Wishlist of Applications I'd like to see ported to Aqua

[Doctor Q]

What about this: http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/ ?

That still requires X11. This wishlist is for a native-GUI version.

Edit: As rueyeet pointed out just before I did!

 

[James_C]

Eliminate Office for Macs, and the number of switchers drops dramatically.

Potential switcher looks into switching to Mac, finds that MS doesn't release a version of Office for Mac anymore, a program that he and his kids use all the time, and boom, no more switcher. They could do lots of research and realize that OpenOffice exists, read up on OpenOffice, but the large majority of people wouldn't bother searching.

And even if OpenOffice was preinstalled on Macs, and it's advertised as a fully compatible product to MS Office, many people would still be reluctant to buy an expensive computer only to find out if this is true or not.

So no, lets not hope that Apple produces an "Office killer." Office is still the standard, and it's Mac presence makes Apple computers more attractive. Eliminating standard software (that's not bad) just because you don't like MS for whatever reason is dumb if it will hurt Apple sales in any way. This could only hurt Mac sales, mostly because it can't help sales. People won't see Office availability and turn to Dell instead.

I agree completely, I switched a couple of years ago, and I remember I was nervous of making the switch, if there was not a Mac version of office then I probably would still be using Windows.

I use a Powermac at home for video and photo work and a Powerbook at work. We use Windows at work and the Powerbook works well in that environment (We use MS Office). I have even found aMac OS X SAP client that works well.

 

[superbovine]

http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/


GTK+ has not been available running natively on the Macintosh, although there is a native port of GTK+ for Windows. CinePaint currently uses Fink and the XDarwin X server on the Mac, a technology that enables X Windows programs to run on the Mac almost seamlessly. The Mac's native interface is called Aqua, and unlike X is proprietary to Apple. The relationship between Darwin/Aqua is roughly the same as Linux/X. Like Linux, Darwin is open source. XDarwin enables X to run on Darwin, and it may run "rootless" on the Aqua desktop if a user wishes to run both. However, there's overhead and complexity to running two graphics systems simultaneously. That's why it is desirable to have GTK+ run natively on the Mac without X.

 

[iMeowbot]

I wasn't aware that open-source projects were only intended to benefit those with the expertise to contribute to them. I have also heard it argued that one of the advantages of open-source is that if there's enough of a demand for something, a programmer is likely to be working on it somewhere.

On the other hand, it is true that if there are no Mac users (or employees of Mac-centric companies) contributing to a project, that a substantial porting effort simply won't be made.

I know there were times when I had to do my own Windows ports of Unix programs, simply because it wasn't an interesting problem to the projects' maintainers. It's not that anyone really objected, just a lack of interest.

Another way to get stuff ported between Mac and elsewhere...
There is also a project called GNUstep which makes the OpenStep (Cocoa) APIs, Interface Builder and so on available to other platforms. Its primary weaknesses right now are that it makes programs look NeXT-ish on every platform (see the current complaints about X11 on OS X for why this is a problem) and AppKit support on Windows is weak. Mac fans with a current interest in Windows could do worse than jump into the Windows port, because it would offer many of the same benefits as Apple's canceled Yellow Box product -- namely, stuff written to it would be relatively simple to bring to Cocoa, Unix and Windows, and unlike some of the other "portable" toolsets it's a sane way to build GUIs.

 

[neilrobinson]

for gimp try this

http://www.macgimp.org/

neil

 

[Sneeper]

for gimp try this

http://www.macgimp.org/

neil

That's GIMP under X11, not Gimp ported to Aqua. See all the above posts regarding Gimp.

If anyone else sends a link for X11 Gimp, I'm busting some kneecaps!

 

[Mac Lad]

s'more engineering apps please....

Gosh... I would like to have more engineering applications like:
AutoCad, PSpice, etc... etc...

I don't like using Virtual PC...