Contactile update in the pipeline

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the initial release of Contactile. I am thrilled that you took time out to share your thoughts on how to make it better. I’ve completed the first update and it has been submitted to Apple for review. I am pleased with the outcome and I think that you will be too. Stay tuned for it on the App Store. I expect it to be approved in about one week.

WebObjects: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

About eleven years ago I became acquainted with Apple WebObjects. WebObjects was in the midst of a transition from Objective-C to Java at the time and I entered the WebObjects picture on the Java side of the equation. The fingerprints of the original Objective-C version of WebObjects were visible throughout the product. You had classes like NSDictionary and NSArray in the foundation package and patterns such as delegation throughout the design. Most/all of these concepts themselves came to WebObjects from NeXTSTEP and OpenStep.

Years later, I entered the world of iOS and Cocoa desktop programming. Much of the learning curve in these technologies was eased due to my prior experience with WebObjects. This is true in spite of the fact that my WebObjects usage involved no Objective-C work at all.  The conceptual cores of iOS and Cocoa share a common heritage with WebObjects.

More recently I had an opportunity to work with the open source object-relational mapping framework called Apache Cayenne. Cayenne was inspired by the Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF) which was part of the WebObjects product. It’s not an exact clone of EOF, but my prior WebObjects experience made me feel right at home with Cayenne. Completing the picture is a recent investigation of Apache Tapestry. Tapestry is a component-oriented web framework also inspired by WebObjects. Working with the component-oriented approach taken with Apache Tapestry felt like going home (albeit to a greatly renovated house.)

So, more than eleven years after first developing with Apple WebObjects, the time investment  that I made in learning/mastering that product is still paying dividends. My hat’s off to all those who have created the line of technologies that both precede and descend from WebObjects.

Pure Speculation…

I’ve been a long time “Apple guy” and have used Macs at home and in the workplace as far back as 1988. Over the years, I’ve paid close attention to the various moves made by Apple.  When Apple announced the end of the Xserve line a couple of months ago, I initially thought that they were walking away from the enterprise market.  Adding to this perception was their announcement in the same timeframe that they would no longer shoulder the burden of porting Java to OS X.  However, the enterprise signals were mixed.  The iPad is being welcomed in the enterprise market and Apple has actually partnered with a large IT firm to further iPad adoption in the enterprise.

Well, the Java issue was soon put to rest when Oracle and Apple announced that the OS X port of Java would become part of the OpenJDK effort.  That still left Apple without a rack-mountable server platform of the sort that would be welcomed in most data centers.  The Mac Mini and Mac Pro server configurations just don’t fit the mold.

Then I thought, “what if Apple decided to relax the licensing restrictions for OS X Server to enable it to be virtualized on non-Apple hardware?”  (To date, only the server edition of OS X is licensed for virtualization and only on Apple hardware.)  The recent unveiling of the fact that “Lion Server” will be part of OS X implies that there will no longer be a separate OS X Server flavor.  This further implies that Apple will either license all copies of OS X Lion for use in a virtualized environment or shut the door on virtualization altogether.  I tend to think they will choose the former.

All that is needed to complete the picture, is for Apple to allow Lion to be virtualized on non-Apple hardware.  Then they’d have broader reach in the enterprise by being able to run atop a variety of hardware through virtualization.  This could be quite a coup, since OS X Lion includes some features geared specifically towards the iPad.

We shall see.