UIKit and AppKit still share a lot of concepts. Like in "AppKit contains all the objects you need to implement the user interface for a macOS app—windows, panels, buttons, menus, scrollers, and text fields" (by Apple documentation). And same UIKit is support the user interface. So what's the main difference between these two framework.
AppKit
AppKit is included in the OS X SDK only. It provides all the classes and controls you need for creating Mac applications. Most of these classes share a common naming prefix starts with NS and classes you will be working with include - NSView, NSButton.
UIKit
UiKit is the framework that iOS uses to provide its UI and its classes start with a UI prefix. For example, both frameworks have a class to represent color include UIColor, while other concepts are pretty unique to UIKit, such as its use of predefined controllers such as UINavigationController and UITabBarController
AppKit is much older and was developed for desktop machines, like Macintosh (Mac OS X) and (before that) NeXT.
UIKit is later, a deliberate reduction and rationalization of AppKit, developed for iPhones (iOS).
Appkit is for Mac OS SDK[Cocoa] and UIKIT is for iPhone/iPad [Cocoa Touch]
They are the same UI framework except that UIKit's views and controllers were specifically made for touch, while the AppKit equivalents were specifically made for the mouse or non touch .
Related
For an iOS app I use the Charts library from Daniel Gindi. I am currently migrating from UIKit to SwiftUI and would like to use iOS Charts from Apple which is available from iOS 16 onwards. The app targets iOS 15 + which forces me to keep Daniels Charts library also.
So basically I have two modules with the same name and concerning import statements cannot differentiate between the two. What can I do?
Module aliases we’re added 5.7 which exactly handle this situation.
Sorry if I use the wrong terminology, I'm not an iOS developer so I'm mapping everything back to equivalent features in Windows ...
If I write an iOS application that creates controls using standard UIKit functions, and I run that exact same application on various versions of iOS, will the application look slightly different on the different versions of iOS? Or does the application always use the styling of the version of iOS I select for the target version in Xcode?
And in a related question, is there a web site somewhere showing how the various controls have changed their look through the various iOS versions?
Generally no. Since iOS7 to current iOS release - all standard UIKit controls look the same. On iOS6 and lower things are drastically different. If you target iOS7 and up (As most devs do now since hardly anyone is on iOS versions lower) - you can be rest assured that all usage of standard UIKit controls will look exactly the same.
what is the easiest and fastest way to turn iOS project to work on OSX. I've already added OSX to project, and tried to use ios storboard. But it just load empty window. Is there any simply, tricky way to do this? I dont want to rebuild entire UI, and link all outlets, etc..
Although quite similar in some respect, iOS and OS X are completely different when it comes to interface. Main difference being that UIKit doesn't exist on OS X meaning that your UI isn't compatible with OS X.
All your UI code will need to be started from scratch but most of the backing logic should be ok depending on how you've architectured your application.
As mentioned by Mikael in the comments, AppKit for UIKit Developers is a great article for iOS Developers looking to expand onto OS X.
Also, Separated at birth: Why Apple won't merge OS X and iOS is also another good article to give you a better understanding on why it works like this.
I can find the UIKit header files but i'd like to see how some of the UIKit classes are being implemented because i'm trying to create some custom controls.
So basically i'm trying to find the UIKit .m files, where would they be located on my mac?
The source code (as hotpaw2 said) is only available to Apple, but there are multiple ways you can see what's going on:
Using the program class-dump (example output for UIKit: https://github.com/kennytm/iphone-private-frameworks/tree/master/UIKit/ ), you can view all the private methods and instance variables of the UIKit classes, to see how they implement them at a higher level.
Disassemblers, like IDA Pro ( http://hex-rays.com/ ) can disassemble and read the assembly-level code for the classes, although this is much lower level than is often useful.
So, while it's not as simple as opening up some .m files, it's certainly possible to see how Apple does things in UIKit!
They aren't on your Mac (in source form). Only Apple has access to most UIKit source. What you have on your Mac is already compiled into library binary files.
I have been searching around for a method to port an iOS xcode built project to OSX xcode project. Unfortunately, I have found that because there is no UIKit or storyboard for OSX xcode (just individual .xib's). Is there a way around this?
If you're a registered Apple developer there's a new video up that goes through some of the basics and the design patterns you should be aware of, just named "Bringing Your iOS Apps To OS X".
The UI paradigm of any non-trivial iOS applications is entirely different to that of one for MacOSX.
Necessarily, you will need to redesign the View layer of the application. However, the Model layer ought to cleanly port over and at least some of your controller classes might be reusable, although MacOSX doesn't have anything equivalent to a UIViewContoller.
Besides this, many of the frameworks your app might be using are either available for both iOS and MacOSX (usually in cut-down form on the former), or a similar.
If your logic and UI are well separated, you have a chance at some good re-use, but at a minimum you will need to rebuild the UI layers of your app; it's going to take time.
If you don't have the time to invest, and if you are willing to try something experimental, there are a couple 3rd party frameworks available that attempt to bridge the UIKit AppKit gap.
You can probably consider many of these as risky 'shots in the dark', but they are worth a look. Keep in mind the long term support ramifications as well.
Chameleon
UMEKit