Re: It is time for me to take a decision. [Slightly OT]
Re: It is time for me to take a decision. [Slightly OT]
- Subject: Re: It is time for me to take a decision. [Slightly OT]
- From: Lloyd Sargent <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 11:43:00 -0500
On Tuesday, August 7, 2001, at 10:40 , Bertrand Mansion wrote:
I am wondering if Cocoa is portable to Microsoft Windows ?
Somewhere I found information about Yellow Box which was part of
WebObjects
and Rhapsody but it seems to be discountinued. How difficult is it now
to
port Cocoa apps to Windows ? Do you think there are plans to make an
API for
Windows ?
We have looked into this recently and came to the conclusion that it is
not worth the effort. Your are stuck on Mac OS X if you do Cocoa
development.
GNUStep on Windows is a pipe dream until a lot of people are going to
put a significant amount of effort into it. We had troubles getting
GNU's libFoundation to work on Windows since Cygnus seems to have pulled
Objective-C support.
I have seen that TrollTech made a beta version of Qt available
yesterday on
their site.
I don't know about the quality of this API but if you really want to
have one codebase it's the only way to go. The other alternative is
Java/Swing.
As a small shop it might be feasable to use Cocoa but if you want to
expand your market I would not use it. And that is unfortunate because
it's the only environment where you can still have "fun" while writing
software. Apple should support this on Windows if they want to make it
big. I guess they are only using it because it gives them a distinct
competetive advantage when developing all these digital hub applications
we're supposed to see soon...
I have to shake my head when I read posts that say "will Apple make [s/w
product here]" available on windows? One has to remember that, unlike
Billy's Co., Apple is primarily a HARDWARE company. That is why the
tools are free (or did someone think they were a "loss leader"?).
Something has to pay the bills and that is the sales of cool boxes.
Now consider what would happen should Apple decide "hey, let's open this
puppy up to OTHER boxes". In my opinion you would end up with another
NeXT. First the hardware would go so they could just do software only
(leaving us Mac programmers using that OTHER box). The free support
tools would now cost us $199.95 (or more). iMovie (which is a way-cool
app) would be dead.
Sorry, I don't ever see it happening - at least not in the short term.
So the question is, how important is portability? I like Cocoa. I REALLY
like Obj-C. I love the Mac platform. I love the free software. Yeah,
portability is a bitch, but one has to consider HOW and WHY we got Cocoa
to begin with. Those who do not learn from History are doomed to repeat
it. I personally think Jobs learned from NeXT.
Doesn't solve your problem, I know, but it may help you make a decision.