[mikehall314]

Every so often I get weirdly obsessed with Objective-J, which "has the same relationship to JavaScript as Objective-C has to C". It is (was?) an absolutely bonkers project. I think it has more or less died since 280 North was acquired.

https://www.cappuccino.dev/learn/objective-j.html

[0x457]

Didn't expect to see cappuccino mentioned ever again. It was so wild, you can use AppKit documentation for cappuccino. Apps were so pretty and yet so fast.

I remember back in 2009 I really liked their coffee machine icon. I emailed the devs, they referred me to some design studio, and then to my surprise they replied and said that it's Francis Francis X1. Now I'm looking at it in my home office.

[ihumanable]

Same. I remember when this first came up and I was like "this is so weirdly interesting."

Sad that they got acquired because it was just fascinating what they were doing, even if I was never going to use it.

[zffr]

Holy shit, it’s still being actively developed and maintained https://github.com/cappuccino/cappuccino

[Towaway69]

More amazingly the guy doing the most recent maintaining[1] is a medical Professor at Freiburg Uni.

[1]: https://github.com/daboe01

[vintagedave]

And wow, it's basically a web version of Cocoa! Check this out: https://ansb.uniklinik-freiburg.de/ThemeKitchenSinkA3/

[samesimilar]

Anyone know if this is or ever was the basis for Apple's iCloud web apps on iCloud.com (e.g. Keynote / Pages / Notes etc.)? Those apps are heroic attempts to replicate the desktop app experience in the browser. I'm curious what web framework is underlying it. Side note - if I could install 3rd party apps w/ similar UIs in my iCloud dashboard that would be interesting.

[mikehall314]

I think originally Apple was using SproutCore, which had similar aspirations to produce "desktop quality" web apps, and was one of the early frameworks to implement things like two-way data binding. This was back when iCloud was called MobileMe.

SproutCore 2.0 became Ember.js 1.0, but I don't know if Apple are still using it.

[MBCook]

Oh wow I didn’t know that’s where Ember came from.

[mikestew]

Cappuccino was not an Apple project, so I doubt that is what Apple used to develop those projects. That, and 280 North eventually got acquired by Motorola.

[sgt]

Weren't they acquired by Motorola?

[mikehall314]

Yes, after which they announced they were canning their "Atlas" project, which was meant to be an Interface Builder for the web. Motorola decided they wanted to keep the technology in house.

No idea if they ever did anything with it!

[tumultco]

Best I can tell, it turned into Google Web Designer!

I'm on the outside, but best I can tell:

- You're thinking of a UI design tool called "Ninja"

- Google purchased Motorola Mobility and the Ninja project got cancelled

- Google launched Google Web Designer, that basically had an almost identical UI. As far as I can tell the internals are different, but probably shared some code or at least design work.

[mikehall314]

Possibly! The tool was definitely named Atlas when it was going to be an open source tool made by 280 North [1]. But it could have been renamed Ninja after Moto acquired it.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/03/atlas-a-visual-ide-f...