{"id":731,"date":"2008-08-03T13:34:43","date_gmt":"2008-08-03T05:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2008\/08\/2008_08_03_1334.php"},"modified":"2008-08-03T13:34:43","modified_gmt":"2008-08-03T05:34:43","slug":"reserving-judgment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/08\/03\/reserving-judgment","title":{"rendered":"Reserving judgment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Initially, my first reaction to this post<\/a> was: No, no! Fucking NO!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But then I remember the time Cydia<\/code> first came out<\/a>, and I thought it would be unfair to judge Installer 4<\/code> negatively when it’s just doing exactly what Cydia<\/code> had done back then. As such, I decided to reserve judgment and see where all this takes us.<\/p>\n

I do, however, want to state my disappointment in the “scene.” Why can’t these guys just get along and fucking collaborate?<\/strong> Unless Installer 4<\/code> can guarantee that it will have a better distribution backend than APT<\/code> then I really see no point why they even have to give an alternative to Cydia<\/code>. Eye-candy\/ease of use, while certainly appreciated, isn’t critical; a proper backend implementation is always more important for stuff like this.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the desktop arena; these types of scenarios are bad<\/strong> for the scene because it dilutes<\/strong> the collective integrity of the community… even if it’s masquerading as “giving the users more choices.”<\/p>\n

I believe I already gave my opinion on the matter in a fairly recent post<\/a>, but let me expound.<\/p>\n\n

Cydia<\/code> had to be done<\/strong> because of the backend flaws of the old Installer<\/code>, if those flaws had not<\/strong> existed, I’m pretty sure Saurik<\/em> wouldn’t have even tried reinventing the wheel. Now the only thing missing from Cydia<\/em> is a really nice<\/em> GUI (and the GUI as of late isn’t half as bad) – and all you need there are good designers to work on what’s already existing – something that couldn’t be done with Installer<\/code> because the NullRiver<\/em> folks were just too stubborn to accept a better backend than what they had implemented.<\/p>\n

I understand the whole “working hard” on the backend that can justify why Installer<\/code> didn’t give way to Cydia<\/code>… after all, it was first in the scene. But now that Mobile OS X v2.0 has become a great equalizer… EVERYONE<\/strong> had to start from scratch – and Cydia<\/code> was left standing, and had APT<\/code> already prepped for v2. So right now, what Installer<\/code> is doing is needlessly reinventing the wheel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know what ticks me off the most here? Is when I come to this sad realization:<\/p>\n

BOTH<\/strong> systems will have their strengths, and [more importantly] their weaknesses. But ultimately, these two are essentially doing the exact same thing<\/strong> (which is to install applications, only in a different manner). But because of this “choice,” you have developers and repositories of what essentially should be the same community SPLIT<\/strong> because of that. What happens if there’s an application that bombs on one system but isn’t available at all<\/strong> on the other?<\/p>\n

This is exactly<\/strong> what happened with Installer<\/code> the first time around; their BSD Subsystem was a kludge and you got errors in other apps here and there as the new OS builds came out. Replacing it with the Cydia<\/code> BSD system sorted all that out.<\/p>\n

I personally had both installed and ONLY installed via Installer<\/code> when I knew the application wasn’t available in Cydia<\/code> – and this is exactly the “dilution” I was talking about; It shouldn’t have to be that way! The ideal is that both groups just put their differences aside and fucking work together.<\/strong><\/p>\n