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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T h e   R o a d   L e s s   T r a v e l e d
Two kinds of OS X applications, and why they matter


Oct. 5, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard

   Apple had a difficult choice when it introduced a modern operating system for its Macintosh computers five years ago. The new system, which came to be named OS X (with the "X" pronounced "ten," as a Roman numeral), was built on Unix with a state-of-the-art user interface -- one so advanced that Microsoft is planning to copy it in the next version of Windows in a year or two.
   But what about older Macintosh software? There were millions of users of the old system, called Mac OS. If their software couldn't run on the new system, Apple would be abandoning the very users that kept it in business in the lean years of the 1990s.
   So Apple built an ingenious emulator into OS X called Classic. When an OS X user double clicks an old Mac OS program, Classic interposes itself between the operating system and the program, allowing the old program to run just as if the Mac were running Mac OS instead of OS X. (In Tiger, the current version of OS X, Apple made this emulation even better, running the old Mac OS program as if it were an old-looking OS X application. The Classic "layer" is confined to just the old program, which can therefore appear alongside OS X programs on the screen.)
   Most OS X users who upgraded from Mac OS to OS X probably already know about Classic. It's unobtrusive and works well. But Apple's dilemma -- how to keep users of older software happy while making a totally new operating system -- was solved in another way, too. Casual OS X users don't even know the second solution exists.
   It's called carbon. Programs created for Mac OS, the old operating system, can be tweaked relatively easily so that they can run under both the old system and OS X. This is called "carbonization." Programs that undergo this reformulation are carbon applications.
   In an ideal world, no new programs should be carbon applications. In the half-decade since Apple brought out the first version of OS X, software developers have had plenty of time to come up with pure OS X programs. These are called cocoa applications. They have a gorgeous liquid look and take full advantage of all the features of OS X. (I'll mention just one of those cocoa features in a minute. Stay with me.)
   But this isn't an ideal world for OS X users. For reasons of their own, some of the most prolific programmers for Apple's Macintosh continue to stick with Carbon applications.
   The best -- or perhaps worst -- example is Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, a semi-autonomous group within Microsoft. The Mac BU had a chance to upgrade the Mac version of Microsoft Office, called Office X, to cocoa when it created Office 2004. But it stuck with Carbon. (A Mac BU blogger says changing to cocoa would have been a lot of work. But isn't Microsoft the world's largest software company? One would expect it to be able to handle such a task.)
   If you use Safari, you're using a good cocoa application. Mail is another. Text Edit, the built-in word processor included with OS X, is one of my favorite cocoa applications.
   Microsoft Word X and Microsoft Word 2004 are my favorite examples of carbon programs that work well but would be quite a bit better as cocoa apps. if you have either version of Word, do a half hour of word processing with text edit and then switch to Word; you'll sense that you've gone back in time in a couple of ways. It's hard to define but easy to detect.
   Carbon applications can't handle many of the features of OS X. The dictionary built into Tiger springs into action by pressing Cmd-Ctrl-D -- but only in cocoa applications. It works in Mail, Safari and Text Edit, for example, but not in Entourage, Word or even the Finder. (The Finder is a carbon application. Shame on Apple! For a real cocoa replacement for the finder, try Path Finder from http://cocoatech.com.)
   Am I saying you should prefer Cocoa applications? Absolutely. But is it a big problem? No. But it does help explain why some OS X applications seem to have more features than others. And as the list of cocoa apps grows, we'll all benefit.