iOS Is it hard to convert simple iPhone app to Mac OS app ?

[namanhams]

Hi,

I have this question and the client needs me to answer it fast, that's why i do not have enough time to do research on this.

The iPhone app is very simple. Just loading data from the web, and then display it in a table view. When tap on a row, it jumps the the detail view.
I need to convert it to Mac OS app.

So is it hard ?

 

[PhoneyDeveloper]

Probably. If you've never written a Mac app then there is a learning curve that will take weeks or months. Knowing Objective-C will help but there's a lot more to it. While Foundation exists on Mac OS X UIKit doesn't exist. You'll need to learn AppKit.

In your MVC design you'll throw out the V and probably most of the C. If you're lucky most of the M might still work.

The other thing is that the UI paradigm is different. While there are of course tables in AppKit there isn't this UI paradigm of detail views sliding into view. Sometimes detail views are separate windows and sometimes they are next to the master view in the same window. Look at iTunes and Mail.app for this kind of UI.

If your master-detail views will fit in a single window then it might be straightforward to implement.

I have also been thinking about porting a UIKit app to AppKit but got stuck on how the thing should look and work. It's a drill down app with four or five layers of drill down and I haven't come up with a way to do that on the Mac.

 

[firewood]

I'm in the middle of porting an iPad app myself. The M ported over. The C and main V are getting recoded, but using an almost parallel design. I'm still thinking about how to present the axillary views appropriately for the Mac UI. For my first crack at a simple app, I'm thinking that, at 2 weeks working part time, I'm about halfway there. But the next conversion should go a lot faster.

I have written several Mac apps before, but they were for MacOS System 6, etc. Almost nothing to do with current Mac OS X app coding technology.

 

[namanhams]

Thank you guys for the helpful infomation !

 

[hayesk]

Whatever you do, please just don't do one of those "iPhone app in a window" Mac ports. Design a proper menubar, windows, preferences, etc.

 

[lloyddean]

Whatever you do, please just don't do one of those "iPhone app in a window" Mac ports. Design a proper menubar, windows, preferences, etc.

The problem with this request is he's already (effectively) admitted a lack of familiarity with Mac programming. Thus he's not in position to determine what's right or wrong about any approach he takes.

 

[firewood]

Whatever you do, please just don't do one of those "iPhone app in a window" Mac ports. Design a proper menubar, windows, preferences, etc.

1. There seem to be a lot of them that are doing relatively well in the Mac App store.

2. It's not an unfamiliar or jarring UI paradigm for the large percentage of Mac users who also use an Apple iOS device.

3. And Apple started it with Desk Accessories and Dashboard widgets. (Back in the day, I had a complete app that ran as System 6 Desk Accessory.)