Stephen Pair <stephen at pairhome.net> writes:

> It's hard to argue that Apple is a monopoly when they have ~7% of the PC market
> and there are 3 significant competing platforms in the smartphone market (RIM,
> Android, and Windows).  Now, I'm not defending Apple's stance on alternate
> languages, but I do think these decisions are based mostly on engineering
> compromises in an effort to constrain the problems they will face as they
> evolve the hardware and software.  I mean, Objective-C itself is just about the
> epitome of a language born out of engineering compromise (an early attempt to
> get a Smalltalk inspired OO system running in a C based environment).
>
> It's a much simpler problem if they only have to worry about breaking
> Objective-C and web apps all using official, documented and published APIs
> moving forward than if they have to worry about a mixed bag of apps all using
> various idiosyncratic technologies accessing undocumented APIs.

What an argument. They's had done a much better job to have one "useful
and official API" with support. But Apple goes further, they prohibit
every competition on apple os X. E.g just try to not use the Apple gcc
for some work even on Mac OS X. You will get cauhgt while getting into
exceptions and that's  very soon you encounter that.

I do not have troubles at all with Objective-C but one. It's one
platform language, and you can not use much let's say in Gnustep and/or
elswwhere. And there is but one IDE for it... So I know of many
Smalltalks which do work on at least three different platforms and I
surely would like to use this APIs on IPhone or whatever also.



  As for the
> AppStore, it's a practical solution to the problem of viruses and malware
> (there is certainly demand for computers that just work, where viruses and
> malware are not an issue...the virus problem in Windows has been quite
> successful in fostering an appetite for that).

C as practical solution for not having viruses? or what do you mean with
this?
>
> I don't mean to come across sounding like an Apple apologist, but the arguments
> here seem to be very one sided.  I simply want to express an
> alternative view.

Apple has decided they do not want competion, so that's the one and only
conclusion one can draw. People should use their tools and nothing
else. Now tell anything about vendor-lockin for MS. Compared with that
is Microsoft an OSS corporatin...

>
> Of course, having said all of this, I would still like to be able to use
> Smalltalk to write apps for my iPhone.
Apple should not bother about the implemenntation language nor the
content. It seems they are doing both, and so they definitly are the bad
guys this time. I hope they get put into the ground for that.

Friedrich

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