In Mac OS X, you can create a text file, type in some code in Python or many other languages, save the file, set it to be “executable” and run it. There is no Cocoa involved in this process at all. That is just one of the many, many ways you can run apps on Mac OS X. This is considered a major feature, and it’s why it is so easy to port apps from other platforms to Mac OS X. This is part of why there are so many apps for Mac OS X.

If you were maintaining an old-school Mac app like iTunes, which is as Carbon as an app can be, and you were instructed to use as much Cocoa as you can in the next version, you still would only change maybe 15% of the app.

What happened recently is that Apple decided not to provide 64-bit Carbon UI. However, you can still run 32-bit Carbon UI. It means that in order to go 64-bit your Mac app has to do its interface in Cocoa. Again, this is maybe 15% of the app. And considering that operating systems and hardware are still transitioning to 64-bit, I would expect the apps to take at least 5 more years from now before you expect an app to be 64-bit. Even so, at that time iTunes will have a 64-bit Cocoa UI, but still >50% of the iTunes code will be the same as it is now (at least).

The argument between Carbon and Cocoa in the early days of Mac OS X was really an argument over object-oriented (Cocoa) versus procedural programming (Carbon). The fact is we need both because although object-oriented programming is “the future”, the vast majority of the world’s software code is procedural and that will be the case for years to come yet. Even today, most programming is procedural C programming. That code runs on Mac OS X and will continue to run on Mac OS X. That is a FEATURE.

Note that there are parts of Mac OS X that are 30 years old and proud of it. Apple specifically chose to put UNIX under Mac OS X instead of something like BeOS because there are so many advantages to being compatible with the entire history of computing.

My one argument against that would be that Apple wants the fastest, most stable OS possible on the machines shipping over the next few years as they work on Mac OS 11. That may mean dropping PPC support in “Snow Leopard”. But the features on both the Leopard G5s and the Snow Leopard Macs will be the same—except Snow Leopard is optimized for Intel. Cleaning out the old code and making way for the transition to a whole new OS.

On a different topic, what do you think about iTunes 8?

I will not comment on the future of Apple, as I believe that thinking that far ahead serves no purpose.

Dear Apple, release whatever you want. Just please, please change the name to something that isn’t Snow Leopard. Thanks.

You do make one very interesting point, which i can see being true, but also confirms to me that this release would not be purely Intel, instead it would be the last PPC/Universal version of the OS. If Apple use this release as the final version of Mac OS X, prepping it for bigger and greater things as OS 11, it seem the ideal opportunity to use it as the way to tie-up the PPC life.

In short, if this does happen, I don’t think it will be Intel only but I do think it will be the last PPC compatible version. This would leave OS11 to close the door on PPC and push forward on innovation and the Intel platform.

http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/106-and-then-no-more-hope-so/