Re: When does Carbon completely?

On 08.10.2009, at 17:49, Eric Gorr wrote:
>  What I am now wondering is when does it go the way of "Classic" and  
> become completely unsupported and non-functional?


  I'd say, look at the schedules of Microsoft and Adobe. I don't think  
Apple will drop Carbon before those two big companies have moved their  
products to Cocoa. Since they have announced general timelines when  
that will happen, that outlines the minimum lifetime  the non-64 bit  
parts of Carbon still have.

  I also think that Apple will not change the system requirements of  
OS X significantly within one major revision, so that means 10.7 could  
be the earliest release. Of course, 10.7 is a flexible term: Apple is  
fully able to release a new 10.7 after 10.6.3, if they so feel like  
it, but of course there is a certain interval required between two  
major revisions if they don't want to risk angering their customers.

  As to a maximum timeframe, who knows? If there was a major  
architectural switch like PPC -> Intel, My guess would be 32-bit-only  
Carbon APIs would be the first thing to go. Same if Apple introduced a  
completely new hardware platform, like they did with the iPhone.

  Mind you: This has nothing to do with internal details of the menu  
bar on the Mac: It is much more effort to test and maintain code for  
public consumption, public APIs. I can entirely see us still having  
the same old "Carbon" menu bar code under the hood ten years from now.  
It just won't be a public API, and Apple will only be using it  
internally. If you look at the system frameworks, a lot of 64-bit  
HIToolbox actually exists, but isn't available. My guess is that's  
because Apple only developed and debugged it as far as they needed it  
for their own apps/system services, and didn't fix stuff they'd have  
to address to make it suitable for general consumption.

Cheers,
-- Uli Kusterer
"The witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."