[Mono-osx] An open letter to the OS X Mono group.

[Robert Mullen]

I can see shades of this in the information I have gathered so far. I hope (and it is a somewhat naïve hope I will admit) that Apple will recognize that the release of Vista may have given them an entry point on the business desktop that has not existed before. I am writing this email from a Vista desktop and can say that as promising as some of the technologies are, the desktop simply is not ready for prime time. Apple integration of a Unix backend positions them exceptionally well from a strategic standpoint *but* they must execute. If they make the lock in mistake they will miss this opportunity IMO. None of that is to say they should not focus their primary resources on Cocoa which is a nice framework but they must realize that the time to get their foot in the door is now and the most immediate way to do that is via Mono. Cocoa-Objective C is not ready to be a business application development platform. I think Cocoa has potential but am less certain of Objective C. Clearly a strength of Microsoft is their developer tools and APIs. I have developed on these as my primary responsibility for my entire career and have seen the progression which has been impressive. With Mono, a large developer base can be leveraged and that alone eases a major cost of transition. I guess the question becomes whether Apple is content with the "Creative" niche as far as business desktops go or whether they really want to challenge for dominance. If they want to challenge they need to ease the path of transition for those willing early adopters and do what they can to minimize the risk of transition. It is a monumental task for a Windows shop.

I will be going to my first WWDC this year and hope to meet some likeminded individuals and possibly make some contacts within Apple itself. The company I work for was a pioneer adopter of Intel-Windows in our industry (we were actually featured in Intel brochures) and we think the time may be coming for another pioneering effort. We hope to find Apple to be supportive. As a .NET shop that would almost certainly have to include Mono as a foundational piece.



From: mono-osx-bounces at lists.ximian.com [mailto:mono-osx-bounces at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Eoin Norris
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 3:01 AM
To: Andrew Satori; Mono-OSX List
Cc: Miguel de Icaza
Subject: Re: [Mono-osx] An open letter to the OS X Mono group.


If Apple step up to the plate on mono they will, I think, be pushing their own core technologies ( read : Cocoa) as well as mono. i think they may be interested in some version of the dumbarton project, if anything. Were mono to be the main platform for development on the Mac, then the OS/AppKit team would not be in a position to innovate for developers.. If you read Apple's spiel on it's newest operating system releases the marketing does not focus on just what is available for consumers, but what new technologies are available for developers - and this is standard marketing guff sold to everyone not just sold on specific developer mailing lists ( the latest such technology to be touted is Core Animations, a Cocoa framework for cool animations probably used in the iPhone).

It is a stretch to believe that they will create these technologies and immediately port them to mono ( which in any case could create a disconnect between the Apple mono api set and the standard api set).

The API defines the OS, to a large extent. As does the UI. 

That said, this year's WWDC is about  getting windows developers onto the Mac. I wonder if a senior representative on this list could point Apple developer connection to the possibilities of  using mono, Cocoa#, or Dumbarton/Objective C on the Mac  . I think Apple would be most amenable to promoting a mono back-end, and a cocoa front-end.

However, they may not be following the possibilities of mono on the Mac, at all, but this is the year to push it.

-- Eoin Norris



On 27 Mar 2007, at 03:13, Andrew Satori wrote:


 Until a big  
player, (and I think that player almost *has* to be Apple) steps up,  
I don't think we'll ever get enough Mac specific resources to get  
Mono on the Mac to be a full peer to Mono on Linux.