I have some basic familiarity with Objective-C, but prefer Ruby, so I'm thinking of playing around with MacRuby. Is it possible to use MacRuby to develop applications for the Mac App Store, or do I have to use Objective-C? (Note that I don't care so much about iOS/the iPhone and iPad store right now, just the Mac OS X app store.)
And to answer the actual question, yes, see http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2010-November/006475.html.
Short answer: Yes, you can, technically, build such an app. You need to revisit the store guidelines to know what requirements must be met to submit to the various stores.
This comes up sporadically; beyond the guidelines that #NSResponder mentioned, the reality is that you'll just be spending a lot of extra & unnecessary time if you decide to use MacRuby unless you plan on using some large chunk of already written Ruby code in your app.
Learning Objective-C is about 2% of the overall learning needed to be an effective Cocoa developer. The other 98% is everything from memory management model to standard idioms like KVC/KVO/delegation to NIB files to the myriad of classes & APIs throughout the system.
All of those things are written in Objective-C (or C) with documentation targeting Objective-C and examples written in Objective-C.
As well, the entire tool chain is focused on validating, compiling, indexing, debugging, and manipulating Objective-C.
If you want to use MacRuby to build a real Cocoa app, you are going to have to know Objective-C through and through anyway. And you are going to have to deal with whatever bugs and impedance mismatch is in the bridge layer, too.
Yes. As the Mac developer forums says:
My Mac app is not written in
Objective-C. Is this allowed on the
MacApp Store?
Yes, provided it also adheres to the
Mac App Store Review Guidelines at
http://developer.apple.com/appstore/mac/resources/approval/guidelines.htmland
the Mac Developer Program License
Agreement at
http://developer.apple.com/programs/terms/mac/mac_program_agreement_20101020.pdf
(via alloy)
Read the submission guidelines here: https://developer.apple.com/appstore/mac/resources/approval/guidelines.html
Related
It appears the language is the same for either device ios or mac os on a mbp, but if I learn Objective-C in a tutorial, won't I also need to learn cocoa or cocoa touch to program effectively?
I'm not sure how to start on my path of learning to program an ios device. I know I need to learn objective-c and that appears to work on all apple products. Then do I move to cocoa touch for ipad and iphone? What comes after objective-c?
The type of project is akin to a web app but native objective-c app instead. Have ui, buttons, the app hits some back end location, returns data, I put it on that same ui. Only, as stated, use objective-c and whatever framework and library to do it (that's my dilemma. I dont know what to do next after objective-c).
thanks.
Cocoa and Objective-c go hand in hand. For getting started, I would suggest going over some old WWDC footage and following some of the examples there.
As far as Cocoa and Cocoa touch are concerned, they are very similar in many aspects, same name conventions, similar structure, etc. Learn one, and you can easily pick up the other.
#craig adds:
I would further this answer by also mentioning that Objective-C is a programming language, while Cocoa/Cocoa Touch are collections of frameworks that are provided by Apple, and used by developers to add functionality to their programs. (Which are written in Objective-C.) The Cocoa frameworks contain various UI components like buttons, table views, sliders, etc. in addition to various fundamental classes like NSString and other text- and graphics-based APIs
I started my learning by watching thenewboston's xcode tutorials:
you can begin with this one
Good luck :)
I prefer books for some strange reason and I found that the Apress series of IOS development is really good. The book goes through developing iPhone and iPad apps using all kinds of Cocoa libraries. There's a lot of good books out there on the subject; I would go find one that looks like it would suit your needs.
I am working on an application in which I need to migrate the whole code of it from carbon to cocoa.I have experience in programming of C,C++,python and Java during my college time and internship but have never touched objective C or have done any programming for Mac(Carbon and Cocoa) before this.
So Can you please suggest me some sources to start with, also how should I go about the whole migration ?
After researching on net I have found that most the people have suggested following books
Cocoa Programming for Mac® OS X, Third Edition by Aaron Hillegass
Programming in Objective C - Stephen Kochan
I have got both these books.
Should I read them first and then should start with the code change? (it will take some time to read both of these)
OR
after having a decent fimiliarity with Obj C and Cocoa, should I directly get started with code migration?
Also,
since I don't know carbon , what should I refer to learn carbon to have sufficient knowledge to migrate the carbon code to cocoa?
First, learn Carbon so you can read the program and understand how it's currently implemented.
Install the Legacy documentation set in Xcode to gain access to the Carbon guides. You'll want to read the Carbon Overview, then Getting Started with Carbon, then everything that Getting Started links to. You'll also need to learn Core Foundation, which some of the more modern parts of Carbon use; read Core Foundation Design Concepts and the Memory Management Programming Guide for Core Foundation.
Then, learn Cocoa.
I didn't learn by the Hillegass book, but a lot of people swear by it. My current favorite Cocoa book is “Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running” by Scott Stevenson. The way I learned Cocoa was using Apple's own docs. Start with The Objective-C Programming Language, the Cocoa Fundamentals Guide, and the Memory Management Programming Guide for Cocoa. Much of the last document will seem really familiar, but skip nothing. Read every one of those guides from beginning to end and all the way through.
Once you've learned Cocoa's general concepts, you can move on to more application-specific material. Start with the Application Architecture Overview and most of what that document links to. The Cocoa Guides list has the full list of guides.
Down the road, you'll also need to make the application compatible with 64-bit mode. If you still have any Carbon code by that point, you'll need to read the 64-bit Guide for Carbon Developers; either way, you'll also need the general 64-bit Transition Guide and the 64-bit Transition Guide for Cocoa.
I am working on this process myself right now, and it's a fairly complex undertaking for a full document-based application that uses a few frameworks. My Carbon app has dozens of menu items, the interface is built with Carbon Nibs and implemented using Carbon event hooks. The programming language is C++. Going back in history, the original Mac classic version was implemented in straight C, so there's a little bit of legacy from that era too. Resource-based PICS for example!
There are several approaches one can take, so it depends on your particular situation how to proceed. In my case I decided to start with a bare Cocoa document-based project and start building the document loading code, because the hooks for that are already in place in the empty project. This seems like a good place to start for me, because it gets me into the mode of working with Cocoa and thinking about the app in terms of smaller pieces.
You really have to take a methodical approach and look at what your app depends on in Carbon versus which parts of your app are independent - for instance your abstract classes. If your app is in C++ there may be some pitfalls with converting over to pure Objective-C. Operator overrides can be tricky to notice, for example.
You can mix C++ with Objective-C, as described in Apple's Carbon-Cocoa Integration Guide and around the web you can find plenty of C++ wrappers for Cocoa foundation objects like NSStrings. So if you already have C++ classes that wrap CFString, these can come in handy.
Generally-speaking, you can leave your data storage just as it is. If you use malloc() and calloc() to make a linked list of structs, there's no special reason to move over to an NSArray. You won't get better performance. The real change comes in the interfaces, the way you call and access that data from other objects. If you decide to mix C++ and Objective-C objects in the same app it helps to encapsulate as much as possible. That is, as much as possible make your abstract C++ classes only refer to their own data and that of other C++ objects. Eventually this will make it easier to transition them to Objective-C.
If you're transitioning from one event model to another or from Carbon port-based imaging to Cocoa's views-based imaging, it's probably best to start with a fresh Objective-C app and bring over your model classes first. Add some test functions to make sure they all work within the new language. If your app is anything like mine (old) then it probably needs to display some things larger, and to have more polish in the interface. This is a good time to rebuild those parts piece-by-piece.
There's definitely no great shortcut. The PDF linked above is the best document I've found on the topic.
Looking on-line I saw that I can write most of the application in Ansi-C code or as a website and present it in a webView control.
Then besides some general knowledge about iOS and the API... Do I really need to learn Objective C?
You could use something like PhoneGap, which wraps an HTML-based application into a native launcher app. It may not be as powerful as what you can do with a pure native app, but on the other hand, your code will not only run on iOS.
PhoneGap does offer access to some of the phone's API (camera, notifications, accelerometer and so on) that you normally only get in native apps (it exposes them as JavaScript objects), so you can do more than you could in a regular HTML5 webapp, even without learning Objective-C.
Most people overlook the fact the iPhone has an extremely capable web browser. You can create very powerful web apps and therefore avoid having to learn objective C.
Safari on the iPhone has a bunch of great HTML5 features, including local sqlite stoage - so for example you could easily make a todo list app which could sync up with your server when there's a net connection.
You can even add home screen icons etc.. personally I'm astonished people don't write iPhone web apps more!
This is a super useful guide on how to do it:
http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/
You can use C# to write iPhone apps using MonoTouch, but it costs money. Then again, so does developing for the iPhone the normal way.
The other answers are correct in that you /can/ use other languages... you really don't want to. You are never going to create a pleasant to use, standard, and HIG-abiding application without learning Objective-C. Truly, though, there's no reason /not/ to learn something new. It's not particularly difficult (like, say, C++), and Cocoa is a well-designed API.
Somewhat related, I personally refuse to install all the PhoneGap/etc apps in the App Store as I find them of significantly less inherent quality (especially as compared to the rest of the apps on the device), and I would suspect many non-developers would have similar issues with them, if not so specific.
Unless your app is all web, or uses a framework such as PhoneGap you have to have some working knowledge of obj-C. It's actually not that bad. It's C with Smalltalk bolted onto it.
It's generally much simpler than C++.
if u want true native app that can take advantage of the latest features on the latest iOS release, Objective-C is da language you gotta learn.
Objective-C is a very powerful language, and there are a ton of great frameworks - you are doing yourself a HUGE disservice by not learning the language, and your app quality will suffer as a result.
You can write an entire iPhone app in C++ using a framework like libnui.
I would like to write an app for the iPad but I can't stand Objective-C.
Is there a language generator that would spit out Objective-C but let me write my iPad application in another language?
I've heard a little about MacRuby and am curious whether it could be used this way. Any other similar projects in other languages?
C# with MonoTouch.
JavaScript with Appcelerator Titanium.
Flex with ELIPS Studio 3.
Python with PyObjC (for jailbroken iPhones though).
Apparently Lua is an option.
John McIntosh uses Smalltalk on the iPhone. For instance, his Mobile Wiki Server app.
No computer anywhere (well maybe some) cares what language you write your programs in. Heck, you could hand-write machine instructions if you were patient (and crazy) enough. As long as you can figure out how to interact properly with the system call interface and the ABI, you can do whatever you want.
You could use Corona, Torque, or Unity. These all have advantages and disadvantages compared to using the standard Objective-C SDK, but really, if it's about the language itself, it's hard to see how you would be better able to "stand" the languages supported by these three than Objective-C.
I've been developing for Windows and *nix platforms for quite some time, and am looking to move into Mac development. I am tossing up between using ObjC/Cocoa and C++/Qt4.5.
The C++/moc semantics make more sense to me, and improving knowledge in Qt seems like a sensible thing to do given that you end up with a skill set that covers more platforms.
Am I likely to handicap my applications by skipping Cocoa?
The sample Qt applications look pretty Mac-native to me, but they are quite simple so potentially don't tell the whole story. Are there other pros to the Xcode way that Qt doesn't have, such as packaging, deployment, etc.?
Here's an easy way to answer it:
If you were developing a Windows app with .NET or MFC, would you handicap your applications by using Qt? If the answer to that is yes, then the situation is likely to be the same on the Mac.
A few negatives I can think of off the top of my head:
Licensing
Qt apps, while good, are not completely a native UI experience and there's things a native UI designer can do in Cocoa which boggle the mind. While I can't be sure that all the same functionality isn't available in Qt, I doubt it.
Qt is always a little behind. If Microsoft or Apple come out with a great new technology, you have to wait for the Qt developers to update Qt.
However, with all that said, only you can determine the business value of using Qt. If you think cross-platform development is going to be a major part of your development, then Qt might be worth it, despite the issues mentioned.
Ask yourself: how many of the best Mac applications that you know of use Qt instead of native Cocoa?
For our robotic systems, we originally wrote our control software in C++ using the cross-platform wxWidgets library (we avoided Qt due to some licensing concerns), because we felt that we had to target Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms for our end users. This is what we shipped for over a year until I started tinkering with Cocoa.
Right away, the thing that most impressed me was how quickly you could develop using Cocoa. Eventually, we decided to drop support for Linux and Windows and rewrite our entire control applications in Cocoa. What had taken us years to put together in C++ required only three months to completely reimplement in Cocoa.
Aside from the "lowest common denominator" interface issues that others have pointed out, the rapid development allowed by Cocoa has become a competitive advantage for our company. Our software has advanced far more quickly since our conversion to Cocoa, and it has allowed us as a new company with one developer to pull even with 10-year-old competitors that have 20-man development teams. This appears to be a common story in the Mac development space, where you see a lot of small teams who are able to create products that compete with those of much larger companies.
As a final note, using Cocoa gives you the ability to stay on top of the new APIs Apple is continually rolling out. We're now working on a new control interface that will make heavy use of Core Animation, something that would be painful to deal with using Qt.
I'm currently developing both with QT (actually PyQT, but it makes no difference to your question) and native Cocoa app. For me it's no brainer, I'd chose Cocoa. It's really worth time to explore Cocoa in general, there are many great concepts within the Cocoa framework, and Objective-C 2.0 as well.
I'd use Qt if you want this to be a crossplatform application.
You can have a look at the QMacCocoaViewContainer class. It acts as some kind of wrapper for generic Cocoa views, so you can also have Cocoa elements which are not officially supported by Qt.
Of course this means learning a little about Cocoa and Objective C and how a Cocoa UI would need to look like. But if you already know Qt well and if it’s not like your application is all and only about the GUI this could be a good way to go.
And don’t forget about the QMacStyle::WidgetSizePolicy or you won’t understand why your tables come out so huge.
Obviously, the best option is to use a cross platform suite that supports native widgets.
With QT4 you can build your base user interface. Then just add native support for your specific target platform.
Sure, Cocoa has a lot of fancy stuff (and you can still use them trough QT4), but let me be clear. I see a lot of fancy Apps on the AppStore, pretty ones, but most of then are just crap, expensive.. what ever. I really missed my Kate text editor, my okular viewer, my krita drawing software... those are just better than the commercial and expensive alternatives and are free. so i just tweak the source code a little bit too have a REAL native and great experience.
What if i have to use a linux app on my main computer with is a mac os x? or windows? or whatever? only?
For example, why on earth i have to buy a expensive ,fancy but far less featured image editor software for my mac like pixelmator when i can use a full featured real image manipulation software like Gimp? YES Gimp is gtk2 based which is a pain on any platform, specially on Mac because is really ugly. Gimp should be ported to QT4. Inkscape should be ported to QT4 too, and it would feel so great.
Is so simple to do.. gosh!
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/demos-macmainwindow.html
Even you can add support for the the new native lion fullscreen feature, unified title and toolbar menus, etc
I , as a user, i really care about efficient, featured, good and cross platform apps, i don't really care about developer's convenience or laziness .
I do a lot of cross-platform development (Mac, Windows, Linux), and for some projects use Qt. It is a fine framework, and provides a rich class library. If you need to deploy on multiple platforms, cannot afford to spend the time/effort on platform-specific front-ends, or the "generic" support for each platform is sufficiently good, then use Qt.
However, Qt inevitably suffers in some ways from the lowest common denominator syndrome, and sometimes does not feel quite native enough. There are also certain features that are either difficult to support, or are simply not provided in the Qt libraries. So if you can afford the time and effort, or your app really demands the attention to detail and fit & finish, then developing separate front-ends may be worth it.
In either case, you ought to be writing your back-end (aka domain) code in a platform-neutral and front-end neutral manner. This way, the front-end is easily replaced, or modified between platforms.
You could always start with a Qt front-end and go for a quick time to market, then develop a native front-end down the line.
In practice, I've noticed that a Qt app on Windows looks most "native", while on Mac there are certain subtle telltale signs that make it look/feel not quite right. And Mac users tend to have much higher expectations when it comes to UI/UX!
Since posting this, i've been learning the Cocoa / Objective-C way, and have been quite impressed. Despite what I initially thought was quite a quirky syntax, Objc appears to be a very effective language for implementing UI code, and the XCode sugar - things like Core Data and bindings - make short work of all of the boring bits.
I spent a while with the QT examples and documentation before digging into cocoa, and tend to agree with what has been said above w.r.t being slightly behind the curve and less 'aqua-ish' - albeit from a fairly trivial inspection. If I absolutely had to be build a cross-platform app i'd probably use QT rather than trying to separate out the UI code, as it seems like it would provide close-enough visuals, but for mac only purposes, Cocoa seems like a definite win.
Thanks all for your responses, they've all been very helpful!
DO NOT use Qt for a Mac app. You will get no hardware acceleration for 2D rendering, and you will not be able to deliver ADA compliance.
Depending on what kind of apps you want to write, another contender is REALbasic now called Xojo.
The move from C++ is pretty easy (I have 15 years C++ experience) and the framework and IDE extremely productive. You have the added bonus of being able to deploy to Linux and Windows with trivial effort. Their framework compiles to native code and uses native widgets so you don't have an emulated look and feel.
The big reason for learning Cocoa and coding in Objective-C is if you want to hone your iPhone skills or are chasing a really fancy user experience. If you wanted to rival the cutting edge of WPF development then I'd recommend Cocoa.