Quote: Originally Posted by
jeffw 
Can you explain this one more? What is it about Cocoa that is an advantage for car computers? How does it effect the car computer... is it just the development of it or does it affect the end result?
Despite some of Apple's "improvements" Cocoa is in my opinion still by far the best OO framework out there (and I have seen and used quite a few). Although it lacks some functionality (i.e. db connectivity), this fortunately does not affect car use.
It does affect the end result quite a lot. It is so much easier to work with than other frameworks/environments (with .NET coming rather close, but still not quite there), so you can really focus on what you are doing, instead of fighting hardware, OS etc.. Because of this, you can also develop many things yourself and do not have to try to glue together stuff made by others.
As for the other advantages of the platform, the hardware has very good price/performance ratio and is extremely reliable. I do not have time and nerves to build my own hardware that I can buy. I have enough to do with the hardware we cannot buy and have to make.
Quote: Originally Posted by iamgnat
First and foremost it has to be a love for the platform.
Come on, it is just a computer. If any other platform offered me what Mac does, I would not have any problems switching... Currently however there is no such platform.