Mac OS X 10.7 Lion -- developer preview announced

[mhschmieder]

Thanks for some very useful feedback on Mac developer issues for cross-platform apps etc.

Oh, I looked at Mono earlier, but forget why I dismissed it. I probably have a cached email I can track down. It's always worth another look.

I had heard some people promote WebKit as an app development accelerator that rubs off on multiple targets, but your is the first detailed write-up I have seen that gives me any reason to research it further.

Thanks for clarifying the Qt "ugliness" issue. In the end, our customers are the final judge and jury, but you've given me reason to investigate some other options, and now is a good time, as Lion may well break the current paradigm (we're going to load it on a computer here pretty soon, to see what works and what doesn't).

I am very pro-Java and very anti-AWT/Swing. I worked with SWT/JFace/RCP for awhile, but the project was killed for reasons I can't go into here, and it was more expedient to go back to AWT/Swing and write enough wrappers to make it work better than to drop everything and start from scratch with a Qt port (though that might still happen eventually). Sun did Java a disservice by bundling the catastrophic AWT/Swing toolkit. It's a fatally flawed design, but at least it's better than MFC (and its derivatives) and Visual Basic, which is what I was using before (in order to plug into some other apps at the time).

I am way more of a C/C++ expert than a Java expert, even after all these years, but for app development, feel C/C++ is not the best way to go overall. The Qt toolkit mitigates some of the aspects of C++ that slow down development in smaller organizations. Python is also an option and has many bindings. Ruby is interesting but a bit weird and maybe not ideal for desktop apps that are highly complex.

I'll look into WebKit some, this week, as I am just now (finally) between release cycles and not under quite the pressure I've been under (I was working 16 hour days for six weeks straight). It seems the best alternative option at this point, given the specificity of ObjectiveC to Mac-only development.

It's such a strange position to be in, to admire Apple for doing almost everything better than the competitors, and yet somewhat resenting their go-it-alone strategy because of the impact it has on developers who support all major platforms and can't afford to write things twice.

Sorry I can't give many hints about what I do, due to what could happen with people doing Google searches on terms that show up in my postings and not wanting to make it too easy for them to connect the pieces and potentially get people into trouble. The only hint that I'll drop is that my app was reviewed in Sound-On-Sound a few years back, and was also mentioned by name by Paul McCartney in an interview a year or two ago (boy, did that make my day!).

[mhschmieder]

Oh, I agree that HTML5 is fantastic, but is it going to be properly supported by all the major players?

[mhschmieder]

Interesting: I just got an email from Nokia a few minutes ago announcing that they are unloading Qt commercial licensing due to divergence from Nokia's core business (though it is unclear to me whether Nokia remains creative control and ownership over embedded licensing).

Digia will now be responsible for Qt commercial licensing. They are a Finnish company as well. Transfer is expected to happen by end of March.

[SixStringGeek]

Interesting: I just got an email from Nokia a few minutes ago announcing that they are unloading Qt commercial licensing due to divergence from Nokia's core business

Nokia has imploded I think. Lost their focus, fumbled the ball. The only mobile platforms that matter these days are droid and ios and they're both carrying webkit browsers. All the droid/iphone portability libs are based on this approach. The best known one I know of is http://www.appcelerator.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; but there is nothing in that toolkit that a smart motivated developer can't throw together himself depending on his needs.

[mhschmieder]

Cool -- I'll take a look at that this week. Good to know WebKit is supported on iOS as well. There are so few truly universal GUI toolkits, even after all these years, and so many of them are bloated and unfocused in purpose (such as Spring Framework, which initially was just for client/server webapp name-and-directory-lookup services, using the injection paradigm).

[HCMarkus]

You guys are total geeks. Love it.

[SixStringGeek]

You guys are total geeks. Love it.

Its a living and it lets me feed my guitar and DP habit.

[mhschmieder]

Apple and Oracle hashed it out.

Mac OS X Lion (which apparently might be out by summer 2011) will ship with Java 6.

Sun then hands off the code base to OpenJDK Project.

Oracle then works on Java 7 for Mac OS X Lion (and maybe earlier OS X releases).

The Mac OS X port will lag the Windows version, but probably not as much as under Apple's stewardship, and probably less bug-ridden as well (and less quirky on point releases).

I also found out what Mach Five V2 was written in. As it uses UVI Engine, I don't know if MOTU uses this cross-platform C++ toolkit for other platforms or not:

http://libnui.net/

Seems like a nice toolkit, and maybe growing in use, but Qt still reigns supreme (in spite of wxWidgets hanging on), in the C/C++ programming space.

[SixStringGeek]

Apple and Oracle hashed it out.

Mac OS X Lion (which apparently might be out by summer 2011) will ship with Java 6.

Sun then hands off the code base to OpenJDK Project.

Oracle then works on Java 7 for Mac OS X Lion (and maybe earlier OS X releases).

The Mac OS X port will lag the Windows version, but probably not as much as under Apple's stewardship, and probably less bug-ridden as well (and less quirky on point releases).

I also found out what Mach Five V2 was written in. As it uses UVI Engine, I don't know if MOTU uses this cross-platform C++ toolkit for other platforms or not:

http://libnui.net/

Seems like a nice toolkit, and maybe growing in use, but Qt still reigns supreme (in spite of wxWidgets hanging on), in the C/C++ programming space.

Interesting in the extreme. I was under the impression that Juice was king of the hill here.

[mhschmieder]

I think NUI may have been out longer, and maybe has appeal to those trying to share as much code as possible between mobile platforms and desktop platforms?