Re: CoverFlow

FROM : Jaime Magiera
DATE : Wed Nov 21 18:21:26 2007

On Nov 21, 2007, at 12:11 PM, Mark Munz wrote:

> Of course if we followed that line of thinking, we would never have
> any Mail plug-ins. Six years (5 major revisions) and counting with no
> public Mail plug-in APIs.


Maybe there is a reason for that (i.e. security, user experience 
consistency, etc.)

> Avoiding private APIs is great in a perfect world, where Apple
> regularly pushes its private APIs to public APIs once they have been
> tested. Of course, that isn't always the case.


Depends on what your definition of tested is. They released HUD 
windows after a few years. Those few years were well spent getting the 
OS to where HUD windows fit  better with the overall GUI environment. 
They waited until they were sure of what *they* were doing.

> That said, if you use undocumented APIs you have to have your guard up
> (unless you're a big company like Adobe or Microsoft) -- you'll get
> zero support for using private APIs and your app could well break with
> an update.


I've spent the past two months replacing/updating/etc. third-party, 
non-standard and private API code in an app that I recently took over. 
It has been nothing short of a nightmare. Relying on private API seems 
to be a *bad* thing.

Jaime