[yconst]

A related thought might be, once this is in place, how much work would it be so support Appkit (OS X) apps as well?

[pavlov]

The weird thing is that such a product -- AppKit on Windows -- existed and was made by Apple itself. It was called "Yellow Box for Windows" and shipped as part of WebObjects at one point.

Now the tables are turned, and Microsoft is building an "iOS Yellow Box" of their own.

[lukeh]

Indeed. Tell any ex-NeXT person circa 1996 that MS would be effectively building their own OPENSTEP for Windows and no one would have believed you.

Will be interesting see how they implemented it and whether they used Apportable's Foundation (which looks really well written).

[pavlov]

I wonder if part of the reason for last year's Swift announcement was that Apple got whiff of Microsoft's Obj-C Cocoa clone.

Swift was obviously half-baked when it came out. It's still far from production quality IMHO. But as a deterrent for this kind of compatibility action, Swift's existence is quite effective.

[dep_b]

- Swift uses the same compilers and frameworks

- Swift support s in Xcode and if Microsoft doesn't watch out their implementation might be miles ahead at their first try

- Swift 1.0 was a marketing 1.0, technically maybe a 0.2 release. I hope I don't need to touch it again in the next year even though I like the language principally