Eudora Going OSS

[Ashley Aitken]

Howdy Scott et al,

On 14/10/2006, at 5:21 AM, Scott Stevenson wrote:

> On Oct 13, 2006, at 1:21 AM, Ashley Aitken wrote:
>
>> Look at Camino, it had a pretty good MacOSX Look and Feel, but  
>> lacked deeper integration, probably because of a lack of resources  
>> and some insider access to Apple's new APIs etc
>
> Could you explain this in more detail?

I was just trying to say that Camino is/was an app that is/was trying  
to be a "good MacOSX app" but can't/couldn't compete with Safari for  
a number of reasons, as indicated.

> In any case, Camino is open source, so I don't think they're in  
> competition with Safari (which, incidentally, is also free and  
> partially open source).

Why not?  How can they not be in competition with Safari?   They are  
both Web browsers specifically for MacOSX.   I think they were trying  
to be the "MacOSX Cocoa" Web browser (using a standard Web engine).

> Also, in terms of new APIs, they generally don't expose secret  
> functionality hidden in Mac OS X that Apple was keeping to itself.  
> The new frameworks are usually the result of Apple sitting down and  
> generalizing something which was already possible.

But you can't seriously tell me that two Apple developers would not  
be in a better position than two non-Apple developers.  There are all  
sort of advantages of being part of the mothership (e.g. new widgets,  
hidden optimisations).

>> PS  Delicious Monster with Delicious Library have shown that small  
>> software companies can produce amazing Mac apps, but then that is  
>> quite a niche product.
>
> It might be "niche" in the sense that there aren't billions of  
> people using it, but Delicious seems to make quite a good living at  
> it.

Sure, I know it was successful, but that's because it is not a core  
app that Apple has muscled in on.  If Apple chose to release a  
Delicious Library, I believe they could have done it faster and just  
as well (if not better, see above) than DM.

Not to take anything away from those guys though - amazing work.

In summary, I was just trying to say that Apple has an unfair  
advantage over smaller software companies (and probably larger  
companies), and the larger companies generally need to make sure  
their apps are cross platform (which is harder to do well).

Cheers,
Ashley.


--
Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com
Skype Name: MrHatken (GMT + 8 Hours!)