This is what scares me as an App Store developer, I love all the new functionality that Apple introduce with each new release, but I’m nervous of Apple, they often make a change overnight without warning that screws up our ability to make money from their platform.
We’re now going to burn the midnight oil to make sure that our application is in the queue before WWDC, just in case they introduce this change, hopefully if we’re at least in the queue, we’ll get this version shipped (albeit with a couple of known minor issues).
As for the rest of our schedule this year, I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see what they do
If this change does come into effect (without warning from Apple), I’m going to write a nicely worded letter to Tim Cook, explaining how difficult they’re making it for us, but not giving sufficient warning.
If we focused on Windows development, we wouldn’t be spending so much time playing catch up with the OS vendor, and have more time to focus on our application.
I will say the ONE thing Apple really SHOULD copy from MS is their developer relations.
Comparing the two is like night & day.
But I get that this would leave Apple with few “secrets” or surprises for WWDC etc
But there IS a way to have those without making dev lives hell
I think thats a matter of just redoing their relations so they use WWDC as “here’s whats coming in the next year” instead of “Oh by the way hurry up and get here because we’re releasing it today and you’re now behind - again”
They can still work on shit in secret and announce it coming at WWDC just not release it immediately
Instead of “this is here now get to it” they could use WWDC as “its coming its already well rounded and we’ve been working on it for a long while and now that we’ve told you YOUR customer are going to be asking for it soon. So get there by next year as we’ll be shipping it by then”
I think they got burred in the mid 90’s when they talked about “whats coming” before they really had it even minimally working - Copland and some other high profile failures back then
So instead they got secretive and until / unless it was working & shippable they don’t say ANYTHING
I feel for you guys, because I know that if this comes in, you’re gonna get developers screaming for 64-Bit support, plus we’ll all be hurriedly working to make our apps 64-Bit (which will require app updates for everyone I’m sure).
oh we already have the screaming about 64 bit for linux server apps for sure
we could use them today for Xojo Cloud but since it is a custom VPS set up we can make sure that it’s configured correctly wit hall the 32 bit libs. I think Phillip does that for hosting Xojo apps too.
But we also have folks who need it for big image editing, database & things that require more than 4Gb which is a lot of stuff nowadays
I do not think they will enforce 64 bit app at the beginning if 10.10 is 64 bit only. Like iOS 7 and Mavericks, they will wait that their two new systems have a fair market share. Even if both systems are free, we have to count a few months (one or two) before they enforce the rule.
I saw a funny cartoon (just can’t find it again) where some guy is standing on front of an old Mac SE and says “I can’t believe I use to get a days work done on you” and the next pane has the mac SE thinking “I can’t help it if you got less efficient”
Almost fitting
I sure hope there’s some lead time but they are still unlikely to tell us when that might be
Unfortunately, Apple are not forthcoming when introducing new rules for the Mac App Store. Just look at the Quicktime fiasco which happened recently. Overnight they banned submission of apps using Quicktime. Which meant that us developers (doesn’t matter what language you use), we’re suddenly locked out from the App Store (if you application used Quicktime). I know of one guy who’d just completed a music app, a week before and had started public testing. He was mortified.
Bear in mind that 10.8 (I think it was 10.8) is 64-Bit only, now we’re two years later… A change like this and overnight wouldn’t surprise me and it would affect Objective-C developers as well as Xojo developers, anyone that’s building a 32-Bit only application would be locked out, until their application has been converted to 64-Bit, for us, this not only means that we may have to update parts of our code (especially declares), but we’d also have to wait for Xojo to complete their 64-Bit change over. I know Xojo are working hard on it, however it’s hassle we could all do without.
Well, I was trying to be optimistic… But as Norman said earlier, Apple does not car about developers like MS does, so we will have to wait on Monday and see the announcements.
iOS 64-Bit makes very little sense as Apple only currently have one device that’s 64-Bit. I realize that they might announce more tomorrow. But still as a iOS developer, it would mean that apps will only work on devices that less than a year old.
On the other hand, for the Mac OS, we’ve had 64-Bit machines for 7~8 years.
Perhaps the answer is to not play the Apple 30% game & sell direct? A Xojo App store where Xojo get’s say 10% commission?
Or perhaps sell to the Windows community 85%+ of users (but sadly Xojo looks like excrement in that profitable environment).
Reality check! There have been conversations on this site as to why iOS is a more profitable target than Android. Let’s apply the same reasons to OSX vs Windows. The only thing OSX has is the 30% app store (and of course Xojo’s lack of real interest in supplying the Windows market). Windows has 85%+ of the target market, so where’s the opportunity?
BTW I’m excluding iOS here cause that’s not ready yet. And I’ve used Xojo on OSX & found the bugs are just as bad as Xojo on Windows but I know the Windows issues.
Typo - must be:
I mean, if Apple declines all 32bit apps for the AppStore soon (read: next week?) it will have a huge impact on Xojo Inc sales for sure.
But Xojo Inc already said the current version of iOS is 32bit.