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iPhone and iPad Apps Coming to Macs With Apple Silicon, Developers Can Manage Availability in App Store Connect

This is terrific. Web apps are often garbage, or often just don't work. I can't tell you how many times I've had to turn away from my Mac to do something very simple on my iPhone/iPad.

Example apps (that would never had a native macOS built):
  • iPeng
  • Cheap Charts
  • USAA Mobile app (better than their browser)
  • TextNow
  • Blue Iris
  • Harmony
  • DeRemote
 
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Yeah ok, but why *wouldn't* a dev. wanna extend their app to the Mac, when they get more money from it. True, there is no obligation, but there never was anyway was anyway..

I also believe the need not to re-compile would therefore make their apps run faster?
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Those icons in the dock are hideous. I don't think the icons should be unified between macOS and iOS, but if that must happen, use the icons from iOS, don't just take the Mac icon and throw a white rounded square behind it. That's just ugly.

Also... now that iOS apps are on macOS... what about the new iOS Widgets? Those seem kind of analogous to apps that live on the right side of the status bar...
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Agree. They should have just ported the iOS icons which now look much more professional than the icons on Big Sur. Pages, Numbers and Keynote are especially awful. If you are going flat and simplified then don't mix it up with 3D stuff. I really wish they could just put one design team in charge of unifying the entire icon collection.
 
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If only someone on these forums a month ago said this was going to happen. That would have been pretty cool.
 
Starrwulfe said:
I like using Apollo for accessing Reddit. […] His app is so good in fact, I have grown to abhor the traditional way of going through the web browser to get to Reddit and usually wind up reaching for my iPhone or iPad even while sitting at my Mac
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That’s a bridge (or two) too far, in my opinion. Reddit is a website! I’ve used the desktop site from all my devices for a decade, I’ve tried all the apps and dropped them quickly. The day that old.reddit.com stops working is the day I leave the site. The simple design (without subreddit themes) makes all content types equally weighted. I’ll be headed back to RSS readers soon.
 
konqerror said:
Not sure how much of a "mega" game changer this is. They have Android apps for Chromebook, and Android apps for Windows (BlueStacks), and apparently nobody realizes its a thing...
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BlueStack is an emulator, which isn't seamless, and Chromebooks aren't really for home use. And most Mac users don't use Windows or Chromebooks.
 
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rp2011 said:
A Mac will now be able run iphone and iPad apps. And as Mac OS 11 now has more spacing between targets, I do see a touch screen Mac that is iPad Pro-like with a Magic Keyboard as a posibility. I mean why not? Why wouldnt a designer not want the option to pick up an Apple Pencil to work in Illustrator or Photoshop?
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A DeskPad! That said, imagine the price of a magic keyboard for a 32 inch DeskPad!
 
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Developers like Cultured Code must be quaking in their boots now.

After all, how can they get around charging £9.99 for an iOS app and £48.99 for a Mac app when they’re identical?...
 
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Ansath said:
Well, Bluestacks is basically an Android emulator,
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As far as I know, there’s no android emulator running ARM based android, but x86 variant of it. This means app compatibility suffers and apps/games writing for ARM will have a chance to not run. (I just have one of those games refusing to run on even bluestacks)
 
Useful to some, a gimmick to many, but certainly a simple way of getting a lot of simple desktop games onto Mac.

Questions:

Is this really a game changer if developers can already use catalyst to port some/most apps to Mac OS, assuming they're written in Swift?

Also think on this: There will be two platforms: an Intel Mac that can run Mac apps and windows apps, or an Arm Mac that can run Mac apps and iPhone/Ipad apps. Which is the most compelling platform?

I think the move to arm is good in the long term (for supply chain, to differentiate, vertical integration etc. ) but being able to run iOS apps is not the reason.

Good Mac apps are designed for Mac. Developers that want to get their iOS apps onto Mac OS and not make them feel janky will need to be some effort to change the touch paradigm to one that takes advantage of a traditional computer. And if they need to do this then they may as well build for Mac OS properly. And they can do this for Intel as well as Arm.

If developers want to maintain the value in what they do, they want simply accept the default 'make available on Mac OS' box - they'll disable this and build a specific Mac OS app with extra features.
 
konqerror said:
Not sure how much of a "mega" game changer this is. They have Android apps for Chromebook, and Android apps for Windows (BlueStacks), and apparently nobody realizes its a thing...
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Its a game changer for Apple. Does Apple need to put ”for Apple” at the end of everything? Apple often criticized hype machine is appropriately turned up to 11 for this.
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konqerror said:
It doesn't take a genius to realize that if the ability to run mobile apps which comprise 80% of worldwide phones on a platform that runs on 90% of computers has made absolutely zero impact, then Apple's capability isn't going to be a "mega game changer"
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Microsoft was hurting in the mobile space. So why would giving windows the abilty to run mobile games have a significant impact in the area that needed it (mobile). It wouldn’t. So just because Apple is doing the opposite does not mean the comparison is relevant. It really is not.
 
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I think one thing that might end up being really cool is developers of desktop apps ending up going the other way and bringing their desktop versions to iOS because most of the hard work will already be done and also developers bringing apps to MacOS that they wouldn't have bothered with before. For example, we might end up with World of Warcraft for iPads because they'll undoubtedly release an ARM based MacOS client and now with iPads having keyboards and trackpads, it wouldn't take much for them to get into the mobile space through iOS and iPads.
 
Unified App Store sounds like the way forward with apps 'required' to have iPhone, iPad, and desktop UI's. These apps have long since not needed to be cut down desktop apps in anyway but their UI.
 
reyesmac said:
If they keep this up and the iOS becomes the MacOS, how much will the user base grow for MacOS if you lump all iOS users into one group? That may be a goal. What would it be like to have the same OS running on your phone, tablet, tv, and computer? I don't think splintering their products is their aim, I think they want one code base so their entire company is focused in as few directions as possible.
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It is not the same OS. Mac OS is completely different. Only thing that has changed is the main processor to allow iOS and iPad OS apps to run directly on it. Do not make the mistake to confuse the mobile OS and desktop OS as one and the same.
 
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konqerror said:
Not sure how much of a "mega" game changer this is. They have Android apps for Chromebook, and Android apps for Windows (BlueStacks), and apparently nobody realizes its a thing...
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The Apple ecosystem is more uniform, I think it's going to be hard to anyone who bought an ARM Mac to not "realize it's a thing" :) There are plenty of "widget-like" iPhone apps I'd love to see on macOS. And I expect them to run a lot more seamlessly than the more "hacky" methods from multiple vendors you see with running Android apps.
 
Apple is paving the way to release a Mac with touchscreen, they are preparing MacOS, iOS and iPadOS.

We all now this is not ready, a lot has to be done to release a satisfactory multipourpose product.

All who tried doing this failed, Apple will succeed as always.
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blackcrayon said:
The Apple ecosystem is more uniform, I think it's going to be hard to anyone who bought an ARM Mac to not "realize it's a thing" :) There are plenty of "widget-like" iPhone apps I'd love to see on macOS. And I expect them to run a lot more seamlessly than the more "hacky" methods from multiple vendors you see with running Android apps.
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Yes! There is an app,called touch retouch, I use all the time.

Its cheap and so efficient, that I keep sending photos to my phone to edit and send them back to the Mac.

Thank god for airdrop hahahahaha But it would be great to have it on the Mac itself!
 
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Honestly this will be the game-changer the Mac App Store needed for years. I will be surprised if the number of apps for the Mac doesn't explode in the next five years.
Apple thought this through extremely well. The support of trackpad and keyboard shortcuts for the iPad is no coincidence. Many developers will support them, and that alone will make porting apps for the Mac a lot easier. The fact that Mac sidebars look just like the ones on the iPad is yet another great thing. After that the steps to support the Mac will be small, as it won't be necessary to do anything from scratch but add some polishings here and there.
 
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nickgovier said:
As long as it doesn't go the other way, and developers who currently make simplified iOS apps and more complex macOS apps decide that it's easier to run the iOS app on macOS than rebuild the macOS app for ARM, so Mac owners end up with a dumbed down iOS experience. I think that's the fear here.
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Mac users aren't known for accepting crap apps. If they don't like the developers' Mac experiences, they'll complain or not use them. Simple. It's the same as having iPhone apps run unmodified on the iPad. Developers will make optimized experiences where it makes sense just like for that platform (and similarly, there's a "backup" where the app at least runs otherwise).

I can think of a lot of simple (in UI) iPhone apps I'd love to have on the desktop... Stuff like guitar tuner. Think of them as advanced desktop widgets :) Assuming they're compatible, there are also lots of chat apps that would be nice to use on the desktop when I'm home instead of tapping on the phone keyboard - at least I much prefer doing that with Messages.
 
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Watched the video... Apple acknowledges some edge cases where usability may be impacted, but it appears they've really thought through how this will work. I don't see having more options for apps on the App Store as a bad thing. I think there's an inherent thought that iOS apps coming to macOS will somehow 'dumb down' the mac. Again, I don't think that will be the case (there's plenty of dumb macOS apps and complex iOS apps).
 
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MacOH21 said:
Watched the video... Apple acknowledges some edge cases where usability may be impacted, but it appears they've really thought through how this will work. I don't see having more options for apps on the App Store as a bad thing. I think there's an inherent thought that iOS apps coming to macOS will somehow 'dumb down' the mac. Again, I don't think that will be the case (there's plenty of dumb macOS apps and complex iOS apps).
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Yes! iOS has very advanced apps, some more complex and complete than their Mac companion!
 
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