Re: Thoughts about the future...

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Gregory Casamento wrote:
> 1) They haven't updated macOS significantly (Cocoa specifically) in a 
> few years.  I've been keeping track since Catalina
> 2) Currently you can run UIKit apps on the mac if your mac uses Apple 
> Silicon.
> 3) They are aggressively phasing out Intel based macs.
>
> I am wondering if these facts combined mean that they are thinking 
> about deprecating Cocoa within the next few years and going COMPLETELY 
> to using UIKit as the preferred framework for development.

Could happen... I always feared Apple would somehow merge iOS with 
MacOS. Now... an intermediate step is iPadOS.
Also, not true they are not updating Cocoa, they are actively 
deprecating a lot of stuff. Dumnifying it...
So yes UIKit or SwiftUI could become the "preferred" framework. Or only one?

> 1) We need to add support for macOS to GNUstep so that, in the case 
> that they DO deprecate Cocoa or ObjC (I hope they DO NOT) then the 
> people who use those have someplace to go

I don't know how interesting it would be. If XCode removes support for 
things like NIB/XIB for Cocoa, a Cocoa compatibility layer would be of.. 
niche use at least.
You could use .gorm files with GORM, indeed, even use it to open legacy 
IB files. Who knows.


> 2) We need to have a mobile library (UIKit compatible) to accommodate 
> those who might want to bring their applications to other things 
> outside of the stupidity of Apple's walled garden.
> 3) We need to add support for Swift (most likely by enabling the ObjC 
> extensions already present in the compiler on Linux)

We could do that, in a separate libray. But how interesting would it be?

We can also say... Bye Apple, it has been nice. You finally killed your 
OpenStep legacy... we followed Cocoa, now we are on your own.

Honest answer: how many applications have been ported from Mac to 
GNUstep in the past 5 years? How many of these are Open Source?
And vice-versa?

Although FOSS doesn't forbid it, I don't want to work for a Mac-useful 
tool. I intend to work for something that contributes to FOSS Operating 
Systems. Support of proprietary stuff is a nice collateral (e.g. Mac 
compatibility, Windows or Solaris...) but only to the point that there 
is a fallback to FOSS.
with an UI-kitted MacOS..... call it iMacOS (.. sarcasm ..) it will 
become even less probable than it is now.

Riccardo