many will find that in time, OS X will enable them to better compete in their respective professions.

And in case anyone says that I haven't tried using X for everyday work, I have been for about a month. :-)