S
Steven Troughton-Smith
blog.steventroughtonsmith.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2010
Steven Troughton-Smith, an Apple platform developer, writes about iOS and Mac development, old operating systems, and early mobile history.
What HN saysHN links it for the 2007 pre-iPhone Android prototype post and an iPhone speech synthesis API, and cites its old Mac development material.
17HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
16stories submitted
264story points
8 years agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
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- 22007's pre-M3 version of Android; the Google Sooner3 people · 8 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 3Building Classic Mac OS Apps in OS X2 people · 175 points · first shared 2015 · 20 comments on HN
- 4Lisa Pascal Development in Lisa Workshop2 people · 31 points · first shared 2014 · 6 comments on HN
- 52007's pre-M3 version of Android; the Google Sooner2 people · 4 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
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- 9PSA for Developers writing iPhone apps that are not Universal1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 10Nokia N9 - Meet MeeGo Harmattan1 people · 1 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 11Speech synthesis on iphone 3gs1 people · first shared 2012
What HN people wrote when they linked it
kitsunesoba · 2017-10-01
I can’t speak much for the rest, but old Mac codebases in particular hold up better than you might think. You can write an application that runs on every version of Mac OS from 1.0 (circa 1985) up to High Sierra with just a handful of conditionals through the use of Carbon [0]. Porting pre-OS X software should be similarly simple, given that it’s written in C or C++ (Pascal was somewhat popular for classic Mac apps, not sure what getting that code running on modern machines would look like).
When it comes to “new world” Mac stuff, the things keeping something written for OS X 10.0 from running on modern macOS have more to do with API deprecations than anything else. Objective-C is still widely used and is well supported (even with Swift’s growing popularity), so usually getting an old codebase of this nature running just means fixing a couple of deprecation errors, fixing a bunch of warnings, and hitting compile. The nature of change in the native sphere has largely been evolutionary, not revolutionary, so it’s largely stayed the same with new things being added. It’s not like the web where wheel reinvention and fads are a constant.
[0] http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/post/109040361205/mpw-carbon-and-…
mzs · 2013-12-19
I wondered what Sooner was like, closest I could find:
http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-version-of-a…
There is also a video, pretty similar device.
engrenage · 2013-08-26
You can't expect anyone to take this seriously. The hiptop was nothing like the iPhone.
And in 2007 before the iPhone was released Android looked like a blackberry clone: http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-version-of-a…
chime · 2012-03-28
During development, I used the hidden http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2009/07/speech-synthesis-on-iphon… API but that doesn't work anymore. I can't wait till Apple makes it available to us. Then I can give my app away for free if I want.