Dear Apple:
When you acquired NeXT, you gained access to two powerful and sibling technologies: Cocoa and WebObjects. Both are built upon stunning and advanced architectural principles, and share many concepts.
A few years later, when you introduced OS X, you promoted Cocoa as the way to build software for Mac. That’s great, because it in fact was a breakthrough compared to what we had to do before (I still remember WaitNextEvent()… ).
Probably because the web was not then what it is now, you decided to not publicly advertise and promote WebObjects, although you saw enough potential on the technology to make it the technical base for all your business. From numerous internal applications to popular industry leading services like Apple Store or iTunes Store, every dollar than gets in or out your company goes trough, at least, one WebObjects app.
This lead to a situation where you made WebObjects evolve according to your needs, barely maintaining a public functional version of the framework. Although the framework by itself is still the one with the most advanced and powerful concepts one can find, the feature gap started to show. This lead to an incredible, amazing, dedicated community to grab the task for themselves and make the work Apple should be doing, adding features, some of them essential for the success of the framework, like XHTML support or Ajax.
So, you’ve just announced WWDC 2009 today. I’m not asking for 18 WebObjects-related sessions like you had in WWDC 2000, because I know that’s unimaginable, given the importance (or lack of it) you attribute to promoting WebObjects. I know there will be one, maybe two, and if we are really lucky, three WebObjects sessions on WWDC 2009. It’s the same every year since I attend WWDC.
But, Apple, you have to tell me… how hard is to respect an entire community, of highly competent and dedicated professionals, who use your technology for years, who kept it alive, who built extensions and IDEs that yourselves are using internally, and adding at least one fucking little reference to WebObjects on the WWDC 2009 IT page? Is it really that hard to do, specially considering you mention other web technologies that are not even made by you?
Or it’s just the iPhone that matters now?
Hello.
This question might be a little off topic but I am considering WebObjects as my next technology to learn. Do you think it is still relevant given the lack of interest from Apple or do you think it will just die off?
I have looked at book titles in amazon.com, blogs and websites and everything that I could find with a reference to WebObjects seems to be outdated. Any insight would be appreciated.
Hi!
That’s one of the reasons Apple attitude irritates me a lot. They are giving everyone the image that WO is dead, and that is far from true. WO has a lot more momentum now that a few years back. In fact, WO is the only technology I know that has a satellite conference (WOWODC) on the weekend immediately before WWDC. Check the WebObjects mail-list for details.
The worst about WO is the very step learning curve. The documentation is poor and somewhat outdated. I advise you to subscribe Apple’s WebObjects Development mailing list, as it’s a great place to gather and ask for information. Besides that, it’s an amazing technology, and it’s still one of the most advanced web frameworks out there, despite it’s age.
I came across this post in such a random way. The more I learn about FreeBSd, the more I like it. Thanks (oh, and you may want to turn down the intensity a bit; make rude jokes, it’s funnier :).