Carbon (API)
| Carbon | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Apple Inc. |
| Release | 2000 |
| Final release | macOS Mojave
/ 2019 |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Classic Mac OS, macOS |
| Type | Software framework |
| License | Proprietary |
Carbon is a discontinued C-based application programming interface (API) developed by Apple for Mac OS X. Introduced to ease the transition from Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9, it enabled developers to port ("carbonize") existing applications to Mac OS X while maintaining compatibility with the classic Mac OS. Carbon complemented Cocoa, the object-oriented API inherited from NeXTSTEP, which became Apple's primary application framework.
As developers increasingly adopted Cocoa, particularly following the introduction of iOS, Carbon's role diminished. Apple never released a 64-bit version of most Carbon APIs, deprecated the framework in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in 2012, and removed it entirely with macOS 10.15 Catalina in 2019, leaving Cocoa as the primary native API for Mac application development.