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I'm still hoping for API convergence between the Mac and iOS, opening the road to universal Mac/iOS apps. People keep bringing up how iOS is designed for touch

I'm still hoping for API convergence between the Mac and iOS, opening the road to universal Mac/iOS apps. People keep bringing up how iOS is designed for touch and the Mac for mouse and keyboard, and how screen sizes are different and all that, but those differences can all be accounted for. Microsoft have shown it possible. Why? Extend the Mac software ecosystem and allow for multi-paradigm devices, like the iPad Pro should have been.

zw 11y ago
I think it's gotta come from the other direction, ultimately. They're working hard to push AppKit forward and bring it into the future, but I think UIKit will figure out the hard problems (menuing, keyboard navigation, pointer input) before that. I think pointing at Microsoft as having the solution to this problem is disingenuous. Modern Windows has had so many false starts, and I still feel their multi-modal devices are inherently compromised — jack of all trades, master of none.
LeoNatan25 11y ago
Possible? Maybe. Desirable? No, not all. Don't get me wrong, AppKit is very much in need of a modernization, and it definitely is not as actively improved upon as UIKit is, but the two have very little in common from a design UI/UX standpoint. What has Microsoft shown with their multi-paradigm direction? That lowest common denominator is bad. And same would be for a possible "UXKit".
- Aleman360 11y ago
  Why would you want different UI framework for each screen size/input device type? Seems silly to have one set of API's for small touch devices and a completely different one for large mouse-driven devices. Shuts the door to large touch devices and small mouse-driven devices. iPad Pro is already awkward. At that size, a mouse would be nice, along with lots of other desktop UX paradigms. > What has Microsoft shown with their multi-paradigm direction? Seems to be working. Windows Shell, modern Office, Edge, and Xbox dashboard are all using the same UI framework.
  - jimbokun 11y ago
    Define "working". Since the introduction of iOS, Apple has seen a lot more growth and profits than Microsoft, and became the largest corporation in the world (by market cap). I do think Microsoft's latest multi-paradigm devices (like Surface Pro), are gaining traction. But overall Apple has outpaced Microsoft while having different UI frameworks for mobile and PC.
    - Aleman360 11y ago
      I'm talking from a dev perspective, not a business perspective.
      - an_account 11y ago
        From a dev perspective, why not just have one device only? Then we wouldn't have to worry about different screen sizes or input devices.
      - jimbokun 11y ago
        From a dev perspective, the best development environment is the one with the most customers willing to buy your products. Other criteria come pretty far behind that.
- dharma1 11y ago
  Android apps work pretty well with mouse, on desktop. I think the baseline toolkit could be the same, with some extra components for different form factors. We're working on something like that (multi form factor UI toolkit) for Ubuntu, with Qt. Will see how far it goes.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    Android apps work pretty well with mouse, on desktop. No! No they absolutely don't! Almost every Android app is clearly design for use on a touch device. Every aspect of the design is intended to be touch-first. That's totally fine – but the fact that they can be used with a mouse on a desktop does not mean that they work pretty well. The user interface paradigms are really very different.
    - dharma1 11y ago
      Have you actually tried using Android with a mouse?
      - Alphasite_ 11y ago
        Yes. It is awful.
- chrisdevereux 11y ago
  Exactly. Apart from anything else, we already have HTML. Why would you want to write a lowest common denominator UI that only targets the Apple ecosystem? You'd be getting neither the benefits of native nor the benefits of cross-platform.
- sdegutis 11y ago
  AppKit is dead. Apple is using WebKit for all their UI needs, these days. Goodbye AppKit, you were never that great, but you served your purpose, and had a relatively long and fulfilling life. RIP.
  - LeoNatan25 11y ago
    Huh? What are you talking about?
  - CountSessine 11y ago
    I don't think that this is true...
- micheljansen 11y ago
  I agree that it's a terrible idea to put a touch UI on a mouse-operated desktop and pretend you're done. That doesn't mean you always have to build two completely separate apps or UIs for each platform though. The differences between touch/mouse incarnations of basic components, such as lists, buttons, scrollviews etc. can often be resolved with adaptive design. Apple has already put the basics in place to allow for adaptive apps that scale from the smallest iPhone to the largest iPad. Doing the same for touch -> keyboard/mouse UI is not unthinkable.
jmcmahon443 11y ago
I don't understand why this post is titled "UIKit for the Mac". Apple already made UIKit work the same for iOS and OS X. EDIT: I'm wrong!
- bonaldi 11y ago
  What are you talking about? It hasn't done anything of the sort. It's made some of the AppKit APIs similar to how they operate in UIKit, but it's a long way away from "work the same"
  - LeoNatan25 11y ago
    Read about UXKit; Apple did limited work on porting a small set of UIKit to OS X. But it's hardly complete or ready, and I don't think it's under active development as a possible public framework.
  - jmcmahon443 11y ago
    Thanks for clarifying so this is a rework of UIKit for OS X? Rather than an layer over AppKit to make it "the same" as UIKit.
makecheck 11y ago
There is a decent amount of convergence in game development, since Sprite Kit has SKView, SKColor, etc. (whose base classes vary by platform but most methods are the same) and important frameworks like AVFoundation are identical. The Mac has shown hints of iOS influence when looking at recent changes to NSViewController and the addition of other standard view-controller-based classes. Realistically, though, I like Apple's separate-but-similar approach. I don't want Mac applications shoehorned in from iOS by lazy developers, I want applications that were actually written for the desktop.
marssaxman 11y ago
Microsoft have shown that it is possible, and that it is terrible. Touch interfaces are a waste of the precise input methods and expansive real estate available on a desktop or laptop computer.
jimbokun 11y ago
This article about UXKit is a good summary of why this is a bad idea. http://inessential.com/2015/02/05/uxkit_skepticism http://inessential.com/2015/02/05/uxkit_skepticism (Found this by Googling UXKit, after reading about it for the first time in this discussion.)
pjmlp 11y ago
Yes, but it has been a pain road. Windows 10 is the first one where you can finally use the same APIs for the store, phone and desktop.
- titanix2 11y ago
  Which is not really that usefull given how different usage and behavior a desktop and a smartphone app have. Even as a former Windows Phone hobbyist developer I don't have any interest in this API because I think the programming model in totally wrong and too limited for desktop programming. Not to mention the UI components which are not suited to big screens. The biggest proof of failure is probably the fact that in 4 years of Windows Runtime existance Microsoft itself didn't bring any killer software (Visual Studio for example) on it.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    People always mentioned killer software like Studio and Office, forgetting that one just doesn't rewrite software like that. For example Studio is still 32 bits, for many reasons, one of them being third party plugins that no one is going to re-write. Windows File Explorer and Edge are two UWP applications on Windows 10. Having separate XAML for mobile, tablet and desktop is no different than responsive HTML, with the benefit of being native. But what can I say, I love WinRT as it feels C++ Builder is vindicated.
mercer 11y ago
> Microsoft have shown it possible. I suspect Apple is perfectly happy to let Microsoft experiment with this until they figure it out (assuming they do). But from everything I hear they aren't quite there yet, and until they do, I'm happy that Apple is not using me as a beta-tester for such a 'universal interface'.

zw 11y ago

I think it's gotta come from the other direction, ultimately. They're working hard to push AppKit forward and bring it into the future, but I think UIKit will figure out the hard problems (menuing, keyboard navigation, pointer input) before that. I think pointing at Microsoft as having the solution to this problem is disingenuous. Modern Windows has had so many false starts, and I still feel their multi-modal devices are inherently compromised — jack of all trades, master of none.

LeoNatan25 11y ago

Possible? Maybe. Desirable? No, not all. Don't get me wrong, AppKit is very much in need of a modernization, and it definitely is not as actively improved upon as UIKit is, but the two have very little in common from a design UI/UX standpoint. What has Microsoft shown with their multi-paradigm direction? That lowest common denominator is bad. And same would be for a possible "UXKit".

Aleman360 11y ago
Why would you want different UI framework for each screen size/input device type? Seems silly to have one set of API's for small touch devices and a completely different one for large mouse-driven devices. Shuts the door to large touch devices and small mouse-driven devices. iPad Pro is already awkward. At that size, a mouse would be nice, along with lots of other desktop UX paradigms. > What has Microsoft shown with their multi-paradigm direction? Seems to be working. Windows Shell, modern Office, Edge, and Xbox dashboard are all using the same UI framework.
- jimbokun 11y ago
  Define "working". Since the introduction of iOS, Apple has seen a lot more growth and profits than Microsoft, and became the largest corporation in the world (by market cap). I do think Microsoft's latest multi-paradigm devices (like Surface Pro), are gaining traction. But overall Apple has outpaced Microsoft while having different UI frameworks for mobile and PC.
  - Aleman360 11y ago
    I'm talking from a dev perspective, not a business perspective.
    - an_account 11y ago
      From a dev perspective, why not just have one device only? Then we wouldn't have to worry about different screen sizes or input devices.
    - jimbokun 11y ago
      From a dev perspective, the best development environment is the one with the most customers willing to buy your products. Other criteria come pretty far behind that.
dharma1 11y ago
Android apps work pretty well with mouse, on desktop. I think the baseline toolkit could be the same, with some extra components for different form factors. We're working on something like that (multi form factor UI toolkit) for Ubuntu, with Qt. Will see how far it goes.
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  Android apps work pretty well with mouse, on desktop. No! No they absolutely don't! Almost every Android app is clearly design for use on a touch device. Every aspect of the design is intended to be touch-first. That's totally fine – but the fact that they can be used with a mouse on a desktop does not mean that they work pretty well. The user interface paradigms are really very different.
  - dharma1 11y ago
    Have you actually tried using Android with a mouse?
    - Alphasite_ 11y ago
      Yes. It is awful.
chrisdevereux 11y ago
Exactly. Apart from anything else, we already have HTML. Why would you want to write a lowest common denominator UI that only targets the Apple ecosystem? You'd be getting neither the benefits of native nor the benefits of cross-platform.
sdegutis 11y ago
AppKit is dead. Apple is using WebKit for all their UI needs, these days. Goodbye AppKit, you were never that great, but you served your purpose, and had a relatively long and fulfilling life. RIP.
- LeoNatan25 11y ago
  Huh? What are you talking about?
- CountSessine 11y ago
  I don't think that this is true...
micheljansen 11y ago
I agree that it's a terrible idea to put a touch UI on a mouse-operated desktop and pretend you're done. That doesn't mean you always have to build two completely separate apps or UIs for each platform though. The differences between touch/mouse incarnations of basic components, such as lists, buttons, scrollviews etc. can often be resolved with adaptive design. Apple has already put the basics in place to allow for adaptive apps that scale from the smallest iPhone to the largest iPad. Doing the same for touch -> keyboard/mouse UI is not unthinkable.

jmcmahon443 11y ago

I don't understand why this post is titled "UIKit for the Mac". Apple already made UIKit work the same for iOS and OS X. EDIT: I'm wrong!

bonaldi 11y ago
What are you talking about? It hasn't done anything of the sort. It's made some of the AppKit APIs similar to how they operate in UIKit, but it's a long way away from "work the same"
- LeoNatan25 11y ago
  Read about UXKit; Apple did limited work on porting a small set of UIKit to OS X. But it's hardly complete or ready, and I don't think it's under active development as a possible public framework.
- jmcmahon443 11y ago
  Thanks for clarifying so this is a rework of UIKit for OS X? Rather than an layer over AppKit to make it "the same" as UIKit.

makecheck 11y ago

There is a decent amount of convergence in game development, since Sprite Kit has SKView, SKColor, etc. (whose base classes vary by platform but most methods are the same) and important frameworks like AVFoundation are identical. The Mac has shown hints of iOS influence when looking at recent changes to NSViewController and the addition of other standard view-controller-based classes. Realistically, though, I like Apple's separate-but-similar approach. I don't want Mac applications shoehorned in from iOS by lazy developers, I want applications that were actually written for the desktop.

marssaxman 11y ago

Microsoft have shown that it is possible, and that it is terrible. Touch interfaces are a waste of the precise input methods and expansive real estate available on a desktop or laptop computer.

jimbokun 11y ago

This article about UXKit is a good summary of why this is a bad idea. http://inessential.com/2015/02/05/uxkit_skepticism http://inessential.com/2015/02/05/uxkit_skepticism (Found this by Googling UXKit, after reading about it for the first time in this discussion.)

pjmlp 11y ago

Yes, but it has been a pain road. Windows 10 is the first one where you can finally use the same APIs for the store, phone and desktop.

titanix2 11y ago
Which is not really that usefull given how different usage and behavior a desktop and a smartphone app have. Even as a former Windows Phone hobbyist developer I don't have any interest in this API because I think the programming model in totally wrong and too limited for desktop programming. Not to mention the UI components which are not suited to big screens. The biggest proof of failure is probably the fact that in 4 years of Windows Runtime existance Microsoft itself didn't bring any killer software (Visual Studio for example) on it.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  People always mentioned killer software like Studio and Office, forgetting that one just doesn't rewrite software like that. For example Studio is still 32 bits, for many reasons, one of them being third party plugins that no one is going to re-write. Windows File Explorer and Edge are two UWP applications on Windows 10. Having separate XAML for mobile, tablet and desktop is no different than responsive HTML, with the benefit of being native. But what can I say, I love WinRT as it feels C++ Builder is vindicated.

mercer 11y ago

> Microsoft have shown it possible. I suspect Apple is perfectly happy to let Microsoft experiment with this until they figure it out (assuming they do). But from everything I hear they aren't quite there yet, and until they do, I'm happy that Apple is not using me as a beta-tester for such a 'universal interface'.