Apple has always denied that merging its mobile and desktop operating systems, the way that Microsoft has done, is a good idea. But from 2018, it is reportedly starting to explore that road by giving developers the ability to create apps which work on iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Depending on the hardware you use them on, these apps could be controlled via touchscreen, mouse, or trackpad — and would be equally at home on both iOS and macOS.
Apple will reportedly let developers start creating these apps from the first half of next year, possibly at WWDC, while end users will get to use them from fall, when Apple rolls out its next-gen software updates.
The project responsible for this initiative inside Apple is supposedly codenamed “Marzipan.” The Bloomberg report about the project, which cites unnamed individuals familiar with Apple’s plans, notes that there is still a chance that the project could be cancelled.
It’s not clear what this would mean for the iOS and Mac App Store as individual entities, and whether these changes would affect all apps or just a few, depending on developer preferences.
A change of philosophy
In some ways, the move would be surprising for Apple. Other companies have blended the desktop and mobile experience quite well, but Apple has always been adamant that this is not the way it thinks things should be. Speaking with tech journalist Steven Levy a couple of years back, Phil Schiller said that:
“iOS from its start has been designed as a multi-touch experience — you don’t have the things you have in a mouse-driven interface, like a cursor to move around, or teeny little ‘close’ boxes that you can’t hit with your finger.”
In theory, the idea sounds promising — since it could help fix the ghost town that is the Mac App Store. Personally, I’d love to see Apple experiment a bit more with the Mac, which has been disregarded in recent years, even though the new iMac Pro offers a ray of hope in that regard. At the same time, merging iOS and Mac apps could simply result in more mobile focused, simplified apps appearing on our desktops and laptops, further relegating the Mac in terms of priorities.
What do you think? Is this a positive route for Apple to travel down? And would you like to see more merging of iOS and macOS? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Bloomberg
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
17 responses to “Apple’s got a secret plan to merge iOS and Mac apps in 2018”
Want to re-energize the Mac? Start with touchscreens.
Nope…sorry, that won’t do it.
And not forgetting all the cleaning that goes with a monitor.
Using a touch screen that’s vertical — vs horizontal screen on iPhone & iPad — is much more fatiguing to the arm & shoulder. It just ain’t practical. Otherwise I think computer touch screens would have been available long time ago.
Replace the keyboard with a force touch panel across everything but the actual QWERTY set… like a ‘cut around’. Animate, and curve the edges of the keyboard or go with a shell white curved underbody in the style of the original Air’s underbred or the back of the iMac. Illuminate the logo. That would work perfectly imo.
here we go folks iPadification and demise of the Mac
What it means is the Mac platform gets a $hit ton of more apps that run on it.
All this means is fat binaries containing different versions of the same application for different platforms. Each version adapted to the unique requirements of its platform. So the iOS version will be designed to be controlled via a touch interface and the macOS via a mouse and pointer interface. I don’t think we’ll see an unified OS any time soon.
There would be no point in fat binaries with iOS code when iOS has no executable filesystem or Finder to open them, and macOS has no need for touch interfaces. Where do you put the app to use it? It would need updating in a version or two so it doesn’t make sense to just leave in.
I sense the incoming arrival of Finder to iOS would be a necessity.
Playing iOS games on the mac would be cool.
Macs will get fuzed together with iOS and become discontinued by an entirely different product line altogether before Mac OS gets as good and stable as Snow Leopard again
This article fails to mention that some apps are already useable on the Mac and iPhone — like the Apple apps Mail, Notes, Contacts, Safari, Photos, FaceTime.
These are not iOS apps. These are written specifically for Mac, the only thing they have in common are icons and function.
“These are not iOS apps”?? “These are written specifically for Mac”? And yet they work on both my MBPro and iPhone.
The ” … only thing they have in common are icons and function.”?? I don’t need any more than that. What more do you need?
I need you to understand that we are talking about something that is not for you then.
Mail, Notes etc etc have to be written separately for each device by a team of people each. They are very different on each device as they have to do only what is fast enough on the device they use, whether in performance or ease of use. This proposes making a single application – like a HTML5 website that zooms into a mobile mode if you zoom too much – that is exactly the same for all devices, then basically picking how to control the app depending on whether it’s a touch device or a mouse or a pad etc etc.
It’s a stupid idea if the commenter is right though. Fat binaries are bad.
…. it about time………..
It seems that Apple has a lot of corporate secret plans problem is how long did they think it would be before chip kids found out what they were doing? The result of this corporate greed will be seen in the drop of sales of new phones and the crash of the secondhand market for Apple products, downclocking in was a bridge to far !