WebObjects has been where it is since Apple's acquisition of NeXT. NeXT was banking on WebObjects as its future, just like BEA WebLogic, SliverStream, blah blah. WebObjects was $50K per CPU. NeXT had a large enterprise sales force for WebObjects and there was a large consulting business around it.
Apple is a consumer integrated computing platform company. It is the largest music retailer in the world. It's market capitalization is HUGE, one of the largest corporations in the world. WebObjects as a PRODUCT does not fit into that world. WebObjects as a competitive advantage to Apple in its IT infrastructure is a HUGE. WebObjects SAP adaptor allowed Apple to integrate the Apple Store with its trading partners to give us instantaneous feed back on where our orders are in the world. WebObjects is tightly integrated with every major system in Apple today. Is Apple incentivized to upgrade the docs, or provide what ever you/we are asking for? NOT AT ALL. Even at its peak, NeXT was doing $50M per year. That's like a couple of hours on the Apple online stores? So Apple does not really care if we on the outside use their "internal" framework. The only reason they would care is that they need more WO developers. All the upgrades to WOnder that's happened recently, where did that come from? If certain people at certain companies did not get support from a certain fruit company financially, would there have been all these upgrades and new capabilities? Everywhere I have gone professionally, WebObjects typically followed. AT K12, I built one of the largest WebObjects dev shops outside of Apple. They have lots of WebObjects Apps that I personally designed and help build. We re-trained several developers from other technologies, J2EE, C#, VisualBasic, etc. They are all highly functional WO developers now. Could having better documentation help, sure. But from the start WebObjects was like this. All the talk about the demise of WebObjects is ridiculous. Apple will continue to use it internally. Real developers all know how hard it would be to parallel track an entire development effort to replace any technology that's in production. There's no way that Steve would authorize the replacement of Apple Store, iTunes Music Store, etc. etc. without WebObjects falling all over itself. If Apple does not replace WebObjects internally, then WebObjects will not die. Could we in the outside world do better at coordinating the enhancements to WOnder? Sure... But really the answer is that if we are able to make money using WebObjects, we should be prepared to give back to the community. Like when I got K12 to support WONOVA, which continues today. Without financial support or incentives from ongoing companies, it is very difficult to ask people to fully volunteer to improve the Wonder project. So lets not ask what WebObjects can do for us, and ask what we can do for WebObjects. Sorry for the Rant. Paul On Nov 16, 2010, at 11:04 PM, Ian Joyner wrote: > The best marketing is making a better product - either technically or with > improved documentation, accessibility, etc. > > I know that's wrong, at least as far as marketers are concerned. Marketeers > are like lawyers - they get paid to defend people and make them look their > best even if they are guilty. So a lot of shoddy products pay heaps to > marketeers to make them look good. Problem is that must be a cheaper/more > effective strategy than actually putting in the technical effort. > > I don't think your hours were wasted Pascal. > > Ian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Webobjects-dev mailing list (Webobjects-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/webobjects-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
