Is Logic A Cocoa App Now?

[Subtonic]

John Nack of Adobe has a post about the future of Photoshop on the Mac, and how the next version of Photoshop will not be 64-bit on the Mac.

 

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/photoshop_lr_64.html

 

The meat of this is because Apple had originally announced that they were going to get Carbon, the other OSX framework that most Adobe stuff is in, to be 64-bit. It ended up that Carbon does not have 64-bit support in Leopard.

 

So an app needs to be Cocoa in order to take advantage of 64-bit support now. Judging from the LOOK of Logic 8, it seems Logic is a Cocoa app now. There's a proper toolbar, when you cmd click the title you get a dropdown…Aperture now has that Cocoa-ish look - which makes me assume that all Pro-Apps will look like this soon.

 

Right now, Final Cut Pro does not, which makes me believe that it's a Carbon app, and thus does not support 64-bit.

 

Thing is, I'm not really interested in Cocoa for 64-bit support. All I know is that when I use a Cocoa app I seem to have a much better time using it than if it's not.

[Subtonic]

I don't mean to make it seem that Cocoa apps are MAGICALLY better than Carbon apps.

 

http://inessential.com/?comments=1&postid=3175

 

But, when you work with software that looks very similar it seems easier to get into a creative flow that you can carry from app to app. Seems like when I start Photoshop I think "Photoshop mode now."

 

I could be talking out one of these.

[ski]

I think Logic 8 is a Cocoa-based app now. I believe that someone offered this as an explanation as to why the window focus behavior has changed so drastically.

[Subtonic]

Besides 64-bit support, I'm wondering what the gains are for Apple to switch development of Logic to Cocoa.

 

I've been thinking about learning Objective-C (which is a stretch, since I'm like a Level 2 Javascript Warrior, in nerd speak, but I've gotten some ideas for applications), and this news with Adobe eventually needing to switch to Cocoa makes me think of other applications that faced huge development time either writing for Intel machines or migrating to Cocoa.

 

I suppose I understand the WHY of it - Carbon will eventually be phased out, but for sake of argument, if Carbon is just as well supported as Cocoa then what is there to gain from moving to Cocoa from Carbon?

[ski]

I dunno... this is going beyond my limits of geek-speek. But my understanding is that the Cocoa framework (or whatever it's called) allows for Logic's interface to have a look, feel, and (unfortunately) operation like that of other APple PRO apps. And I think "conformity" with those other apps was one of the things that Apple was going for with the release of L8. I could be wrong about this, but I seem to have this lasting impression that such is the case. Can't remember where I read this...

[sayenex]

reading this thread has made me coo-coo for cocoa puffs

[Subtonic]

And I think "conformity" with those other apps was one of the things that Apple was going for with the release of L8.

 

Isn't that sort of thing possible without Cocoa? iTunes has that integration with other iLife apps and it's still Carbon. So is the Finder.

 

Both the finder and iTunes existed in Pre-OSX days. And the first versions of Logic on OSX used Carbon because it was still a cross-platform app at the time.

 

When someone asks me which DAW they should get I almost always say if they're on Windows, get Sonar. If they're on OSX, get Logic. I never ever recommend Cubase. Besides hating it, it's kind of odd to me to want to work in an app that tries to be the same on BOTH Windows and OSX. So maybe Cubase is Carbon - BUT if Carbon is such a great thing for cross platform development, then why is Adobe's Lightroom in Cocoa on OSX? Lightroom feels nothing like an OSX app.

 

I guess it's as simple as Apple has made it clear that Carbon is on the way out, at least for big apps. And since Apple had to spend time refining/rewriting code to make Logic intel compatible, I suppose it figured they might as well migrate it from Carbon to Cocoa.

 

And before someone points it out, I guess there's no mistaking that

for asking these questions.

[Viv Savage]

I'm a Windows programmer and I haven't started on programming Mac yet. I will, but I have other things to do before I can invest time in getting into Objective c, XCode and the like.

 

But as far as I know the difference between Carbon and Cocoa is that Carbon is a translation of non-native code whereas Cocoa is native.

 

I don't know in how far you are familiar with MS-DOS and Windows, but the analogy I had in mind is that DOS was the predecessor to Windows. In Windows you had the choice of creating an actual Windows program ("Cocoa") or to create (or have create) a sort of front-end for the DOS program ("Carbon").

 

By going native you have the pros of working with the actual Operating System environment, whereas the Carbonized version is reliant upon a shell to make the translation for you. Is it going to translate correct? Or is it going to become gibberish?

 

In short, the benefit of writing Cocoa apps is that you have the control.

 

Of course what I just said is in real Sesame Street level language as the internal complications will make an explanation way more difficult.

 

Hope this helps.