Cocoa/Yellow Box for Windows... Where is it?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
With the coming of Jaguar and OS X finally being fully implimented, has anyone wondered what happened to the Development of Cocoa/Yellow Box/OpenStep for Windows?



This was a great system, and would give many developers out there an easy way of developing cross platform Apps.



Anyone know what happened to it? Apple stopped talking about it a while ago. Don't people think that it should continue to be developed?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    All they did was some retooling and naming and we have cocoa and webobjects and whatnot. The great thing about YellowBox was a program compiled in it would run on any platform that had the yellow box librarys installed on it. What if cocoa still worked and all of the developers wouldnt have to recompile there software because it already runs in cocoa?
  • Reply 2 of 5
    bluejekyllbluejekyll Posts: 103member
    [quote]Originally posted by Mount_my_floppy:

    <strong>All they did was some retooling and naming and we have cocoa and webobjects and whatnot. The great thing about YellowBox was a program compiled in it would run on any platform that had the yellow box librarys installed on it. What if cocoa still worked and all of the developers wouldnt have to recompile there software because it already runs in cocoa?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well webobjects is a different beast from Cocoa/OpenStep. They are similar, but different.



    All I want to know is if Apple plans on continuing where they left off. It would be great to have a standard set of Application Libraries across many different platforms. I feel like Apple swept this under the rug, to be forgotten. Giving people only one option to run all of their Mac Apps.



    Now a bit more optimistically, Apple has been pushing hard to get OS X up to speed so, Cocoa/YellowBox/OpenStep for Windows/CDE, or whatever other platforms they want, has been put on hold. I hope that is true.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    [quote]Originally posted by BlueJekyll:

    <strong>

    All I want to know is if Apple plans on continuing where they left off. It would be great to have a standard set of Application Libraries across many different platforms. I feel like Apple swept this under the rug, to be forgotten. Giving people only one option to run all of their Mac Apps.



    Now a bit more optimistically, Apple has been pushing hard to get OS X up to speed so, Cocoa/YellowBox/OpenStep for Windows/CDE, or whatever other platforms they want, has been put on hold. I hope that is true.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I wish I could share your optimism. My understand ing is that Apple had trouble justifying the cost of continued development of YellowBox for Windows given that YB/Win does not actually promote Macintosh sales. To recoup their costs, Apple would have had to charge enormous license fees for the YB/Win runtime.



    The nail in the coffin was the switch from Display Postscript to Quartz. There was no way that Apple could have afforded to commit the development resources to make Quartz run on top of Windows (if it would even have been possible).



    At the time that YB/Win was quietly killed, I was very angry at Apple. Since then, I have come to see the wisdom of their decision.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    bluejekyllbluejekyll Posts: 103member
    [quote]

    The nail in the coffin was the switch from Display Postscript to Quartz.

    <hr></blockquote>



    I thought that Quartz is Display Postscript, just given a new name, and a face lift...





    I disagree a bit with the idea that this technology would not drive up sales on the mac. It would definitely release software developers from the Death grip MS has on the industry, Allowing users to choose the better OS, not based on available Apps. I think it would, in time, allow people to use any OS of their choice.



    I guess Sun tried this with Java, but maybe because Cocoa is faster than Java it would actually work?
  • Reply 5 of 5
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quartz is way different than DPS. Really. Think of it as the next generation, but not based on DPS.



    As for the rest... if developers can write to Cocoa, and target Wintel machines with all the cool Mac apps, and Wintel machines are cheaper...



    then what reason do consumers have for *buying* a Mac?



    Right now, Apple can't (and I don't think they should) compete on sheer price. The advantage is the OS, but more importantly, what the OS allows the *apps* to do. Take that advantage away, and Apple won't sell a single box.



    It took me a long time to realize it too, but Apple is a hardware company, period. The software, although that's where their expertise lies, is *just* to move boxes.
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