Apple previewed Mac OS X 10.2 today, and as part of this week’s WWDC festivities, the company also touted the fact that there are some 3000 Mac OS X apps. Apple also says that there has been 100% growth in its developer community and that 46% of the members of the Apple Developer Connection (Apple’s developer organization) are Unix or Java coders. The company does not specify whether or not those people are new to the Mac platform, or simply include Unix and/or Java amongst their skills. From Apple:
Apple® today announced that since the September preview of Mac® OS X version 10.1, the number of native Mac OS X applications from developers such as Adobe, Microsoft, Corel, Macromedia, MathWorks, Oracle and Sybase have more than doubled to over 3,000.
Since its launch in March 2001, the appeal of Mac OS X has led to more than 100 percent growth in Apple’s developer community. In fact, more than 46 percent of Apple Developer Connection members are UNIX or Java programmers. Over three million Macs® with Mac OS X have shipped to date, making Apple the number one supplier of UNIX-based systems in the world.
"Mac OS X is bringing thousands of new developers to the Mac platform, including a large number from the UNIX and Java communities," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "Now with Jaguar’s innovative technologies, such as Quartz Extreme, QuickTime 6 and Rendezvous, developers can create amazing applications that can’t even be imagined on other platforms."
"Jaguar" is the code name for the next major version of Mac OS X and will be available to Mac customers in late summer 2002. Today Mac developers received a preview copy of "Jaguar" that includes iChat, Apple’s new AIM-compatible instant messaging software; QuickTime® 6, the complete MPEG-4 and AAC audio streaming solution; Rendezvous, Apple’s proposed new industry standard for dynamic discovery of computers and devices over IP networks; Address Book the new system-wide database for managing contacts; an enhanced Finder™ with spring-loaded folders and integrated instant searching; Sherlock® 3, an all-new version with several new innovative "channels;" Quartz™ Extreme, the hardware accelerated Quartz graphics and compositing engine; and advances to UNIX tools and technology and Windows compatibility.
A unique platform for developers, Mac OS X delivers the power of an open, UNIX-based architecture with support for industry standards such as Apache, OpenGL, Java, WebDAV and PDF. "Jaguar" provides increased UNIX support with such features as the new GCC 3.0 compiler, the OpenGL Profiler, the latest BSD components to sync Mac OS X with FreeBSD 4.4, security enhancements with IPv6, AES 128, CDSA and PAM security module and an improved terminal application with Unicode support.
You can find more information on the WWDC at Apple’s Web site. Join in on the discussion on the coding issues of Jaguar in our Coder’s Corner forum.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Apple is pushing the new features of "Jaguar" as being boons to developers, and is really pushing the strengths of Mac OS X as a Unix-based OS. It bears watching whether this will have an impact on the opinions of developers.
Speaking of whom: it’s great news that Apple is seeing growth in the developer ranks. One can say anything one wants to with the right statistics, but any growth in the number of Mac coders means more Mac apps, and that usually means more Mac users.