Cocoa IE and MSN Messenger...but not office or WMP?

[wdw_]

I was at macosXrumors.com and saw this article:

Microsoft to release Cocoa-based applications by next year. But what about Office?

That's what more than several sources say us since early September: Microsoft is definitely jumping on the Cocoa ship. The first products of Microsoft's first Cocoa experience may be Internet Explorer followed by MSN Messenger and though it's quite difficult to predict release dates let's say they should be released in late 2003 or early 2004.

That is good news! Isn't it? Well, now look at the bad news. Although at the moment Windows Media Player and Office development team is really active on new releases of these products that should come during 2003, it is still undecided whether these products will be continued on the Mac platform or not after 2004! That means that a Cocoa version of Office could at worst never see the light! According to a source, there has never been question of a Cocoa-based Office for the moment at Microsoft. The problem is that a such big application needs time and money to be totally re-programmed in Cocoa and Microsoft doesn't know if there will be enough market to make this product release financially viable. Competition from other companies like Sun or even Apple (as speculated on a recent article) may stimulate Microsoft but can even make it give up development efforts.

As for Windows Media Player, there are chances that a Cocoa-based release comes during 2004 and that this release will add it many features and new technologies that will make the Mac version competitive with other products like QuickTime or RealOne...

Awwh...I really wanted a Cocoa office!

[Koelling]

I'm really happy with my experiences with OpenOffice.org but that's still in X11. They plan to port to cocoa and then it will kick, but it still wont have fonts or the royalty based features. Then Star Office will use OpenOffice.org source to port their 50$ app with all the goodies. Then Microsoft will see they missed out on a trend (like they do all the time) and port theirs. Don't worry, you'll get your port, but it will be years from now and we'll have better, cheaper office suits by then.

Would it really be any more functional as cocoa? I might agree with them that it's not worth their efforts to port such a big project.

[GroundZeroX]

There really isn't much of a need for Office to go to Cocoa right now. It would take a massive effort, that would be probably be well over a year to do it. Another thing, is that I seriously doubt that Internet Explorer and MSN Messenger will go to Cocoa, because these are two things that are going to help make up MSN Explorer for Mac. MSN Explorer for Mac is set to be released in January, and if IE and MSN Messenger go to Cocoa at the end of next year, to early 2004, that means MSN Explorer would have to be re-written in Cocoa too, because it uses the engines of both to function. In addition to that, I believe I read somewhere, that Microsoft is planning on using parts of Entourage for the MSN Explorers E-mail program. All of this is supposed to be integrated together, and I just don't see Microsoft spending the money, or resources to pull all this stuff in Cocoa, when MIcrosoft is slowly beginning to question their future with Apple. From what I understand about programing, I don't think you can take something written for one API, and use parts of that programs functionality in something written in another API. I maybe wrong, but, if this wasn't true, then why don't all the Photoshop Classic plugins work in Photoshop for X?

[macosXrumors]

Microsoft doesn't need to port all its appz to Cocoa to still be able to integrate them together, for example, cocoa web browser can access windows media content although Windows Media player for Mac is carbon. It will be the same for Entourage.

The only advantage for Microsoft to switch on cocoa is actually ease of programming and easier integration with Mac OS X new technologies.

[wtmcgee]

i'd say IE 6 may be cocca... just a wild guess, but that could make sense.

[Krevinek]

Originally posted by GroundZeroX
From what I understand about programing, I don't think you can take something written for one API, and use parts of that programs functionality in something written in another API. I maybe wrong, but, if this wasn't true, then why don't all the Photoshop Classic plugins work in Photoshop for X?

Actually, you just write a Cocoa app and a Carbon app and they can talk together. The issue is not Cocoa/Carbon incompatibilities, but X/9 incompatibilities. 9 had transparent data types (you could see the internal structure) which is bad, you can't do that in X with system data. Classic PShop plugs use that older API, not something more portable like Carbon.

[GroundZeroX]

I stand corrected. I am just skeptical all together about Microsoft to be perfectly honest.

[fryke]

Microsoft has been one of the main pushers of Carbon. They pushed Apple to change this and that in the operating system as well. And they've been pushing Apple to push Mac OS X as the main operating system. And that's about all I love Microsoft for, so don't call me MS-Luva or something. :P

Carbon apps are behaving quite well. What do I care whether MS Office is Carbon or Cocoa? And frankly, I rather have a Carbon MS Office keeping up with the feature set of the Windows counterpart instead of no or late Cocoa MS Office.

If MS wants to do a Cocoa IE, that's okay with me, as I think IE is really a BAD Carbon app right now. But maybe they should rather clean it up instead of building something new with completely new bugs. Office v. X shows that MS *is* in fact capable of doing better Carbon applications.