I still think that macOS is coming to the next iPad Pro. iPad Apps on a Mac, which never had a touch screen, doesn't make any sense. But running macOS on the iPad Pro makes one helluva upgrade for the iPad and Mac combined. It would be the first "mac" product to feature a high-refresh rate touch screen with support for Apple Pencil. And it would be the first iPad that can run a full mac desktop operating system and popular software like Final Cut, Logic Pro, and Xcode.
A-Series processors feature Intel Core performance and fast Apple custom graphics. The iPad Pro storage capacities are up to 512GB matching the high end SKUs for popular MacBook Pro laptops. I think this is the time... Apple is going to do what they said they would never do... Merge the mac and iPad... You heard it here first.
If Apple does bring macOS to the iPad, you can bet it won't be "full" macOS. Meaning you won't have the ability to side load apps. Only apps from the App Store will be permitted. On a side note, now that iOS 12 / macOS 10.14 will focus on performance / stability / reliability, any chance of this happening won't come till 2019 at the earliest.
This is probably going to be implemented in a new product .. or "macPad" if you will. And yes, all developers that want to sell apps to macPad users will have to put them in the App Store. Hopefully they will have a better keyboard/cover accessory. Maybe have a larger 15" macPad Pro. Maybe the return of mag-safe, in the form of a magnetic docking stand for your macPad for charging and desktop mode with magic keyboard and mouse.
If iPad apps are to run “natively” on a Mac then “little or no changes” makes no sense. It would have to be no changes at all, otherwise it ain’t native.
But here’s a thought:
If Apple allows iPad apps to run natively on Macs, then I’m not sure the implications would be that great for the Mac’s long term future.
The typical case for supporting other platforms or features is to enable them. For instance, Apple may require apps to declare menubar options and size classes and recompile with a capability enabled. This would be done to prevent apps that don't support macOS from being run on macOS. It would be inferred that the developer has to do something to allow the app to be available for macOS so they can run it.
Your argument of no changes makes sense only if Apple is emulating.
Developers do it now with iPad and iPhone emulator, not sure what the issue is?
That’s for developers to test their apps. It’s not for end users to run an iPad app in a tiny non-desktop-optimised rectangle on the screen with a UI designed for touch rather than a mouse.
I’m not saying they can’t do it. I’m saying they won’t do it because it would encourage a store full of really poor applications.
What I think they’ll do is make it much easier for developers to write apps that can cover all their platforms from a file loaded to a single store. You buy an app, and all your devices get the app native to that platform.
But I don’t expect them all to have the same UI.
Exactly this. IMO the non-developer tech writers are getting confused, believing that universal app packages means “zomg iOS apps on Mac!”
While anything is possible, everything Apple has said indicates they understand apps must be custom designed for their target platforms. Adding new APIs and IDE support to Xcode to make universal iOS + macOS apps a thing sounds cool, but it isn’t at all the same as running touch-based iPad apps on a pointer-based Mac. Just as we don’t run iPad apps on tvOS.
This is about frameworks and code sharing, not applications.
I mostly agree with your point except that many of those frameworks have been changed, especially in iOS 11, to allow for automatic reclassification of UI. For instance, if you take dynamic text and automatic sizing of UITableViewCell among countless other improvements in iOS 11, you'd see a trend to allowing the application to change appearance on different platforms. iOS 11 has also changed many underpinnings of the framework that didn't really need to be touched such as external screens and UIViewController stacks. The UIToolbar is also changed in a way that one could assume would allow for differently sized systems.
All I'm saying is that it's possible that Apple allows app already available in iOS to be used in macOS with very little tweaking. They could simply add a MouseKit framework and allow that to be transparently used as a touch. It wouldn't be very difficult to conclude or implement. You could also handle all the multitouch interaction with a touchpad on modern Macs. Again, I don't see this as being a huge hurdle...
Developers do it now with iPad and iPhone emulator, not sure what the issue is?
Yep. Not a big deal at all. From the users stand point some are better than others on a Mac's screen.
The only real issue here is that developers actually cross compile to x86 and actually get very good performance. Apple could be sending down native apps to the Mac to svoid emulation. This would be a good thing.
Might explain why we have not seen a Lightning peripherals adapter for the Mac, or a Lightning port on the Mac yet. If there is a full blown emulation of iOS apps on the Mac, then there would be a need for it. For now, there's still no way to use Lightning headphones on a Mac, with or without an adapter, which just seems odd.
I still think that macOS is coming to the next iPad Pro. iPad Apps on a Mac, which never had a touch screen, doesn't make any sense. But running macOS on the iPad Pro makes one helluva upgrade for the iPad and Mac combined. It would be the first "mac" product to feature a high-refresh rate touch screen with support for Apple Pencil. And it would be the first iPad that can run a full mac desktop operating system and popular software like Final Cut, Logic Pro, and Xcode.
A-Series processors feature Intel Core performance and fast Apple custom graphics. The iPad Pro storage capacities are up to 512GB matching the high end SKUs for popular MacBook Pro laptops. I think this is the time... Apple is going to do what they said they would never do... Merge the mac and iPad... You heard it here first.
If Apple does bring macOS to the iPad, you can bet it won't be "full" macOS. Meaning you won't have the ability to side load apps. Only apps from the App Store will be permitted. On a side note, now that iOS 12 / macOS 10.14 will focus on performance / stability / reliability, any chance of this happening won't come till 2019 at the earliest.
This is probably going to be implemented in a new product .. or "macPad" if you will. And yes, all developers that want to sell apps to macPad users will have to put them in the App Store. Hopefully they will have a better keyboard/cover accessory. Maybe have a larger 15" macPad Pro. Maybe the return of mag-safe, in the form of a magnetic docking stand for your macPad for charging and desktop mode with magic keyboard and mouse.
No, that is all just wishful thinking.
The framing of this story by Mark Gurman and AI is incorrect -- Marizpan isn't about running iOS apps on macOS, and it's surely not about macOS apps on iPad. It's about universal apps that leverage new frameworks and IDE support to remove barriers-to-entry that discourage developers from producing separate macOS apps. Instead they're just building iOS apps and skipping Mac. So Apple is likely trying to make it easier to code share and make creating a target specifically for the Mac less work than it is today. None of this means "porting iOS apps to Mac".
Developers do it now with iPad and iPhone emulator, not sure what the issue is?
That’s for developers to test their apps. It’s not for end users to run an iPad app in a tiny non-desktop-optimised rectangle on the screen with a UI designed for touch rather than a mouse.
I’m not saying they can’t do it. I’m saying they won’t do it because it would encourage a store full of really poor applications.
What I think they’ll do is make it much easier for developers to write apps that can cover all their platforms from a file loaded to a single store. You buy an app, and all your devices get the app native to that platform.
But I don’t expect them all to have the same UI.
Exactly this. IMO the non-developer tech writers are getting confused, believing that universal app packages means “zomg iOS apps on Mac!”
While anything is possible, everything Apple has said indicates they understand apps must be custom designed for their target platforms. Adding new APIs and IDE support to Xcode to make universal iOS + macOS apps a thing sounds cool, but it isn’t at all the same as running touch-based iPad apps on a pointer-based Mac. Just as we don’t run iPad apps on tvOS.
This is about frameworks and code sharing, not applications.
I mostly agree with your point except that many of those frameworks have been changed, especially in iOS 11, to allow for automatic reclassification of UI. For instance, if you take dynamic text and automatic sizing of UITableViewCell among countless other improvements in iOS 11, you'd see a trend to allowing the application to change appearance on different platforms. iOS 11 has also changed many underpinnings of the framework that didn't really need to be touched such as external screens and UIViewController stacks. The UIToolbar is also changed in a way that one could assume would allow for differently sized systems.
All I'm saying is that it's possible that Apple allows app already available in iOS to be used in macOS with very little tweaking. They could simply add a MouseKit framework and allow that to be transparently used as a touch. It wouldn't be very difficult to conclude or implement. You could also handle all the multitouch interaction with a touchpad on modern Macs. Again, I don't see this as being a huge hurdle...
(With love – an app developer)
Could doesn't mean should. Of course they could make iOS apps work w/ a mouse on Mac -- it's all OS X and that's what they do in Xcode for testing. So could, yes. But should -- no, they won't. Not according to what they've been telling us all along, that they believe these platforms have very different use cases and thus the apps should reflect that with different designs. Nobody wants iOS apps running in a little box on their 27" iMac. Apple won't do it. Gurman isn't a developer and doesn't understand that isn't what he's hearing here. AI took it and went a little further in a game of telephone (funny they were just writing about others publications doing that too).
(BTW external screens are used by iOS currently, namely head units. Even before CarPlay, iOS apps running on Pioneer's AppRadio would use the car's head unit as an external display for the running app. So references to external displays doesn't indicate Mac-support).
Might explain why we have not seen a Lightning peripherals adapter for the Mac, or a Lightning port on the Mac yet. If there is a full blown emulation of iOS apps on the Mac, then there would be a need for it. For now, there's still no way to use Lightning headphones on a Mac, with or without an adapter, which just seems odd.
They're not going to do this in a million years. If for no other reason that once they "throw in the towel" and allow emulation of the more popular iOS platform apps on macOS, it will actively decrease the number of new good apps written natively for macOS. Developers will say "Why do twice the work?" and just stick to iOS, the more dominant platform, and let users emulate it on Mac if they want it on Mac.
This is exactly what happened when Blackberry allowed their platform to run Android apps -- devs said "OK then why write a native Blackberry version?" and didn't. Yet another nail in the coffin for Blackberry.
Apple won't allow that.
Lightning jacks have nothing to do with it. Mac hardware doesn't need Lightning ports, it has USB. Lightning existed before USBC and served a purpose on iOS hardware to replace the previous 30-pin port. That's it. iOS devices and Macs are different platforms with different use cases. I doubt Apple cares whether or not your Lightning headphones work with you Mac. It's just not their primary interest.
Most of the code of a iOS application compile and run natively on macOS; most of the libraries are the same, and large part of the UI infrastructure is also the same. Actually, from a developer point of view, iOS and macOS are already very very close.
I'm confused what you mean by "large part of the UI infrastructure is also the same". While a lot of naming and hierarchies are similar, it's quite different when you look at the details of the counterparts. NSViewController and UIViewController serve different purposes, drawing y-origins are in reverse for Quartz, NSButton and UIButton behave differently, NSView and UIView have different responders that react different because of an input base vs gesture based system.
This is my larger point of pointing out why Apple came up with UXKit internally (https://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/new-apple-photos-app-contains-uxkit-framework/). From what we have gathered, UXKit is essentially marrying UIKit and AppKit. AppKit has a lot of cruft it has gathered over the last 20+ years (a lot of carryover from the NeXTStep days). They really need to come up with a new framework for the Mac. I imagine we will see the emergence of something like UXKit at WWDC this year, though I've predicted that for the last two years
Does UXkit marry to Appkit in any substantial way or is it just a mac implementation of UIKit UIResponder? If the difference is a new Responder at the head of the interface chain on mac with interactions geared to keyboard, pointer and non-direct multi-touch. That would also make it as different to AppKit as UIKit is to either of them. Still Even UIKit has 10years of overhead now as well. So it really does make sense to built a new one that could replace both in time.
To me the curious thing about rumour is they specific that this being iPad apps being reworked to allow them to run on mac but there is only a fairly poor distinction between iOS generally and special pad app. It would be a great carrot for developers if at the same time they launch a pad AppStore that giving much higher visibility to productive and business app that would benefit from working both Mac and Pad.
I still think that macOS is coming to the next iPad Pro. iPad Apps on a Mac, which never had a touch screen, doesn't make any sense. But running macOS on the iPad Pro makes one helluva upgrade for the iPad and Mac combined. It would be the first "mac" product to feature a high-refresh rate touch screen with support for Apple Pencil. And it would be the first iPad that can run a full mac desktop operating system and popular software like Final Cut, Logic Pro, and Xcode.
A-Series processors feature Intel Core performance and fast Apple custom graphics. The iPad Pro storage capacities are up to 512GB matching the high end SKUs for popular MacBook Pro laptops. I think this is the time... Apple is going to do what they said they would never do... Merge the mac and iPad... You heard it here first.
This is the wrong way to go. Apple should add mouse support to iOS and release in iOSLaptop. Cheaper model should have 9.7 inch touch screen with USB C and trackpad based on iPad Air2. This is for the school market and could have a polyCarbonate body like the only MacBooks. The Premium Model should have 12.9 in screen with USB C and Trackpad based on the iPadPro. will include the Pencil support too. This iPadPro plus $300 dollars more. This would be to replace the macBook Air. Software wise it should included family profiles (multi-user support)
If iPad apps are to run “natively” on a Mac then “little or no changes” makes no sense. It would have to be no changes at all, otherwise it ain’t native.
Native just means running the same code directly on the CPU without an emulation/translation layer.
Here we have 2 different CPU architectures, but fat binaries could have code for both (and bit-code could help).
Even more possible is the ability to have the same APIs (or even ABIs) in both systems, and be able to have the same backend, but customized UI for each platform (like today you can run the same "fat app" in both iPhone and iPad with a different UI for each.
So they don’t mean runnng an iPad app; they mean making it easier to write universal apps. That’s the point.
If iPad apps are to run “natively” on a Mac then “little or no changes” makes no sense. It would have to be no changes at all, otherwise it ain’t native.
But here’s a thought:
If Apple allows iPad apps to run natively on Macs, then I’m not sure the implications would be that great for the Mac’s long term future.
The typical case for supporting other platforms or features is to enable them. For instance, Apple may require apps to declare menubar options and size classes and recompile with a capability enabled. This would be done to prevent apps that don't support macOS from being run on macOS. It would be inferred that the developer has to do something to allow the app to be available for macOS so they can run it.
Your argument of no changes makes sense only if Apple is emulating.
Disagree. My argument is that if it’s running natively then it’s not an iPad app. An “iPad app running natively” is taking an ill fitting app and just slapping it on the Mac. That’s what I meant when I said “little or no changes”. What you’re talking about, to me anyway, is a proper universal app: an app that takes advantages of the platform it’s running on. If it’s on a Mac, it has a menu bar. An iPad app runnng on a Mac wouldnt have a proper menu bar; it would get that nasty default nonsense that doesn’t do anything.
In much the same way, I don’t consider most banking apps as native because sticking a web page into a frame and barfing it onto the App Store does not make it a native app. That’s just a web page with a frame.
To me, the terminology is wrong. What I think they’re trying to say is that Apple is making it easier to take an iPad app and make it universal, which will involve some work to get something that doesn’t look like an iPad stuck in the middle of the screen.
Saying that they’re going to allow iPad apps to run in a Mac immediately implies emulation, and that’s not what’s going to happen.
I still think that macOS is coming to the next iPad Pro. iPad Apps on a Mac, which never had a touch screen, doesn't make any sense. But running macOS on the iPad Pro makes one helluva upgrade for the iPad and Mac combined. It would be the first "mac" product to feature a high-refresh rate touch screen with support for Apple Pencil. And it would be the first iPad that can run a full mac desktop operating system and popular software like Final Cut, Logic Pro, and Xcode.
A-Series processors feature Intel Core performance and fast Apple custom graphics. The iPad Pro storage capacities are up to 512GB matching the high end SKUs for popular MacBook Pro laptops. I think this is the time... Apple is going to do what they said they would never do... Merge the mac and iPad... You heard it here first.
This is the wrong way to go. Apple should add mouse support to iOS and release in iOSLaptop. Cheaper model should have 9.7 inch touch screen with USB C and trackpad based on iPad Air2. This is for the school market and could have a polyCarbonate body like the only MacBooks. The Premium Model should have 12.9 in screen with USB C and Trackpad based on the iPadPro. will include the Pencil support too. This iPadPro plus $300 dollars more. This would be to replace the macBook Air. Software wise it should included family profiles (multi-user support)
Add mouse support. Add keyboard. Add USBC. Multiuser (I thought this was already supported for education).
Since you can already draw on the massive mousepad, why not just use a MacBook?
I hope this is true. I have an iOS app I would like to run on macOS because there is no macOS equivalent so I end up running a Win10 Virtual Box VM to run the Windows version of the app.
The app works slightly better with a mouse for some functions but with multitouch mice and trackpads it should work fine on macOS through an emulator and I won’t need Windows at all then
Most of the code of a iOS application compile and run natively on macOS; most of the libraries are the same, and large part of the UI infrastructure is also the same. Actually, from a developer point of view, iOS and macOS are already very very close.
I'm confused what you mean by "large part of the UI infrastructure is also the same". While a lot of naming and hierarchies are similar, it's quite different when you look at the details of the counterparts. NSViewController and UIViewController serve different purposes, drawing y-origins are in reverse for Quartz, NSButton and UIButton behave differently, NSView and UIView have different responders that react different because of an input base vs gesture based system.
I was thinking to lower level stuff, like the graphic model, or the SceneView stuff; yes, you are right, the toolkits are (very) different, especially in the details, but they share the same set of basic technologies; and this make approaches like UXKit to be "possible" without going ballistic with a meta-ui toolkit (think AWT/Swing on Java .
But here’s a thought: If Apple allows iPad apps to run natively on Macs, then I’m not sure the implications would be that great for the Mac’s long term future.
They had a really good and in-depth discussion about this on ATP podcast a while back, http://atp.fm/episodes/254 in the section, "iOS and macOS apps as one?"
And, this leads to the whole discussion about what some of we long-term Mac users are bemoaning in terms of the degrading UI, etc. We remember the days when Mac apps really stood out, because they were, well, just better. As more (and new) developers have come on board (including Apple's own apps and OS UI), they've been becoming more like other platforms, or cross-platform re-builds, or just designs that haven't taken into account what a Mac app was supposed to be like.
It's a bit like your earlier example of just reframing a bank app web-interface (or worse) in a frame with an 'app' built around it. If these apps just embedded the banks mainframe terminal screens, we'd all recognize it. But, I'm not sure there are enough of us old-Mac users around anymore to differentiate between a well written Mac app and an app that just looks pretty, anymore.
And, that's what I'm talking about when I complain about the degradation of the Mac. It's becoming more like any old computer, because UI principals are being lost and apps aren't all that Mac-like any longer. And, this is super-prevent on iOS. So, I'm not sure we Mac people really want any ol' iOS developers tossing together crumby Mac apps. That actually sounds a bit like a nightmare to me.
Might explain why we have not seen a Lightning peripherals adapter for the Mac, or a Lightning port on the Mac yet. If there is a full blown emulation of iOS apps on the Mac, then there would be a need for it. For now, there's still no way to use Lightning headphones on a Mac, with or without an adapter, which just seems odd.
What on earth does Lightning have to do with any of this? Why would you need a Lightning port on a Mac for iOS apps?
Might explain why we have not seen a Lightning peripherals adapter for the Mac, or a Lightning port on the Mac yet. If there is a full blown emulation of iOS apps on the Mac, then there would be a need for it. For now, there's still no way to use Lightning headphones on a Mac, with or without an adapter, which just seems odd.
What on earth does Lightning have to do with any of this? Why would you need a Lightning port on a Mac for iOS apps?
There are apps which use custom peripherals which only attach via lightning. In order to use those peripherals with the apps on a Mac, there would need to be an adapter or a native port. So far Apple has introduced specs for Lightning headphones, but has not as far as I know provided a way to adopt those headphones to anything else, forcing customers to additionally use 3.5mm headphones for HQ audio on the Mac. Bringing iOS apps to a Mac, would increase the necessity to provide a way to connect custom Lighting peripherals to the Mac, which would finally allow a customer to use one set of headphones for all of their Apple products. IF Apple is really doing this, then the lack of any kind of Lightning adapters to date starts to make some sense. It hasn't been a priority for Apple, which was also pushing the AirPods and W1 Bluetooth chip despite their inferior sound quality to wired connections (especially in professional situations), but would make more sense with greater need to connect other lightning peripherals.
mac_128 said: There are apps which use custom peripherals which only attach via lightning. In order to use those peripherals with the apps on a Mac, there would need to be an adapter or a native port. So far Apple has introduced specs for Lightning headphones, but has not as far as I know provided a way to adopt those headphones to anything else, forcing customers to additionally use 3.5mm headphones for HQ audio on the Mac. Bringing iOS apps to a Mac, would increase the necessity to provide a way to connect custom Lighting peripherals to the Mac, which would finally allow a customer to use one set of headphones for all of their Apple products. IF Apple is really doing this, then the lack of any kind of Lightning adapters to date starts to make some sense. It hasn't been a priority for Apple, which was also pushing the AirPods and W1 Bluetooth chip despite their inferior sound quality to wired connections (especially in professional situations), but would make more sense with greater need to connect other lightning peripherals.
You're expecting Apple's plans to make sense? (Tip: All that stuff about better quality, and moving into the future, and legacy ports... marketing fluff. Apple wanted the space, and to humor Ive's portless-fetish. That's about it.)
Might explain why we have not seen a Lightning peripherals adapter for the Mac, or a Lightning port on the Mac yet. If there is a full blown emulation of iOS apps on the Mac, then there would be a need for it. For now, there's still no way to use Lightning headphones on a Mac, with or without an adapter, which just seems odd.
What on earth does Lightning have to do with any of this? Why would you need a Lightning port on a Mac for iOS apps?
There are apps which use custom peripherals which only attach via lightning. In order to use those peripherals with the apps on a Mac, there would need to be an adapter or a native port. So far Apple has introduced specs for Lightning headphones, but has not as far as I know provided a way to adopt those headphones to anything else, forcing customers to additionally use 3.5mm headphones for HQ audio on the Mac. Bringing iOS apps to a Mac, would increase the necessity to provide a way to connect custom Lighting peripherals to the Mac, which would finally allow a customer to use one set of headphones for all of their Apple products. IF Apple is really doing this, then the lack of any kind of Lightning adapters to date starts to make some sense. It hasn't been a priority for Apple, which was also pushing the AirPods and W1 Bluetooth chip despite their inferior sound quality to wired connections (especially in professional situations), but would make more sense with greater need to connect other lightning peripherals.
Lightning peripherals that don’t have some sort of USB equivalent... how many of those things even exist. The fact there aren’t any 3rd party adapters means there’s no market for that use case, much less pointing to anything planned by Apple.
Comments
Your argument of no changes makes sense only if Apple is emulating.
I mostly agree with your point except that many of those frameworks have been changed, especially in iOS 11, to allow for automatic reclassification of UI. For instance, if you take dynamic text and automatic sizing of UITableViewCell among countless other improvements in iOS 11, you'd see a trend to allowing the application to change appearance on different platforms. iOS 11 has also changed many underpinnings of the framework that didn't really need to be touched such as external screens and UIViewController stacks. The UIToolbar is also changed in a way that one could assume would allow for differently sized systems.
All I'm saying is that it's possible that Apple allows app already available in iOS to be used in macOS with very little tweaking. They could simply add a MouseKit framework and allow that to be transparently used as a touch. It wouldn't be very difficult to conclude or implement. You could also handle all the multitouch interaction with a touchpad on modern Macs. Again, I don't see this as being a huge hurdle...
(With love – an app developer)
The only real issue here is that developers actually cross compile to x86 and actually get very good performance. Apple could be sending down native apps to the Mac to svoid emulation. This would be a good thing.
The framing of this story by Mark Gurman and AI is incorrect -- Marizpan isn't about running iOS apps on macOS, and it's surely not about macOS apps on iPad. It's about universal apps that leverage new frameworks and IDE support to remove barriers-to-entry that discourage developers from producing separate macOS apps. Instead they're just building iOS apps and skipping Mac. So Apple is likely trying to make it easier to code share and make creating a target specifically for the Mac less work than it is today. None of this means "porting iOS apps to Mac".
https://daringfireball.net/2017/12/marzipan
Could doesn't mean should. Of course they could make iOS apps work w/ a mouse on Mac -- it's all OS X and that's what they do in Xcode for testing. So could, yes. But should -- no, they won't. Not according to what they've been telling us all along, that they believe these platforms have very different use cases and thus the apps should reflect that with different designs. Nobody wants iOS apps running in a little box on their 27" iMac. Apple won't do it. Gurman isn't a developer and doesn't understand that isn't what he's hearing here. AI took it and went a little further in a game of telephone (funny they were just writing about others publications doing that too).
(BTW external screens are used by iOS currently, namely head units. Even before CarPlay, iOS apps running on Pioneer's AppRadio would use the car's head unit as an external display for the running app. So references to external displays doesn't indicate Mac-support).
They're not going to do this in a million years. If for no other reason that once they "throw in the towel" and allow emulation of the more popular iOS platform apps on macOS, it will actively decrease the number of new good apps written natively for macOS. Developers will say "Why do twice the work?" and just stick to iOS, the more dominant platform, and let users emulate it on Mac if they want it on Mac.
This is exactly what happened when Blackberry allowed their platform to run Android apps -- devs said "OK then why write a native Blackberry version?" and didn't. Yet another nail in the coffin for Blackberry.
Apple won't allow that.
Lightning jacks have nothing to do with it. Mac hardware doesn't need Lightning ports, it has USB. Lightning existed before USBC and served a purpose on iOS hardware to replace the previous 30-pin port. That's it. iOS devices and Macs are different platforms with different use cases. I doubt Apple cares whether or not your Lightning headphones work with you Mac. It's just not their primary interest.
If the difference is a new Responder at the head of the interface chain on mac with interactions geared to keyboard, pointer and non-direct multi-touch. That would also make it as different to AppKit as UIKit is to either of them. Still Even UIKit has 10years of overhead now as well. So it really does make sense to built a new one that could replace both in time.
To me the curious thing about rumour is they specific that this being iPad apps being reworked to allow them to run on mac but there is only a fairly poor distinction between iOS generally and special pad app. It would be a great carrot for developers if at the same time they launch a pad AppStore that giving much higher visibility to productive and business app that would benefit from working both Mac and Pad.
In much the same way, I don’t consider most banking apps as native because sticking a web page into a frame and barfing it onto the App Store does not make it a native app. That’s just a web page with a frame.
To me, the terminology is wrong. What I think they’re trying to say is that Apple is making it easier to take an iPad app and make it universal, which will involve some work to get something that doesn’t look like an iPad stuck in the middle of the screen.
Saying that they’re going to allow iPad apps to run in a Mac immediately implies emulation, and that’s not what’s going to happen.
Add mouse support.
Add keyboard.
Add USBC.
Multiuser (I thought this was already supported for education).
Since you can already draw on the massive mousepad, why not just use a MacBook?
Genuine question.
The app works slightly better with a mouse for some functions but with multitouch mice and trackpads it should work fine on macOS through an emulator and I won’t need Windows at all then
And, this leads to the whole discussion about what some of we long-term Mac users are bemoaning in terms of the degrading UI, etc. We remember the days when Mac apps really stood out, because they were, well, just better. As more (and new) developers have come on board (including Apple's own apps and OS UI), they've been becoming more like other platforms, or cross-platform re-builds, or just designs that haven't taken into account what a Mac app was supposed to be like.
It's a bit like your earlier example of just reframing a bank app web-interface (or worse) in a frame with an 'app' built around it. If these apps just embedded the banks mainframe terminal screens, we'd all recognize it. But, I'm not sure there are enough of us old-Mac users around anymore to differentiate between a well written Mac app and an app that just looks pretty, anymore.
And, that's what I'm talking about when I complain about the degradation of the Mac. It's becoming more like any old computer, because UI principals are being lost and apps aren't all that Mac-like any longer. And, this is super-prevent on iOS. So, I'm not sure we Mac people really want any ol' iOS developers tossing together crumby Mac apps. That actually sounds a bit like a nightmare to me.
(Tip: All that stuff about better quality, and moving into the future, and legacy ports... marketing fluff. Apple wanted the space, and to humor Ive's portless-fetish. That's about it.)