I used to write apps for both Windows and Mac using Real Basic - but stopped back in 2013 (opting to use Windows-only tools as that is what my employer - a University - uses and supports).
I still have RBasic running on my old Mac…and can still compile apps for both Win and Mac that work fine on current versions of OSX and Win10 (much to my surprise!).
It looks like I will be needing to create more software that will work on both platforms (my students seem to buy Apple Macs thse days, but the university uses Windows PCs). My question is…given the cost (to me) of upgrading from RBasic to Xojo is around £200 pounds sterling, is it worth it?
Is the toolset and technologies in Xojo worth the upgrade? I only ask as I have been ‘out of the loop’ with cross-platform development for a while.
The other consideration is that I want the apps I write to work on both platforms for a few more years. I’m sure the apps from RBasic are probably 32-bit?
My unregistered ‘demo’ version of Xojo Desktop (installed on my high spec Windows machine) does seem far prettier and slicker than the old RBasic.
If you need to support / develop for modern Mac’s you will want a newer version
2013 used Carbon for its UI framework for macOS
That framework has been completely deprecated and discontinued by Apple
As well you MUST now support 64 bit macOS applications for modern versions of macOS
And there are other changes as well (like requiring notarization etc)
Thanks Norman. I don’t use Apple Products as much as I used to. I know that Microsoft are looking to phase out 32-bit apps in the future (Story Here) but wasn’t sure if Apple are going to ‘force’ it. I don’t want to waste time compiling for Mac if the apps no longer work in one or two years. The old RBasic apps do still seem to work in Mojave which my 2013 Mac Mini is running. I can update to the latest (Catalina) but each time I update some apps are lost (deemed incompatible). Despite complaining about student loan fees, many students pay the premium to buy a Macbook rather than a cheaper Windows laptop which is surprising. Even my postgrads buy Macbooks - and then complain they can’t run specialist data analysis or GIS software that needs a PC - so they buy Parallels. When I need to write software utilities for them, I write Windows apps - but using Parallels is a pain when the datasets are sometimes many gigabytes in size.
Markus, I write software all the time - so the issue becomes one of cost Vs future-proofing and ensuring whatever OS Apple are using in a year or two, my compiled apps will still run OK. If Apple moves away from Intel chips as I have heard, would current Xojo apps still work?
They did
macOS 10.15 is 64 bit only and 32 bit software will not run
macOS has been 100% 64 bit since macOS 10.7 in 2011 and 32 bit support has been on life support ever since
And now its gone so any software created with 2013 will not run on the newest versions of macOS
My old “expensive” macbook pro which I bought in 2012 I literally just quit using last week and am giving it to my daughter
My cheap HP desktop, which is about 4 years newer, runs Windows 10 slower than my old MBP + Parallels
Multi GB data sets arent an issue since you can mount the mac OS file system as a remote volume in Parallels and access it as if its a local drive
I do that all the time
And when Windows needs a reinstall, as its wont to do from time to time, its a quick process
I have a fresh clean Windows VM set aside that I can clone and it takes about 5 seconds to return to a clean Windows install
Thanks Norman. I didn’t know that had already happened. That renders all my older Mac software obsolete.
I think that answers my question and makes the jump to Xojo a done deal!
[quote=491770:@Jeff Tullin]And yet their latest surface pro X is an ARM chip and the intel emulation is 32bit only.
It cannot run the 64 bit versions of apps![/quote]
Yes, they can, but they must be native ARM64 apps, running natively, not x86 emulated under ARM. Xojo, currently does not offer ARM64 Windows options, just in case someone asks.
MS will never drop 32bit app support, there’s too many legacy apps out there. As for Xojo dropping support for a 32bit edition in windows, this is also a mistake <https://xojo.com/issue/58251>
Not for me, at least. Hold some money to buy a Mac in the beginning and then you can use it more than 10 years (=not buy another computer for 10 years) and, with Parallels or other virtualisation applications, you can have Mac OS, Windows and Linux (and more) on a single OS. And, if you like to use Macs, that’s the only way anyway.
