December 2012
Beginner
398 pages
9h 6m
English
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Chapter 18. Nonstandard Apps
For the majority of this book, we’ve talked about GUI applications designed to run on either OS X or iOS. These applications receive user input via the mouse, keyboard, or touch screen, display information via the screen and are launched by double-clicking them on OS X or tapping them on iOS.
However, not every piece of software that you write is a traditional app. In some cases, you might want to create something that the user doesn’t need to see—for example, a background application that periodically talks to the Internet. Another case where you don’t want to build a traditional app is when you want to create a preference pane, which the user can access via the System Preferences application.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to build apps for OS X that don’t fit the mold of standard applications. Specifically, you’ll learn how to build command-line tools (which don’t use a GUI), system preference panes, and applications that add an item to the system-wide menu bar.
Note
This chapter only applies to OS X—on iOS, you can only build apps that the user accesses via the home screen and that display an interface. Command-line tools and daemons aren’t supported.
Command-Line Tools
The simplest possible application on OS X is a command-line tool. This kind of app never presents a GUI to the user, but instead sends and receives output via the command line.
The command line is the fundamental method of communication for computer programs; every Unix-based system has ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.