Jamie Zawinski <jwz@netscape.com> writes:
Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
Apple computer is dead, for all intents and purposes. It will be "officiall dead (bankrupt) within a couple of years. Writing any sort of software for Mac - crypto or otherwise - is a waste of time.
If you accept that, then doesn't that make writing crypto software for any Unix platform *even more* of a waste of time? Because last time I checked, there were way more Macs on mom-and-pop's desks than Unix machines, counting *all* vendors.
Irrelevant. Unix boxes are multi-user.
Even if Apple folded *tomorrow*, those machines wouldn't vaporize. If you put easy-to-use strong crypto on a significant fraction of those desks six months from now, your work could easily have a lifetime of a year and a half even in your worst case scenario.
Scenario 1: writing a multi-platform comm program with strong crypto, and including a Mac port (like Mac PGP, or clients for various tcp/ip protocols) is only a minor waste of time. Scenario 2: writing an encrypted filesystem for the Mac is a minor waste. Scenario 3: Writing a comm program that lets Macs talk to each other with no consideration that some Mac users may wish to talk to other platform (or any other Mac-only software) is a major waste of time. Of course, Apple is pushing #3. They're worse than Microsoft. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps