🚀 go-pugleaf

Subject change, please.

ckt@best.com (Chris Thomas) wrote:
] I can answer that question, as can most people, I think.  Properly
] documenting something takes time.  Apple only has so much documentation
] effort to go around.  Apple is planning to bring out an (almost) entirely new
] operating system next year.  Apple has just released the HRP specs.
] What would you rather have documented at this point?  This year's 
] proprietary structures which will be going away next year?  Or the
] new OS in it's entirety?

As a user of their hardware but not their OS, my answer would
have to be hardware.  But presented as an "A xor B" proposition,
I'd have to say that the OS is of more strategic importance.

I don't agree with your XOR, however.

] > I am not bashing computers.  If anything, I am bashing OS's.  And
] > if I am doing that, it's tangential to what I'm really bashing,
] > which is Apple's failure to document their hardware.
] 
] Apple does document their hardware, internally.

So photocopy that and sell it, and use the prfits to hire
someone to clean it up, and sell that too.


This claim that there is doc existant counters your earlier
argument about limited resources to produce doc.  It doesn't
need to be produced if it exists, just published.  And sales
can cover publication costs at a very small level.

Compared to what I initially pais for PCI and PCMCIA docs,
even several hundered dollars would seem like a bargain.


] What hardware has Apple failed to document that anyone needs access
] to (and can't get access to themselves?)

You mean without reverse engineering?

On board ASICs, register locations, command values, etc.  The
Lunix guys have noted this before, and so have I.

] Again, it comes back to "Why should Apple make the effort at
] the expense of it's other documentation if so few programmers
] will be better off?"

You already said the doc exists.

] Anyone who really needs documentation for
] a legitimate purpose *can* get internal documentation by asking
] Apple for it.

You reiterate that it exists.  Clearly, it would not be at the
expense of their other documentation efforts.

] But they do need to convince Apple that they have
] a legit purpose, and they need to sign an NDA.

Why?


                                        Terry Lambert
                                        terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.