Writers' Talk With Guest Wil Shipley
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
OReillyMac: i have to say, the first time I saw an OmniWeb page, I thought, "this is the way the Web is supposed to look."
wilshipleyatomni: There was a poll on some website recently, and something like 70% of people on OS X said OmniWeb is their favorite browser.
OReillyMac: that low?
OReillyMac: ;-)
alanosx: With the advent of Quartz and Apple moving towards blurring the line between the net and the PC...
alanosx: do you understand what Jobs is going for and will the browser play a role? What role? Will you be there?
wilshipleyatomni: Well, I can't really speak for Jobs, for a number of reasons, least of all because I can't read his mind.
wilshipleyatomni: We obviously want to be close to Apple, and we always have been very close in terms of being able to talk to engineers.
wilshipleyatomni: It's only in the last six or so months we've finally gotten to know some of the managers and support people at Apple, and that's made our lives 100x easier.
alanosx: Yeah...but I think we are starting to see some hints at where Apple is headed. Any insight into that?
wilshipleyatomni: In particular our Worldwide Developer Relations guy, Skip Levens, is a godsend.
alanosx: Just from your experience with the new hardware and OS X.
wilshipleyatomni: OS X is a strange beast for Apple.
wilshipleyatomni: It's a server-class OS under the best consumer interface ever written.
wilshipleyatomni: How do you market such a beast?
wilshipleyatomni: There's still some of the myth that "OS X is for professionals only."
alanosx: I see that.
OReillyMac: We're working on dispelling that myth
wilshipleyatomni: To which I respond, "Then why does every game we port run 10% faster than the OS 9 port?"
OReillyMac: Everything in Cocoa, though, right?
wilshipleyatomni: The amazing thing is that the Wall Street Journal published this big piece on how OS X wasn't ready for consumers because you couldn't burn CDs.
alanosx: I think there is too much geek spin on X and not enough evangelism for the consumer.
wilshipleyatomni: Well, six months before, you couldn't burn CDs in Mac OS 9 out of the box, either!
alanosx: And really...it is a third party issue...not Apple.
wilshipleyatomni: On the other hand, it's nice to get a somewhat slow introduction to the mass market.
OReillyMac: This sounds like a running conversation that Alan and I are having ...
wilshipleyatomni: There were real bugs and problems in 10.0.0, and I think Apple's grateful that it's only 100s of thousands of people who need to upgrade to 0.1 and 0.2, instead of millions.
OReillyMac: One more question, Wil ...
OReillyMac: Do you communicate with the Microsoft team? And where do you think they're going with their browser for Mac OS X?
OReillyMac: Are they serious about it?
wilshipleyatomni: I've spoken with Jim Grewal a couple of times now. He's a really good guy, and has, quite honestly, been a real gentleman about some of the crap I've given him over IE's bugs.
alanosx: I think they are use to hearing it.
wilshipleyatomni: There's no doubt he's serious. They were the first people to adopt Carbon, and they've borne the brunt of getting the bugs shaken out.
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OReillyMac: You know, that's a good point.
wilshipleyatomni: As he wrote to me, why do people blame Microsoft when the same IE code from the 9.0 port (that runs great) sucks under X?
wilshipleyatomni: That's really Carbon's fault, by definition.
wilshipleyatomni: And Apple is working on it, but I think in the meantime he shouldn't get beat up.
OReillyMac: How much harder is it to go Cocoa than Carbon for apps this size?
alanosx: I will say...the Apple team at MS is a totally different animal from the rest of the company.
OReillyMac: Agreed!
alanosx: Look at Office 2001.
wilshipleyatomni: Cocoa is SO MUCH EASIER it's crazy.
OReillyMac: Why would you choose Carbon, then?
wilshipleyatomni: But if you're starting with 10 million lines of Carbon code, then staying in Carbon is the only sensible thing.
wilshipleyatomni: What ticks me off is that Maya, a BRAND-NEW app for OS X only, decided to use Carbon.
wilshipleyatomni: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
OReillyMac: Really? I didn't know that.
OReillyMac: I just assumed ...
