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Apple Win32 to OS X Porting Guide

BoomerSooner writes "Apple has released a Win32 to Mac OS X Porting Guide for C/C++ developers. This Guide is to get you started porting an existing procedural Win32 application written in C or C++ to Mac OS X. It looks like Apple is getting a bit more aggressive toward Microsoft."

8 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Step #1 by swordboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Get this!

    It does wonders for cross-platform development.

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    Life is the leading cause of death in America.
  2. Documentation Overdue by masonbrown · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's great to see all this documentation coming out. For the first couple of years, it was difficult at best to find any information about the internals of MacOS X. I still don't know of any decent reference for NetInfo administration. O'Reilly's helped alot though.....

  3. Marklar by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    >> It looks like Apple is getting a bit more aggressive toward Microsoft.

    The ultimate aggressive move would be to release Marklar, the x86 version of Mac OS X.

    --

    Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

  4. Re:Now, if only... by Cheesewhiz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For the last time...

    Apple is a hardware company. They make money from selling hardware, not software. OS X is great in part BECAUSE it's running on a unified Apple hardware architecture. Apple does NOT, however, make money by developing software that enhances their hardware, and then selling it to an unrelated platform. Sun is another example of this, I believe.

    As a result, OS X for x86 is not going to happen. If, by some freak of an accident it does, it's going to be on proprietary, Apple-designed hardware, and it won't run on any old machine.

    If you don't believe me, go to Apple.com's support or specs section and look at how much OS X depends on the concept of OpenFirmware. This, and speed, were two reasons why OS X was not installable on Macs older than the G3. Anything without OpenFirmware is out.

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    "Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
  5. Re:Usless tutorial for 90% of win32 programmers by oscarmv · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oh yeah, but the other 10% are the ones that do the interesting programs that 90% of the people use ;) I don't think Apple is particularly obsessed about getting VB developers to migrate at any rate...

  6. something that only . . . . . by kraksmoka · · Score: 3, Interesting
    a /.'er livin in a hole might say: It looks like Apple is getting a bit more aggressive toward Microsoft.

    didn't you see the switchers campaign????? isn't that just a bit aggressive?

    lemme guess, you've been wearing that Ellen Fiess t-shirt this whole time, and couldn't remember why or what the ad was about?????????

    --
    "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
  7. Re:Advice to Geeks about to try out mac osx by Etcetera · · Score: 3, Interesting


    13. Pitfalls

    Third, unfortunately, for backwards compatibility there are two different kinds of soft links on a mac. One is the usual unix soft link and the other is the "alias" function of the OS. The OS is smart enough to recognize the unix links and treat them as file aliases in the GUI. But the reverse is not true. Generally you are better off using the unix soft links.


    Great post, but I have to take issue with this one. MacOS aliases are far superior to symlinks IMHO. By storing the file ID and other meta-information about the original file (creation date/time, modification date/time, file name, size, creator, type, etc...), the alias has a much higher chance of identifying the proper file should the original file move.

    In fact, you can do pretty much anything to a file you want (short of moving it to another volume and deleting the original) and chances are the alias will still be able to track it down (and update itself) when you double-click it.

    It's an old-school MacOS concept that Unix geeks would do well to learn from.

  8. Classic by frooyo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I find it interesting that not only does the article mention the Classic API but almost promotes the API. They never mention that Apple wants to migrate away from Classic, they only mention the pro's and con's of Cocoa vs. Carbon