Apple Plans to Let Developers Release Universal Apps That Work Across iPhone, iPad, and Mac

[npmacuser5]

What I want, IOS Pixelmator on my Mac. IOS apps are dumbed down apps at their best. IOS apps that do simple things like Netflix, good option. IOS apps like Excel and Numbers, Pixelmator for example, no thank you. They require a Mac version.

 

[randomplaydo]

I wonder if this is first steps of a several year plan to move to a single operating system. It seems like that's what they're doing, but taking the opposite approach to Microsoft. They're putting all the pieces in place so that the design language matches more and more each year. That apps start working across the board. Adding split view and overlay to the ipads, etc.

I look forward to it actually.

 

[haunebu]

If true, Apple is simplifying themselves out of the desktop computer market. They're actually taking a page from Microsoft here, who came at the issue from the other side.

No more Intel processors in Macs. It'll be the A-series powering the next generation of hardware. Rosetta2 will be available for legacy apps and those lag behind in supporting the new ARM architecture (Adobe, etc). Of course, Intel-based Macs will remain for at least another generation during the transition. Hey, the Mac Pro is now four years old, so Apple isn't afraid of making people wait for new hardware while the software is ported.

At the end of a multi-year transition, you'll have iOS on laptops and desktops.

This will be the end of the Macintosh as we know it.

 

[gsapienza]

If true, Apple is simplifying themselves out of the desktop computer market. They're actually taking a page from Microsoft here, who came at the issue from the other side.

No more Intel processors in Macs. It'll be the A-series powering the next generation of hardware. Rosetta2 will be available for legacy apps and those lag behind in supporting the new ARM architecture (Adobe, etc). Of course, Intel-based Macs will remain for at least another generation during the transition. Hey, the Mac Pro is now four years old, so Apple isn't afraid of making people wait for new hardware while the software is ported.

At the end of a multi-year transition, you'll have iOS on laptops and desktops.

This will be the end of the Macintosh as we know it.

Sigh.. this is not true. Do you know what kind of effort is going into this? New App Store deprecation of AppKit, etc. The mac isn't going anywhere

 

[StoneJack]

If true, Apple is simplifying themselves out of the desktop computer market. They're actually taking a page from Microsoft here, who came at the issue from the other side.

No more Intel processors in Macs. It'll be the A-series powering the next generation of hardware. Rosetta2 will be available for legacy apps and those lag behind in supporting the new ARM architecture (Adobe, etc). Of course, Intel-based Macs will remain for at least another generation during the transition. Hey, the Mac Pro is now four years old, so Apple isn't afraid of making people wait for new hardware while the software is ported.

At the end of a multi-year transition, you'll have iOS on laptops and desktops.

This will be the end of the Macintosh as we know it.

No. Macs have already had transition of at least 3 CPU generations (Motorola, PowerPC, Intel).
Moving to ARM or 4th CPU transition itself doesn't kill Macs.

 

[BootsWalking]

This means touchscreens are coming on future Macs.

 

[DNichter]

Instead of bringing iOS up to Mac OS standards which they should, Apple will slowly bring Mac OS standards down to iOS standards

I have no faith in Apple in this endeavor especially when they insistingly try to convince the consumer that the iPad is a laptop replacement.

Also no mouse support on iOS will disrupt the flow in user ability in seemlessly switching between operating systems

What's so bad about iOS apps? From what I have seen, most are more reliable/stable than macOS apps. Maybe not as full featured, but that's just up to the developers. Much better from a security standpoint as well.

 

[chrono1081]

My main worry about universal apps is bloat.

You won't have to worry about that that's been taken care of years ago. App Thinning even thins apps down to your specific hardware configuration.

 

[sam2345678]

For who ? For consumer users ? I'm afraid that they forget that majority of MacOS users are "professionals" like developers, content creators etc. There isn't at least one useful app in appstore for me right now because sandboxing and many various technical reasons. Apps like Adobe, Office are distributed outside the appstore. Why the hell is launchpad still there ? It's useless, I'd like to meet the person who came with this stupid idea. Windows with UWP failed and they are doing the same mistake again ? Tim Cock will ruin the company once again.

Well said, I miss a clear top visionair at Apple.

The whole Macbook 2016/touchbar update is flawed as well as the iMac Pro which will be outdated in 2-3 years. They should have just updated the Air with a retina screen, maybe put on that machine only USB C for consumers to push the market and updated the 2015 Macbooks Pro's with updated internals and leave the keyboard, SD reader alone and maybe add 1-2 USB C ports. Perfect would be a 15 inch macbook pro 2015 with the size of a 14 inch due to reduce bezels and updated CPU and more memory.

For people "loving" the new keyboards, try to sit in an office with 30 people with these new keyboards and hear to the sound and look at the productivity. Further if you buy a machine of ~2000$, of course you will start to "love" it and get used to it. But in all fairness, i really believe the old macbooks were overall relatively better. Maybe most important the T shaped cursor keys.

The iPhone 7 should have not lost the headphone jack. That should happen when iPhones get USB C and there are many USB C headphones, which might take 5 years. Call me old fashioned but i still prefer everything wired including my keyboard or mouse. With a wire, there's just 1 more less thing to worry about instead of charging 20 devices. They should focus on a new type of battery if they really want to make everything wireless.

The iMac pro, should be twice as thick as the older 2011 iMacs, and let users upgrade it with desktop components instead of laptop components. Why does anyone wants a thin desktop that stands mostly against a wall? And therefore reduce components quality. Put an iPhone 8 camera inside it as webcam 4K, and make an option to order it without it, and a matte screen. Bring back target display. I actually prefer the old 24 inch or 4:3 size as well.

The Apple watch could have become SO much bigger. They should have focussed on Health and Sport from the start instead of notifications, apps. Drop the whole display. Have a battery of 2 weeks. And let it sync with iPhone. No-one wants apps or look at the watch constantly. It should just be a health bracelet with features you can't possible do on an iPhone cause its on your body constantly. The way they introduced it was just a wrong vision. It shouldn't be a watch but called "Apple Health" or something. 200$ for a thin unobtrusive timeless design bracelet that lets you improve your health.

And this adds to my point that, even though I "love" the company, it seems that there is hardly any vision from the top concerning Pro users. Maybe there is but other people are overruling it. Look at the film industry and the music industry moving to PC for years already. I wonder what Pixar uses to create their movies. They seem to forget that Pro users are the trend setters who create content, content that consumers use, consumers that make the money yes, but without creation, it will be less and less interesting for consumers. I also think PWA's can become bigger and bigger. Probably Apple will try to delay this development on their platform, but at least for Android, i think it will be mainstream.

Anyone sharing my thoughts or am I just getting old and grumpy? >:|

 

[npmacuser5]

If true, Apple is simplifying themselves out of the desktop computer market. They're actually taking a page from Microsoft here, who came at the issue from the other side.

No more Intel processors in Macs. It'll be the A-series powering the next generation of hardware. Rosetta2 will be available for legacy apps and those lag behind in supporting the new ARM architecture (Adobe, etc). Of course, Intel-based Macs will remain for at least another generation during the transition. Hey, the Mac Pro is now four years old, so Apple isn't afraid of making people wait for new hardware while the software is ported.

At the end of a multi-year transition, you'll have iOS on laptops and desktops.

This will be the end of the Macintosh as we know it.

If true, Apple is simplifying themselves out of the desktop computer market. They're actually taking a page from Microsoft here, who came at the issue from the other side.

No more Intel processors in Macs. It'll be the A-series powering the next generation of hardware. Rosetta2 will be available for legacy apps and those lag behind in supporting the new ARM architecture (Adobe, etc). Of course, Intel-based Macs will remain for at least another generation during the transition. Hey, the Mac Pro is now four years old, so Apple isn't afraid of making people wait for new hardware while the software is ported.

At the end of a multi-year transition, you'll have iOS on laptops and desktops.

This will be the end of the Macintosh as we know it.

Not until IOS system can fully run Mac apps like Adobe Photoshop (suite). IOS a dumbed down version of Mac OS. Other words, a two way conversion. Much simpler to move IOS apps to the Mac. A huge project fraught with problems. Microsoft Surface as an example.

 

[Bart Kela]

My main worry about universal apps is bloat.

One possibility is that you would only download the necessary bits for your particular device rather than the whole blob, a thin binary instead of a fat binary. iOS devices would download the ARM code specific to the device (iPhone, iPad, maybe Apple Watch, Apple TV as well) and Macs would download the x86 code.

We're already seeing some of this when you download a delta macOS update from the Mac App Store. You are only downloading the bits specific to your system. A 2017 MacBook owner is getting a different download size than a 2014 Mac mini owner.

More intriguing is the possibility of an ARM-based Mac.

What is macOS High Sierra anyhow? Is it a massive under-the-hood rewrite? Are there prototype ARM-based Macs running High Sierra in labs in Cupertino?

 

[Ohples]

#MakeWidgetsGreatAgain

 

[cmChimera]

Wow people blowing this out of proportion.

This does not mean Apple is switching to ARM Macs next year, or anytime soon. (They may choose to eventually, who knows.)

This doesn't mean apps are going to be blown up iOS apps. (To be frank, this would be an improvement for some web services though)

This is probably better for developers and consumers in the long run.

 

[smacrumon]

Love this. Always wanted it. iOS on Mac and vice versa!

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Don't worry about this. There really is no need to.

It's already an issue. There are pieces included in most apps that aren't needed for that device. Your Angry Birds app on your iPhone has quite a few megabytes of un-needed code for the iPad version that will never need to be used on your device and just takes up space.

Now take that and add a couple hundred megabytes to every app for the macOS version to be bundled in there too and all apps start really expanding in size. They need to go to a system where only the libraries relevant to the device it's loaded on. No need to carry around all that extra information when it's not needed.

 

[PavelGubarev]

Actually it isn’t the same... designing for a touch-centric device like the iphone and ipad is different than designing for a keyboard/pointing device-centric device like a laptop/desktop.

Seems true but when I launch my apps in iPhone emulator on Mac they work just fine without any fine-tuning. If you can tap a button you can click it as well.

 

[djlythium]

As long as devs are using things like Asset Catalogs, App Thinning should mean that only the required resources for that device are downloaded. When you download a universal app on iPhone, it doesn't download the iPad assets as well. I'd expect it to work the same if universal apps worked on Mac too.

This is contingent with developers using the latest APIs etc, but that historically hasn't been a huge issue.

I’m no dev, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t dev’s mandated to use the most recent APIs to ensure things like app thinning?

 

[CarlJ]

My main worry about universal apps is bloat.

Don't worry. Apple has App Thinning and Bitcode. Bitcode means that your source code doesn't compile all the way down to machine code for the target CPU, it compiles to an intermediate representation, which is submitted to the App Store. Then, that intermediate code is compiled to the final machine code for each target platform, and only the necessary code is shipped to a given device. Same with the various graphic assets. App Thinning means your iPhone only gets the iPhone code & graphics, your iPad gets only the iPad code & graphics, etc. This means apps can take less space on your device, but it also is a way to combat the long-standing problem of waiting around for every developer to recompile their app for some new situations - now Apple can come out with a new CPU that adds new instructions to the instruction set that would make some operations much faster, and then Apple simply has to change the intermediate-to-machine-code compiler to take advantage of these new instructions, and boom, everybody's app is updated (using the partially-compiled code that developers have already sent to Apple). It eliminates one whole class of problems for them (releasing new devices with a new improved CPU and a new Xcode and then hoping that all one million developers will recompile and resubmit their apps, and waiting for that to happen).

BTW, with the switch to 64-bit only, there were some developers screaming, "there's absolutely no reason Apple has to do this! 32-bit forever!" I suspect this path (universal apps) is one of the reasons. Apple does things for reasons (arguably not always good ones), they just don't explain their next half dozen moves to everyone else ahead of time.

A prerequisite being a shiny new ARM based Mac?

Nope, with Bitcode they could presumably generate both Intel CPU-specific and ARM CPU-specific versions of an app from the same code.

Rosetta2. Things like iOS weather apps on a Mac would be nice.

Only related to Rosetta in the notion of letting things run in multiple different places. Rosetta translated old already-compiled code on the fly, to run on new CPUs. Bitcode would allow submitting new apps - where the devs have made proper allowances - that can be distributed by the App Store to run on both Intel-based Macs and ARM-based iOS devices.

The Mac App Store has been sorely neglected for a long time. It has seemed like it (the whole MAS ecosystem) was given an initial push and then neglected and left to fend for itself. It isn't exactly a ghost town, but it's not a very lively place, either. Giving iOS developers a path by which they can (with some effort and planning) submit their apps to both the iOS and Mac App Stores, might allow a bunch of useful iOS apps to come over to the Mac, and get more attention focused on the MAS.

i don’t see how it can be done right. For years we’ve been told that OSX/macOS is not designed for touch. That is still true.

Having universal apps is going to impact either the touch end on ios or the desktop style on macos. A compromise is going to be made one way or another.

Agreed that this is a very hard target to hit - some apps could handle the transition between platforms while others couldn't - but I don't foresee this being a complete change into "everything is / must be cross platform now", rather it would be a slow transition for a very long time (and would require much cleverness on the part of both Apple and independent developers to have UI elements give native experiences in both places). It's more making it possible to ship an app that runs on both platforms (if the developer goes to some effort to facilitate this) than requiring all apps to be cross platform.

And so it begins... ARM Mac.

This would certainly make a future ARM Mac easier, but I don't see that it would necessitate an ARM Mac for this plan to work "now".

Many APIs especially the newer ones are similar on both platforms. iOS and macOS apps can share a lot of their codebase; it's mostly just the UI that needs to be created (excluding platform specifically features).

So I'm thinking (or at least hoping) that it'll still be a requirement for each platform to have it's own UI. So like with an iPhone and an Apple TV, a macOS app can be downloaded to your mac if you install its iOS counterpart.

Ding ding ding! This sounds very plausible. I can also see some apps working cross platform using some new "we mostly do the work for you" cross-platform UI framework/layer (an Apple-supplied layer on top of the existing Apple-supplied frameworks), if said app has a fairly simple, straightforward, UI already.

 

[PatriotInvasion]

This is the best news in years. It brings the development juice from mobile back to the desktop and provides a new backbone to mouse/cursor/non-touch UI as another computing option rather than be relegated to a legacy computing method that doesn't warrant as much attention.

I think if you've remained a Mac person throughout the iPad era (2010-2017), than this should make you happy. It proves that the Mac stood the test of time and didn't become the true truck that Jobs theorized. It's still the car for many of us.

 

[123]

i don’t see how it can be done right. For years we’ve been told that OSX/macOS is not designed for touch. That is still true.

Exactly. "Responsive" websites stand for bad UX because it is simply impossible to design something that automatically scales perfectly for different sizes. And you can't design an app that works perfectly for hover+click and touch input either. Basically, if you want to offer great usability, you'll have to write multiple versions of that app. Meaning that the whole thing is only useful for lazy developers and crappy apps.

 

[cmChimera]

Well said, I miss a clear top visionair at Apple.

Lol I'm going to come back to this.

For people "loving" the new keyboards, try to sit in an office with 30 people with these new keyboards and hear to the sound and look at the productivity. Further if you buy a machine of ~2000$, of course you will start to "love" it and get used to it. But in all fairness, i really believe the old macbooks were overall relatively better. Maybe most important the T shaped cursor keys.

Owners of new Macbook Pro: I love this machine.

You: No you don't.

Solid argument.

The iPhone 7 should have not lost the headphone jack. That should happen when iPhones get USB C and there are many USB C headphones, which might take 5 years. Call me old fashioned but i still prefer everything wired including my keyboard or mouse.

This is where I go back to your first statement. You expect someone to be a visionary while at the same time saying "we should stick with the 3.5mm jack and wired keyboards." That's not vision.

Why does anyone wants a thin desktop that stands mostly against a wall?

Because it's powerful, doesn't take up a whole of space, and has a 5k display. The iMac line is quite popular.

The Apple watch could have become SO much bigger. They should have focussed on Health and Sport from the start. Drop the whole display. Have a battery of 2 weeks. And let it sync with iPhone. No-one wants apps or look at the watch constantly. It should just be a health bracelet with features you can't possible do on an iPhone cause its on your body constantly. The way they introduced it was just a wrong vision. It shouldnt be a watch but called "Apple Health" or something. 200$ for a thin unobtrusive timeless design bracelet that lets you improve your health.

You have seen the news of the Apple Watch doing extremely well right?

 

[ike1707]

Makes me uncomfortable

 

[majordude]

Ugh. This is going to dumb-down programs that run on Mac. An iPhone is no match for a MacBook Pro.

 

[itguy06]

Touch screen Macs would be AWESOME.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

My main worry about universal apps is bloat.

Not a problem at all. With App Slicing what gets installed to the user's device is only what is necessary, with all files and features pertaining to other device categories left out.