23 ms·

Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad and Mac Apps to Create One User Experience

350 points by uptown 9y ago

wiremine 9y ago
To provide some historical perspective: Apple's done major transitions like this in the past: The move from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS 10 and the move to Intel come to mind. I'd be curious to hear from experienced Mac devs on what they think of this plan (if true) and the biggest hurdles?
goalieca 9y ago
Having lived through windows 8 and the .net frameworks, I really hope Apple can do better.
- mtgx 9y ago
  Spoiler: It won't. You need UX that is tailored for the device type and form factor. It's like gravity - you can't escape this. Both Google and Microsoft learned this the hard way. Even Apple had to basically encourage developers to write tailor-made tablet apps. If iPhone and iPad apps can't be "universal" what hope is there to unify them across an even larger range of form factors?
- _rpd 9y ago
  I don't think it is possible. Different hardware means different user experience. You can pretend it is the same application, make one sale and provide different software for each device. But this is more of a marketing gimmick than anything.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    It's not even the hardware, it's the user interface. Touch interfaces are too large for desktops apps well, and desktops interfaces are too fiddly to be used with touch.
    - macintux 9y ago
      Agreed, but if anyone understands that UI platforms are different with different needs, it's Apple.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    We can't even make unified websites which work well on a desktop and mobile. There's always something missing from the mobile website which makes the customer revert back to desktop version on mobile, which is a horrendous experience(like functionality which is there on desktop version but disappears as soon as you shrink the screen past a certain point). Very very very few companies get it right.
- IBM 9y ago
  Spoiler: they will. Apple is the back-to-back champ of these platform transitions.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  > .net frameworks I believe you mean Metro/Modern/Universal Application Platform, the .Net Framework dates back to 2002[0] and was likely created to compete with Java after the 2001 Visual J++ court case[1]. .Net wasn't an attempt to combine mobile/tablet/PC applications together, in particular as it predates smartphones and modern day tablets. Metro/Modern/UAP was however designed to accomplish that goal in Windows 8. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework_version_history#.NET_Framework_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework_version_history... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigation_against_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigatio...
  - scarface74 9y ago
    .Net Framework Compact Edition has been around since 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Compact_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Compact_Framework
- pjmlp 9y ago
  The difference will be that instead of complaining, Apple devs will find explanations why it makes sense and adopt it.
valuearb 9y ago
This will be one of those Apple APIs that someone in Apple thinks is a good idea, gets a half hearted release, then dies on the vine as the vast majority of developers say “F no”. It will be Apples less successful version of Electron.
- cmsj 9y ago
  That really comes down to whether or not Apple uses it themselves. If they port their various iOS apps to this new thing and have them replace their current macOS counterparts, then this thing is safe to use.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    That's not the point. I have no doubt it will be "safe" to use. But if it's going to be used for dumbing down apps, it's only going to be beneficial for enterprise and cross platform developers willing to make usability trade-offs to slash development costs. As a Mac/iOS developer, I'd only use it if I'm able use the merged classes to cross-develop on both platforms, while still implementing my UI natively on each. If it's just for making iOS widget apps run on MacOS, that's fine for others but it's not going to fly for many commercial applications. The problem is, as an iOS developer, I spent the majority of my time writing UI code to make our apps work as well as possible for users. Which means large tap areas, eschewing menus, minimizing scrolling areas, etc. Basically the opposite of good desktop design.
skc 9y ago
They are inching ever closer and closer to that toaster-fridge they despise.
dddddaviddddd 9y ago
Seems like such a bad idea from a UX perspective that it's hard to imagine iOS apps on macOS being anything more than reimagined Dashboard widgets.
- checker659 9y ago
  I think the burden is going to fall squarely on iOS developers to make their apps usable with mouse and keyboard on the mac. Mac developers are probably not going to bother porting their UI to work on iOS though. Apps like Sketch App come to mind.
baldajan 9y ago
Anyone unfamiliar with how things currently work: macOS and iOS use 2 different UI frameworks (CocoaTouch and UIKit, respectively). And this causes problems when trying to compile the source code between the two platforms. Ex: things like font and color are defined specifically in each framework (NSFont and NSColor versus UIFont and UIColor). If they combine these frameworks, it makes the design and maintenance of cross platform software a lot easier (it'll still be difficult), and the at the very least, you wouldn't have to stub out a bunch of class names and files. BUT - the most important work is still on the developer to ensure that their app runs great on iPhone, iPad and Mac and has a cohesive UI that scales and takes advantages of the different technologies. It's no different from Responsive Web Design or the shift from iPhone to iPad (and vice versa).
- jawngee 9y ago
  It's just Cocoa on macOS. Cocoa Touch is iOS (and tvOS and watchOS) and encompasses UIKit.
  - allwein 9y ago
    Correct. And the UIKit equivalent on macOS is called AppKit
- Duckton 9y ago
  Precisely. People thinking this is to create one UI for both platforms are missing the point. Just like you can have an app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, all with their own UI to a more or less degree, you will now be able toinclude a macOS build as well.
  - jobu 9y ago
    Shared Text and UI controls and libraries could be useful, but we need to consider the "one UI" given the title of the article "Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps to Create One User Experience". That just screams Marketing Department Overreach to me, and I've arguments about this exact issue with sales and marketing people before. The "one user experience" idea is a fallacy because the physical interfaces are so much different. There are definitely overlaps with typical phones, computers or TVs, but developers should embrace and accentuate the the differences, not try to force everything to the lowest common denominator. For example, an iPhone has limited text input because of a small screen where the keyboard takes up almost half the space. However, it does have a great camera and a shit ton of useful sensors that no computer or TV ever will.
therealmarv 9y ago
This are two different eco systems. What works for touchscreen does not work for Desktop and vice versa. I don't want even one app from the phone/tablet on my Desktop. This only gets messed up. The good thing about macOS is that Apple stick to it and does not mess it up like Microsoft with their confusion about touch and non touch apps.
perseusprime11 9y ago
Windows 10. I hope Apple treads this path very carefully.
- partiallypro 9y ago
  Windows 10 is fine, Windows 8 was the failure. Window 10 actually suffers a bit from not being enough like Windows 8 in some touch screen facets.
  - perseusprime11 9y ago
    Windows 10 became fine after taking windows phone out of the equation. You no longer need to optimize for both big and small screen.
untog 9y ago
Well, I hope they can learn from Microsoft's total failure to do this. To be honest, I don't see a persuasive argument. In order for this to be worth the extra development time the company needs to have a big marketshare on both platforms - MS failed because they had zero footprint on mobile, and I think Apple will fail because they have a relatively small footprint on desktop. As a third party developer, is it really worth your time to make a native macOS app when the web is already very capable? In some cases I'm sure it will, but in the vast majority of cases you're going to need to make a web version anyway (for the huge number of Windows desktops out there), so a native macOS app just wouldn't be worth it.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  I feel like the Ubuntu phone might have succeeded had they not focused on trying to do it this too. So sad.
  - untog 9y ago
    It feels like a "X is the year of the Linux desktop!" comment to make, but I'm more and more convinced that the web is will be a very viable mobile app platform soon. Progressive Web App APIs are solving a lot of the homescreen/notification/other native functionalities, and performance is always getting better. One day there might be an opportunity for a web-focused phone OS (what Firefox OS was trying to be, essentially), but... not quite yet.
    - criddell 9y ago
      Are you talking about everything being an Electron app?
      - untog 9y ago
        Well, I'm talking about mobile, so the Electron model isn't quite applicable. But sort of, yes. Except without the overhead of each app bundling it's own entire browser runtime.
      - 9y ago
minimaxir 9y ago
Here's a relevant 2014 WWDC presentation on how Apple redesigned iWork to work on both iOS and Mac using most of the same codebase, and the technical problems which needed to be solved: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014/233/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014/233/
notfried 9y ago
This makes more sense for games than apps (for apps could have a much more wildly different experience and design on the desktop than on mobile), and it makes even more sense for VR games (where both input and output will be identical regardless of the execution ecosystem).
maxpert 9y ago
Would be interesting to see how Apple tackles the problem; since other giants have failed badly on this. Microsoft is perfect example of over-promising and not getting traction.
JoshMnem 9y ago
That sounds like a terrible idea. You need an Apple device to seriously build iOS apps, so does that mean that Apple users will have trouble using software that is created by people who write their software on other operating systems?
IBM 9y ago
Hope they ban the shitty cross platform frameworks at the same time.
- briandear 9y ago
  Better hope the Javascript Mafia doesn't read that!
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  Unity probably accounts for 90% of the iOS games.
  - Pulcinella 9y ago
    I would imagine games would be an exception. Plus Unity started on OSX.
ajankelo 9y ago
To me this speaks to the power of Progressive Web Apps.
- justacat 9y ago
  Yea, that is the first thing I thought of when I saw this. PWAs could be made for this and I think could be awesome
pazra 9y ago
Going to be very interesting to see how they go about implementing this. So much is different about the UI of Mac Os and iOS, that I'm guessing at the very least you'll need different views for each platform.
dangoor 9y ago
I guess this is possible given that their frameworks support many different screens at this point, and some variation in tap target size. But it's not totally clear to me that supporting both touch and mouse in one app will do both input mechanisms justice. Unless they're imagining that there would be a completely different set of UI resources for Mac apps vs iOS ones? Any thoughts on this from Windows users?
colechristensen 9y ago
I wish people would stop designing "one user experience" between mobile and desktop. Capital One just switched me from a nice classic UI to one clearly designed for a small touch screen, and I'm thinking of switching banks because it annoys me so much. I generally hate when websites redesign to "look nicer" based on the aesthetic du jour and in doing so throws away a significant portion of the functionality.
- yingbo 9y ago
  Totally. The google map desktop is hard to use, because it's copying features from mobile.
- whowouldathunk 9y ago
  That's an orthogonal problem. Why should the Apple platform arbitrarily require you to use different toolkits for different form factors or input modalities? They already support phones, tablets, TV's, and watches with the iOS toolkits. Adding desktops and laptops to that mix seems obvious. And it goes the other way. The iPad Pro will probably benefit by gaining support for pointer input.
- Duckton 9y ago
  Despite the title of the article, I do not think this is about designing "one user experience" between mobile and desktop. I think it's about consolidating the UIKIt and Cocoa frameworks, making it easier for developers to share code between platforms, but not necessarily creating a UI that's the same for both.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  Tangerine did the same a few weeks back. Hate it.
- pcurve 9y ago
  Ally made that idiot choice awhile back (mobile first, f-the rest) UI and they've been gradually dialing it back for better experience on desktop. It was like using iphone app on ipad in simulation mode; everything huge, functionally crippled.
fredley 9y ago
This is a complete 180 from the approach in the early iPhone, iPad days. Everything was encouraged and often required to be made device-specific, because the UX is subtly different. Apple followed this too, back in the heady days of Skeumorphism. Even the shade of grey on the keyboard was different between iPhone and iPad[1]. This is yet another indicator that Apple has changed drastically since the Jobs days, and is moving more into alignment with other tech giants in their approach to products. [1]: https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/16369 https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/16369
- Clubber 9y ago
  Perhaps after seeing the somewhat success of Microsoft in this arena, they are going to a "switchable" UI that will change depending on the device type. Instead of writing an app for iPhone, iPad, macOS, the developer just has to write one switchable app. That would be helpful for the developer, and if implemented right, the user wouldn't be able to tell the difference. This functionality already exists to a degree in iOS. You can render different views based on the device / resolution. This would just be extending it to touch vs. keyboard and mouse. I wouldn't think of it as a single UI that (doesn't) work for all devices, but rather a UI that knows what device it's on and can morph accordingly.
  - fredley 9y ago
    Apple's never been about the Developers (Developers! Developers!...) though, it's been about the users. It's a while since I've worked on Apple platforms, but it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. Apple — back then at least — had the user experience at the forefront of what they were doing. You endured the pain of writing your app in Objective C, in XCode, submitting it to the app store, paying the subscription fees, dealing with the terrible portals and jumping through many hoops because Apple's platforms were where the users were. Microsoft's approach was always, "We're where the developers are, which is where the app(lication)s are, which is where the users will be forced to go". It's hard to remember quite how much easier to use Apple's devices were in those early days compared to the status quo.
    - 9y ago
bo1024 9y ago
> Developers currently must design two different apps -- one for iOS, the operating system of Apple’s mobile devices, and one for macOS, the system that runs Macs. That’s a lot more work. One set of devices have ONLY a touchscreen as an interface. The other set of devices have ONLY a keyboard and mouse. So how will this create less work? I think it will mean that each app either (a) bundles two essentially-different programs into one "application", or (b) gives up on desktop usability. Sadly I expect (b) and I feel that Apple does too, and doesn't mind.
- _rpd 9y ago
  My laptop has a touchscreen. I didn't even realize until I needed to clean it. Maybe they'll require all new macOS screens to be touchscreens?
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Well, it’s been so useful to you....
    - _rpd 9y ago
      Yeah but my nieces and nephews are practically touchscreen only users, so maybe for them. I'm personally holding out for decent voice controlled UI - should be any year now.
      - adjkant 9y ago
        This highlights something incredibly important. There's a very stark age line in people using touch screens by default. I TA an intro CS course, and I've noticed the line creep. It's somewhere between those born in 1998 and 2002. They just all like touch screens better because that's what they are used to. I haven't even graduated and am feeling like a greybeard when it comes to this area. I have to wonder if it's simply that we were trained to be mouse by default...
        9y ago
juicy-fruit 9y ago
This is amazing news. As a developer the idea of writing once and running on many platforms is weight off our shoulders. However, I can also see how a lot of developers might not like this. For example, Cultured Code charges $13.99 for Things on iOS but $49.99 on Mac. Why the difference? It is mostly because users expect apps to be cheap on mobile even though developing for both platforms is comparable. However now, developers are going to be expected by users to support both iOS and Mac apps for the same price. Also, I feel like this news might imply ARM based macOS?
- valuearb 9y ago
  No developer will be forced to use this, it will be for enterprise developers and low volume specialists. Pricing will stay the same. And ARM ain’t coming to MacOS anytime soon. The costs are far higher than benefits.
- trollied 9y ago
  No, it won’t imply ARM macOS. It’s obviously a distinct possibility, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they went that way one day. In fact, given release builds uploaded to Apple are basically just an intermediate llvm bitstream, Apple could theoretically release to any architecture.
  - astrange 9y ago
    llvm bitcode is a compiler IR and nothing else, it's not architecture-independent. There have been independent bytecodes based on it like PNaCL and SPIR-V, but they're not nearly good enough to run any old app on.
kmfrk 9y ago
Outright shared apps sounds like a terrible experience. I can definitely understand the argument from a developer perspective wrt shared code bases between platforms, i don't know if the user part of me is excited, though. Maybe it'll also keep people from using other frameworks and lock them in on Apple platforms more.
- Clubber 9y ago
  Like everything, it greatly depends on the execution rather than the concept.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    The concept was tried with Windows 8; they had to go back to offering both desktop and touchscreen options. Based on my experiences using an iPad, iPhone, and a variety of mac laptops, I don't see how this could be practically different. Touch interfaces take up too much space on lap/desktops, and desktop interfaces are inconvenient to the point of not working with touch.
    - whowouldathunk 9y ago
      > The concept was tried with Windows 8; they had to go back to offering both desktop and touchscreen options. Still using the same platform. The idea is to use responsive design rather than different UI frameworks. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.
digitalengineer 9y ago
This won't help one bit. Seriously: Why do developers like those from Sketch drop the Mac App Store? Here's why: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/01/another-popular-app-leaves-the-mac-app-store/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/01/another-popular-app-leaves... http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-upgrades.html http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-... https://www.dancounsell.com/a-wish-list-for-the-mac-app-store/ https://www.dancounsell.com/a-wish-list-for-the-mac-app-stor... https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/developers-keep-leaving-mac-app-store/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/developers-keep-leaving-mac-ap...
- Razengan 9y ago
  Speaking as a user, many developers are, pardon my French, shit, and will take every mile for any inch given to them. Look at the iOS App Store after Apple introduced subscriptions: Even the most inane apps are now asking for monthly and yearly subscriptions. Like, what is even the point of, say, a text editor having a monthly subscription? “To justify development costs”, they write elaborate blogs about. Even though they used to be perfectly fine with a pay-once model for years before. Even though everyone was perfectly happy with buying an incrementally-numbered “Text Editor N” every year, IF they needed to. Some (like Day One I think) try to justify it by charging for features that Apple can provide for free, like iCloud Sync, and reinventing that wheel with their own paid solutions for that. As a user I was happier with the weekly blog whining about Apple’s draconian walled garden, compared to this subscription-infested market now.
  - prawn 9y ago
    People expect updates once they've purchased an app for a few bucks. They tend not to pay more, and developers who release v2 and v3 as completely separate apps are often criticised. Not to mention, export/importing data can be a new issue across apps. An upgrade could be released as an IAP, but asking for more once you've released a paid app is risky also. I tend to avoid subscription software too, but I can fully understand why developers lean towards it as a way of getting a strong return and justifying further development, taking on staff for support, etc. If the app isn't up to it, then consumers can find an alternative that can scrape by with a single price, right?
gallerdude 9y ago
Assuming they can pull this off in a very good way (a big assumption), I think this is a smart move. This isn't just for tech illiterates, this is for pros. Imagine if all new software created was immediately available on iPad - that'd be huge. People have been talking about the lack of pro-grade video editors, vector art painters, and programming environments on iOS for a while now. This could be really interesting.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  I like that most may content creation software has a high level of access to the operating environment. I also like that all my iPhone and iPad apps are sandboxed off from each other. I use the devices for different purposes, and want them to behave differently. That's how I felt when Unity flopped, that's how I felt when Windows 8/10 flopped, and that's how I expect I'll feel this time, too.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Serious applications will always be native.
- egypturnash 9y ago
  I sure wouldn't hold my breath for any Adobe products to get on board with this, they've put all of one app (Photoshop Elements) on the Mac App Store so far.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    I wouldn't be so sure. Adobe has a rather large presence on the iOS App Store, and they're frequently featured as early adopters of whatever new technology Apple rolls out during their onstage presentations. Apple would probably try hard to get Adobe to follow along here, since it's an important app that people want to use.
- whywhywhywhy 9y ago
  > Imagine if all new software created was immediately available on iPad Alternatively imagine if all new Macs were created with touch screens and pen input like all new Microsoft machines are.
azinman2 9y ago
So basically they’re going to allow a 3rd set of storyboards and components for the Mac (theres already differences for iPad and iPhone), and then somehow merge the frameworks so it’s coherent from a programming perspective?
whowouldathunk 9y ago
Hopefully this means the iPad Pro will gain support for trackpads and mouse input.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  I would seriously doubt this. More than likely it'll be a unification of some AppKit and UIKit API, with the developer being expected to tailor the experience to the input devices available.
dionian 9y ago
This sounds to me like providing the ability to run iOS apps in a window in Mac OS
jawngee 9y ago
As someone (apparently the only one in this thread) that writes macOS and iOS apps, I can't wait for NSView and it's stupid lower-left cartesian coordinate system to die. UIKit is so much better in so many ways, it's time NSView and its friends are all put out to pasture.
- wtallis 9y ago
  Unifying the APIs that exist in slightly different versions on both platforms makes sense. But it's dangerous to talk like that frees you from having to design and implement separate user interfaces for handheld touchscreens and for desktops with keyboard+mouse. I like the idea of getting a compiler error when you try to deploy a touchscreen UI to my MacBook Pro. I paid good money for that Retina display because I want to have a lot of information on screen. I don't want it wasted by 200px buttons.
- neonhomer 9y ago
  I've had many years of experience with iOS and then started working on a macOS app a year or so ago. Everything seemed overly complicated compared to iOS development. I ended up using a web view and did a lot of front-end work via HTML to save time!
  - tinus_hn 9y ago
    UIKit is much more limited than AppKit because it was meant to run on devices with limited resources. In fact, people used to complain about all the things you couldn't do on iOS devices that you could on the Mac.
- Klonoar 9y ago
  I end up just using a subclass with isFlipped returning true 90% of the time. I've found that I rarely need to deal with the lower-left issue after that... what's your biggest pain point after that? I look forward to this from Apple, because then I could scrap so much of my own stuff that's aliasing the two platforms. I think people who haven't built for these platforms don't understand that it's not about Apple letting you provide the same UI on two different platforms, but about getting rid of the lower-level differences between the two that don't need to exist in the first place. It's strange to see so many people both here and over on Reddit take issue with Apple doing this - you can't sit there and complain about Electron taking over and then decry a company literally giving you a better option. I'd gladly run a Slack client on my desktop if I could get the iOS build, and I'd really enjoy having RobinHood or Tinder or any number of apps on my desktop so I don't need to pull out my phone (or open a browser) for them. As it stands right now, cross-building your app for desktop from iOS is a rabbit hole that most people are right to shy away from as there's a lot of odd knowledge that's historically been needed to make it work. For example, NSTableView in 10.13 finally supports AutoLayout without needing to hack around it with a caching view, making it much closer to UITableView. That alone makes certain views much easier. Collection Views also only recently got closer to their UIKit counterparts, and it's made that much more usable as a result. Before these things, there was _so much_ glue code to reuse the same stuff. Sharing layout code before was possible, but an extreme exercise in frustration for a lot of people - now it's getting closer to a 1:1. Using any of the littered unmaintained frameworks for "UIKit in AppKit" is also usually not that great, since it's another API to learn that's most unofficial and they've almost all been abandoned over the years. Also, as one last personal comment, Apple needs to port UINavigationController - I ended up rolling my own (with the whole header view/etc), which is horrendously annoying to do. While I totally understand that mobile != desktop, it's 2017 and people have gotten slightly used to some mobile interfaces working on desktop. At the end of the day it's a simple stacked navigator that'd make code reuse a lot easier. Hell, port the API and have it display differently for all I care. Ninja Edit: if you're an Electron fan, and Apple had frameworks that worked the same on Mac/iOS, you could avoid Electron on iOS if you had a React Native app that could now cross compile (not using the odd third party framework that exists and is never really feature-parity with actual React Native).
pducks32 9y ago
There are 2 parts of the apps. There's model layer and view layer. The model layer is a pain to bring over because certain model objects (UIColor) are only on one platform. So if they make changes to ease that then making a mac app will become way easier. The other problem is that AppKit is not as nice or as easy to use as UIKit in my experience. If they can bring these two frameworks together under shared functionality that would be great. For example, template Master-Detail from iPhone to iPad is great (and you can always customize). So having that extend to macOS would make mac development easier. I imagine this is what they are planning. The third idea is they are thinking of something greater yet separate that is not meant for existing apps. Like a new UI Framework that works on both. This seems hard to believe as they have the iOS app base and the goal is to bring that over to mac not start a new app base altogether.
romanovcode 9y ago
Ugh. Not looking forward to this at all. Instead of making things perfectly fit each device they will try one-fits-all approach which will most likely be sub-optimal at best and horrible at worst (Windows8).
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Windows is a different beast–many of it's laptop/desktop computers have touchscreens, and Microsoft overreached and basically made the experience better for them at the expense of mouse/keyboard devices. Apple can't do this, of course, since Macs don't have touch screens.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    The cynic in me sees your last statement as an indication of the next must have feature - the official Apple Touch Screen Monitor for your desktop Mac.
    - romanovcode 9y ago
      But Steve did the research, he even said himself: "Laptop users do not want a touch screen!". To which I completely agree, mind you.
- megy 9y ago
  Except they have a curated app store, so they can reject apps which do not have a good UI for both cases.
d--b 9y ago
The lure of convergence again... that really didn't go so well for Microsoft. I think that's something that really set Apple's iphone apart and that was really smart. The problem is the iPad. The iPad should be a mac, in my view, like the Surface is a PC. Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake. Now people make pro applications for the iPad Pro and they're thinking "shit I really wish this could run on a mac" and now Apple is forced into some kind of compatibility that goes from the iPhone 5s with touch screen to a iMac 4K with touchpad.
- wvenable 9y ago
  Making the iPad a giant phone was what made is successful compared to every other attempt (even Microsoft's) at making tablets. The success of the iPad in the "pro" market is more of an accident and took a long time to come around.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  > Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake. I disagree. iPad is fundamentally a touch device, and trying to shoehorn macOS into this paradigm would have probably doomed iPad–remember, that's what the competition was doing back before iPad, and you know how the sales of those devices were…
  - criddell 9y ago
    I think you are exactly right. If I wanted a small macOS device, I could buy one (I didn't). What I wanted is a large iOS device and that's why I have a 10.5" iPad Pro. It's my favorite computer.
  - kartickv 9y ago
    I agree with the post you responded to. I have a 13-inch iPad "Pro" that I'm unhappy with since it doesn't do what it's promised to do. Can I build an iOS app? An Android app? Upload 100GB of data to Google Drive? Play movies stored on my external hard disc? Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do? And so on. As far as I'm concerned the "big iPhone" idea is a failure. I don't want a tablet that doesn't have the full power of a PC OS like macOS or Windows. That doesn't preclude touch. The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch. And Apple has the market power to pull that off. I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps. Yes, both options require a lot of work, but Microsoft is further ahead in having shipped it for years rather than denying the problem, as Apple does.
bitL 9y ago
Apple just can't let go of copying Microsoft, first with flat UI, now with one-size-runs-all :D Seems like real innovation is a thing of the past.
- petecox 9y ago
  I thought it was more Google providing Android compatibility within Chrome OS driving the push to bring apps to macOS.
johnhenry 9y ago
I wonder if this is a hint that apple might finally be bringing a touch screen interface to the Mac?
ZenoArrow 9y ago
One step closer to killing off Mac OS.
borplk 9y ago
Apple's got the Microsoft bug.
mehrdada 9y ago
Along with an ARM-based 12” MacBook named iBook. #speculation
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Friendly reminder that a 12" laptop named "iBook" already exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook
  - mehrdada 9y ago
    I was alluding to that indeed: reviving the beloved brand. Makes perfect sense.
beamatronic 9y ago
The user experience I want includes USB ports, an SD card slot, replaceable batteries, and the escape key.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
Please just fix iTunes for God's sake. Why are they wasting all this effort when their core apps like iTunes are among the worst apps in existence but are forced upon us?
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Maybe they'll rewrite iTunes to use this framework, instead of the C++ Windows/macOS hybrid monster it is today?
  - checker659 9y ago
    If they write it in Swift, all the problems will magically go away. Just like how stable rest of macOS has become in the last few years.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      You're joking, right?
      - checker659 9y ago
        What do you think?
pducks32 9y ago
This is probably going to be focused on lower performance apps but for those talking about video editors it may be important to point out that though the iPad is insanely powerful, it's not as strong at doing long term high performance tasks. Not like a laptop anyways.
- 1_2__4 9y ago
  It’s insanely powerful only for its size and energy usage. There are so many cut corners and micro-lies when it comes to mobile that make all the specs sound good but at the end of the day they are far, far more crippled devices than any desktop or laptop computer. They tout things like processor specs but the entire computer matters, and turns out when you optimize for power efficiency and battery life a whooooole lot of computing power is simply not there for you to use.
draw_down 9y ago
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty unhappy with the state of Apple's software quality these days. But, what would possibly get discussed here in the comments for such a story, other than people griping about how their iPhone is broken and everything has been going downhill since Steve Jobs died?
Shivetya 9y ago
I just don't see anyone winning other than trash app sellers. far too many using iOS expect apps to be free or so cheap as to be free. how will that outlook crossover into the Mac world? Let alone how will all the apps with in app purchases play out in the Mac world? finally, how much functionality must mac apps give up to be compatible with both systems? the mac ecosystem is much more open than iOS, is that going to change?
selfsimilar 9y ago
No one's mentioned this but could this be a precursor to weaning themselves off of Intel for MacOS devices?
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  Why would it be? macOS's APIs are architecture-independent and have been since day one, which is what enabled the smooth transition from PowerPC to x86.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pryelluw 9y ago
I know Beeware[0] is doing something similar. Disclaimer: Contributor. [0] https://beeware.org https://beeware.org
heavymark 9y ago
The reason MAS is a ghost town I have always assumed was because of the MAS limitations and that unlike iOS devs aren’t required to use the store. iOS and macOS are totally different so you’d still have to develop custom ui’s though Apple could certainly help to make it easier to develop for both platforms at once. But even then MAS would remain mostly a desert until they even change limitations or require all apps to be from MAS which would be nearly impossible, especially for business customers.
jaxondu 9y ago
I take it that next year we will see a totally different macOS user interface, in order to make the one ux experience alignment. macOS has not had major UI changes for a few years, so maybe macOS app with no menu bar?
liminal 9y ago
Wish Apple would hurry up and eat their words so that they can add touchscreens to their laptops. I'm using a mac at work and I so miss my Windows touchscreen.
marenkay 9y ago
Convergence is overestimated. As a users, I actually do not want an identical use experience of apps on desktop and mobile devices because inherently these are different use cases and it does not make sense to mix them. It's not even the same applications that would be used on iPad as on macOS. I doubt technology is an issue here. Universal binaries for macOS worked well and that was a decade ago. It's the fundamental use cases for these devices that differ and no development framework can bridge that, probably even shouldn't.
- blueprint 9y ago
  It sounds to me like you're actually saying your experience with convergence has been overrated vis-à-vis initial claims.
  - sooheon 9y ago
    By extension they could be saying that convergence is likely to incentivize creation of those mediocre experiences.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
garviand 9y ago
This is exactly what Progressive Web Apps are going to achieve! Reinventing the wheel once again...
Hernanpm 9y ago
It doesn't make sense for all apps but I felt like I need it since I started using Margin Note app in my ipad and macbook.
lucaspottersky 9y ago
there we go again... people failed so many times before... let's see what they can bring to the table now.
txmx2017 9y ago
This convinces me my suspicions are correct. They want to replace desktops with iPhones. Apple has been drastically increasing the power of the processors in iPhones. Now they’re unifying the iOS and macOS experience. They’re going to create a desktop mode within iOS. It’ll use bluetooth peripherals and an HDMI Airplay stick that plugs into a monitor. The iPhone will become a PC we carry around in our pockets containing all our data making it unnecessary to have a different computer in every place we go to. And it will justify spending more on our phones because we’ll be saving not buying desktops.
- brazzledazzle 9y ago
  I've suspected that iOS-only had been the plan for a while and I am pretty sad about it to be honest. I'm sure the user experience will be great but I'm a professional and I want a relatively unrestricted OS with a decent UI and good hardware. I suspect I'll have to compromise on at least one of those eventually. It makes sense for Apple but it will be the end of an era.
sparky_ 9y ago
Not enough info here to determine anything useful from the developer perspective. If I had to make an arbitrary assumption, I'd guess that this boils down to a UIKit implementation on the Mac.
evadne 9y ago
It would be interesting to compare this to https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon which came out of the Iconfactory in 2011: “Chameleon requires OS X 10.6 or higher. Apps built with it have been proven to be acceptable to Apple for the Mac App Store. Chameleon was first built by The Iconfactory to unify the codebase of Twitterrific for both Mac and iOS.” Frameworks with iOS/macOS targets have long existed and it is proven possible to have events routed in UIKit style. I however fear that the merging of user experiences will come at the detriment of the Mac experience. SJ said long ago that Macs are trucks and only some people need it. This converging step makes no sense when Apple is already trying to push the iPad as the “computer” for the masses.
nicodjimenez 9y ago
I'm surprised by all the negative comments about this. It's hard for me to understand why this is a bad thing. Linking the phone to the computer in deeper ways without having to write separate apps seems _super_ valuable.
- petecox 9y ago
  Yes. The obvious universal API that targets big screens and small, touch or mouse is Qt. It started as a desktop framework, was made touch-aware to be used Nokia and BB10 for phones, powers KDE 5 and I'm hopeful Ollie Paranoid will provide an update in a few weeks re: Plasma on postmarketOS. Now a company with Apple's resources should surely be able to reintegrate the Cocoa Touch hard-fork back into a common modernised Cocoa, which by now has a 30 year legacy from NeXTSTEP. Naturally you'll still need to customize a UI for Mac or iPhone but a unified toolkit is entirely possible.
beedogs 9y ago
This will probably be what gets me (and most power users) to leave Apple's walled garden for good. Once iOS infects MacOS heavily enough that it interferes with the way I prefer to use my computer, it's all going away.
beders 9y ago
Please, don't Apple. A Mac is a different device with a very very very different user interface - in the sense of how users are interfacing with it. I don't need ANY of the UIKit interface elements on my Mac. It's like Write Once Run Anywhere all over again. Instead, go back and focus on what made OS X so great. Because High Sierra ain't it. It's bad enough that a viewer of hypertext documents is now the common 'app' platform, I don't need or want a unified UI kit.
bonaldi 9y ago
I'm hoping "unified user experience" is meant in a big way -- the promise of a device that can go from touch UI when in my pocket to desktop experience when a keyboard and display are connected is a huge one. The makings of such support are already there in the hooks iOS has to support different size classes -- currently used to handle device rotation mainly.
BerislavLopac 9y ago
I've realised a while ago that the fact that OSX is Unix-based and fairly open - and therefore used by many developers for non-Apple development -- happened purely by accident, because Apple needed a better replacement for the old MacOS 9 and NExTSTEP was readily available. When developing iOS they made it more controlled and closed, and they're now following that strategy to the desktop.
twobyfour 9y ago
Really looking forward to my complex professional software and content creation and data management desktop tools being dumbed down to the UI complexity of an iPhone just like desktop web apps have been since the advent of responsive design. Maybe the upside of this will be all the developer types fleeing to Linux and Linux finally gaining a comparable user-facing software ecosystem. (Yes, I know a lot of software exists for Linux, but the quantity, variety, and ease of installation of end-user applications on Mac is in a different league; and a lot of mainstream Mac+Windows apps still don't have Linux versions. It's the main thing Apple gained by making OSX developer-friendly in the first place.)
rakshithbekal 9y ago
AKA UWP for Apple OS
nkristoffersen 9y ago
people seem to forget but Apple makes some of the most powerful iOS apps currently. iMovie, Keynote, Photos, Garagaband etc. And the experience between iOS and MacOS is extremely similar between them. Just more “expanded” on desktop. I wouldn’t be surprised if they share a lot of code between the different platforms too. If this helps more developers accomplish the same thing that Apple is doing with their own apps then I’m all for it!

350 points by uptown 9y ago

To provide some historical perspective: Apple's done major transitions like this in the past: The move from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS 10 and the move to Intel come to mind. I'd be curious to hear from experienced Mac devs on what they think of this plan (if true) and the biggest hurdles?

goalieca 9y ago

Having lived through windows 8 and the .net frameworks, I really hope Apple can do better.

mtgx 9y ago
Spoiler: It won't. You need UX that is tailored for the device type and form factor. It's like gravity - you can't escape this. Both Google and Microsoft learned this the hard way. Even Apple had to basically encourage developers to write tailor-made tablet apps. If iPhone and iPad apps can't be "universal" what hope is there to unify them across an even larger range of form factors?
_rpd 9y ago
I don't think it is possible. Different hardware means different user experience. You can pretend it is the same application, make one sale and provide different software for each device. But this is more of a marketing gimmick than anything.
- falcolas 9y ago
  It's not even the hardware, it's the user interface. Touch interfaces are too large for desktops apps well, and desktops interfaces are too fiddly to be used with touch.
  - macintux 9y ago
    Agreed, but if anyone understands that UI platforms are different with different needs, it's Apple.
- gambiting 9y ago
  We can't even make unified websites which work well on a desktop and mobile. There's always something missing from the mobile website which makes the customer revert back to desktop version on mobile, which is a horrendous experience(like functionality which is there on desktop version but disappears as soon as you shrink the screen past a certain point). Very very very few companies get it right.
IBM 9y ago
Spoiler: they will. Apple is the back-to-back champ of these platform transitions.
Someone1234 9y ago
> .net frameworks I believe you mean Metro/Modern/Universal Application Platform, the .Net Framework dates back to 2002[0] and was likely created to compete with Java after the 2001 Visual J++ court case[1]. .Net wasn't an attempt to combine mobile/tablet/PC applications together, in particular as it predates smartphones and modern day tablets. Metro/Modern/UAP was however designed to accomplish that goal in Windows 8. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework_version_history#.NET_Framework_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework_version_history... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigation_against_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigatio...
- scarface74 9y ago
  .Net Framework Compact Edition has been around since 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Compact_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Compact_Framework
pjmlp 9y ago
The difference will be that instead of complaining, Apple devs will find explanations why it makes sense and adopt it.

valuearb 9y ago

This will be one of those Apple APIs that someone in Apple thinks is a good idea, gets a half hearted release, then dies on the vine as the vast majority of developers say “F no”. It will be Apples less successful version of Electron.

cmsj 9y ago
That really comes down to whether or not Apple uses it themselves. If they port their various iOS apps to this new thing and have them replace their current macOS counterparts, then this thing is safe to use.
- valuearb 9y ago
  That's not the point. I have no doubt it will be "safe" to use. But if it's going to be used for dumbing down apps, it's only going to be beneficial for enterprise and cross platform developers willing to make usability trade-offs to slash development costs. As a Mac/iOS developer, I'd only use it if I'm able use the merged classes to cross-develop on both platforms, while still implementing my UI natively on each. If it's just for making iOS widget apps run on MacOS, that's fine for others but it's not going to fly for many commercial applications. The problem is, as an iOS developer, I spent the majority of my time writing UI code to make our apps work as well as possible for users. Which means large tap areas, eschewing menus, minimizing scrolling areas, etc. Basically the opposite of good desktop design.

skc 9y ago

They are inching ever closer and closer to that toaster-fridge they despise.

dddddaviddddd 9y ago

Seems like such a bad idea from a UX perspective that it's hard to imagine iOS apps on macOS being anything more than reimagined Dashboard widgets.

checker659 9y ago
I think the burden is going to fall squarely on iOS developers to make their apps usable with mouse and keyboard on the mac. Mac developers are probably not going to bother porting their UI to work on iOS though. Apps like Sketch App come to mind.

baldajan 9y ago

Anyone unfamiliar with how things currently work: macOS and iOS use 2 different UI frameworks (CocoaTouch and UIKit, respectively). And this causes problems when trying to compile the source code between the two platforms. Ex: things like font and color are defined specifically in each framework (NSFont and NSColor versus UIFont and UIColor). If they combine these frameworks, it makes the design and maintenance of cross platform software a lot easier (it'll still be difficult), and the at the very least, you wouldn't have to stub out a bunch of class names and files. BUT - the most important work is still on the developer to ensure that their app runs great on iPhone, iPad and Mac and has a cohesive UI that scales and takes advantages of the different technologies. It's no different from Responsive Web Design or the shift from iPhone to iPad (and vice versa).

jawngee 9y ago
It's just Cocoa on macOS. Cocoa Touch is iOS (and tvOS and watchOS) and encompasses UIKit.
- allwein 9y ago
  Correct. And the UIKit equivalent on macOS is called AppKit
Duckton 9y ago
Precisely. People thinking this is to create one UI for both platforms are missing the point. Just like you can have an app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, all with their own UI to a more or less degree, you will now be able toinclude a macOS build as well.
- jobu 9y ago
  Shared Text and UI controls and libraries could be useful, but we need to consider the "one UI" given the title of the article "Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps to Create One User Experience". That just screams Marketing Department Overreach to me, and I've arguments about this exact issue with sales and marketing people before. The "one user experience" idea is a fallacy because the physical interfaces are so much different. There are definitely overlaps with typical phones, computers or TVs, but developers should embrace and accentuate the the differences, not try to force everything to the lowest common denominator. For example, an iPhone has limited text input because of a small screen where the keyboard takes up almost half the space. However, it does have a great camera and a shit ton of useful sensors that no computer or TV ever will.

therealmarv 9y ago

This are two different eco systems. What works for touchscreen does not work for Desktop and vice versa. I don't want even one app from the phone/tablet on my Desktop. This only gets messed up. The good thing about macOS is that Apple stick to it and does not mess it up like Microsoft with their confusion about touch and non touch apps.

perseusprime11 9y ago

Windows 10. I hope Apple treads this path very carefully.

partiallypro 9y ago
Windows 10 is fine, Windows 8 was the failure. Window 10 actually suffers a bit from not being enough like Windows 8 in some touch screen facets.
- perseusprime11 9y ago
  Windows 10 became fine after taking windows phone out of the equation. You no longer need to optimize for both big and small screen.

untog 9y ago

Well, I hope they can learn from Microsoft's total failure to do this. To be honest, I don't see a persuasive argument. In order for this to be worth the extra development time the company needs to have a big marketshare on both platforms - MS failed because they had zero footprint on mobile, and I think Apple will fail because they have a relatively small footprint on desktop. As a third party developer, is it really worth your time to make a native macOS app when the web is already very capable? In some cases I'm sure it will, but in the vast majority of cases you're going to need to make a web version anyway (for the huge number of Windows desktops out there), so a native macOS app just wouldn't be worth it.

jasonkostempski 9y ago
I feel like the Ubuntu phone might have succeeded had they not focused on trying to do it this too. So sad.
- untog 9y ago
  It feels like a "X is the year of the Linux desktop!" comment to make, but I'm more and more convinced that the web is will be a very viable mobile app platform soon. Progressive Web App APIs are solving a lot of the homescreen/notification/other native functionalities, and performance is always getting better. One day there might be an opportunity for a web-focused phone OS (what Firefox OS was trying to be, essentially), but... not quite yet.
  - criddell 9y ago
    Are you talking about everything being an Electron app?
    - untog 9y ago
      Well, I'm talking about mobile, so the Electron model isn't quite applicable. But sort of, yes. Except without the overhead of each app bundling it's own entire browser runtime.
    - 9y ago

minimaxir 9y ago

Here's a relevant 2014 WWDC presentation on how Apple redesigned iWork to work on both iOS and Mac using most of the same codebase, and the technical problems which needed to be solved: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014/233/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014/233/

notfried 9y ago

This makes more sense for games than apps (for apps could have a much more wildly different experience and design on the desktop than on mobile), and it makes even more sense for VR games (where both input and output will be identical regardless of the execution ecosystem).

maxpert 9y ago

Would be interesting to see how Apple tackles the problem; since other giants have failed badly on this. Microsoft is perfect example of over-promising and not getting traction.

JoshMnem 9y ago

That sounds like a terrible idea. You need an Apple device to seriously build iOS apps, so does that mean that Apple users will have trouble using software that is created by people who write their software on other operating systems?

IBM 9y ago

Hope they ban the shitty cross platform frameworks at the same time.

briandear 9y ago
Better hope the Javascript Mafia doesn't read that!
bitmapbrother 9y ago
Unity probably accounts for 90% of the iOS games.
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  I would imagine games would be an exception. Plus Unity started on OSX.

ajankelo 9y ago

To me this speaks to the power of Progressive Web Apps.

justacat 9y ago
Yea, that is the first thing I thought of when I saw this. PWAs could be made for this and I think could be awesome

pazra 9y ago

Going to be very interesting to see how they go about implementing this. So much is different about the UI of Mac Os and iOS, that I'm guessing at the very least you'll need different views for each platform.

dangoor 9y ago

I guess this is possible given that their frameworks support many different screens at this point, and some variation in tap target size. But it's not totally clear to me that supporting both touch and mouse in one app will do both input mechanisms justice. Unless they're imagining that there would be a completely different set of UI resources for Mac apps vs iOS ones? Any thoughts on this from Windows users?

colechristensen 9y ago

I wish people would stop designing "one user experience" between mobile and desktop. Capital One just switched me from a nice classic UI to one clearly designed for a small touch screen, and I'm thinking of switching banks because it annoys me so much. I generally hate when websites redesign to "look nicer" based on the aesthetic du jour and in doing so throws away a significant portion of the functionality.

yingbo 9y ago
Totally. The google map desktop is hard to use, because it's copying features from mobile.
whowouldathunk 9y ago
That's an orthogonal problem. Why should the Apple platform arbitrarily require you to use different toolkits for different form factors or input modalities? They already support phones, tablets, TV's, and watches with the iOS toolkits. Adding desktops and laptops to that mix seems obvious. And it goes the other way. The iPad Pro will probably benefit by gaining support for pointer input.
Duckton 9y ago
Despite the title of the article, I do not think this is about designing "one user experience" between mobile and desktop. I think it's about consolidating the UIKIt and Cocoa frameworks, making it easier for developers to share code between platforms, but not necessarily creating a UI that's the same for both.
rocky1138 9y ago
Tangerine did the same a few weeks back. Hate it.
pcurve 9y ago
Ally made that idiot choice awhile back (mobile first, f-the rest) UI and they've been gradually dialing it back for better experience on desktop. It was like using iphone app on ipad in simulation mode; everything huge, functionally crippled.

fredley 9y ago

This is a complete 180 from the approach in the early iPhone, iPad days. Everything was encouraged and often required to be made device-specific, because the UX is subtly different. Apple followed this too, back in the heady days of Skeumorphism. Even the shade of grey on the keyboard was different between iPhone and iPad[1]. This is yet another indicator that Apple has changed drastically since the Jobs days, and is moving more into alignment with other tech giants in their approach to products. [1]: https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/16369 https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/16369

Clubber 9y ago
Perhaps after seeing the somewhat success of Microsoft in this arena, they are going to a "switchable" UI that will change depending on the device type. Instead of writing an app for iPhone, iPad, macOS, the developer just has to write one switchable app. That would be helpful for the developer, and if implemented right, the user wouldn't be able to tell the difference. This functionality already exists to a degree in iOS. You can render different views based on the device / resolution. This would just be extending it to touch vs. keyboard and mouse. I wouldn't think of it as a single UI that (doesn't) work for all devices, but rather a UI that knows what device it's on and can morph accordingly.
- fredley 9y ago
  Apple's never been about the Developers (Developers! Developers!...) though, it's been about the users. It's a while since I've worked on Apple platforms, but it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. Apple — back then at least — had the user experience at the forefront of what they were doing. You endured the pain of writing your app in Objective C, in XCode, submitting it to the app store, paying the subscription fees, dealing with the terrible portals and jumping through many hoops because Apple's platforms were where the users were. Microsoft's approach was always, "We're where the developers are, which is where the app(lication)s are, which is where the users will be forced to go". It's hard to remember quite how much easier to use Apple's devices were in those early days compared to the status quo.
  - 9y ago

bo1024 9y ago

> Developers currently must design two different apps -- one for iOS, the operating system of Apple’s mobile devices, and one for macOS, the system that runs Macs. That’s a lot more work. One set of devices have ONLY a touchscreen as an interface. The other set of devices have ONLY a keyboard and mouse. So how will this create less work? I think it will mean that each app either (a) bundles two essentially-different programs into one "application", or (b) gives up on desktop usability. Sadly I expect (b) and I feel that Apple does too, and doesn't mind.

_rpd 9y ago
My laptop has a touchscreen. I didn't even realize until I needed to clean it. Maybe they'll require all new macOS screens to be touchscreens?
- valuearb 9y ago
  Well, it’s been so useful to you....
  - _rpd 9y ago
    Yeah but my nieces and nephews are practically touchscreen only users, so maybe for them. I'm personally holding out for decent voice controlled UI - should be any year now.
    - adjkant 9y ago
      This highlights something incredibly important. There's a very stark age line in people using touch screens by default. I TA an intro CS course, and I've noticed the line creep. It's somewhere between those born in 1998 and 2002. They just all like touch screens better because that's what they are used to. I haven't even graduated and am feeling like a greybeard when it comes to this area. I have to wonder if it's simply that we were trained to be mouse by default...
      - 9y ago

juicy-fruit 9y ago

This is amazing news. As a developer the idea of writing once and running on many platforms is weight off our shoulders. However, I can also see how a lot of developers might not like this. For example, Cultured Code charges $13.99 for Things on iOS but $49.99 on Mac. Why the difference? It is mostly because users expect apps to be cheap on mobile even though developing for both platforms is comparable. However now, developers are going to be expected by users to support both iOS and Mac apps for the same price. Also, I feel like this news might imply ARM based macOS?

valuearb 9y ago
No developer will be forced to use this, it will be for enterprise developers and low volume specialists. Pricing will stay the same. And ARM ain’t coming to MacOS anytime soon. The costs are far higher than benefits.
trollied 9y ago
No, it won’t imply ARM macOS. It’s obviously a distinct possibility, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they went that way one day. In fact, given release builds uploaded to Apple are basically just an intermediate llvm bitstream, Apple could theoretically release to any architecture.
- astrange 9y ago
  llvm bitcode is a compiler IR and nothing else, it's not architecture-independent. There have been independent bytecodes based on it like PNaCL and SPIR-V, but they're not nearly good enough to run any old app on.

kmfrk 9y ago

Outright shared apps sounds like a terrible experience. I can definitely understand the argument from a developer perspective wrt shared code bases between platforms, i don't know if the user part of me is excited, though. Maybe it'll also keep people from using other frameworks and lock them in on Apple platforms more.

Clubber 9y ago
Like everything, it greatly depends on the execution rather than the concept.
- falcolas 9y ago
  The concept was tried with Windows 8; they had to go back to offering both desktop and touchscreen options. Based on my experiences using an iPad, iPhone, and a variety of mac laptops, I don't see how this could be practically different. Touch interfaces take up too much space on lap/desktops, and desktop interfaces are inconvenient to the point of not working with touch.
  - whowouldathunk 9y ago
    > The concept was tried with Windows 8; they had to go back to offering both desktop and touchscreen options. Still using the same platform. The idea is to use responsive design rather than different UI frameworks. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

digitalengineer 9y ago

This won't help one bit. Seriously: Why do developers like those from Sketch drop the Mac App Store? Here's why: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/01/another-popular-app-leaves-the-mac-app-store/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/01/another-popular-app-leaves... http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-upgrades.html http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-... https://www.dancounsell.com/a-wish-list-for-the-mac-app-store/ https://www.dancounsell.com/a-wish-list-for-the-mac-app-stor... https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/developers-keep-leaving-mac-app-store/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/developers-keep-leaving-mac-ap...

Razengan 9y ago
Speaking as a user, many developers are, pardon my French, shit, and will take every mile for any inch given to them. Look at the iOS App Store after Apple introduced subscriptions: Even the most inane apps are now asking for monthly and yearly subscriptions. Like, what is even the point of, say, a text editor having a monthly subscription? “To justify development costs”, they write elaborate blogs about. Even though they used to be perfectly fine with a pay-once model for years before. Even though everyone was perfectly happy with buying an incrementally-numbered “Text Editor N” every year, IF they needed to. Some (like Day One I think) try to justify it by charging for features that Apple can provide for free, like iCloud Sync, and reinventing that wheel with their own paid solutions for that. As a user I was happier with the weekly blog whining about Apple’s draconian walled garden, compared to this subscription-infested market now.
- prawn 9y ago
  People expect updates once they've purchased an app for a few bucks. They tend not to pay more, and developers who release v2 and v3 as completely separate apps are often criticised. Not to mention, export/importing data can be a new issue across apps. An upgrade could be released as an IAP, but asking for more once you've released a paid app is risky also. I tend to avoid subscription software too, but I can fully understand why developers lean towards it as a way of getting a strong return and justifying further development, taking on staff for support, etc. If the app isn't up to it, then consumers can find an alternative that can scrape by with a single price, right?

gallerdude 9y ago

Assuming they can pull this off in a very good way (a big assumption), I think this is a smart move. This isn't just for tech illiterates, this is for pros. Imagine if all new software created was immediately available on iPad - that'd be huge. People have been talking about the lack of pro-grade video editors, vector art painters, and programming environments on iOS for a while now. This could be really interesting.

bunderbunder 9y ago
I like that most may content creation software has a high level of access to the operating environment. I also like that all my iPhone and iPad apps are sandboxed off from each other. I use the devices for different purposes, and want them to behave differently. That's how I felt when Unity flopped, that's how I felt when Windows 8/10 flopped, and that's how I expect I'll feel this time, too.
valuearb 9y ago
Serious applications will always be native.
egypturnash 9y ago
I sure wouldn't hold my breath for any Adobe products to get on board with this, they've put all of one app (Photoshop Elements) on the Mac App Store so far.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. Adobe has a rather large presence on the iOS App Store, and they're frequently featured as early adopters of whatever new technology Apple rolls out during their onstage presentations. Apple would probably try hard to get Adobe to follow along here, since it's an important app that people want to use.
whywhywhywhy 9y ago
> Imagine if all new software created was immediately available on iPad Alternatively imagine if all new Macs were created with touch screens and pen input like all new Microsoft machines are.

azinman2 9y ago

So basically they’re going to allow a 3rd set of storyboards and components for the Mac (theres already differences for iPad and iPhone), and then somehow merge the frameworks so it’s coherent from a programming perspective?

whowouldathunk 9y ago

Hopefully this means the iPad Pro will gain support for trackpads and mouse input.

saagarjha 9y ago
I would seriously doubt this. More than likely it'll be a unification of some AppKit and UIKit API, with the developer being expected to tailor the experience to the input devices available.

dionian 9y ago

This sounds to me like providing the ability to run iOS apps in a window in Mac OS

jawngee 9y ago

As someone (apparently the only one in this thread) that writes macOS and iOS apps, I can't wait for NSView and it's stupid lower-left cartesian coordinate system to die. UIKit is so much better in so many ways, it's time NSView and its friends are all put out to pasture.

wtallis 9y ago
Unifying the APIs that exist in slightly different versions on both platforms makes sense. But it's dangerous to talk like that frees you from having to design and implement separate user interfaces for handheld touchscreens and for desktops with keyboard+mouse. I like the idea of getting a compiler error when you try to deploy a touchscreen UI to my MacBook Pro. I paid good money for that Retina display because I want to have a lot of information on screen. I don't want it wasted by 200px buttons.
neonhomer 9y ago
I've had many years of experience with iOS and then started working on a macOS app a year or so ago. Everything seemed overly complicated compared to iOS development. I ended up using a web view and did a lot of front-end work via HTML to save time!
- tinus_hn 9y ago
  UIKit is much more limited than AppKit because it was meant to run on devices with limited resources. In fact, people used to complain about all the things you couldn't do on iOS devices that you could on the Mac.
Klonoar 9y ago
I end up just using a subclass with isFlipped returning true 90% of the time. I've found that I rarely need to deal with the lower-left issue after that... what's your biggest pain point after that? I look forward to this from Apple, because then I could scrap so much of my own stuff that's aliasing the two platforms. I think people who haven't built for these platforms don't understand that it's not about Apple letting you provide the same UI on two different platforms, but about getting rid of the lower-level differences between the two that don't need to exist in the first place. It's strange to see so many people both here and over on Reddit take issue with Apple doing this - you can't sit there and complain about Electron taking over and then decry a company literally giving you a better option. I'd gladly run a Slack client on my desktop if I could get the iOS build, and I'd really enjoy having RobinHood or Tinder or any number of apps on my desktop so I don't need to pull out my phone (or open a browser) for them. As it stands right now, cross-building your app for desktop from iOS is a rabbit hole that most people are right to shy away from as there's a lot of odd knowledge that's historically been needed to make it work. For example, NSTableView in 10.13 finally supports AutoLayout without needing to hack around it with a caching view, making it much closer to UITableView. That alone makes certain views much easier. Collection Views also only recently got closer to their UIKit counterparts, and it's made that much more usable as a result. Before these things, there was _so much_ glue code to reuse the same stuff. Sharing layout code before was possible, but an extreme exercise in frustration for a lot of people - now it's getting closer to a 1:1. Using any of the littered unmaintained frameworks for "UIKit in AppKit" is also usually not that great, since it's another API to learn that's most unofficial and they've almost all been abandoned over the years. Also, as one last personal comment, Apple needs to port UINavigationController - I ended up rolling my own (with the whole header view/etc), which is horrendously annoying to do. While I totally understand that mobile != desktop, it's 2017 and people have gotten slightly used to some mobile interfaces working on desktop. At the end of the day it's a simple stacked navigator that'd make code reuse a lot easier. Hell, port the API and have it display differently for all I care. Ninja Edit: if you're an Electron fan, and Apple had frameworks that worked the same on Mac/iOS, you could avoid Electron on iOS if you had a React Native app that could now cross compile (not using the odd third party framework that exists and is never really feature-parity with actual React Native).

pducks32 9y ago

There are 2 parts of the apps. There's model layer and view layer. The model layer is a pain to bring over because certain model objects (UIColor) are only on one platform. So if they make changes to ease that then making a mac app will become way easier. The other problem is that AppKit is not as nice or as easy to use as UIKit in my experience. If they can bring these two frameworks together under shared functionality that would be great. For example, template Master-Detail from iPhone to iPad is great (and you can always customize). So having that extend to macOS would make mac development easier. I imagine this is what they are planning. The third idea is they are thinking of something greater yet separate that is not meant for existing apps. Like a new UI Framework that works on both. This seems hard to believe as they have the iOS app base and the goal is to bring that over to mac not start a new app base altogether.

romanovcode 9y ago

Ugh. Not looking forward to this at all. Instead of making things perfectly fit each device they will try one-fits-all approach which will most likely be sub-optimal at best and horrible at worst (Windows8).

saagarjha 9y ago
Windows is a different beast–many of it's laptop/desktop computers have touchscreens, and Microsoft overreached and basically made the experience better for them at the expense of mouse/keyboard devices. Apple can't do this, of course, since Macs don't have touch screens.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  The cynic in me sees your last statement as an indication of the next must have feature - the official Apple Touch Screen Monitor for your desktop Mac.
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    But Steve did the research, he even said himself: "Laptop users do not want a touch screen!". To which I completely agree, mind you.
megy 9y ago
Except they have a curated app store, so they can reject apps which do not have a good UI for both cases.

d--b 9y ago

The lure of convergence again... that really didn't go so well for Microsoft. I think that's something that really set Apple's iphone apart and that was really smart. The problem is the iPad. The iPad should be a mac, in my view, like the Surface is a PC. Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake. Now people make pro applications for the iPad Pro and they're thinking "shit I really wish this could run on a mac" and now Apple is forced into some kind of compatibility that goes from the iPhone 5s with touch screen to a iMac 4K with touchpad.

wvenable 9y ago
Making the iPad a giant phone was what made is successful compared to every other attempt (even Microsoft's) at making tablets. The success of the iPad in the "pro" market is more of an accident and took a long time to come around.
saagarjha 9y ago
> Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake. I disagree. iPad is fundamentally a touch device, and trying to shoehorn macOS into this paradigm would have probably doomed iPad–remember, that's what the competition was doing back before iPad, and you know how the sales of those devices were…
- criddell 9y ago
  I think you are exactly right. If I wanted a small macOS device, I could buy one (I didn't). What I wanted is a large iOS device and that's why I have a 10.5" iPad Pro. It's my favorite computer.
- kartickv 9y ago
  I agree with the post you responded to. I have a 13-inch iPad "Pro" that I'm unhappy with since it doesn't do what it's promised to do. Can I build an iOS app? An Android app? Upload 100GB of data to Google Drive? Play movies stored on my external hard disc? Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do? And so on. As far as I'm concerned the "big iPhone" idea is a failure. I don't want a tablet that doesn't have the full power of a PC OS like macOS or Windows. That doesn't preclude touch. The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch. And Apple has the market power to pull that off. I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps. Yes, both options require a lot of work, but Microsoft is further ahead in having shipped it for years rather than denying the problem, as Apple does.

bitL 9y ago

Apple just can't let go of copying Microsoft, first with flat UI, now with one-size-runs-all :D Seems like real innovation is a thing of the past.

petecox 9y ago
I thought it was more Google providing Android compatibility within Chrome OS driving the push to bring apps to macOS.

johnhenry 9y ago

I wonder if this is a hint that apple might finally be bringing a touch screen interface to the Mac?

ZenoArrow 9y ago

One step closer to killing off Mac OS.

borplk 9y ago

Apple's got the Microsoft bug.

mehrdada 9y ago

Along with an ARM-based 12” MacBook named iBook. #speculation

saagarjha 9y ago
Friendly reminder that a 12" laptop named "iBook" already exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook
- mehrdada 9y ago
  I was alluding to that indeed: reviving the beloved brand. Makes perfect sense.

beamatronic 9y ago

The user experience I want includes USB ports, an SD card slot, replaceable batteries, and the escape key.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

Please just fix iTunes for God's sake. Why are they wasting all this effort when their core apps like iTunes are among the worst apps in existence but are forced upon us?

saagarjha 9y ago
Maybe they'll rewrite iTunes to use this framework, instead of the C++ Windows/macOS hybrid monster it is today?
- checker659 9y ago
  If they write it in Swift, all the problems will magically go away. Just like how stable rest of macOS has become in the last few years.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    You're joking, right?
    - checker659 9y ago
      What do you think?

pducks32 9y ago

This is probably going to be focused on lower performance apps but for those talking about video editors it may be important to point out that though the iPad is insanely powerful, it's not as strong at doing long term high performance tasks. Not like a laptop anyways.

1_2__4 9y ago
It’s insanely powerful only for its size and energy usage. There are so many cut corners and micro-lies when it comes to mobile that make all the specs sound good but at the end of the day they are far, far more crippled devices than any desktop or laptop computer. They tout things like processor specs but the entire computer matters, and turns out when you optimize for power efficiency and battery life a whooooole lot of computing power is simply not there for you to use.

draw_down 9y ago

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty unhappy with the state of Apple's software quality these days. But, what would possibly get discussed here in the comments for such a story, other than people griping about how their iPhone is broken and everything has been going downhill since Steve Jobs died?

Shivetya 9y ago

I just don't see anyone winning other than trash app sellers. far too many using iOS expect apps to be free or so cheap as to be free. how will that outlook crossover into the Mac world? Let alone how will all the apps with in app purchases play out in the Mac world? finally, how much functionality must mac apps give up to be compatible with both systems? the mac ecosystem is much more open than iOS, is that going to change?

selfsimilar 9y ago

No one's mentioned this but could this be a precursor to weaning themselves off of Intel for MacOS devices?

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
Why would it be? macOS's APIs are architecture-independent and have been since day one, which is what enabled the smooth transition from PowerPC to x86.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pryelluw 9y ago

I know Beeware[0] is doing something similar. Disclaimer: Contributor. [0] https://beeware.org https://beeware.org

heavymark 9y ago

The reason MAS is a ghost town I have always assumed was because of the MAS limitations and that unlike iOS devs aren’t required to use the store. iOS and macOS are totally different so you’d still have to develop custom ui’s though Apple could certainly help to make it easier to develop for both platforms at once. But even then MAS would remain mostly a desert until they even change limitations or require all apps to be from MAS which would be nearly impossible, especially for business customers.

jaxondu 9y ago

I take it that next year we will see a totally different macOS user interface, in order to make the one ux experience alignment. macOS has not had major UI changes for a few years, so maybe macOS app with no menu bar?

liminal 9y ago

Wish Apple would hurry up and eat their words so that they can add touchscreens to their laptops. I'm using a mac at work and I so miss my Windows touchscreen.

marenkay 9y ago

Convergence is overestimated. As a users, I actually do not want an identical use experience of apps on desktop and mobile devices because inherently these are different use cases and it does not make sense to mix them. It's not even the same applications that would be used on iPad as on macOS. I doubt technology is an issue here. Universal binaries for macOS worked well and that was a decade ago. It's the fundamental use cases for these devices that differ and no development framework can bridge that, probably even shouldn't.

blueprint 9y ago
It sounds to me like you're actually saying your experience with convergence has been overrated vis-à-vis initial claims.
- sooheon 9y ago
  By extension they could be saying that convergence is likely to incentivize creation of those mediocre experiences.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

garviand 9y ago

This is exactly what Progressive Web Apps are going to achieve! Reinventing the wheel once again...

Hernanpm 9y ago

It doesn't make sense for all apps but I felt like I need it since I started using Margin Note app in my ipad and macbook.

lucaspottersky 9y ago

there we go again... people failed so many times before... let's see what they can bring to the table now.

txmx2017 9y ago

This convinces me my suspicions are correct. They want to replace desktops with iPhones. Apple has been drastically increasing the power of the processors in iPhones. Now they’re unifying the iOS and macOS experience. They’re going to create a desktop mode within iOS. It’ll use bluetooth peripherals and an HDMI Airplay stick that plugs into a monitor. The iPhone will become a PC we carry around in our pockets containing all our data making it unnecessary to have a different computer in every place we go to. And it will justify spending more on our phones because we’ll be saving not buying desktops.

brazzledazzle 9y ago
I've suspected that iOS-only had been the plan for a while and I am pretty sad about it to be honest. I'm sure the user experience will be great but I'm a professional and I want a relatively unrestricted OS with a decent UI and good hardware. I suspect I'll have to compromise on at least one of those eventually. It makes sense for Apple but it will be the end of an era.

sparky_ 9y ago

Not enough info here to determine anything useful from the developer perspective. If I had to make an arbitrary assumption, I'd guess that this boils down to a UIKit implementation on the Mac.

evadne 9y ago

It would be interesting to compare this to https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon which came out of the Iconfactory in 2011: “Chameleon requires OS X 10.6 or higher. Apps built with it have been proven to be acceptable to Apple for the Mac App Store. Chameleon was first built by The Iconfactory to unify the codebase of Twitterrific for both Mac and iOS.” Frameworks with iOS/macOS targets have long existed and it is proven possible to have events routed in UIKit style. I however fear that the merging of user experiences will come at the detriment of the Mac experience. SJ said long ago that Macs are trucks and only some people need it. This converging step makes no sense when Apple is already trying to push the iPad as the “computer” for the masses.

nicodjimenez 9y ago

I'm surprised by all the negative comments about this. It's hard for me to understand why this is a bad thing. Linking the phone to the computer in deeper ways without having to write separate apps seems _super_ valuable.

petecox 9y ago
Yes. The obvious universal API that targets big screens and small, touch or mouse is Qt. It started as a desktop framework, was made touch-aware to be used Nokia and BB10 for phones, powers KDE 5 and I'm hopeful Ollie Paranoid will provide an update in a few weeks re: Plasma on postmarketOS. Now a company with Apple's resources should surely be able to reintegrate the Cocoa Touch hard-fork back into a common modernised Cocoa, which by now has a 30 year legacy from NeXTSTEP. Naturally you'll still need to customize a UI for Mac or iPhone but a unified toolkit is entirely possible.

beedogs 9y ago

This will probably be what gets me (and most power users) to leave Apple's walled garden for good. Once iOS infects MacOS heavily enough that it interferes with the way I prefer to use my computer, it's all going away.

beders 9y ago

Please, don't Apple. A Mac is a different device with a very very very different user interface - in the sense of how users are interfacing with it. I don't need ANY of the UIKit interface elements on my Mac. It's like Write Once Run Anywhere all over again. Instead, go back and focus on what made OS X so great. Because High Sierra ain't it. It's bad enough that a viewer of hypertext documents is now the common 'app' platform, I don't need or want a unified UI kit.

bonaldi 9y ago

I'm hoping "unified user experience" is meant in a big way -- the promise of a device that can go from touch UI when in my pocket to desktop experience when a keyboard and display are connected is a huge one. The makings of such support are already there in the hooks iOS has to support different size classes -- currently used to handle device rotation mainly.

BerislavLopac 9y ago

I've realised a while ago that the fact that OSX is Unix-based and fairly open - and therefore used by many developers for non-Apple development -- happened purely by accident, because Apple needed a better replacement for the old MacOS 9 and NExTSTEP was readily available. When developing iOS they made it more controlled and closed, and they're now following that strategy to the desktop.

twobyfour 9y ago

Really looking forward to my complex professional software and content creation and data management desktop tools being dumbed down to the UI complexity of an iPhone just like desktop web apps have been since the advent of responsive design. Maybe the upside of this will be all the developer types fleeing to Linux and Linux finally gaining a comparable user-facing software ecosystem. (Yes, I know a lot of software exists for Linux, but the quantity, variety, and ease of installation of end-user applications on Mac is in a different league; and a lot of mainstream Mac+Windows apps still don't have Linux versions. It's the main thing Apple gained by making OSX developer-friendly in the first place.)

rakshithbekal 9y ago

AKA UWP for Apple OS

nkristoffersen 9y ago

people seem to forget but Apple makes some of the most powerful iOS apps currently. iMovie, Keynote, Photos, Garagaband etc. And the experience between iOS and MacOS is extremely similar between them. Just more “expanded” on desktop. I wouldn’t be surprised if they share a lot of code between the different platforms too. If this helps more developers accomplish the same thing that Apple is doing with their own apps then I’m all for it!