There are all sorts of indicators one can look at to determine the relative health of a computing platform, though many of them are not very accurate, or can be interpreted in many ways. Take general desktop market share, for instance: The number of new desktops Apple can claim has fallen over the years from a respectable 7% in 1995 to a worrisome 2% to 3%, or even 1.7%, depending on who you talk to. Yet Apple is about as healthy as it has ever been, and the platform itself also seems to be stable, which only proves that numbers donit tell the whole story.

Another indicator of the health of a computing platform is to look at who is developing for it. High profile reports of Adobe halting development of Framemaker for the Mac, and Microsoft discontinuing the Mac version of Internet Explorer may have many thinking that no one is developing for OS X anymore.

Nothing could be further from the truth, according to a report in Internetnews.com. The news outlet says that Apple Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations points to an increase in developeris interest in OS X and the Mac, especially in light of the upcoming World Wide Developeris Conference.

From the article:

Over the last three years, people who have experience in those areas are showing a great interest in our OS," Apple Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations Ron Okamoto told internetnews.com. "Weire seeing a lot of first timers. Itis really impressive."

[...]

Apple will now open its arms to the developers of open source and other program languages with some 200 sessions including categories like Enterprise IT, Hardware Technologies, and OS Foundations.

"This is a change from last year with our focus on enterprise and IT," Okamoto said. "One of the things weire doing is adding content and laboratories with more education. Weire adding to our tools space including an update of our Xcode development tool."

Okamoto said Apple developers will be greeted with platform tuning applications for hardware and software including a new hardware platform in the PowerPC G5 processor and QuickTime sessions added in, which used to be addressed as a separate conference.

Thereis more information in the full report at Internetnews.com. You can also find more information on the WWDC at Appleis Web site.