
Apple to Target Combining iPhone, iPad and Mac Apps by 2021 - jmsflknr
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-20/apple-is-said-to-target-combining-iphone-ipad-mac-apps-by-2021
======
skywhopper
This is weird. It’s the sort of thing that management dreams of but which
companies like Apple should realize is a bad idea. They definitely need to
provide tools for making app families work smoothly across each platform, but
even more importantly they need to be segmenting their devices more, not less.
The latest iPads are a great example of a device that has enormous potential
which is being hamstrung by an OS and dev platform that doesn’t really provide
a tablet-focused experience.

And then the Mac is losing what should be its primary audience through
unwanted innovations and otherwise stagnant hardware, and a failure to
recognize the importance of catering to the power users who might want an
actual escape key, multiple types of ports, and a keyboard that doesn’t feel
like it came off a rejected tablet accessory.

I can see an argument for fragmenting the laptop world into Pro/developer
hardware and consumer hardware. But Apple seems to have got the needs of those
groups mixed up. Do Apple’s own software engineers love the newest Macs I
wonder?

~~~
scarface74
_And then the Mac is losing what should be its primary audience through
unwanted innovations and otherwise stagnant hardware,_

While I agree with most of the post, the “Mac is losing people” narrative
isn’t supported by the numbers. Apple just reported its highest revenue
quarter for Macs in its entire history.

The industry has spoken, statistically, no one cares about PC software.
Writing Mac software even less. I would rather live in a world with cross
platform iPad/Mac apps using Apple’s SDKs than Electron apps.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Apple’s revenues are a crappy statistic because the majority of their revenue
and profit both come from consumer-level content consumption devices. For all
the talk of “Microsoft Office on your iPhone” there is still nothing to
supplant the hidden iceberg of small-to-Medium-to-Enterprise businesses that
are only able to function because of hacked-together VBA macros in an Excel
spreadsheet stored on a Synology box somewhere.

PC software _matters_ because it’s still the only platform that enables
scrappy non-expert _go-getters_ to get things done. Despite the announcement
of “real” Photoshop for iPad - Hello? Binary 8bf plugins? Where are you?),
Apple’s continued devotion to the Walled Garden concept and associated
prohibition on extensible iOS applications - combined with the high barrier-
to-entry to develop for Apple’s ecosystem means that the PC will always be
relevant.

As an aside, it’s kinda funny that VBA macros copypasta’d together by
individuals with little to no formal SE or CS training provide more utility-
per-MB-of-RAM-consumed than Electron apps.

~~~
scarface74
I did specify “Mac Revenues”....

~~~
threatofrain
And I think someone followed up with a critique on frame. I'd agree for a
different reason. People would want to know how much slowdown there is in
userbase gain and how much of the revenue is made from getting existing users
to pay more.

------
bradenb
The article hits on this, but I think it probably makes sense for Apple to do
this as they plan to run all their hardware on Apple chips in the near future.
That said, I think it will likely result in lazy UX that's "good enough" for
multiple device types.

~~~
cytzol
> I think it will likely result in lazy UX that's "good enough" for multiple
> device types.

This is already the case: the Marzipan apps shipping with Mojave are
_shockingly_ bad (Home, News, Voice Memos). Standard keyboard shortcuts don’t
work, drag-and-drop is inconsistent, and it’s clear that they never considered
standard Mac features like multiple windows while designing them.

I worry that people will look at these badly-ported, out-of-place apps and say
“Apple are doing it, so why can’t we?” rather than “Even Apple could only come
up with this, so let’s not.”

~~~
scarface74
Yes they are bad - but they are also a technical preview. Apple said as much.
Would you rather Apple come out with the framework in a year without getting
real world feedback?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
The News app says it's version 4.1.1. It's part of a shipping release version
of macOS. I don't know why any regular user should come to the conclusion that
this is some sort of technical preview. Why wouldn't they think that it's
simply terrible software?

~~~
scarface74
We aren’t suppose to be regular users. We are suppose to be technical. We
discuss technical issues on HN and do stuff like watch the WWDC keynote.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Absolutely. I just think these apps should never have shipped as part of an OS
release. They are demo apps for the Marzipan technology and should have
shipped as part of an SDK.

~~~
scarface74
Yeah that or just label them as beta to set expectations. Unfortunately,
Google has ruined the term beta for users. Maybe put them in a folder called
“Prerelease”.

------
iambateman
Why? Has anyone asked for this?

I want my desktop apps to be dense and feature rich professional applications.
My phone apps are relatively simple tools.

I don’t understand why.

~~~
TheCoreh
Personally, I would love if my phone apps were dense and feature rich
professional applications, too.

A lot of times I want to do something and it feels like the apps are holding
me back just for the sake of being excessively simple. I've had this feeling
on both Android and iOS

~~~
MobileVet
Seriously asking, was this sarcasm? I can see feature rich iPad apps... but is
the phone meant for more than quick glances?

~~~
TheCoreh
It was not sarcasm. Sometimes quick glances can involve advanced tasks too.

Or sometimes I'm on the go, with no tablet or computer and I still want to do
something advanced, even if the phone screen is small.

Besides there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to hook up my phone to an
external display/mouse and get a full desktop experience. (Samsung is ahead of
the pack in this, but the apps are still "mobile" versions that are not as
fully fledged as their desktop counterparts)

~~~
MobileVet
Cool, thanks.

------
coob
What worked and didn't work with Microsoft's attempts to do this with
Universal Windows Platform?

Was it just lack of active phone / tablet marketshare, or was there a
fundamental technical reason it didn't take off?

~~~
bradenb
Speaking for myself (as a huge fan of C# and WPF), I didn't feel like there
was enough of a phone/tablet/Store/Xbox market for UWP apps that made it worth
restricting myself to UWP. I feel like it was a case of trying to make one
tool useful for all jobs instead of choosing the right tool for each job.

------
skoopie
Now we know why the new keyboards are so awful. They want to delight users by
removing it completely for the new touch-only interface.

~~~
arundemeure
Sigh, I really hope you're wrong. I can't stand the new keyboards (sticking to
a last-gen Macbook Air) but the only thing worse than those keyboards are the
official iPad keyboard folios from Apple. I'd seriously rather use the
onscreen keyboard...

On the other hand, if we had to rely on keyboard cases, there might be better
options than what we have today - e.g. I've heard a lot of good about this
Razer _mechanical_ iPad Pro keyboard although it's obviously very bulky:
[https://www.macworld.com/article/3115739/input-
devices/razer...](https://www.macworld.com/article/3115739/input-
devices/razer-mechanical-keyboard-case-review-luxurious-keys-for-ipad-
pro.html)

------
matthew-wegner
This is already sort of here, and badly. If you're on Mojave, open up the
built-in News.app.

Resize the window (it's terribly slow). Mouse hover states aren't even there.
Bouncing over-scroll is still present. The speed at which Apple can
successfully make this not-awful is probably a good indicator of them trying
to make it ship for all developers.

------
exabrial
This is one of those corporate directives from upper management that was made
in a vacuum. Those three devices have different access patterns, user bases,
and user abilities.

------
talkingtab
Yesterday there was an article on HN about audio glitches on Macs,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19196354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19196354),
with comments (including mine) about Apple products going down hill. I think
this idea is a glaring example of how Apple has lost their way. They are
exploiting a market - Apps - instead of adding value and building good
products.

I seem to remember Microsoft do exactly this same kind of thing as they were
on their downward trajectory?

~~~
snazz
Microsoft managed to turn it around with a new CEO and a new market category.
I wonder what Apple’s next venture will be, and if it will be as successful as
Microsoft’s cloud and subscription-service products.

------
auggierose
This is great. For those here commenting "why? My iPhone is very different
from my iMac", an example: I am writing an iPad app for a client that has a
lot of custom Metal compute code. It is great that I can basically run that
code on my iMac Pro as well, for rapid prototyping, and because having a
desktop companion app makes a lot of sense. Right now though I have to be very
careful how to share code between the two apps, mainly because UIKit is not
available on the Mac. Unification would solve that headache for me.

~~~
sjwright
What people who haven't written Mac apps need to realise is that many of the
UI APIs are not even remotely shared between macOS (AppKit) and iOS (UIKit).
Even the most basic concepts like colour are not handled uniformly.

Having UIKit available on macOS doesn't mean you port over your iPad GUI and
call it a day; you would still write a desktop GUI. But by having the same API
means that your business logic and glue code doesn't get infected with quite
so much platform-specific crap like UIColor vs NSColor.

------
MobileVet
I understand the desire to push computation to a single device, but I don’t
agree with it. It is very rare for a device that does ‘everything’ to do
anything ‘well.’

In software, Eclipse is the perfect counter argument. It does nothing well,
imho. Sketch is the opposite, singular focus = quality experience.

My phone serves a purpose and I expect apps to be bite sized experiences and
quick data points.

My computer serves a completely different purpose. The applications should be
equally focused on that purpose

~~~
agumonkey
I think it's also a bit (just a bit) due to our need to focus on a single
domain. It's rare to have your brain ready to navigate the mathematical realm
of all universal abstractions in a single setting (can happen but not common
for the mere mortal I suppose).

Meanwhile people are doing [https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/02/14/the-
spudwrite-single-pu...](https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/02/14/the-spudwrite-
single-purpose-user-device-for-creating-writing-made-with-e-paper-mbed-and-
stm32f401-cortex-m4/) in their backyard.. says something

------
oflannabhra
A lot of people are focusing on the user experience in their commentary here,
which I totally get, and I would argue is the most important part of this
initiative. I personally have a lot of open questions about how a user
interface will work across different paradigms (touch and cursor). The first
Marzipan apps (News, Stocks, and HomeKit) have lots of weird corner cases and
sharp edges.

Specifically, some of the "elder statesmen" of Apple commentariat see Marzipan
as a threat to the old Mac indie app ecosystem. I get that, and I think that
there are definitely some aspects of the old paradigm that are at risk (ie,
AppleScript integration, etc).

However, I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here.

1) Apple is unmatched in their ability to design user interfaces. It is
entirely possible that they will come up with a solution for cross-paradigm
interface that works, or come up with a system to "translate" an interface for
multiple target paradigms.

2) Apple has a history of successfully pulling off large transitions like
this. In fact, they might be the _only_ company that has done this
successfully multiple times. (That is, architecture change and UI framework
migration).

On top of that, I think all the doubt and suspicion has to be weighed against
the following upsides:

1) The upside for the Mac is _enormous_. The sheer amount of software that
could immediately become available on the desktop would probably be the worlds
biggest inflow of software to any operating system, ever. And, it is, for the
most part, _good_ software.

2) This is mostly a move on behalf of developers. I get the "but no one asked"
responses, but the developer story here is probably one of the major reasons
Apple undertook the work (that and ARM).

3) This is Apple's answer to Electron for the Mac. It will undoubtedly be
better in user experience, performance, and resource usage. (We will have to
wait and see whether it is successful, though).

Stephen Troughton Smith [0] has had one of the most refreshing takes on
Marzipan that I've seen. He maintains an open source tool [1] that will get
your iOS app to run on Marzipan.

[0] -
[https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith](https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith) [1]
-
[https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/marzipanify](https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/marzipanify)

------
seanalltogether
I've been working on an IoT mobile app suite for about 4 years now for a
client. While the app has evolved significantly over the years, one thing
remains constant, Only one platform is getting top billing, the other is
getting the leftovers. All the designs and workflows and copy are solved on
the phone first, and tablet gets a cursory glance and some changes if things
don't look right. In fact at this point many of our menu views are simply
modal popups on tablet so that we don't have to put any mental effort into
solving view layouts.

I'm sure management would love to know they could get a mac app for free as
well, but I wouldn't imagine it would look like a native mac app.

------
dep_b
Well it would definitely be nice to have more serious applications for the
iPad and perhaps some new mobile productivity apps crossing over to the Mac.

But the UX is so fundamentally different that I'm afraid the majority of the
applications will be pretty awful on the Mac as mobile is less information and
feature dense while having a smaller screen.

What could be really great is having feature dense UI's on the larger iPad
Pro's since they do have the screen real-estate but often it's underused.

------
hokua22
Touch and Desktop mouse/keyboard are different enough to each have their own
UI...im guessing this just is another universal binary project...

------
tarunupaday
I have been using an iPad exlusively for 3 years and this makes sense to me.

Once they add this (and a mouse to iPad); then we can have the best of both
worlds

~~~
dmitriid
Most likely you will get the worst of all worlds.

Desktop is driven by a pointer (mouse/trackpad) and keyboard, both with high
degrees of fidelity. iPad and iPhone only have touch. (iPad has a keyboard as
an afterthought, and the support for it is inconsistent even within the OS
itself).

~~~
tarunupaday
Can you give examples of: “keyboard support is inconsistent within the OS
itself”

I have used iPad Pro exclusively for last 3 years for python coding and office
work and not sure what you mean by it.

~~~
dmitriid
Unfortunately I've given up on my iPad, so I can't give you precise answer.
So, anecdata only.

As I tried to work on it the way I work on my laptop, I would continuously run
into an impedance mismatch. What I could tab to I now had to touch. What I
could reach with my mouse/trackpad, I now had to touch. What I could select
with my mouse/trackpad, i now had to touch. Multiple gestures and keyboard
shortcuts ingrained into me by my laptop usage failed on the iPad because the
software was never built to be controlled via keyboard.

MS tried doing combining desktop and mobile twice, and it failed. I have no
idea why Apple thinks they can do it with any degree of confidence.

------
blumomo
If Apple continues as in the past they will deliver great APIs, SDKs and User
Guidelines which allows developers to build great apps which feel good on both
iOS and macOS. I trust them that they this comes true and I'm excited to see
the possibilities which their multi-platform app development tools will
unleash for the Apple ecosystem.

~~~
Yetanfou
> _great APIs_... _great apps_... _feel good_... _I trust them_... _I 'm
> exited_... _possibilities...will unleash_...

That sentence has too many happy adjectives - something which seems to be
endemic in the Apple world - and could have been lifted straight from an Apple
advertising campaign, the latter in no small part due to the use of the word
_unleash_ which thrives in that context.

~~~
blumomo
Go ahead and compare Apple's Cocoa framework with the MFC or Android
framework. Build apps on all these platforms and you'll see what I'm talking
about.

------
FBISurveillance
Assuming of of the reasons for this is to make Mac apps work on ARM.

------
naspinski
Granted they are a different company, but this was a huge failure for
Microsoft. Different devices have different strengths and weaknesses.

------
aboutruby
More likely to have apps ported from iOS to macOS than the reverse IMHO

~~~
moduspwnens14
Yes, and we are already seeing it. The "Home" app on macOS right now is
clearly reusing a lot of iOS UI elements. It works, although it's tough to
imagine a more native Mac app wouldn't be a better UX.

I think there's probably a case to be made when the app you're building is
"mobile first," so you (as the developer) inherently do not want a richer,
more feature-filled UI on the desktop. In that case, there's value in having a
single UI to maintain and for that UI to be familiar to the user in both
places.

~~~
scarface74
You act as if it is some great conspiracy that the Home app is a port from
iOS. They outright said that it was a proof of concept for the cross platform
framework they are working on.

~~~
moduspwnens14
My apologies if that's how it came across. My intention was to support the
parent comment's assertion by pointing to a live example supporting his claim.

Honestly we already discussed this when Marzipan was announced. I guess the
news here is just the years they're targeting? Regardless, a lot of the
comments here are worried about what the headline implies, which is much more
sinister than "a fast and clean way to make an iOS-focused UI app also work on
the Mac." And there are already live examples on macOS that actually work
fairly well!

------
bluedino
I hope they've learned from that joke Marzipan.

------
tdhz77
This can be done using WebAssembly and swift web.

