Carbon was an API for developers to update their applications that used the Classic API to be run without the Classic emulator. Carbon (Mac OS 8.5 up to and including Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard). Apple has long since stopped support of the Classic API and Classic emulation in Mac OS X.Ģ. When Mac OS X first came out, users and developers had a huge investment in software written for Mac Classic OS and Mac OS X used to have an emulation mode so that users could run their old software. Developing for the Classic API is no longer done. There used to be three separate APIs for developing a Mac application with a GUI:ġ. Before you learn Mac programming you must know the basics of C since it is the basis for Objective-C. Objective-C entered Mac OS X and has ancestry in NeXT. Objective-C is the language most commonly used in Mac OS Programming. See Programming:Objective-C for a lesson on the basics of Objective-C may also be of assistance. Using both Objective-C and C++ is called 'Objective-C++' and is considered to be optional when developing software for Mac OS X: C++ See: Objective-C.Ĭ++ can be used in developing for the Mac, but generally, it is used in addition to Objective-C rather than being in place of Objective-C. Objective-C includes everything that plain C can do, and adds object-oriented programming. The most popular languages for use on the macOS platform is Objective-C which could be thought of as Mac OS X's 'native language' since the Mac OS X libraries, or 'frameworks', all have an Objective-C interface. Mac OS X applications are developed using Objective-C though there are other possible programming languages that could be used. Anybody can develop applications using Apple's free development tools which includes XCode. Cocoa applications include: Finder, Mail, Address Book, Safari, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel. Types of Software for Mac OS X Applications Īpplications are what people generally think of when they think about software for Mac OS X.

People generally think of applications, but we'll briefly cover some of the other kinds. There are many different kinds of software that can be developed for Mac OS X. Specifically, a modified FreeBSD operating system called 'Darwin'.

It was originally a system designed privately by Apple Inc, however with Mac OS X, it has been based on Unix. MacOS is the primary operating system for the Macintosh computer.

C programming in macbook