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FEATURE
Opinion: Cocoa Frameworks on Windows?
Why Cocoa Isn't a Threat to REALSoftware
Issue: 5.6 (September/October 2007)
Author: David Mancuso
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 4,782
Starting Page Number: 14
Article Number: 5608
Related Web Link(s):
http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote
Excerpt of article text...
There's been some discussion online about REALbasic and the new Safari for Windows. More specifically, it seems that Apple has ported part or all of its Cocoa framweworks to Windows. At first glance, it seems that Apple has done this in order to assist in iPhone application development, since iPhone apps run on Windows. It seems strange that Apple would do this for only one reason, however. Is there more at stake? And is REALbasic, the only cross-platform development solution, in danger?
In addition to iPhone development, Apple has another reason to bring Safari to Windows. Apple apparently makes money from each Google search and the revenue resuting. John Gruber at
Daring Fireball estimates that Apple makes 25 million dollars per year from Safari (http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote ). Each new Windows user of Safari is a potential revenue generator for Apple. Windows UI issues aside (Safari breaks all kinds of Windows user interface guidelines, although it looks better on Vista than on XP), market share gain is market share gain.The threat remains however, at least in theory. If Cocoa frameworks for Windows becomes available to developers, Apple will have provided a multiplatform development tool. Just like RB. At least that's the way it could look on the surface. By extrapolation, some have already predicted the end of REAL Software. When you look deeper, there are a number of crucial problems with this analysis.
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