Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

11 July 2003

 

A 150,000 potential new Mac OS X Developers Are Sitting in the Wings with their Apps - With one Tool they Can Compile for OS X in a Day and Suddenly Apple will Explode with Application Options

This Innovative Norwegian Software Company is Set to Rock the Mac OS X World

While Apple turned everyone's head during its developer conference in June with its stunning introduction of the Power Mac G5, a little known company called Trolltech introduced a landmark product for the Macintosh community entitled simply, Qt/Mac.

Qt/Mac is the Mac port of Qt, a single-source, multiplatform C++ GUI toolkit that allows applications to run natively on Windows, Linux/Unix, and Mac OS X, all from the same code base. With Qt/Mac anybody who has ever written a Qt application for Linux/Unix or Windows -- that includes over 150,000 developers -- has now written a native Mac OS X application too! Using the same source used in Qt you can now compile your app for native Mac OS X.

Apple Users Rejoice!

Just think? Over 150,000 developers of Qt can spit out a Mac OS X version of their programs within a day. Who are these developers? For the most part Qt was developed for the Linux community, enabling Linux developers to reach multiple versions of UNIX and eventually Windows. Of course, using Qt you can go the other way, as Brain Innovation did with their market leading medical imaging software for Windows. Brain Innovation's story is a very compelling one for Windows developers: essentially abandon Microsoft Foundation Classes for the Qt environment and then support both Windows, UNIX/Linux and Mac OS X all from the same code base. Even the Metrowerks Codewarrior IDE products doesn't do this. While CodeWarrior has been great for Macintosh/Windows development, an ultra multiplatform target environment doesn't yet exist.

Qt can be a Godsend for smaller Mac developers too -- who have struggled through the years and are hard pressed for resources during this sluggish economy. Not only can they think about a single tool for Mac and Windows, they can go ahead and target Linux as well! And vice versa for smaller Linux developers -- which most of them are.

Qt/Mac supports OpenGL support, the Aqua interface and its native widgets. Qt/Mac also supports Apple's Project Builder (IDE) for editing, compiling and debugging with their Qt/Mac application. As the site says emphatically, "if you already develop in Qt, you [can] take an existing source and port it to the Mac platform in a few hours."

Who are These Qt Developers?

As noted in a previous story, Qt developers include companies like Adobe Systems Inc.. However, other customers of Qt that may write software of interest to Mac customers include:

• Boeing
• Agilent
• ARM
• Cadence
• Canon
• Disney
• Earth Decision Sciences
• HP
• IBM
• JD Edwards
• Lockheed Martin
• NASA
• NEC
• Sharp
• Siemens
• Sony
• Stryker
• Synopsys

And many more smaller companies making very specific software applications for UNIX, Linux and Windows. Now all of these companies with their Qt-based apps can easily support Mac OS X. If you know of a software application that may be written in Qt and should be native on Mac OS X please write to us: info@architosh.com

To learn more go here: http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/mac.html

Architosh Analysis: Wow! The discovery of Qt has been a great one. We hope Apple works with them closely to get more integration with Apple's new Xcode. Xcode looks hot and has some great features, but developers have multiplatform target needs and Qt and Xcode could be an awesome fit.

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