MacApp

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MacApp is the object oriented application framework for Apple Computer's discontinued classic Mac OS. Released in 1985, it transitioned from Object Pascal to C++ in 1991's version 3.0 release, which offered support for much of System 7's new functionality. MacApp was used for a variety of major applications, including Adobe Photoshop^[1] and SoftPress Freeway.^{[citation needed]} Microsoft's MFC and Borland's OWL were both based directly on MacApp concepts.

Over a period of ten years, the product had periods where it had little development followed by spurts of activity. Through this period, Symantec's Think Class Library/Think Pascal had become a serious competitor to MacApp, offering a simpler model in a much higher-performance integrated development environment (IDE).

Symantec was slow to respond to the move to the PowerPC platform in the early 1990s, and when Metrowerks first introduced their CodeWarrior/PowerPlant system in 1994, it rapidly displaced both MacApp and Think as the primary development platforms on the Mac. Even Apple used CodeWarrior as its primary development platform during the Copland era in the mid-1990s.

MacApp had a brief reprieve between 2000 and 2001, as a system for transitioning to the Carbon system in MacOS X.^[2] However, after demonstrating a version at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2001, all development was cancelled that October.