# What do you do to run Carbon apps?



## rharder (Jul 23, 2001)

I'm actually in OS 9.1 now. Wow.

I thought I was supposed to be able to run Carbon apps in 9.1, but all I see is iTunes.app or Internet Explorer.app, and double clicking on them gives me a "cannot be used with this OS" or something.

I've got the latest CarbonLib installed--actually, all of the extensions that came with 9.1 are installed.

So, do I have to do something special to launch a Carbon app?

-Rob


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## endian (Jul 23, 2001)

You should just be able to double click carbon apps.
I believe iTunes and IE are OSX-only Carbon apps, so that's why they're showing up as packages in 9


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## apb3 (Jul 23, 2001)

I think he's correct about them being X only. Just tried it. Same result you describe.

Maybe I'm confused, but in iTunes' case wasn't there something in the installation readme or maybe in the install itself that said/warned not to update your 9 version to the new version if you wanted to use it in 9? I seem to remember something like this. As I did not replace the iTunes in my OS9 app folder on my OS9 HD - only the iTunes in the X app folder on my X HD, it seems to make sense. 

Memory....hazy........must...stop......drinking


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## rharder (Jul 24, 2001)

Is StuffIt Expander the same way? I thought I could share the same app between 9 and X.

So...what's the point of Carbon? Is it that you compile a 9 and X version still, but you do it from the same source?

-Rob


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## endian (Jul 24, 2001)

You _can_ write a single Carbon binary that runs across 8-X, but those are usually the horribly sucky Carbon apps that noone wants to use.


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## Murderer909 (Jul 26, 2001)

basically if it is Cocoa or something, it won't work in OS X. OS X is not backwards compatible, at least fully. But you can run carbon apps like NAPSTER or AIM. In AIMs case, it works better using the OS 9 native version rather than the classic version. Stuffit Deluxe 6.0.1 is carbonized. I dont believe that itunes nor IE for OS X are carbon apps. I may be wrong but...


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## endian (Jul 27, 2001)

iTunes & IE are quite firmly Carbon apps.

Interesting note - in the iDVD demo in Steve's keynote the version he was using had drawers. Considering how much Steve likes to talk about how complicated it is and how they're using groundbreaking algorithms, I doubt they rewrote all that for Cocoa...


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## Matrix Agent (Jul 27, 2001)

I've come t the conclusion that anything using the suffix ".app" cannot be used in OS 9. It's really to bad, I waned to see if IE was capable of busting two different OS's


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## ksv (Aug 6, 2001)

nonononononononononono...
The apps with the .app suffix is Cocoa apps, not carbon apps, and cocoa apps can only be used in OS X. In the same way, Classic apps can only be used in OS 9 (or earlier). Only Carbon apps can be used in both OS 9 and OS X.


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## Matrix Agent (Aug 6, 2001)

What about iTunes and IE? I thought that they were both carbon apps?


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## endian (Aug 6, 2001)

the .app extension just means the app is structured as a bundle. it doesn't necessarily say anything about the API it's written to.


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## theCaptain (Aug 20, 2001)

Appleworks is  a .app application and I use the same one in both OS 9.1 and OS X [the difference is the OS X version is 6.2],  .app applications can be used in OS 9.1.
I have downloaded a lot of OS X applications that were written in carbon, off download.com and they all seem to work perfectly well in OS 9.1.


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## RacerX (Aug 26, 2001)

We are now actually dealing with four different type of application environments now.

(1) The good old Mac OS app that runs fine in OS 7-9 and needs Classic to run in Mac OS X.

(2) Carbon compatible apps that use the Caron libs to run and can run on OS 8.6-X (in most cases, some may still invoke Classic).

(3) Mac OS X native Carbon created using project builder and interface builder and are designed to take advantage of the Mac OS X Aqua interface (like using sheets instead of dialog boxes and windows for some functions).

(4) Cocoa (formerly Yellow Box, formerly OpenStep), again a Mac OS X native environment that has a different feature set (like application cooperation) than Carbon.

And some may want to add Unix to the mix, and maybe even X-Windows, but that is moving out of the main stream application environments for most Mac users.


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