Apple Plans on Combining iPhone, iPad, Mac Apps by 2021

Megalith

Megalith

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Things are about to get a lot easier for iDevelopers in the coming years: Apple is currently working on a new software development kit allowing coders to create a single app that works on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac (alternate source sans paywall). The initiative, dubbed “Marzipan,” will be fully realized by 2021: “developers won’t have to submit their work to different Apple App Stores, allowing iOS apps to be downloaded directly from Mac computers -- effectively combining the stores.”

The work coincides with the company’s preparations to merge more of the underpinnings of its hardware. Currently, iPhones and iPads are powered by Apple processors, while Macs use Intel Corp. chips. Apple plans to start transitioning some Macs to its own chips as early as 2020, Bloomberg News reported last year. Despite the app merger plan, Apple has said it won’t combine iOS and macOS into a single operating system.
 
As a consumer this may be useful. Many people invest in the Mac eco system. I’ve often thought some apps on my phone would be useful on OS X
 
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It makes sense from Apple's standpoint to have a unified OS/language/architecture sure.

OTOH, if you think gaming is thin on Mac now... this will be the kiss of death. Moving off of x86 probably means no Steam/Blizzard etc. Unless those spiffy new chips have some amazeballs emulation capability / VMs. Because everyone loves playing games in a VM window.

"...Apple plans to start transitioning some Macs to its own chips as early as 2020..."

With one hand they giveth, and the other they taketh away...
 
Burticus said:
It makes sense from Apple's standpoint to have a unified OS/language/architecture sure.

OTOH, if you think gaming is thin on Mac now... this will be the kiss of death. Moving off of x86 probably means no Steam/Blizzard etc. Unless those spiffy new chips have some amazeballs emulation capability / VMs. Because everyone loves playing games in a VM window.

"...Apple plans to start transitioning some Macs to its own chips as early as 2020..."

With one hand they giveth, and the other they taketh away...
Click to expand...
Apple doesn't understand the game market. Supposedly, Steve Jobs hated games and was unhappy to see a lot of them coming out for the iPhone. (Apparently, he also was not amused by fart apps...)
 
Meh. Apple seems to forget that a lot of people want to use the ipad other than the iOS. Even with their new designs, which is really nice, I cant find myself to buy one if it's still using iOS.
 
I think... when it comes to Apple and Gaming, x86 gaming never caught on for them. There was, many years ago, a push back when they were still PPC based. Remember Halo originally debuted at MacWorld by Steve Jobs.

But they were never terribly serious about it. Until it started making money on iOS.

For Apple, gaming is almost strictly an iOS play.

I'm not an iOS developer, but I thought you could "emulate" iOS apps running on OS X in XCode. It could be that today's A-processors are powerful enough that emulation no longer has enough power to keep up with something running natively though, or I am entirely misunderstanding the iOS development process, I don't know.

As far as cross-platform, many of their APIs are already on both sides of the fence, and it's never been a technical reason to prohibit cross-platform program execution. Apple has a good deal of experience with it in the past. I suspect it was just a matter of market segmentation for them, and now with stagnant tablet sales, and OS X Hardware development also stagnant, it makes sense to merge the two and see if you can't ignite some additional growth.
 
i thought they recently announced this would never ever happen.
 
Will Apple finally cave and make their own version of Surface? I've been wondering about that for some time.
 
The death of OSX is coming soon. Everything apple will be running iOS and their own ARM CPUs. Gaming and the professional market means nothing to Apple. They make boats loads more of the iSheep. They are content with getting 30% cut off everything on the app store. I am sure they also get a cut of all the micro transactions gatcha games that flood the mobile market.
 
The writing has been on the wall for a long time and this year things will be interesting. We've seen two shifts from Apple, one away from professional work space & workstations and the other to services. When Apple stopped selling xserver, xsans and OS X server (you can still buy OS X server, but they never talk about it), their move away from professional arena started. Then they released the trash can and it's been sitting for over 5 years with only a minor update and not something people want. There's been no immediacy to replace it with something meaningful, but this year apparently they'll release a modular professional pro computer. Seems a long time to wait to give the pros some attention.

With the advent of the T2 chip and nothing being replaceable (or repairable?) the walled garden's doors are closing. Apple opened up the gates for people when Jobs originally returned and gave a lot of TLC to the OpenSource community. They throw some love in that direction still, but not much, not like MS has recently. They courted a lot of people into the garden and now are closing the doors around them. Their lock-in is stronger than ever with the T2 and non-replaceable components. They do this under the guise of security, but it's their excuse for locking things down even further (fuck user upgrades). Now they say the new pro machine will be completely up-gradable, but what they mean by up-gradable might be completely different then what we traditionally think. Watching Apple's direction is what pushed me to finally switch to Linux.

I had hoped that with the switch to x86 Apple would eventually release OS X to be installed on any PC. ....but ... but they're a hardware company. Well yes, but they're turning into a services company. Wishful thinking, yes, but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility. Obviously their approach to services is to push the iTunes on to TV's and set top boxes (because not everyone is going to buy an Apple TV). That being said I think they'd make huge market share gains in their OS and services if they opened up OS X; and I'm talking just OS X, not iOS. Yes it may be a flawed argument, but just think what would happen if they did.
 
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Well there was a time when Apple licensed the OS.

PowerMax and other clones. It didn’t last long. And it didn’t really boost their marketsharr
 
Well, that basically solidifies that Apple is moving purely to ARM64 and officially off of Intel x86-64 - good riddance, Intel!
 
Brian_B said:
Well there was a time when Apple licensed the OS.

PowerMax and other clones. It didn’t last long. And it didn’t really boost their marketsharr
Click to expand...

I vaguely recall those mac clones at work in the late 90s... when they rehired Jobs he put a stop to that right quick. Then the iMacs came out.
 
Brian_B said:
Well there was a time when Apple licensed the OS.

PowerMax and other clones. It didn’t last long. And it didn’t really boost their marketsharr
Click to expand...
Different platform, but good point. I think Apple is in a much different position today with the iPhone and iOS in general.
 
Who wants to bet they somehow manage to convince Apple users that they should pay 3X price because of this happening?
 
Brian_B said:
Well there was a time when Apple licensed the OS.

PowerMax and other clones. It didn’t last long. And it didn’t really boost their marketshare
Click to expand...
Because when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he told third party system vendors to kick rocks when they wanted to license the new (at the time) version of MacOS - effectively killing the third party market in one fell swoop.
 
I'm not sure what apple is thinking. The move to ARM seems to still be the plan. If they want out of the PC market they could just stop making them. It'd be cheaper and easier on the bottom line than failure.

If ARM for chromebooks is still less than a slam dunk, I'm not thinking it'll work well for apple either.

You have the creatives, the office drone, the coder, and the consumer. You might possibly offer up the academic in there.

Creatives:

Video editors have already been abandoning the apple ecosystem due to cost and performance.

Graphic design people are starting to leave. I'm guessing because of costs and finally biting the bullet on adobe CC. Which removes a significant barrier to platfrom switching from their key tool set.

I know some authors like it because certain writing apps were there first, and oddly enough because less software works on it, which means as a platform it is more likely to remain work dedicated and not distract their focus. But they are cheap bastards and tend to be behind the curve on hardware refreshes. So once there are cheap used ones with the writing apps they like, they probably won't care.


Office drones:

MS office is only available pared down for ARM at this time. This might get fixed, but not by next year, not likely the year after that.

They might be able to move, but unless they get cheaper and increase the capability of centralized remote management, then they are just making current obstacles larger. Having it just look like an iphone or ipad won't be that.

their support model sucks for business as well.


the coder:
As long as it is not for windows, osx is not a bad platform now. MOve to arm and you'll put a dent in that. But with cloud computing rolling out arm instances, it might be a push.

You need it to code for ios. That likely won't change.

The consumer:

the style is tired, the value is crap, and while built better than the cheap windows laptops, they aren't better or more durable than high quality windows PCs that still cost less.

ARM might bring something here, maybe battery life. But most consumer purchases aren't straight goofing off boxes. They usually aspire to get some of the other stuff above done as well.


The academic:

Academia is already struggling with the fact that they are in an abusive relationship with OSX. This move will just be a falcon punch to the balls. That being said, if I never have to deal with OSX mail and calendar vs. office 365 again, that will be an improvement.

Dumbing down the office apps more than they are on osx would be harsh.


Unless lots of companies are scheming, I don't see this move leaving a market other than authors and ios and arm coders.
 
While useful, my fear is that Mac apps will get dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

We already see this disease with PC games being low quality ports from console games.
 
I've said this a hundred times. Port the full iCloud suite to windows and let the mac die already.
 
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