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Dharma: Cocoa on Windows... Again?

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Nermal said:
Sorry, but that's wrong. You can run on any platform with a .NET runtime - I have run some of my apps on PPC.
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Well I'm talking about GUIs... that use Windows Forms.. and not with Mono..... unless there's something I don't know..
 
gekko513 said:
Releasing Safari for Windows isn't really the news here.

The news is that Apple may release tools that will enable any developer to develop software that works both on OS X and on Windows and still looks and feels like an OS X application.
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Yes, the news is Xcode tools so a developer can write something to work on OSX and Windows.

2 things I hope for
1) I would like to see this running on Windows and Linux... I think that combination would cause more of a stir than just Windows. NeXt used to compile to OpenStep (now OSX), Windows, HP/UX, Solaris, and more.. it's entirely possible.
2) I assume WINE will find it's way to OSX - I hope it becomes integrated into Xcode. Convert your Windows application to Xcode, and compile for multiple platforms.

As to what advantage Apple has in porting Safari to Windows - well, as they say, part of the Cocoa frameworks are "Webkit", so Safari would be easy to port across. The biggest advantage to Apple releasing Safari for Windows would be that web-developers could check their stuff works in Safari, even if they don't have a Mac! Also, any .Mac subscriber can share their bookmarks between their work PC and home Mac. And there'll be a slight bump in Safari share of web-browsers (possibly more than a slight bump).

Greg
ps. I wonder whether you could run a universal application on OSX-Intel, then switch to Windows and open the same universal application.
 
kainjow said:
Well I'm talking about GUIs... that use Windows Forms.. and not with Mono..... unless there's something I don't know..
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Yeah, you're right about Windows.Forms, they use the Win32 API and therefore aren't supported on other platforms. You're not forced to use Windows.Forms for GUI development, but admittedly they're the most common.
 
longofest said:
Speaking of which, anyone else can't wait for tonight's episode??? I'm stoked!

EDIT: Bloody hell!!! It's a repeat! When's the next new one?
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In January, I think the 11th.

I know this post will sound like some urban legend, a friends sister hairdressers pet groomer..., but.....

About a year ago a friend living in California(who is not a mac user, or a rumor spreader, or a conversationlist in general) told me that his buddy who works for a "computer" company said Apple was developing a way that any program written for Mac OSX would also be able to run on the Windows platform. He also said Apple had a working web browser for Windows. Now this was before Apple anounced the intel switch, and I didn't give this info much thought or truth.
If Apple was able to make this happen why wouldn't they do this. They still would be able to choose not to make avalabile ilife and other apps for Windows to keep an edge and a reason to stick with the mac platform(other than the best reason of all, OSX).
 
wine is on mac

wine is already being ported to OS X. its called darwine admittedly it only runs in X11, but there is interest in developing a , so there is some hope we will someday be able to play solitare :p
 
hungryjoe@ said:
wine is already being ported to OS X... so there is some hope we will someday be able to play solitare :p
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Hey I need to run ACT! And MYOB... so it's not just solitare :). Oh I do realise Wine is being ported, and as a runtime too so we can just take a Windows app and run it on OSX-Intel - which is great.

I just think it'd be even greater if Apple could help a Windows developer move their application quickly and easily to Xcode (by using WINE), and then do all their development in Xcode and compile to OSX-PPC, OSX-Intel, Windows, and Linux. Still we're getting outside the rumour.

ps. Thanks 'looklost' for the indirect secondary source :)
 
I'm not hugely well-versed in the technical side, but the bit I found hard to swallow was the claim that WinSafari was "complete with Quartz anti-aliasing" -- I thought that Quartz was baked pretty deep into the Mac OS, and isn't something that one could easily pull out on its own. Does anyone else know more about how tightly integrated Quartz is, and how easy it would be to get it to run on top of another OS?
 
1. Sounds fishy.

2. Reviving yellow box for Windows would be a complex decision with pros and cons, not something I feel I can support OR dismiss out of hand.

3. But my gut feeling: I LIKE IT! The implications are many, most of them sound great... and Cocoa moving to Intel for Macs makes it especially practical.

I think it's an interesting idea and possibly worth a try, whether this source is bogus (as I suspect) or not.


longofest said:
Funny how you link to wikipedia for the definition... It may be right, but with all of the problems with its credibility recently...
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You mean the one problem ;)

O/T, but any info you find on Google, on Wikipedia, or on a commercial site is worth verifying if the usage is a vital one. On an informal discussion forum, I'm happy to leave that verification up to others :) After all, if a poster simply lists facts IN their post, that's not "proven" either, but it's common practice and useful for discussion. I don't demand a firm source unless the info being posted (or linked to) is controversial.
 
ooh..this would be great! I'd love Safari for XP. Now, all I'll need is an OS X emulator and I really wont need OS X anymore. Good for me, toss up for OS X.
 
But why Safari?

The biggest portion of code in safari isn't cocoa to begin with (and does anyone know of a KHTML-based browser which already runs on windows?). Seems strange that Safari would then be the first app running. I'm calling B.S.
 
andyduncan said:
The biggest portion of code in safari isn't cocoa to begin with (and does anyone know of a KHTML-based browser which already runs on windows?). Seems strange that Safari would then be the first app running. I'm calling B.S.
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You can find public information on the Webkit-for-Windows porting efforts on the webkit open source site. It does exist, although I don't believe there's any indication that Apple is participating beyond saying "that's cool, go ahead". If they are reviving yellow box, I wouldn't be surprised if they were participating behind the scenes.

Tulse: Cocoa is just as much a part of Mac OS X as Quartz is, although I agree that it's a little curious they wouldn't just use the underlying windows graphics APIs. Possibly it's 'cause pre-Vista they aren't advanced enough :)
 
andyduncan said:
The biggest portion of code in safari isn't cocoa to begin with (and does anyone know of a KHTML-based browser which already runs on windows?). Seems strange that Safari would then be the first app running. I'm calling B.S.
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Actually, I'm not sure if you can be sure it's the first app running. For instance, Webobjects 5.2 runs on Openstep (on Windows 2000) and is still sold by Apple (though WO 5.3 is the current version and is Mac-only). As far as I know, someone installing WebObjects doesn't realise they're installing Openstep... it happens in the background. Some of Apple's applications on Windows could be doing something similar without us knowing.

Or if they're not doing that already, they could with their next version. Not much of announcement though if "iTunes 6.1 for Windows will be coded differently".
 
old enums in current Cocoa.framework
Code: 
typedef enum {
   NSNoInterfaceStyle = 0,
   NSNextStepInterfaceStyle = 1,
   NSWindows95InterfaceStyle = 2,
   NSMacintoshInterfaceStyle = 3
} NSInterfaceStyle;

But really, I don't think so. What would the advantage be?

What if an app uses CoreImage? CoreVideo? AddressBook? all external frameworks commonly used by cocoa apps and that are not available on Windows

What about WebKit? will they port it too?

Sorry, but that new Yellow Box thing is Bullcrap.

John Locke and Dharma. Nah. That's from Lost. :p
 
rikers_mailbox said:
Safari for Windows is the secondary headline here. Understood.

But if it were true, it's joining a very short list of Windows-built Mac programs (Quicktime, iTunes, any others?), which seems like significant news to me.

I'm not a developer, so I'm not too interested in the details of coding/compiling Mac programs to natively run on Windows. But as an Apple investor, I'm curious as to the implications of releasing Safari Windows and how Apple could benefit.
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Don't forget about Appleworks
 
In its time, OS/2 was a
technically superior OS to Windows 3, but IBM made the tactical
mistake to let Microsoft (who were working with them at the time) add
a Win16 compatibility layer to OS/2.
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Microsoft didn't develop OS/2 Warp and that's when IBM added Win16 to OS/2. It also wasn't a compatibility layer, it was Windows 3.1, re-compiled with Watcom C, which meant that it ran faster under OS/2 than it did as a shell over MS-DOS. Each Win3.1 application ran in its own virtual mode process completely safe from the other.

In any case, it would have made sense for Apple to continue Yellow Box but they chose to re-develop WebObjects to run on top of Java instead of OpenStep/Yellow Box.

I seriously doubt they're going to backtrack since backward is not forward and Steve Jobs doesn't give up that easily. :p
 
Tulse said:
I'm not hugely well-versed in the technical side, but the bit I found hard to swallow was the claim that WinSafari was "complete with Quartz anti-aliasing" -- I thought that Quartz was baked pretty deep into the Mac OS, and isn't something that one could easily pull out on its own.
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I don't know enough either. BUT, I think there's an important distinction between the "Quartz 2D window compositing system", and Quartz Extreme. Anti-aliasing is available through Quartz 2D.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextreme/

To confuse things, quartz 2d extreme is a way of doing the window stuff direct on the graphics card, and is where I lose touch. I'm not sure if 10.4.3 has implemented that yet (and it's the OS level, not application)
 
rikers_mailbox said:
But if it were true, it's joining a very short list of Windows-built Mac programs (Quicktime, iTunes, any others?), which seems like significant news to me.
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Shake runs on Linux, if that counts... albeit for $5000 instead of $3000, which is obviously a rather nasty "buy a Power Mac already" ploy on Apple's part...

longofest said:
Guys, this is 100% fake. The guy put the project name as Dharma, and signed the email "John Locke, somewhere near Hawaii".

Watch LOST on ABC, and tell me it isn't fake.
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for the record, they filmed in Hawaii... the island would be nowhere near there.

Josh396 said:
I would like to see iChat available on windows. I doubt Apple will do it if they already haven't though.
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that would be the best... from what I've heard, iChat/AIM videoconferencing sucks.

to add my own comments about this... what about interfaces? would an Xcode user be forced to use the Aqua interface on Windows? because that would really suck, if I was developing for Windows I wouldn't want my app looking like it was emulated, just like I don't want any app with Windows interface running on my Mac.

ok, yeah, hoax it probably is. still, that's something I'd really like to see - if it were true.
 
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