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0 pointsderefr9y ago0 comments

Why?

• Apple has cross-platform apps, e.g. iTunes. Yes, iTunes on Windows is horrible—but only because it is effectively a userland driver stack for old iPods and such, and this prevents them from rewriting it to follow modern architecture. A plain old "app" wouldn't suffer from this problem.

• It's clear from what's been happening to Visual Studio that all IDEs are increasingly expected to be cross-platform. XCode probably would be by now if it wasn't so bound to building Cocoa apps. Handing Apple an editor that's already cross-platform, I don't think they'd drop the capability.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

jamespo9y ago· 1 in thread

What else do they have other than itunes (which only exists to sell iphones, ipads etc)?

derefrOP9y ago

Not sure about programs; they do maintain the "Boot Camp" set of Windows drivers for their hardware, which seem pretty stable.

vkou9y ago

My problems with iTunes have less to do with how the backend is implemented, and more with how asinine its interface is, and its incredibly uninformative, and at times, destructive abstractions. It sucked when the iPod was new and hot, it sucks now, and, unless they take use experience seriously, it will always suck.

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