[off] Apple to unify ios/macos apps next year

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2018-01-02 18:46, Ben Rubinstein via use-livecode wrote:
> I'm coming to this late, but it looks to me as if the list got into a
> nightmare mode a bit prematurely. What the article actually talks
> about is a way to create apps which can be used across 'desktop' and
> mobile operating systems - specifically *not* about merging those
> operating systems.
> 
> In short, a very approximate way of describing the idea would be... 
> LiveCode.
> 
> We code an app with a text field and a button; on the desktop our
> users click the button with the mouse, on mobile they touch it. On
> desktop they click into the field and start typing on their keyboard;
> on mobile they touch the field and a soft keyboard appears. Apple are
> just trying to help the rest of the developer community catch up with
> us.
> 
> Shouldn't we panic less? Or have I missed something?

My take on it is that Apple intend to include a port of 'UIKit' to macOS 
in the next macOS version - meaning that an app written for iOS would 
compile and run on macOS without changes.

A lot of frameworks are already shared between macOS and iOS - e.g. 
CoreGraphics, MapKit, AVFoundation, ... (the list is actually very 
long). The main points of difference (i.e. where you don't get source 
compatibility) between coding for iOS and coding for macOS is UIKit vs 
Cocoa - i.e. the way you interact with the window system - usually 
though its just a few lines (e.g. using a UIView on iOS vs an NSView on 
macOS).

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps