Steven Troughton-Smith

Translating an ARM iOS App to Intel macOS Using Bitcode →

May 18, 2019 · 12:22

Steven Troughton-Smith, on High Caffeine Content:

Of course, the specter of macOS on ARM has been in the public psyche for many years now, and many have pondered whether Bitcode will make this transition more straightforward. The commonly held belief is that Bitcode is not suited to massive architectural changes like moving between Intel and ARM.

I was unconvinced, so I decided to test the theory!

Of course he did. Since this is Steve, the results are predictable.

That was easy!

This means, in theory, that if Apple wanted every iOS app on the App Store to run on the Mac, today or in the future, they have a mechanism to do so transparently and without needing developers to update or recompile their apps.

Bringing iOS Apps to macOS Using Marzipanify →

March 4, 2019 · 09:46

Steve Troughton-Smith:

marzipanify is a tool I created to statically convert an iOS app built for the iOS Simulator to macOS. It means you can continue working on and building your existing iOS app from its existing project, using the existing iOS SDK, and just run the tool against the Simulator build to create a functioning Mac app. As a bonus, marzipanify will yell at you when you’re linking against a framework or library that doesn’t currently exist in the iOSMac runtime. It trivializes the process so you can focus on adapting your app rather than managing a build environment.

Curious to see what people will come up with before the expected Marzipan-for-developers announcement during this year’s WWDC. Having said that, I’m still partially horrified at the potential flood of poor Marzipan apps coming to the Mac, and how they’ll affect developers actually catering to the feature set and strengths of MacOS.

macOS Has a Future →

June 5, 2018 · 01:04

Steven Troughton-Smith:

Apple ticked a whole lot of my macOS boxes this WWDC; now, finally, it’s clear that macOS has a future — not as a dead platform, but as a pro-focused extension of iOS. The two OSes can grow together, as one, without iOS sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

I’m more hopeful about macOS’ future than I was for the last two years or so. Apple still has a long way to go but the signs we saw today are positive.