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Is the Rhino Mac version done yet? It's Here!
Summary: Rhino for OS X is shipping as of June 2015.
For more information on Rhino for the Mac go here.
The Good:
- Many of the major technical challenges have been overcome, but …
The Bad:
… many months of work are still left to do.
Issues preventing quick development include:
- Since developing for the Mac is completely different from developing for Windows, we need to rewrite major portions of Rhino.
- Some of the 3rd-party libraries we use are not available for the Mac. We have to write libraries, buy a different one (with potentially different features), or leave out those features. This is not all sorted out yet.
- Testing on two different operating systems could delay release. We have not started final field testing yet, so we do not know how difficult this will end up being.
- Rhino takes advantage of Windows and will take more advantage with each new release. As time goes on, it will become more and more difficult to have the same functionality on both platforms. For example, Windows includes VBScript, so we need to write only a few lines of code to provide robust scripting in Rhino (RhinoScript). I’m sure that Mac has something like that, but it would likely have completely different functionality, requiring a rewrite of RhinoScript, and new documentation and examples. This is not sorted out yet.
- To feel like a real OS X application, the Rhino user interface will need to be completely rewritten. We don't know how to make sure that it feels right. We are hoping that Apple will help with this.
The Ugly:
- Tech support could be crazy challenging with two different feature sets, scripting languages, 3rd-party developer tools, and 3rd-party plug-ins.
- All 3rd party products will need to be completely rewritten for OS X. All of the development tools are different on OS X so we will need to write a new SDK for the OS X. This has not started yet,
- Some 3rd party developers are using the Windows .NET SDK. _Many these products will likely not be ported to OS X.
- Porting to the Mac requires a substantial up-front expense and three years of work just to find out what the real difficulties are.
Stay tuned.
rhino/nomac.txt · Last modified: 2020/08/14 (external edit)
