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One of the reasons I like iPhone/iPad. It's brought a mass purchased platform that developers can flock to, make money, and not have to worry about: * Operatin

One of the reasons I like iPhone/iPad. It's brought a mass purchased platform that developers can flock to, make money, and not have to worry about: * Operating System * Web Browser * Plugins * Resolution * Input * Connectivity * Libraries The rapid spread of platforms over the last ten years has really fucked developers. We have to spend 50% of our time making sure the product works on 3 different Operating Systems OR 5 different web browsers. Desktop/laptop computing has come to bite us in the ass.

sailormoon 17y ago
5 different web browsers It's more like 2 different web browsers. IE, and everything else.
pavlov 17y ago
What rapid spread? There were far more platforms before, with far more significant differences. In the late '80s, a popular game was commonly ported to half a dozen platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, Apple II, Commodore 64, PC+EGA, PC+VGA -- sometimes even Sinclair and MSX. Even the hardware was usually completely different between systems, e.g. the powerful custom graphics and audio chips on the Amiga. In the '90s, a cross-platform desktop application like Netscape would have to run on a range of very different systems: Windows 3.1 (16-bit), Windows 95 (32-bit with new UI), Windows NT (32-bit with old UI), Mac OS 7 (32-bit with no memory protection), Solaris, Linux, AIX, HP/UX... In comparison, Windows 7, Mac OS X and modern Linux are basically the same. It's easy to write cross-platform C applications using mostly UNIX APIs and deploy them on Windows using MinGW and a couple of lightweight libraries like pthread-win32. For cross-platform GUI applications, the Qt framework is available pretty much everywhere, even phones. This is pretty amazing. Essentially everything has become "UNIX-like" nowadays -- even the smartphone stalwart Symbian has given up trying to pretend it's something else.

sailormoon 17y ago

5 different web browsers It's more like 2 different web browsers. IE, and everything else.

pavlov 17y ago

What rapid spread? There were far more platforms before, with far more significant differences. In the late '80s, a popular game was commonly ported to half a dozen platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, Apple II, Commodore 64, PC+EGA, PC+VGA -- sometimes even Sinclair and MSX. Even the hardware was usually completely different between systems, e.g. the powerful custom graphics and audio chips on the Amiga. In the '90s, a cross-platform desktop application like Netscape would have to run on a range of very different systems: Windows 3.1 (16-bit), Windows 95 (32-bit with new UI), Windows NT (32-bit with old UI), Mac OS 7 (32-bit with no memory protection), Solaris, Linux, AIX, HP/UX... In comparison, Windows 7, Mac OS X and modern Linux are basically the same. It's easy to write cross-platform C applications using mostly UNIX APIs and deploy them on Windows using MinGW and a couple of lightweight libraries like pthread-win32. For cross-platform GUI applications, the Qt framework is available pretty much everywhere, even phones. This is pretty amazing. Essentially everything has become "UNIX-like" nowadays -- even the smartphone stalwart Symbian has given up trying to pretend it's something else.