WebObjects Now Free With Tiger

Reverberant writes "Macworld reports that has Apple released WebObjects as a free application. From $50,000 to free, the software used to build the iTunes Music Store and Dell's original online store is now available for free to Tiger users via Xcode 2.1." From the article: " The software has historical importance to Apple-watchers: it was originally released in March 1996 - but not by Apple. In fact, WebObjects was developed by NeXT Computer and became Apple's software only when that company acquired Steve Jobs' second computer company later that year. While not software on the tip of every Mac users tongue, WebObjects sits behind several significant implementations - the most famous current example being Apple's iTunes Music Store."

OK, I gotta say it

[udderly]

Free as in beer no doubt.

Re:Why?

[porcupine8]

. . . Well, the average Tiger user will also never use the developer toolkit that came with the OS, but that doesn't stop Apple from including it, does it? Why does something have to be useful to every user to be released?

Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free.

[newdamage]

What, you mean like Apple.com and the Itunes music store? Yes, those highly visited sites are just non-responsive and clunkly.

That's like saying because somebody's first attempt at website that uses JSPs and Tomcat is slow and clunkly must mean that J2EE is a broken architecture.

Re:Says a lot about software pricing

[Phil John]

If you reach that point before the end of the product cycle, IMHO you've then over-charged

No it doesn't, first of all, if you were able to sell that software at that price (and made a profit) then you where charging what the market would sustain. If you didn't shift enough units, then you would have charged too little (or misjudged the need for the app in the first place). You also may have developed the software early and under-budget (hah) so whilst the perceived value of the product is still high, you get your initial investment back sooner.

At the end of the day, companies will be willing to pay big bucks for software for three very good reasons:

1. It would cost them more to implement themselves
2. No cheaper/free alternative, or cheaper/free alternative doesn't have all the required features
3. It will make them money over time

The last point is the most important, Dell used WebObjects to sell who knows how many million units before shifting to something else. WebObjects was probably the best tool for the job at the time, so some part of those sales can probably be attributed to it.

Re:AnandTech report flawed

[Glyndwr]

Having read the article quite closely, actually, I don't think he had an agenda. I just think he did it backwards. He took his SUSE 9 system and looked at what versions of MySQL and GCC it had. Then he built GCC for the OS X machine, then used that to build MySQL. He probably felt really good about that being a fair test, too! After all, the software was the same on all machines!

He'd have done better to use OS X Server with the shipped MySQL, of course, as your source points out. Apple's platform isn't fully mainstream for either GCC or MySQL, and it's hardly unfair to allow Apple's own tweaks to these packages to be used in the test. It's still a pretty real-world test he's doing, so it's not like it can be cheated.

Maybe it was deliberate bias, but I try not to suspect evil when simple incompetence can explain it.

Re:COMPLETELY Misses the Point!!

[Anonymous Writer]

Yes, but with the switch to the Intel Platform, perhaps Apple may let OS X Server run on servers made by different companies which in turn would come along with WebObjects. For example, Dell [slashdot.org], since he said that he would offer OS X to customers if Apple were so willing.

Also, if .Mac Homepages allow for WebObjects, then that would make it interesting. Buy a Mac, subscribe to .Mac, and not only do you have WebObjects, but the server to deploy your site from. And you use iSync to keep what you have online synchronised with what's on your computer.

Re:You should read docs before making statements

[Bobartig]

Mac OS X server is $499 for a 10-client, and $999 for unlimited client.

Re:ASP.NET Better

[The OPTiCIAN]

> WebObjects is almost universally recognized as
> dead, except for internal use at apple.

It's thin client software. So it just doesn't matter what you use on the server. It's your choice. I haven't used anything .NET, but I used to be an .asp programmer (oh the shame!), and I hear C# is just a lot like java, and I use WO. I don't find your arument compelling - for me WO is still very relevant and will be for a long time come. It's still the best tool out there, and your customers don't care what you use as long as your system delivers content that works in their web browser. Cayenne looks like it will be as good as EOF, but it's still not mature. I haven't seen anything else that comes close, and you don't give any examples, but want to put faith in a product coming soon from Microsoft. Well - um - ... I don't trust products before they're out, and Microsoft doesn't have a very good reputation for delivering on promises of what will be in future releases of software atm.

This "almost universally recognised" (whatever that means) is a perhaps somewhat more than an altogether generous bit controversial. ;) But if ASP works for you better than WebObjects used to, that's cool as well. I agree that most of the tools suck, but you don't have to use them. Most stuff can be done in a text editor, and replacements for the rest can be built.