I’ve been doing a couple of contract jobs over at RentACoder for some extra cashola. One of them involves writing a tool that will convert over 700 MOV files to MP4. Ideally, the user should be able to run the tool, pass in two arguments (source directory and destination directory), be prompted for the export settings (window size, framerate, etc) and then be able to sit back and watch the conversions take place. I learned a few things with this project. For starters, I think Apple needs yet another one of those PC vs Mac ads, and it should go a little something like this:
Mac: I’m a Mac.
PC: And I am a PC.
Mac: Straight outta Cupertino, ya’ll! Hardcore to the Apple-core, biotches!
[PC has a confused and bewildered look on his face]
Mac: I buy my clothes at a wicked store in the mall. See these jeans and this shirt? It looks like it came from a thrift store but they actually cost like $150! Check me out, honeys!
PC: I purchased this suit at a Moores.
Mac: I run Mac OS X.
PC: I run Windows.
Mac: I can also run Windows, but for best results you should use Mac OS X. It’s tight!
PC: I have Microsoft Office.
Mac: I have Microsoft Office too, and it’s all sexy lookin’.
PC: I can integrate Microsoft Office with enterprise apps like SharePoint, BizTalk, Exchange, ERP, CRM and much more.
Mac: Dude, I said I have Microsoft Office. Duh. Who cares about enterprise shmenterprise? There’s like a trillion kagillion wozillion viruses and spyware out there for you. None for me. Nada. Zip. Zilcho.
[Mac high-fives a barefoot and bearded digital artist named Mordecai]
PC: This is true, but I am working on it.
Mac: Aw, man, you always say that. You’re all like “I’m working on it” and I’m all like “yeah whatever, now go get your DirectX on so I can play Prey“.
PC: So I’m not as lame as you say I am, or so it would seem.
Mac: Puh-lease, get over yourself, PC. You show up in ugly brown boxes…boxES. That’s plural, dude. And they’re all cardboard-y and stuff. I arrive in like one box, and it’s smooth and white. You look like you’re from a dirty factory and I look like I’m from another galaxy…or Finland, or something like that.
[A penguin enters and interrupts the conversation]
Penguin: I’m Linux.
[The penguin exits]
Mac: Who’s that guy?
PC: I do not know who that strange-looking fellow was.
Mac: Anyway. I can make movies and music and all sorts of cool stuff that people could post on MySpace.
PC: I also can do that.
Mac: Yeah, but not as cool as me. And your apps don’t begin with a lowercase ‘i’. The ‘i’ means “me” which is “you”. Deep stuff.
PC: Touché. Well played, my good man. However, I make it easy for developers to create software for me. I provide thorough documentation with plenty of examples in multiple languages, and there are many aficionados out there providing help and communities, too.
Mac: Oh yeah?
PC: That’s correct.
Mac: Oh yeah?!?!?
PC: Indeed.
Mac: Yeah…umm…well. I have half-assed documentation for my COM library for QuickTime, none of which resembles structured documentation; it’s more like an extremely brief FAQ at best or a conversation between two programming pals at worst. See what I mean? And I claim that said COM control can reuse serialized export settings in XML format, yet I explode and have yet to provide a fix or explanation, as evidenced here, here and here.
PC: I see. It is surely a pity that you do not provide stellar support for 3rd-party developers like I do.
Mac: But dude, I have a Dock that when you mouseover icons, it’s all “boop-boop-boop”. Rock! Cool! Bling! ‘Sup! No fat chicks! Ummm…give peace a chance? Yeah, that works! Wooohooo! Peace out, homeslices!
Apple makes some nice, albeit pricey, hardware. And Mac OS X is a great operating system. But their documentation for developers needs a lot of work.
6 Responses to "a lost apple ad?"
One of the best Mac vs PC parodies yet…
And the saddest part? Very true…
Not true. The documentation is very good. And Thirdparty developers have an easy job. Lets see MS do Core Animation, Core Audio, or Core Image.
Do you have an ADC account? Have you ever been to WWDC? If not get one, vist it, respectively. And then post again.
Are you kiddin’ me? Movie conversion on Mac OS X is a breeze. At work we use FfmpegX. It’s a GUI-wrapper for some OSS video tools. I bet you could use those too and make a GUI with AppleScript/Automator/Xcode … No?
I have only done small applescript and widget stuff before where I found Apple’s documentation very good.
As for the movie conversions FfmpegX is great but I prefer the manual way of After Effects.
Sam: I do have an ADC account, but I’ve never been to WWDC. If I had the chance, I would go. One thing I do know is that ADC, in its current state, cannot compare to MSDN. Try this experiment…let’s say we’re working on a new app and one of the requirements is that it be multithreaded. We’ll be developing a Cocoa app on MacOS and a .NET app on Windows. We’ve never done multithreaded programming on either operating system, so we’re off to ADC and MSDN to get up to speed.
Search for “threading” on ADC in the Cocoa area
Search for “threading” on MSDN
The first result on ADC refers to thread safety with QuickTime. The first result on MSDN refers to a thread synchronization class. Both are good topics but not general enough for us – that’s fine. Let’s try each topic and see how easy it is to get to general thread information.
The ADC doc, while being very QuickTime-specific, provides plenty of sample code, scenarios, links to off-site references and way down at the bottom there’s a link to a threading architectures ADC article. I say article because it reads like a magazine article, a third of which is dedicated to Mac OS 9. I don’t see methods, properties, samples or anything that’ll help get me started.
The MSDN doc, goes on about synchronization. Well, I’m not sure what that is or how it’s usefull (yet). But I see breadcrumbs pointing me back up the doc chain to a general System.Threading doc. I see its namespace, the libary that the threading API is in (in .NET, they’re assemblies), an object heiarchy and a “see also” that points to other MSDN docs that might be relavant.
I’m not anti-Apple. I think MacOS X is a superior operating system right now. But their developer documentation doesn’t give me the warm ‘n’ fuzzies like Microsoft’s does. Sadly, developer documentation isn’t a sexy topic. It won’t make the front page of Engadget or appear in TV commercials. But when you get down to it, an operating system requires great apps to make it successful. And to make great apps, developers need quality documentation.
Udo: FfmpegX looks really nice. If the customer had Mac hardware, that would probably be the route to choose. Unfortunately, he was running QuickTime Pro 7 on Windows XP, and that was his only option.
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[…] Wired reports that Apple will be dropping the “I’m a Mac vs I’m a PC” campaign. It’s about time. There’s plenty of spoofs of the commercials over on YouTube and even yours truly took a shot at lampooning them. […]