Carbon (computing)

Carbon is Apple Computer's set of libraries that allows application programs to run natively in either Mac OS X or earlier versions of Mac OS.

Without Carbon, applications can run only in earlier versions of Mac OS (or in the Classic environment within Mac OS X).

Newer Cocoa applications can run only in Mac OS X, not in earlier versions of Mac OS.

Carbon is also used as the basis for a number of application frameworks for MacOS, including Metrowerks Powerplant[?], MacApp[?] and MacZoop.