How viable is Cocoa development?

FROM : David Niemeijer
DATE : Fri Jan 25 20:09:09 2002

Hi,

Not so long ago (Oct 2001) Apple ended MacApp development which has
caused us to loose a lot of time. We are now looking for an
alternative application framework for Mac OS X development and are
faced with a choice between Carbon based PowerPlant and Cocoa.

We have worked a lot of with PowerPlant but always felt that it takes
too long before new OS developments are incorporated. Cocoa in that
sense seems very attractive. However, we are concerned that Apple
will pull the plug out of Carbon or Cocoa at some point to reduced
development costs. It did so with MacApp so why not with either
Carbon or Cocoa. As the majority of the large software companies seem
to go for and depend on Carbon it does not seem very likely that that
plug will be pulled any time soon. While Apple would like us all to
move to Cocoa we have the impression that there are very few major
vendors building Cocoa applications, so it seems that plug may be a
lot less firmly fixed despites Apple's current rhetorics.

So my questions to you as Cocoa developers are:

1) Whether there are any "big names" depending on Cocoa right now?

2) Why we should move to Cocoa if we want to do OS X only development
and optimally exploit the potential of OS X?

3) Why Apple will "never" unplug Cocoa

Thank you for your time,

david.