iOS Apps Running on MacOS and the Future of Apple
At the end of 2017, it was reported that Apple had begun actively taking steps to converge their iOS and MacOS platforms in a big way — and soon. If the report pans out, you might be able to run your iPhone version of Instagram on your Mac within the year.
Why Is Apple Bringing iOS Apps to MacOS?
The main driver of Apple’s decision seems to be competition rather than innovation. Google has been pushing hard for the last few years to bring their Chrome OS and Android platforms closer together. That’s resulted in an option many Chromebook users now have to use their favorite Android apps on their phone and on their laptop, giving them that much more functionality over someone using a PC or Mac. This option gives users one less thing to take them out of a single experience, giving them access to all their favorite apps even when they’re on a desktop platform and increasing their immersion in the process.
Another reason behind this decision is Apple’s push for truly universal apps — the concept of one app that is built to run on all your Apple devices after a single initial purchase — these devices include your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Mac. In a way, it makes sense for Apple to tear down the walls between its separate app stores to give customers more ways to use the products and services they already love. It also gives customers more reasons to buy into the Apple ecosystem and makes it even harder for them to leave.
iOS and MacOS: Better Together
The clearest benefit of this addition is the ability for Apple users to immerse themselves more fully in their desktop experience while on their MacBook or iMac. Apple’s mobile and desktop experiences have been growing closer together for many years, but an addition like this would serve as the icing on the cake. When users have the option to use an app like Instagram or Snapchat — previously exclusively limited to the confines of their smartphone — on their Mac, then suddenly they can see all their related notifications and have the same sort of posting and sharing capabilities without resorting to looking at their phone every 30 seconds, cutting down on their need to juggle multiple devices at the same the time. Plus, if a user has an iPhone, this integration further cements their Apple-only experience.
What Could Go Wrong?
While adding more functionality to your Mac, adding iPhone app compatibility could also potentially backfire. That’s because some iPhone-only apps are iPhone-only for a reason. Without seeing Apple’s complete approach toward this process, it’s hard to say for sure what an iPhone app running on a Mac would look like, but one has to imagine its something akin to a small iPhone window floating amongst a sea of Mac apps. That’s probably not how most app developers want users to see their app in action. This gives Apple significant leverage over developers to optimize their apps for a new universal standard. Those that choose not to optimize their apps to run within the Mac ecosystem will end up with something that looks similar to running an iPhone-native app on an iPad — big borders around a shrunken app that you can only zoom into with a distorted resolution and an interface that doesn’t make any sense on a tablet — or a desktop.
What Happens Next?
Apple’s always had a clear vision of the future: one that’s dominated by single aluminum unibody machines without ports, able to wirelessly interface with everything around them. This is a reality that they’ve been moving closer to with every passing hardware iteration. From removing the disk drive in the 2012 MacBook Pro to removing the headphone jack to bringing NFC for Apple Pay and wireless charging to the iPhone, Apple has been inching one step closer, year by year, toward that seamless, wireless future. And that future extends beyond the iPhone and beyond the MacBook and beyond the iPad. Apple’s always been focused on uniformity and consistency, and the next logical move is one toward a singular, converged ecosystem.
A Vision of the Tomorrow: One Unified Apple Ecosystem
The same vision that drove Apple into giving all of its products seamless ease of use and utility will also lead them toward their next logical move: enmeshing all of their products into a single cohesive ecosystem. Adding iOS apps to MacOS is clear evidence that Apple believes their technology will one day go beyond a single phone or computer or tablet. In the near future, users will have a single operating system experience that will encompass all of their devices, and those devices will merely be vehicles for the OS in that moment. We’re almost to that point already with features like Apple’s Handoff and iCloud sharing information between Apple devices for a joint experience. Right now, if you create a file on your Mac, and need it during a meeting, all you have to do is open your iOS Files app to find it sitting in your “desktop” folder, ready to access. When you combine this feature with a cloud-based desktop, a la Citrix, is it really so hard to imagine that in the future, hardware is anything more than a frame for that single unified experience?
