> it also proves Jobs' point: cross-platform, least-common-denominator stuff almost never provides the level of enjoyment that native, non-legacy stuff does
Not really. If the difference was that big, he would have devoted resources to porting his own software. Being the perfectionist he is, and not porting his own software, one has to conclude the differences just aren't that big.
The difference in maintainability is pretty big - iTunes and FCP are some of Apple's oldest application codebases at this point and both probably need a total rewrite to be up to their modern standards and work with 64-bit/background threading/etc. (They also both started out at other companies, though who knows what that means.)
I assume the reason they haven't been rewritten is the same reason that QuickTime 10 isn't finished yet. But I don't know what that reason is.
Not really. If the difference was that big, he would have devoted resources to porting his own software. Being the perfectionist he is, and not porting his own software, one has to conclude the differences just aren't that big.