Apple isn't merging iOS and MacOS after all, cites "trade offs and compromises"
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If you imagined Apple would be following Microsoft’s lead and merging their mobile and PC apps, you’d be wrong.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg broke the scoop that Apple was working on a way to make iOS apps run on MacOS with a project codenamed Marzipan. Long time Apple reporter, John Gruber of Daring Fireball was sceptical at the start, and now has provided more sources about what Marzipan really is, and its a lot less fun than it was at first.
Marzipan (now a defunct codename) is a project that would allow developers to build software that worked with multiple interfaces.
Gruber explains:
It makes sense that if Apple believes that (a) iOS and MacOS should have declarative control APIs, and (b) they should address the problem of abstracting the API differences between UIKit (iOS) and AppKit (MacOS), they would tackle them at the same time. Or perhaps the logic is simply that if they’re going to create a cross-platform UI framework, the basis for that framework should be a declarative user interface.
Apple CEO Tim Cook similarly dismissed the idea earlier this month, noting that merging two devices meant to be used in very different ways could only lead to trade-offs.
We don’t believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both [The Mac and iPad] are incredible. One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two … you begin to make trade-offs and compromises.
So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of the day. But that’s not what it’s about. You know it’s about giving people things that they can then use to help them change the world or express their passion or express their creativity. So this merger thing that some folks are fixated on, I don’t think that’s what users want.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s Windows 10 is exactly that. Though how successful it has been in that regard is anyone’s guess.
Via: The Next Web, The Verge.
