The reality is that Mac OS only has a chance to survive in a good enough shape if any feature that comes to iOS can also easily come to Mac OS. Practically all

The reality is that Mac OS only has a chance to survive in a good enough shape if any feature that comes to iOS can also easily come to Mac OS. Practically all of those features are stuff that are on its face a positive additions (OCR for photos, Shortcuts). In the past it wasn’t at all obvious that iOS features would always also benefit Mac OS and often there was a time delay. Mac OS was neglected. During that past few years Apple seems to have created the infrastructure to bring all things to all platforms in a way that’s realistically doable for them and I think that is exactly the right decision. The billion dollar monster iOS will always suck oxygen out of the room for Mac OS, so better for the Mac OS to optimally benefit from that billion dollar monster. In terms of the UI paradigm Mac OS certainly does some weird shit and that’s always sad (though if we are honest with ourselves not exactly a new development – Mac OS always had some weird quirks and corners) but I don’t think that’s down to iOS or unification or anything like that. For Apple platform unification seems to mean bringing features to all platforms, not unifying the UI (and that’s the right call). That doesn’t mean that the UI team for Mac OS can’t make wrong decisions. (One example: Mac OS notifications heavily rely on hover states, to an extent that leads to a poor user experience. This is an interaction model iOS doesn’t even have, so we can’t and shouldn’t blame that on iOS. This is all the fault of the Mac OS team and design direction and not a result of unification.)