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Apple moving Finder to Cocoa

One of the last Apple-developed applications written in the Carbon programming environment has been rewritten using Apple's Cocoa programming environment, according to a report.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
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At long last, Apple has rewritten Finder using its Cocoa development environment for Snow Leopard, according to a report. Apple

Apple has finally rewritten one of the most important applications in Mac OS X in its preferred programming environment, according to a report.

AppleInsider reports that Finder, the ubiquitous file management application in Mac OS X, has been rewritten using Apple's Cocoa development environment in advance of the release of Mac OS X 10.6, otherwise known as Snow Leopard. Finder remained a stubborn holdout tied to the Carbon programming environment as Apple encouraged internal and external developers to switch to Cocoa over the last several years.

Finder, as shown in Mac OS X Leopard. Apple

Apple hasn't released a ton of formal information about Snow Leopard, but it has emphasized that the operating system will mark the completion of Apple's march toward a 64-bit release. The company has also said that application developers won't be able to write 64-bit applications in Carbon, which seems like Apple's way of pushing Carbon holdouts onto Cocoa.

It's not that easy, however, to switch large applications from one development environment to another: Adobe Systems thought it would be able to write a Carbon-based 64-bit version of Photoshop, but had to delay its plans for a 64-bit version of Photoshop for Mac OS after learning it would have to switch Photoshop to Cocoa.

Snow Leopard is expected to arrive "about a year" after it was announced last June at the Worldwide Developers Conference, which gives Apple a lot of wiggle room to work out the kinks. The new version will also support the ability to create separate Mac OS X images on disk partitions or external drives, according to AppleInsider.