Dharma: Cocoa on Windows... Again?

[peharri]

Rats.
Perhaps the community should wrench the idea fropm Apple's hands (if it indeed ever was in them). I mean we (as in the multi-box community) have developed an entire PPC emulator (several, come to think of it), but we can't write a compiler?

Well, if you really want Cocoa under Windows (and GNU/Linux), then the next best thing is probably GNUstep. It's not going to give you univeral binaries (yet), but using some of the APIs, such as Renaissance, you can create a "Write once, compile anywhere" application, while still, essentially, be using the Cocoa (or a very close approximation) APIs you know and love.

Depending on your needs, this might be good enough. And if it isn't, it's GPL'd, so you can modify it to match the project you suggest above.

 

[dneades]

Basically the problem is that for business reasons, developers won't learn ObjectiveC/Cocoa.

If ObjectiveC wasn't seen primarily as an Apple technology, it might be more popular (on the other hand, without real GC ...)

Take a look at the Objective-C 2.0 sidebar at http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/xcode.html. You'll discover that garbage collection is coming RSN.

 

[TangoCharlie]

Dharma... John Locke... Hawaii

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 <Execute>

 

[savar]

That would be neat.

Cocoa is an excellent framework and if it's available for Windows, too, it can only attract more developers. More developers = more software.

The strange thing about this rumor is that if Apple wanted to reproduce the Cocoa API in its entirety, it would have to reproduce the subsystems that support it, e.g. Core Video, Core Image, WebKit, etc. Essentially they would have to port a large portion of their OS to run on top of Windows...seems like a strange idea to me.

Maybe this rumor is just referring to using Cocoa's windowing and event model, plus the Core Foundation classes?

 

[AppliedVisual]

Maybe this rumor is just referring to using Cocoa's windowing and event model, plus the Core Foundation classes?

But that still would have serious limitations... I don't know where they would draw the line in terms of what to port over and what not to. Like others have said, the closest thing right now would be GnuStep and even that is only partially there and not real current with what Apple is offering. ...Or maybe I'm off base a bit as I've never used GnuStep? I could see ports of Core Vidieo, Core Image, etc.. as intermediary libraries or wrappers for DirectX, etc.. But what's the point?

IMO, if Apple wants to attract more developers they need to leave Windows alone.. Just don't go there. Continue improving Cocoa and expand support for full C++ w/Cocoa. OTOH, by officially supporting Cocoa with C++, Objective-C could very well die as more developers migrate over to OSX and bring their C++ training with them...

I'm relatively new to developing on OSX and I found Objective-C to be pretty easy to pick up. I'm still getting a lot of other things figured out, but I often find myself intermixing C++ code and concepts when there's really no need (and often when I don't intend to) and maybe it's just hard for me to change my ways, but while there's nothing "wrong" with Objective-C, I've even found myself writing some smaller programs in Java w/Cocoa just to avoid Objective-C or because I'm more familiar with it.

Maybe I'm just way off and I'm missing something though... Like I've said, OSX development is pretty new to me. Only been at it for a few months now.

 

[rayz]

The strange thing about this rumor is that if Apple wanted to reproduce the Cocoa API in its entirety, it would have to reproduce the subsystems that support it, e.g. Core Video, Core Image, WebKit, etc. Essentially they would have to port a large portion of their OS to run on top of Windows...seems like a strange idea to me.

Well, a large part of their operating system already runs over Unix ...

 

[poppe]

Hello,

This is my firs time posting on this subject. In fact I have never even heard about this such thing and I am really excited if they could get it to work... My question is this: why would they ever ever ever do a port of safari? Safari I'm sorry has been just horrendous for me. Why would a Windows user want to give up Firefox over safari?

 

[rayz]

Hello,

This is my firs time posting on this subject. In fact I have never even heard about this such thing and I am really excited if they could get it to work... My question is this: why would they ever ever ever do a port of safari? Safari I'm sorry has been just horrendous for me. Why would a Windows user want to give up Firefox over safari?

A Windows users probably wouldn't.

 

[poppe]

A Windows users probably wouldn't.

Makes this report seem a little sketchy then... I mean why not say iTunes or something you know? I'm not calling it a lie I'm just saying that I can't figure out why safari would be mentioned...

 

[pixelfreak]

Hello,

This is my firs time posting on this subject. In fact I have never even heard about this such thing and I am really excited if they could get it to work... My question is this: why would they ever ever ever do a port of safari? Safari I'm sorry has been just horrendous for me. Why would a Windows user want to give up Firefox over safari?

While Firefox is a great browser, not everyone prefers Firefox over Safari.

Safari gives you all of the advantages of Firefox: Better security, faster page loads, better standards compliance, etc., in a simple, easy to use UI, without all of the advanced features that non-power users rarely use.

Personally, I prefer Safari over Firefox for everyday browsing and use Firefox for web development and debugging.

 

[rayz]

Makes this report seem a little sketchy then... I mean why not say iTunes or something you know? I'm not calling it a lie I'm just saying that I can't figure out why safari would be mentioned...

Safari would be a good start if you were going to do something like this; it's fairly small and should be an easy starting point.

Though I think we can safely say that the mail was a lie...

 

[pixelfreak]

Safari would be a good start if you were going to do something like this; it's fairly small and should be an easy starting point.

Though I think we can safely say that the mail was a lie...

Let's not forget that the major reason why Apple was able to move to Intel so quickly is because it secretly kept the Intel version of NeXT / Cocoa up to date while developing the PPC version of Mac OS X.

Who's to say that Apple hasn't kept the ability to run Cocoa on Windows up to date as well?

 

[poppe]

While Firefox is a great browser, not everyone prefers Firefox over Safari.

Safari gives you all of the advantages of Firefox: Better security, faster page loads, better standards compliance, etc., in a simple, easy to use UI, without all of the advanced features that non-power users rarely use.

Personally, I prefer Safari over Firefox for everyday browsing and use Firefox for web development and debugging.

How in the world did you get Safari to open faster? MY safari acts like i have 56k. It takes at least a minute for most pages to load. And Would safari really have better security in Windows?

What do you mean by better standards compliance?

 

[pixelfreak]

How in the world did you get Safari to open faster? MY safari acts like i have 56k. It takes at least a minute for most pages to load. And Would safari really have better security in Windows?

What do you mean by better standards compliance?

I haven't done anything special to Safari. In my experience, It's at least as fast as Firefox, if not faster.

Safari would be significantly more secure than IE because (like Firefox) it would not use ActiveX controls on Windows and is based on a modern code base. IE has been patching the same rendering engine used in the early versions of IE released nearly a decade ago.

And Safari has better standards compliance than IE (including IE7), and in some cases better compliance than Firefox. Examples? Safari was the first browser to pass the Acid 2 test. Only the Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 passes the Acid 2 test, which will be publicly released as Firefox v3.0.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.0a1/releasenotes/

http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

My biggest grip with Safari is that Webcore (the framework used to render web pages) leaks memory and needs to be restarted after long browser sessions.

 

[poppe]

I haven't done anything special to Safari. In my experience, It's at least as fast as Firefox, if not faster.

Safari would be significantly more secure than IE because (like Firefox) it would not use ActiveX controls on Windows and is based on a modern code base. IE has been patching the same rendering engine used in the early versions of IE released nearly a decade ago.

And Safari has better standards compliance than IE (including IE7), and in some cases better compliance than Firefox. Examples? Safari was the first browser to pass the Acid 2 test. Only the Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 passes the Acid 2 test, which will be publicly released as Firefox v3.0.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.0a1/releasenotes/

http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

My biggest grip with Safari is that Webcore (the framework used to render web pages) leaks memory and needs to be restarted after long browser sessions.

Oh very interesting I did not know all of that... I just had to stop using safari because it was just running way way way to slow for me liking...
I still think it'd be a bad thing to bring over to windows. I really could not think of anyone that would just jump on it.

This is my reasons: Many windows users use IE and are completely happy and won't/don't think about switching. Then there are they others who are using Firefox and a few other browsers. They have already switched from IE for the various reasons. So what would make Safari different from the rest that would make a non Mac person go after it other than Firefox or even IE7?

 

[pixelfreak]

Oh very interesting I did not know all of that... I just So what would make Safari different from the rest that would make a non Mac person go after it other than Firefox or even IE7?

Again, I think Firefox is a great browser, but it's geared more toward early-adopters and power-users. It's significant adoption seems to indicate that normal users are willing to put up with more complexity to prevent spyware and other security hazards associated with IE. (Personally, I recommend Firefox for Windows users who ask how to prevent spyware)

Safari would give people both security and simplicity.

 

[GregA]

Hello,

This is my firs time posting on this subject. In fact I have never even heard about this such thing and I am really excited if they could get it to work... My question is this: why would they ever ever ever do a port of safari? Safari I'm sorry has been just horrendous for me. Why would a Windows user want to give up Firefox over safari?

There are 4 different issues here.
1) Why would Apple make an easy way to make OSX apps run on Windows?
2) Can Apple make it work - a way of running OSX apps on PC?
3) Why would they pick Safari as an example applicaiton?
4) Why would a PC user want to use Safari?

In reverse order
I think the #4 is fairly straight forward - most won't. Just like most don't use Firefox. It'd be good for Mac users if web developers could test in Safari though.

#3 - Safari is simple enough and NOT something to get people all excited. It would be a test. That said... who knows if Safari is (WAS) a test? (or whether they'd still do Safari first). I'd use safari simply to access my favourites via iSync/.Mac.

#2 - NextStep used to only run on NextStep OS+Hardware. Steve Jobs decided to open it up, and changed NextStep to OpenStep. It allowed an application to run on NextStep, SunOS, Windows 2000, (and HP/UX and AIX?). Then Apple bought Next and the OpenStep API became Cocoa.

So they CAN do it. Though Cocoa has evolved since then - the CoreVideo/CoreAudio would seem to be big pieces, but iTunes & Quicktime on Windows do audio and video, so maybe not.

Anyway, originally, Apple said that Cocoa would run on Windows and Mac. They were using Display Postscript, and Adobe wanted $10 for every Cocoa-for-Windows distributed and Apple didn't want to pay that. They said that's why they switched to display PDF. And then quietly abandoned the Windows stuff.

#1 - Why would Apple do it? If I was a developer thinking of doing a program for the Mac, then knowing I could compile it for Windows as well (and Linux?) would get me more interested. It'd have to work well though.

I suppose there's a danger of people simply running Windows on their Mac hardware, with Cocoa for iLife. I'm not sure how likely that is, but if Apple is still making the same amount of money on each machine sold, and developers have a bigger market to develop for (any Cocoa machine), I'm not sure how important it is (I don't want to lose OSX!)

I would still use OSX, but if Apple I had Bootcamp running, it'd be nice to reboot in Windows and still open up Safari/Mail/etc straight from Bootcamp. Perhaps it can even run the binaries straight from the Mac partition.

 

[pixelfreak]

There are 4 different issues here.
1) Why would Apple make an easy way to make OSX apps run on Windows?
2) Can Apple make it work - a way of running OSX apps on PC?
3) Why would they pick Safari as an example applicaiton?
4) Why would a PC user want to use Safari?

#4: Would Users Choose Safari?
Most of the people I know run Firefox on Windows because they have been infected by spyware (or they are a developer / geek) and would rather download another browser than deal with cleaning their system every week. In most cases, a family member or friend with technical knowledge (such as myself) has recommended Firefox as a more secure replacement for IE on Windows. As a Mac user, I usually tell people to switch to Mac OS X or recommend Firefox if they are unable or unwilling to ditch Windows. In this case, I would recommend Safari because Firefox is usually overkill for their needs.

#3: Why Safari?
Because it doesn't rely on as many Mac specific technologies and Webcore is open source / already being ported to Windows for the Apollo project by Adobe.

#2: Can They?
Again, It's possible that Apple has continued to develop Windows support behind the scenes, just as it did with Intel support along with PPC. (Purely speculation on my part) In many cases, Cocoa is implemented on top of an existing Carbon API. A similar technique could be used with Win32 / WinFX. Since Core Image, etc. can fall back on vector based rendering, such as SSE instructions on Intel, I think that Apple may provide limited implementations of these frameworks to keep the advantage in Mac OS X's court.

Note: It would make sense for Apple to wait for Vista / WinFX to go Gold before wrapping up development of Cocoa on Windows.

#1 Apple's Motivation?
You've heard of the iPod Halo Effect, right? Users who see how simple / well designed Safari is may take a second look at Mac OS X. It would also increase mind share with Mac and Windows developers. Having a single Cocoa code base for iTunes, etc. would be a significant advantage as well. But of all these questions, this is the most problematic. Just because something is technically possible doesn't mean that Apple WILL do it.

 

[GregA]

I don't think Safari does much to showcase Apple's OSX. iTunes does of course.

Anyway - deciding to show us all cocoa for windows, but then porting Safari because it's already been ported partly anyway, doesn't really demonstrate cocoa.

 

[bri3d]

Safari/Windows really does already have the underpinnings of Cocoa/Windows.

It's got implementations of CoreGraphics, CoreFoundation, and WebKit in DLLs which are almost exactly identical to those in frameworks in OSX.

So identical, as a matter of fact, that you can build against them using the OSX headers.

http://pages.brianledbetter.com = sample code/headers/instructions/screenshot/etc.

 

[iSee]

Oh-ho-ho-ho!

This is awesomly awesome. I've got to check this out..........

 

[Much Ado]

#1 Apple's Motivation?
You've heard of the iPod Halo Effect, right? Users who see how simple / well designed Safari is may take a second look at Mac OS X. It would also increase mind share with Mac and Windows developers.

Web standards for iPhone.

Revenue from Search-bar.