Background: This is for a university managed lab environment. Upper management wants to know how often users are using the various software we purchase for the labs. I've already implemented a solution for our Windows machines which consists of a client that tracks user process invocation and sends the results to a web service.
Now I need to create an equivalent Mac client but I have zero experience developing for the Mac platform and its various APIs. Our Macs are currently running 10.4, but will eventually be moving to 10.6 within the next year. I think I've got a handle on consuming the web service using something like gSOAP or even Mono. For the process tracking, I was looking at the Carbon Event Manager. But I've been reading that the Carbon APIs are on the road to being deprecated and I'd rather find something that will be supported moving forward.
Should I just use the Carbon stuff for as long as it works? Or is there some equivalent library I could be using that won't be phased out anytime soon?