Scuttlebutt Regarding Apple’s Cross-Platform UI Project
There is indeed an active cross-platform UI project at Apple for iOS and MacOS. It may have been codenamed “Marzipan” at one point, but if so only in its earliest days.
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I don’t have extensive details, but basically it sounds like a declarative control API. The general idea is that rather than writing classic procedural code to, say, make a button, then configure the button, then position the button inside a view, you instead declare the button and its attributes using some other form. HTML is probably the most easily understood example. In HTML you don’t procedurally create elements like paragraphs, images, and tables — you declare them with tags and attributes in markup.
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It’s a 2019 thing, for MacOS 10.15 and iOS 13. I would set your expectations accordingly for this year’s WWDC.
Sounds like that‘s referring to a pair of separate projects (known alternately as “Amber,” “Infrared” and “Ultraviolet”) from the Swift team. Not the same as the iOS apps on Macs initiative. There are many moving pieces with a major multi-year, multi-step project like this.
This initiative likely intends to replace NIB files with Swift, linked to Interface Builder, which could allow developers to declare their UIs by hand or by using the existing visual tools, much like XAML on Windows.
A declarative control API, especially using a markup language like XML, opens up a lot of tooling possibilities. Apple could extend Interface Builder to create these declarative APIs, but I would love them to return to more powerful standalone UI tools. When Microsoft unveiled XAML, they also unveiled a tool called Sparkle, which eventually became Microsoft Expression.
Some kind of higher level declarative API atop Auto Layout sounds great. I really hope it’s not a markup language. That seems only marginally better than what we have now with nibs. The are pros and cons to using data vs. using code, but I think technologies like Auto Layout and Swift Playgrounds can eliminate most of the advantages of data, making it possible to unleash the power of code.
We don’t know what it is. But my guess — based on my 38 years of writing code for Apple computers — is that it’s something you can use along with UIKit and AppKit, and not a wholesale replacement.
Hmm. I’m inclined to trust @gruber’s sources here to a point, but I nonetheless feel like it’s suicidal for macOS to let this rumor be out there but not launch in 2018.
They could have made a more explicit attempt to tamp down that rumor at the time, for one thing - leak to someone like yourself that no, AppKit is AppKit and UIKit is UIKit and you should keep writing Mac apps.
In my experience they don’t do that. Because if they did that to handle false rumors they’d give away when rumors are spot-on with their silence. The only rational strategy is silence, with rare exceptions.
Previously: Apple Rumored to Combine iPhone, iPad, and Mac Apps to Create One User Experience.
Update (2018-05-01): Dave Winer:
Reading Brent’s piece about Mac development made me think about the ideal, what I really want from being a developer for as long as I’ve been a developer. The thing that got me started was the independence of it. I could have taken a job at Bell Labs or some big mainframe or minicomputer company, and had a nice career being pushed around by bosses at big companies. But I went for PC development because it was something I controlled. I could do what I wanted. Make my own art. The things I wanted to do were things no company would approve of, they had no way of understanding it. And at first it was lovely. Then the corporate bosses at the PC companies started pushing us around and it turned to shit.
Update (2018-05-02): Mark Bernstein:
When personal computing got started, you could make pretty serious money by creating a good tool that people needed. Dave did that with MORE. Dan Bricklin did it with VisiCalc. Mitch Kapor with Agenda. There were lots more. No guarantees, certainly, and some good and smart people never got the big payday, but it was a real possibility.
That’s gone. The real money in iOS software comes from writing frauds and manipulating sad psychological quirks; it turns out that just about nobody makes a living, much less a killing, designing great iOS software. The economics are better on the desktop, but not much better.
The big fear from the iOS-macOS rumor is that Apple will destroy that, that they’ll cripple the Macintosh so badly that we’ll be left with a complete wasteland of 99¢ junk apps. There’s no place to run, no other viable desktop with a future.
See also: Accidental Tech Podcast.
