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Dharma: Cocoa (Yellow Box) on Windows... Again?

Wednesday December 7, 2005 3:39 pm PST by Arnold Kim
A first time poster to MacGeneration (French) forums posted the contents of an email, which was originally sent to another website.

The writer claims that Apple is reviving "Yellow Box for Windows" -- a development environment which promised Mac OS X developers the ability to develop and then deploy on both Mac OS X and Windows environments. The original plans for Yellow Box were promised during early developer sessions by Apple, but later killed.

The letter claims that the project has been relaunched internally under the name "Dharma". Resultant applications will be true "Universal Binaries", allowing developers to release their applications under the Windows environment also.

The reasoning behind this is the same as it was before -- lure developers (Mac and Windows alike) to the Mac OS X platform to stimulate more Mac applications and compatibility. Safari is reportedly already running on Windows XP and is expected to be released as a free application for Windows.

Obviously, anonymous forum posts are amongst the least reliable sources of information, but is linked here for interest sake.
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gekko513
81 months ago
That would be neat.

Cocoa is an excellent framework and if it's available for Windows, too, it can only attract more developers. More developers = more software.
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crazzyeddie
81 months ago
I guess if everything works as smoothly as indicated (highly doubtful) then I don't see why Apple wouldn't do this. It might save them from some of the software developers who will only publish for Windows after the Intel switch (if the machines turn out to be dual-bootable / VPC runs at almost native speeds).
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gekko513
81 months ago
I also doubt it will be an entirely smooth ride to develop cross platform apps with Cocoa, but with extra care and testing on both platforms during development, it should be very possible.
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Nermal
81 months ago
Dharma... John Locke... Hawaii :rolleyes:
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rikers_mailbox
81 months ago
I'm not smart enough...

Could someone please expand/speculate on Apple's intentions for (potentially) releasing Safari for Windows. Is it for mindshare, marketing? Are there revenue possibilities for releasing a browser?
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gekko513
81 months ago

Dharma... John Locke... Hawaii :rolleyes:

I was thinking Dharma and Greg.
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kainjow
81 months ago
Please be true.
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andrewm
81 months ago
The beauty of it is in how well-integrated everything was. If you look inside of a Cocoa (or modern Carbon) OS X application bundle, you'll see a directory named 'MacOS.' Assuming that memory serves correctly, and that there's anyone here who doesn't yet know, the same application *bundle* (ending in .app) would work on both Macintosh and Windows, with executable code unique to each platform (or, rather, each processor for each platform, if I understand correctly) inside its relevant (sub)directory.

Thus a Cocoa program would be slightly larger than it is now, but would work on two platforms without much more than additional compiler stuff--and, of course, fine-tuning.
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Some_Big_Spoon
81 months ago
Well, if it were a 1 to 1 pairity, then there's a better chance that Safari gets used more, then sites/companies/etc might push for either inclusion of Safari when they code and design sites, or put into effect more browser/platform agnostic architecture.

Right now many, man, many sites are coded for IE only, and, occasionally, require IE just to access them. Firefox is doing an ok job of shaking things up, but a recognized company like Apple putting their weight into things could make uptake faster for non-IE browsers. Choice is good, and choice makes innovation possible.



I'm not smart enough...

Could someone please expand/speculate on Apple's intentions for (potentially) releasing Safari for Windows. Is it for mindshare, marketing? Are there revenue possibilities for releasing a browser?

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gekko513
81 months ago

I'm not smart enough...

Could someone please expand/speculate on Apple's intentions for (potentially) releasing Safari for Windows. Is it for mindshare, marketing? Are there revenue possibilities for releasing a browser?

Releasing Safari for Windows isn't really the news here.

The news is that Apple may release tools that will enable any developer to develop software that works both on OS X and on Windows and still looks and feels like an OS X application.
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