This got me acquainted with the classic Mac OS, and I fell in love with the jan...

StilesCrisis · 2026-10-30T19:08:08 1793387288

Does it? I am pretty sure the entire Carbon stack is retired now.

deadnomore · 2026-10-31T01:10:39 1793409039

Yeah I think you are right, I should say that some of that code was ported and still survives today in 26 uses some of the same APIs and naming, but isn’t necessarily the same code from classic Mac OS. One example is RegisterEventHotKey.

StilesCrisis · 2026-10-31T11:57:59 1793447879

RegisterEventHotKey didn't actually exist in OS 9. It was added in CarbonLib only.

jjuran · 2026-10-31T13:10:19 1793452219

"CarbonLib" implies Mac OS 9 (or 8) — it's the classic Mac OS implementation of the Carbon API. The OS X implementation is Carbon.framework (or more precisely, various frameworks under its umbrella).

RegisterEventHotKey() is available "in CarbonLib 1.3 and later" according to Universal Interfaces.

StilesCrisis · 2026-10-31T14:22:38 1793456558

They moved it to HIToolbox when Carbon framework was eliminated.

This was never provided by classic Mac OS and many apps hacked it in by hooking Get/WaitNextEvent. In Carbon they didn't support this sort of "mangle the global system callbacks" shenanigans, but there was a real developer expectation of this API, and Apple was begging developers to port to Carbon. This API filled that gap.

wpm · 2026-10-31T14:55:31 1793458531

HIToolbox still lives in /System/Library/Frameworks IIRC

yjftsjthsd-h · 2026-10-30T19:05:02 1793387102

That surprises me; I assumed they dropped the last pre-Darwin code when they discontinued the classic environment. What remains that's that old?

fredoralive · 2026-10-30T19:23:13 1793388193

I seem to recall years ago reading that the Cocoa (the NeXTstep derived API) menu code called into the Carbon (the classic Mac OS derived API) code to run stuff. But that was around Snow Leopard IIRC. That sort of stuff might still be around?

The Carbon API itself lasted until 10.15 (Catalina / 2019) for 32 bit apps, so there's presumably at least some classic Mac OS derived code in there until then.

my123 · 2026-10-30T19:42:15 1793389335

Menus got moved away from Carbon on macOS 14.

You'll get this error if you try to use the Carbon menu APIs:

> References to Carbon menus are disallowed with AppKit menu system on macOS 14 and newer. Use instances of NSMenu and NSMenuItem directly instead

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...

pcwalton · 2026-10-30T20:47:35 1793393255

Pretty sure the menu bar was Carbon in Snow Leopard, which was the same release that discontinued Classic. Lots of Cocoa widgets called into HIToolbox under the hood. QuickTime wasn't fundamentally changed. And iTunes of course was Carbon code for a very, very long time.

jjuran · 2026-10-31T11:29:37 1793446177

NewPtr() and Delay() date back to System 1.0, and they're still present in macOS 14, at least.

UI-level Carbon is gone, but various low-level APIs persist.

jshier · 2026-10-30T20:18:04 1793391484

Most of the Security framework still dates from OS 9.

breznev · 2026-10-30T20:48:15 1793393295

Is that so? Say more? Such fond memories of reading about Copland in MacAddict…. Then OS9…

kalleboo · 2026-10-31T02:23:58 1793413438

These headers for the Keychain certainly do look familiar https://kalleboo.com/linked/macos86security_vs_macosgoldenga...

hassaanr · 2026-10-30T19:03:23 1793387003

Yes but mostly not. Modern MacOS is based off of NeXTSTEP OS from the NeXT acquisition, not classic.

kalleboo · 2026-10-31T02:17:22 1793413042

But in the early days, a lot of UI and OS frameworks were based on Carbon stuff ported from Classic MacOS with Cocoa wrappers on them.

One sibling mentioned the menus. Another sibling mentioned the Security framework. The SDK for macOS Golden Gate still ships with headers dating back to MacOS 8.6 (although they are mostly deprecated now) https://kalleboo.com/linked/macos86security_vs_macosgoldenga...