Are Developers on Track?

[cavemonkey50]

I've recently written an article on my website regarding developers switching to Universal Binaries. It's a lengthy read, so to sum it up I feel that almost every application is Universal Binary or is close to become a Unibin. However, we still have some people lagging behind such as one-man operations, tightly integrated programs, and the large companies.

 

I'm just curious what your thoughts are. Do you feel that the move to Universal Binaries is going smooth or do we still have a long way to go?

[Swad]

The whole intel transition could have been much worse - Apple did a great job planning for it and the changes for the end user are fairly seamless.

 

Having said that, I'm disappointed in the big software houses like Adobe for being so far behind. There's really not much excuse for that.

[A Nonny Moose]

Apple gave developers a goodly amount of time to get Universal Binaries out. Even gave them developer boxes if they wanted to test apps out.

 

Apple gave developers the tools to do it with XCode and kept warning and warning people to STOP USING CODE WARRIOR and they would be sorry if they kept using CodeWarrior. Well, they're pretty sorry, because now there has to be a port (which *could* get ugly with these kinds of projects). Those who were already using XCode (like Adium) made the change easily.

[blackentangled]

Having said that, I'm disappointed in the big software houses like Adobe for being so far behind. There's really not much excuse for that.

 

maybe it's an apple-adobe marketing strategy? how? adobe is not releasing unibins of their apps (until further notice by apple) so that new power users will choose to buy the ppc machines instead of the intel ones since pro apps like adobe apps aren't unibins yet and they (the power users) don't want to compromise performance from those apps. in this case apple-adobe benefits alot from this strategy. i don't believe a large company like adobe haven't produced yet a universal binary version of their apps, if one person/developer can do it why can't they?

 

again, from the wise words of mashugly;

 

There's really not much excuse for that.

 

[cavemonkey50]

maybe it's an apple-adobe marketing strategy? how? adobe is not releasing unibins of their apps (until further notice by apple) so that new power users will choose to buy the ppc machines instead of the intel ones since pro apps like adobe apps aren't unibins yet and they (the power users) don't want to compromise performance from those apps. in this case apple-adobe benefits alot from this strategy. i don't believe a large company like adobe haven't produced yet a universal binary version of their apps, if one person/developer can do it why can't they?

 

Wow that's very abstract thinking, but I don't think Apple would want that. They want to show the world just how fast they can transition, and they've been making a big deal about big software applications going Universal. When Quark released a Universal beta, Apple was using it show developers' commitment. So using that logic, I think Apple would love to be able to say that Adobe has gone Universal; they're not preventing Adobe from releasing Unibins.

[Urbz]

yeah, i think the whole transition is going better than planned.

There are a lot of independent developers already transitioned, and a lot of popularly used freeware and shareware has already been transitioned.

The big houses will take a bit more time because it IS harder.

Adobe is taking it's sweet time, but now we can run photoshop on our macs through windows anyways!

 

and i dont think itll kill the power users to wait a little for the powermac.

I work at a company that prints on promotional products, so we have photoshop, quark, corel, etc, and for us it would be feasible to wait because we knew that we would be getting a much better product. Of course we use windows, but still.

 

-Urbz