Future macOS Frameworks

I stumbled upon an interesting conversation between some well know Apple Ecosystem Developers this morning discussing, maybe lamenting, the lack of UIKit on macOS. I’m afraid I may have pushed these fellas to take their conversation private, I am sorry if that was the case.

Here’s the tweet that started the conversation:

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/779726806727491584

I’m not known in any development communities. I’m what you’d call a nobody. But I’m a nobody with years of experience that has seen changes to my development ecosystem.

Having experienced a dramatic shift in Windows Development technologies I have opinions about what I would expect to see from Apple. These opinions and $10.00 should be enough to buy you any item on a Starbucks drink menu. Take if for what it is. An opinion of a nobody.

What I Expect

Given Apple’s love and focus on Swift I fully expect Apple to put their effort into moving their frameworks to focus on Swift while continuing to allow App developers to use Objective-C with anything new. I’ve written about the idea of Swift only Frameworks. I believe we will eventually arrive there. For now we have excellent UIKit support for three different devices; iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Odd man out would be macOS. It doesn’t make sense, at least to me, for Apple to spend time back porting or adapting UIKit to the Mac. Their bread and butter is their iOS based trio of the phone, watch, and cable like device. Since iPhone accounts for around 60% of revenue it makes sense for the iOS Platform to be their primary focus. That begs the question, will the Mac ever receive the attention we’d like it to receive? Probably not.

In the end I’d expect Apple to push iOS forward while keeping the Mac as a primary development system for iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS developers with the latter receiving very little attention from a new Frameworks perspective.

A Brief History of Windows Development

Like I said above, I’m opinionated and I’ve been around the block a few times. I know Apple isn’t Microsoft and people tend to hate those comparisons. But I do see similarities between the Microsoft of the 90’s and the Apple of today. That’s a discussion for another time.

The discussions around Frameworks reminds me of Microsoft’s transition to .Net and C# as an easier way for developers to create Windows Apps. Apple is making such a big push with Swift a new framework targeting Swift developers feels like a natural progression.

It’s taken over 15-years to really push app development into a .Net world. I suppose some could argue it took less than 10 and I wouldn’t fight that. The point is Microsoft managed to push an entire development community to a new technology while allow old technologies to continue to not only function but grow. Look at the Microsoft Office Apps and Adobe Photoshop among others. They continue to be very relevant today and continue to add new features while the Windows API receives much less attention than does .Net and C#.

Ultimately the point is I know Apple could choose to push toward a Swift only framework and allow legacy Objective-C/Cocoa apps to continue to grow and thrive. Microsoft is a prime example of how a company could pull it off.

I think it’s kind of nice being a new developer to Apple’s platforms. I don’t have 20+ years of baggage like I do with Windows. It’s been so much easier to move from Objective-C to Swift because of it. Well, that and being most familiar with C++ made the transition to Swift feel more natural to me.

Whatever Apple has in store for us, be it the growth of Cocoa, a new Swift centered framework, or a Swift only framework, I’m ready for it and welcome it.