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After so many years of Apple fans telling everyone that any cross platform technology demonstrated absolute laziness on the part of developers that resulted in

After so many years of Apple fans telling everyone that any cross platform technology demonstrated absolute laziness on the part of developers that resulted in unacceptable un-native feel, how fitting it is that now Apple, the largest company on Earth, and home to the makers of AppKit no less, can no longer be burdened to take the time to write real Mac apps anymore. I know that people will say that this is Apple working hard to make the Mac viable again, but especially when considered in the context of the poor Mac hardware in the past two years, I think it’s clear that’s not the case. Not mentioned in this article is that these apps look weird because they’re using 1.3x scaling from iOS too. Apple barely takes the time to differentiate iOS on the iPad, or even the XS Max. Owning either of these two devices constantly feels like there would be obvious places to make the experience feel better than just a big iPhone. Do we really think Apple is going to work that hard on making iOS software feel good in the Mac? Remember, when the iPad first came out, everyone said “oh it’s new, I’m sure they’ll really make the software different soon”. It took 7 years to get multi-tasking in there. And this was the star product for a while. iOS still doesn’t really feel like iPad is it’s home.

saagarjha 8y ago
> Apple … can no longer be burdened to take the time to write real Mac apps anymore I have no doubt that Apple could have written these from scratch and they'd be fantastic. They're just testing out the new Marzipan platform so that they can work out the kinks in it before launching it next year.
- ixtli 8y ago
  I agree. I'm usually the first to jump on lazy design or the near complete sacrifice of form and function just to release a few hours earlier to save more of daddy's precious investment capital ... but these are clearly just toys. It's a demo of the underlying tech. I think the better argument is that giving such tech to 3rd part devs will encourage them to be lazy.
- tolmasky 8y ago
  I am 100% certain these apps will not be fantastic in 1 year. Or 2, or 3. Let’s look at another cross-platform app that Apple has had years to perfect, iTunes: terrible since they’ve had to make it work on Mac and Windows. Apple Music being the latest proof point that they cannot make a nice experience. The track record isn’t good. But honestly, what’s the latest fantastic new Mac app you’ve used? I can’t think of any. The days of something like Keynote being released are behind us.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > I am 100% certain these apps will not be fantastic in 1 year. Or 2, or 3. That's about how long it took Photos to become pretty decent. I'm sure people will eventually come around to designing for both platforms, but it will take a while for them to do so. > But honestly, what’s the latest fantastic new Mac app you’ve used? Well, there are a couple of third-party apps…
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Indeed. This is just Apple's usual tactic of eating their own dog food, the same way that Finder used to be a Carbon app just to demonstrate that Carbon was viable at a time when classic Mac OS developers were hesitant to move to Mac OS X, this despite having Finder written in Cocoa to start with means we wouldn't have needed to wait for Apple to port to Cocoa much later.

saagarjha 8y ago

> Apple … can no longer be burdened to take the time to write real Mac apps anymore I have no doubt that Apple could have written these from scratch and they'd be fantastic. They're just testing out the new Marzipan platform so that they can work out the kinks in it before launching it next year.

ixtli 8y ago
I agree. I'm usually the first to jump on lazy design or the near complete sacrifice of form and function just to release a few hours earlier to save more of daddy's precious investment capital ... but these are clearly just toys. It's a demo of the underlying tech. I think the better argument is that giving such tech to 3rd part devs will encourage them to be lazy.
tolmasky 8y ago
I am 100% certain these apps will not be fantastic in 1 year. Or 2, or 3. Let’s look at another cross-platform app that Apple has had years to perfect, iTunes: terrible since they’ve had to make it work on Mac and Windows. Apple Music being the latest proof point that they cannot make a nice experience. The track record isn’t good. But honestly, what’s the latest fantastic new Mac app you’ve used? I can’t think of any. The days of something like Keynote being released are behind us.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > I am 100% certain these apps will not be fantastic in 1 year. Or 2, or 3. That's about how long it took Photos to become pretty decent. I'm sure people will eventually come around to designing for both platforms, but it will take a while for them to do so. > But honestly, what’s the latest fantastic new Mac app you’ve used? Well, there are a couple of third-party apps…
zapzupnz 8y ago
Indeed. This is just Apple's usual tactic of eating their own dog food, the same way that Finder used to be a Carbon app just to demonstrate that Carbon was viable at a time when classic Mac OS developers were hesitant to move to Mac OS X, this despite having Finder written in Cocoa to start with means we wouldn't have needed to wait for Apple to port to Cocoa much later.