TigerSDKs - CocoaDev

How does Apple benefit from keeping it’s new General/SDKs (Spotlight etc) away from the bulk - the non-paying - of it’s software developers?

Why is a raven like a writing desk? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_266.html (for the people, like myself, who didn’t get the ungettable riddle).

Surely there must be an answer, otherwise they would benefit everyone by letting all of their developers play with them.

Apple is also excluding most of the paying developers as well. I, for example, am a ADC Select member, which means I pay Apple $500 per year, and I don’t have access to the Tiger seed or the General/SDKs. The Tiger seed I can pass on for now, but I would like the General/SDKs.

For me $500 is no small amount, given how hard it is to make a buck selling shareware today.

There is a market for paying developers, it could hurt this market if previews of their OS could be obtained for free.

The developer preview is unstable, it could hurt their reputation if this was released to the public.

The documentation is incomplete, it could lead to more harm than good to release it and it could cause Apple to spend support resources on people sending redundant feedback etc.

Anyway, it is the common procedure for every company that I know of to not release your product before it is completed – perhaps releasing it to a few select partners, betatesters or paying users!

If you want it this bad, just pay to get an advance copy! If you are not in the class of developers who can pay for a preview, most likely Apple would not benefit from giving a preview of the OS to you. It would just have to spend money on making it available for download and paying for the bandwidth that you’d use (it’s freaking 1.6 GB pr. free copy).

If you read my question again - this time carefully - you will notice that I am not talking about the whole Tiger preview but the specific General/SDKs (Software Development Kits) like for Spotlight and the other new gubbins. When Tiger is released next year I want to be able to release updates to my applications simutaniously, incorporating the new goodies. Not have to wait 6 months while I think about the best implementations then add them in, test then release.

So you want the documentation (which is currently incomplete and subject to change) w/o being able to actually test it? Do you also want the header files? How often would you like for Apple to send you new versions (since the documentation is still being heavily worked on)?

And once again, what are the benefits of providing this service free of charge to you?

Couldn’t they just put it on bittorrent for all the non-paying developers? Wouldn’t cost ‘em a cent.

I think Apple has higher standards than throwing the current incomplete documentation together and seed it as a torrent, and I really do wonder what good it does anyone, other than settle some of their curiosity, and for this you can already pay Apple to get it settled. Apple is in the business of making money, not “release early, release often”.

If it doesn’t do any good except for settling curiosity, then why on earth would Apple hand it out in the first place? Apple is handing it out because there are tons of new General/APIs and API changes that developers need to know about to a) make their apps better on 10.4 (which helps apple) and b) make their apps work on 10.4 (which helps apple). I realize many developers (and probably all the ones developing important apps) made it to WWDC or are Select/Premiere developers, but I doubt all of them had that opportunity.

The developers for whom having early access to OS seeds and API was important enough either made it to WWDC, or are Select/Premier members. What this conversation boils down to is, essentially, “I want all this cool stuff and I want it now, for free! waaaaaahh” Everything else (“it would help Apple!”) is a justification.

“Everything else is justification”. Well, that’s your opinion, keep it if you must.

I didn’t write it, but I fully agree – I think you’re the only one insisting that it will benefit Apple to release early/often.

But seeing as how Apple have embarked on a course of opening development to everyone, through freely releasing all development tools, doesn’t it make sense that all the information is available?

You are making the assumption that 1) Apple has “ready to ship documentation” (they do not), 2) developers are not willing to pay in order to get the information ahead of time (they are), 3) that it will benefit Apple to release more information than already posted to their web-page for something which ships in 7-12 months (I really fail to see how).

Presumably they want everyone that is able to develop, to both increase the available .apps and to help boost the platform, and if they want that.. shouldn’t they release information for next version of the OS?

You are fooling yourself – do you really think Apple care about the dozen of Currency Converters out there? Yes, Apple would like to attract developers in general, but it is consumers who make out the vast majority of their marked, and it is software houses like Microsoft, Adobe and similar who make it attractive for these consumeres, not the majority of shareware out there.

From tiger on, do they want to shut out developers? Which would have the opposite effect.

WTF are you talking about? They arrange a conference 7-12 months in advance with sessions about all the new and existing technologies, they hand out free previews to the 3,500 developers who attended, they ship a preview DVD to all paying ADC members and offer support to these, and they still give out all their development tools for free, which they are also constantly improving.

As the previous poster implied, you’re just being immature about not getting all this stuff for free.

Again, how does it help Apple to send you incomplete documentation for a consumer product that may see the day of light in 7-12 months? Worst-case scenario is that it’ll stop some developers from paying to get this stuff – it certainly won’t mean that hundreds of killer applications are available the same day they ship Tiger.

It may also cause confusion, because many things will change in 7-12 months!

Lets not forget that one major reason that Apple gives us previews is so that we can help debug then new OS. If they just give out free copies, then average users will download it, and bitch and moan because it’s buggy. This would look bad on Apple, and may send some people packing back to Windoze. Apple realizes that we developers can put up with stability issues to help make a better product.

I didn’t write it, but I fully agree – I think you’re the only one insisting that it will benefit Apple to release early/often.

Since I am not the original person whom created this page, I must not be the only one.

Please don’t put words in my mouth, I make no such assumption. I say only that if they want developers to have produce software that is with in line with the latest OS features they should release documentation to everyone as early as is possible.

Again, saying I do something or something is something, does not make it so. Please keep your arguments rational.

WTF are you talking about? …

I was talking about limiting the developer audience come Tiger, I don’t believe this is what they wish to achieve. But it could be a side effect.

As the previous poster implied, you’re just being immature about not getting all this stuff for free.

cough Please, no matter how you repeat it, it does not make it true.

PS in Future, please do not edit what I have entered, you’ll notice on these discussion pages that people leave the original text alone and reply after a line.

To throw my two cents in, I do not believe that there is much (if any) benefit for apple to send out to developers who can’t even cough up the 500 clams, but to set that point asside for a minute, since it doesn’t seem to be convincing our disbeliever, I would like to point out that there was much Longhorn bashing on this site based on builds that are currently available. It is my suspicion that there are few Win developers here and that most (though not all) peopole who saw the latest builds saw screenshots, or pirated copies… and based on those impressions they trahsed longhorn. I very much doubt Longhorn will be all that great, but just becase it’s MS doesn’t mean they always produce crap – they usually produce crap, but that’s besides the point. The point is that releasing an early build to a wide audience is almost always garaunteed to create some negative impressions and negative word of mouth/blog/or any other rss feed :).

Err…, the dubious privilege of running an alpha OS can stay with those who pay for it. Good luck to them. What was being discussed was the release of General/SDKs.

To be honest w/ you, I’m not sure how good the General/SDKs are if they won’t run on your os… if you want to develop code and test it, my hunch is that you need the OS. I just don’t see how you could test say, a spotlight document format declaration w/out spotlight.

Wait…. explain to me again why I should pay to receive General/SDKs so that I can make software that will benefit Apple?… It’s this sort of mentality, the you should be honored to be working with us mentality, that leads to less software. As the original poster reiterated, no one here is asking for the Tiger preview or release early/often. We are just pointing out the facts: 1. enough work has obviously been done to te new sdks to warrant releasing them to prepare programs for 10.4, Jobs stated that himself. 2. There are efficient ways to get them to us that are cost effective, e.g. bit torrent. 3. They don’t necessarily have to accept bug reports from everyone. 4. The General/SDKs will be available 5 minutes later through leaks anyways, so why not at least control the flow of information.

I have the documentation from the Tiger preview, it’s certainly *not useful, most is missing/incomplete etc. � I saw the keynote but certainly do not remember Steve making any claims about how complete the General/SDKs were.*

Secondly, Apple *do ship the stuff when it is ready and for free!*

So why pay for alpha? well, because Apple can sell the alpha, it’s really that simple! :)

Saying that Joe Random Coder benefits Apple and they should award him free alpha versions is ridiculous! If you really would benefit Apple, do write them, and if they agree with you, I’m sure they’d give you a free version of the SDK!

Apple seems to have just released .Mac / General/SyncServices SDK… Woohoo?!?!

Apple expecting $500 from you so you can test new OS X stuff is in my mind perfectly acceptable since you will be able to stay ahead of the competition with new features, which means that you will (hopefully) sell more software. Almost anyone with a half-decent income can afford to put aside $500 per year. (And if you can’t afford to put aside $500 per year, or have no income at all, you may find that “writing software for alpha seeds of General/OSes for high-end computers” might be too high on your priority list ;) However, Apple’s only seeding you Mac OS X Server with the $500 memberships. Full seeds cost $3,500 per year, which is not chump change, and which you can only afford if you have a big operation running already. I’m unsure if OS X Server offers everything that ordinary OS X can offer in the way of these General/SDKs. Anyone know?