November 7, 2025
Apple code on Windows? Cue the popcorn!
Objective-C for Windows, including UIKit (public archive). From Microsoft
Microsoft put iPhone code on Windows — surprise, nostalgia, and a history rabbit hole
TLDR: Microsoft’s archived bridge showed how Apple’s Objective‑C apps could become Windows apps. Commenters reacted with surprise, warm nostalgia for Objective‑C, and reminders it’s a 2015/2016 relic, turning the thread into a funny, informative history tour of Apple-meets-Windows experiments.
Microsoft’s long-lost “Windows Bridge for iOS” — a toolkit that let developers reuse Apple’s Objective‑C code to make Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps with goodies like Cortana and notifications — resurfaced as a public archive, and the crowd went full popcorn. The vibe? Shock that this ever existed, mixed with trivia night energy. One commenter dredged up the 90s with NeXT’s OPENSTEP-on-Windows flex, turning the thread into a mini history lesson. Meanwhile, fans sighed, “Objective‑C is so readable,” celebrating the quirky @ and [] that made their old code feel like poetry.
Then the drama hit: it’s old, and folks called out that this dates back to 2015/2016, not some shiny new drop. The setup checklist (three SDKs, Visual Studio parts, plus Chocolatey) got roasted as a “Windows scavenger hunt.” People joked it’s Xcode cosplay inside Visual Studio, complete with an importer that turns your Mac project into Windows form. The split: some wish this had kept going to help iPhone devs move to Windows, others say Swift and cross‑platform frameworks stole the spotlight years ago. Bottom line: WinObjC on GitHub is now a delightful tech museum piece — and the comments are the tour guides.
Key Points
- •WinObjC is a Microsoft open-source bridge that enables Objective-C and iOS API support in Visual Studio for building UWP apps.
- •The bridge allows reuse of iOS code while integrating Windows 10 features like Cortana and Windows Notifications.
- •Using the bridge requires Windows 10 (build 10586+), Visual Studio 2017, and specific components including UWP and Xamarin Tools due to a Nugetizer bug.
- •Developers can import existing Xcode projects using winobjc-tools and the vsimporter utility to generate Visual Studio solutions.
- •The WOCCatalog sample app and resources such as the wiki, roadmap, Windows Dev Center site, and samples repo provide guidance and examples.