Heron's Perch

Recently, I saw this article regarding ObjCs "end of life" from JetBrains.

The tiobe index seems to disagree. It’s also important to remember that jetbrains recently had to take down their AppCode application (which sucked) since it didn’t sell.
Jetbrains is the creator of the kotlin language so they have a vested interest in their android customers. I would take their “index” with a grain of salt to say the least.

While it is certain that Apple won’t be investing into thing beyond ObjC 2.0, it is foolhardy to think that ObjC is going away anytime soon since there is an enormous installed base of stable code, not the least of which is Foundation and AppKit themselves. Also consider CocoaPods.

So, no, not worried about it. Also… look at Java and COBOL. For years people have declared the end of both languages. Java is still popular, though not in vogue and COBOL while not one of the “cool kids” has literally billions of lines of code being maintained and new code being written every year. This (admittedly biased as it is by the CTO of MicroFocus) article gives some reasons why….

Here is the article about COBOL...

Plus… Apple already has a mechanism for automatically allowing objc and swift to work together. Take a look at the frameworks in Xcode and you’ll notice some files called *.apinotes. These are YAML files that are used by the compiler to allow easy integration into swift projects. So, essentially, if Apple writes an ObjC version of a framework they get the swift version for absolutely free (minus the cost of writing the YAML file). If they write a swift only version they don’t get that benefit.

So, yeah, in conclusion… Yes, ObjC is NOT on the rise, but reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated! ;)

PS. That being said, Apple dumping ObjC might spell a boom for us as all of the people who have installed codebases would suddenly need support for it either on macOS (on which we don’t currently work) or on other platforms. Something to think about…

PPS. All of the above being said. I admit I wouldn’t be terribly shocked to hear from Apple that “we have dropped support for the legacy objc language to provide you with the best support for our new swift language to make it the ‘greatest developer experience in the world’” or some grotesque BS like that. Lol

GC

Although Apple moving to Intel is good news, it's terrible news that Mac OS X will not run on plain vanilla Intel machines. Steve and Co. really need to get their act together and let this fly.

If people could buy OS X for their PC I bet you would get a lot of people switching to OS X who would never have thought about getting a Mac before. If the "essence of the Mac" is truly the operating system, as Steve himself said in the keynote speech, then why should Apple be afraid of this prospect?

Wow. In a stunning move Apple has decided to go to Intel processors. Being an ex-NeXT guy I can tell you that I've always known that OS X was leading a double life on intel processors. This might actually be some very exciting news.

A few questions come out of this event:

Q1) What does this mean for Linux?
Q2) How will this effect Windows?
Q3) What does this mean for GNUstep?

A1: Basically nothing. Mac OS X cannot compete with the price of Linux or the *BSDs. It's $129. FLOSS will always be very cheap or freely available.
A2: It will likely have a good deal of impact on Windows. There is already a project called MacWINE whose purpose is to allow the Mac to run Windows programs. Once OS X is running on Intel, I predict that this project or something very much like it will become a centerpiece of OS X's collection of standard programs. This would remove the common excuse most people give for not using a Mac: "There's no software for it."
A3: This could be an opportunity for GNUstep to shine. If GNUstep can become the equivalent of Wine for OSX, then it bodes well for GNUstep. Additionally, Apple is unlikely to port its APIs elsewhere (i.e. to other environments) so GNUstep will be necessary to fill this gap.