Rogue Amoeba is one of the better software developers for the Mac platform. They make excellent, though admittedly niche, audio software. Their co-founder Paul Kafasis recently gave an interview with Mac Observer. It’s always interesting to hear other programmers hold forth, but he hinted at something I had never heard of before:

I believe that a couple of our apps are on an Apple internal white list so that they say: “…if our OS update breaks any of these 100 apps, then we need to figure out what’s up and maybe contact the developer. Or maybe figure out if we’re doing something wrong.”

This is interesting. A more sensationalist write would attack the “Secret Policy” angle and demand equality for all purveyors on the platform. I’m more interested in how responsive this could (read: probably does) make them. By recognizing quality, know-how, and investment in the platform the OS X team at Apple can in a subtle, non-communicated way, grow with their developers. This is a very different mindset from a typical platform manager’s take of “Let’s update, push far in our own direction, and I hope you can keep up”.

This isn’t to say that Rogue Amoeba (or Panic or MacroMates or MacRabbit) are secretly steering the direction of Cocoa and Objective-C. It’s an observation that by having a list of applications that Apple believes is important to the ecosystem that is OS X, they stand to gain more loyal developers and users by maintaining their typical high standards than they could by forging ahead towards the future of their platform without external influence.