Hello All,

I don't own a Mac, nor do I know anyone who does, but I'm getting curious
about them after a few of my customers/potential customers asked if I
offered Mac-compatible version of my software. I also like the look of the
new MacBook Pro now shipping.

I've been living happily in a world with just Delphi, DBISAM, ReportBuilder,
and DevExpress components for a few years now and I am completely ignorant
of Macs and what it takes to create software for them. This newsgroup is
filled with so many knowledgeable and friendly folks that I thought it might
be a good place to ask this question.

Has anyone ever moved their apps from the Windows world to Mac? How does
Linux relate/or not?  I'd appreciate any comments on this topic.  Thanks!

Sincerely
Rick Leffler

Rick


I also don't own a Mac or know anyone who does, but from reading bits on the web you'll have to look at something like Lazarus (sort of a Delphi clone)/FreePascal to get the cross platform capability. DBISAM will be out of it, you'll probably have to replace all your favourite libraries etc.

Roy Lambert

Rick,

I'm still a bit confused as to what .net does and doesn't do, but isn't .Net
supposed to end up allowing us to port our applications onto the Mac OS?

So, if you ported your apps to delphi .Net, and used Reportbuilder and
Devexpress .Net components, you'd just have to wait for v5 of dbisam (oh...
sorry elevateDB and you should be able to use the same environment you
have now. (I think)

Never developed for Mac myself, or done any .Net stuff todate - so it's a
stab in the dark for me.

Cheers

Adam.

"Adam H." <ahairsub4@rREMOVEMEspamSTOPPER.jvxp.com> wrote on Mon, 6 Mar 2006 12:02:51 +1100

>Rick,
>
>I'm still a bit confused as to what .net does and doesn't do, but isn't .Net
>supposed to end up allowing us to port our applications onto the Mac OS?
>
>So, if you ported your apps to delphi .Net, and used Reportbuilder and
>Devexpress .Net components, you'd just have to wait for v5 of dbisam (oh...
>sorry elevateDB and you should be able to use the same environment you
>have now. (I think)
>
>Never developed for Mac myself, or done any .Net stuff todate - so it's a
>stab in the dark for me.
>
>Cheers
>
>Adam.
>
>
Adam


I think you might be right, but there is also a few "end up"'s and too many "just have to wait"'s in there for my liking!

Cheers

Jeff
--
Jeff Cook
Aspect Systems Ltd
Phone: +64-9-424 5388
Skype: jeffcooknz
www.aspect.co.nz

My best bet for the nearest future, would be to use Wine to
run windows executables on Linux and Mac. Some of my
customers reported, that they were able to run my
program on Linux using Wine. Wine for MAC is still in alpha
stage development, you can read it here:
http://darwine.opendarwin.org/

I think it should be finished before .Net gets ported to Mac.
Of course, not every program will run, about 90% of them.

You can also install an emulator and run Windows inside Mac.
http://www.macwindows.com/emulator.html

Other then that your best bet would be using Java, which
is the standard way of developing for Mac now. Java's latest JDK
is pretty good and fast. You can develop with JBuilder or Eclipse.
As for the database, you should use something portable like
DB2, Oracle, Mimer or IB/Firebird. The DB connectivity in Java is
standard - JDBC. For small databases, there are plenty of
Java based solutions, like JDataStore.


Regards,
Michael



Rick Leffler wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I don't own a Mac, nor do I know anyone who does, but I'm getting curious
> about them after a few of my customers/potential customers asked if I
> offered Mac-compatible version of my software. I also like the look of the
> new MacBook Pro now shipping.
>
> I've been living happily in a world with just Delphi, DBISAM, ReportBuilder,
> and DevExpress components for a few years now and I am completely ignorant
> of Macs and what it takes to create software for them. This newsgroup is
> filled with so many knowledgeable and friendly folks that I thought it might
> be a good place to ask this question.
>
> Has anyone ever moved their apps from the Windows world to Mac? How does
> Linux relate/or not?  I'd appreciate any comments on this topic.  Thanks!
>
> Sincerely
> Rick Leffler
>
>

Adam


And how many write once - run anywhere environments are there today? Genuine ones I mean not ones where you need to tweak the code just a little bit

Roy Lambert

> And how many write once - run anywhere environments are there today? Genuine
> ones I mean not ones where you need to tweak the code just a little bit
1. Java - 100%.

Also Mozilla, but I'm not sure about tweaking code - the interface part should
work anywhere. The problem is - even with Windows - if you develop with XP in
mind it won't work on W2k or W98 - you will not have all the same subsystems.
Needless to say Linux, Mac, Solaris, BSD, WinCE, etc. - you can only use common
denominator approach, which may not be suitable for many applications.
Thus, in Java mouse will only have 1 button, whether you like it not.


Michael

Michael


Java - hmm. I think Sun won the battle with M$ so I suppose there's only the one flavour.

Roy Lambert

Rick,

<< a few of my customers/potential customers asked if I offered
Mac-compatible version of my software >>

Yes, I am in the same position. Except the "asking if" is more like "insisting that",
because my customers sell consumer software and they want to cover both Win and Mac.

We never saw a demand for consumer software under Linux, but the Mac is a *market*.
Our problem is that we had a steep learning curve getting Unicode to work under Delphi
and Win 9x, and I foresee exactly the same pain when we try to develop multilingual apps
for the Mac.

And if I can avoid carrying all that .Net baggage around, I'd prefer to do without it.
Cowardly? Maybe. But a plain Pascal development environment for the Mac would make
life easier.

Regards,
Dan

Lexicon Software Ltd, UK

> And how many write once - run anywhere environments are there today?
> Genuine ones I mean not ones where you need to tweak the code just a
little bit

Oh, thousands of them. Almost every application I currently own (and have
written) runs on Windows 98, 2000 and XP!  

I see your point though, and understand your sceptisism. I said what I've
heard todate, and understand to be the proposed future - but i still
struggle to see how in the end, Microsoft expects to benefit from allowing
us to write applications that run on Operating systems where they don't get
paid. (such as Linux and MacOS)

Cheers

Adam.