#How hard to convert?
3 messages in this thread
Richard:
Best places for Mac tools (in my experience) are APDA and MacTech magazine. No,
there aren't as many available as there are for Windows. I think this stems
from the volume of corporate developers using Windows providing a larger
market.
As far as your friends who developed for Windows hating Mac development – rest
assured that all my friends who have done Mac development _loathe_ porting
their apps to Windows. They absolutely HATE it. I assume that (from both
sides) it is simply a case of having to move to something unfamiliar.
I recently had to print out some files on a Windows machine – I hadn't touched
a clone since doing DOS development five or six years ago. It shocked me how
much like a Mac the whole thing was – I could use it instantly, particularly
once I was within the application. Printer control was unreliable vs the Mac
(and the multitasking during printing was strained to say the least). But,
overall, the differences were kind of slight.
The funny thing was that the computer store that let me use their machines
tried to help me during my printer troubles. They all bitched about Windows
and wished for the simpler days of straight DOS! Once again it seems
unfamiliarity leads to discomfort.
Brooks,
I have no doubt that you are correct that unfamiliarity will cause resentment
in switching environments. However, when I've had to "cheat" (resort to buying
toolkits rather than doing it myself), I've found that my best source has been
shareware on the Mac (some quite good stuff — and I do pay <g>), because I had
had a hard time finding the commercial stuff.
Rich
There are a small number of vendors, usually very small outfits (often times
just the author of the program). There just isn't enough Mac development
activity out there to support larger firms (unless its a compiler, and even
then its rough).
DOS development was no doubt easier than Windows or Mac development, so lots of
developers existed. Now they are migrating to Windows and the tool vendors
that supported them are migrating as well. Its a good situation for Windows
developers and one that Mac developers in some way can only envy at this time.