Having fooled arond a bit with XCode and app development in general I really wish Apple would do something about XCode and how it works. I suspect that the biggest problem with Mac development and the lack of apps there is that it is a strange platform to develop for.
That's not because of Xcode. That's because of AppKit. But that generally applies if you entered the Apple developer ecosystem as an iOS-only developer.
iOS apps being ported to MacOS and using cursor input? Hmmm...
To all those Mac Bigots whining about the possibility of an iPad with cursor input: We Just Moved One Step Closer.... Don't look back: It's coming up fast!
No - I don't want to run iOS apps on my MacBook .. I want a mac that do all the cool things an iPad can do.
I DO want to run iOS apps on my MacBook because there are apps I use on iOS that don't exist on macOS and this just seems to be a happy in-between.
If you want a Mac to do all the cool things an iPad can do then get a sodding iPad that CAN do all the cool things a iPad can do because... well it's an iPad already. It's not rocket science.
The reason I want iOS apps running on my macBook is simply because I need a macBook but I also have an iPad 3 that can only go to iOS 9. One app I use all the time will run on iOS 9 but it has issues with the share panel which is the way it does things to share the data files with iOS, Windows, and Android. There is no macOS version and using the app on iPhone can be tricky in order to get the most out of it. But if this app was useable on macOS then I can do that side of thing on the Mac then upload the datafile to the iPhone and use it in a reader capacity which works well.
Just because the use case doesn't exist for you doesn't mean that it's a rubbish idea.
But there in lies another problem... the iPad Pro can't run Xcode and other important applications that I need for software development.
Why can't there exist a mac tablet, that has a touch screen with Apple Pencil support? Simply insisting that what I am asking for isn't needed is such a Window/PC thing to do.
I have a MacBook Pro today and literally ZERO desire to buy another one - I don't care how fast it might be. I know what the MacBook Pro ownership experience is all about and quite frankly ... I'm bored with it. I see the iPad Pro with new features (Rear Facing Camera, Apple Pencil, Tablet Form Factor) but a software ecosystem that falls well short of what I need. Merely putting the "Pro" moniker on a product doesn't make it a "Product for Professionals." And I certainly do not want to carry two devices.
Apple's insistence that iOS be the only platform for it's tablets is holding back both the iPad and the Mac. This is a recipe for failure.
An iPad is not a development machine. It simply doesn’t have the processing power to do what you’re asking of it. Microsoft did what you’re asking and it was a crap experience. M$ have been trying to push your idea for around 18 years and it’s been crap each and every single time.
That's not always true. For example, my experience with applications like Instagram, Facebook and Netflix among others is very good even though they are the same UI for touch and keyboard/mouse. It's obvious that there are apps and full desktop applications that need to be separate, but there are a lot of them that can work in touch and keyboard/mouse without issues.
Don’t get me wrong Windows 10 is actually a great OS but it’s insistance
of trying to force Metro apps on desktop users was dumb especially when
they refused to eat their own pie with Office.
Microsoft have a UWP/Metro mobile version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. It looks like they ate from their pie...
Personally I use these versions when making annotation in Office files from my SP4. This is a good example where it makes sense to have a desktop and a mobile applications.
But the other way of
having a desktop OS on a tablet was even more of a cesspool of putrid
crud so your idea has already proved to have failed for the past 18
years.
I suppose we should consider a failure too when Apple added a keyboard to use the iPad Pro as a desktop replacement, right?
Having fooled arond a bit with XCode and app development in general I really wish Apple would do something about XCode and how it works. I suspect that the biggest problem with Mac development and the lack of apps there is that it is a strange platform to develop for.
I think you're correct, the API/method names are less intuitive than other platforms and the IDE is just odd. I suspect a lot of developers feel that way but they just push through for the money. To me it feels like a platform made by electrical engineers not computer scientists.
iOS apps being ported to MacOS and using cursor input? Hmmm...
To all those Mac Bigots whining about the possibility of an iPad with cursor input: We Just Moved One Step Closer.... Don't look back: It's coming up fast!
Porting isn't really the right word. It's writing a codebase that supports multiple platforms, thanks to inclusive UI framework support on both platforms.
You aren't going to see iOS apps running on your Mac. You're going to see Mac apps.
No - I don't want to run iOS apps on my MacBook .. I want a mac that do all the cool things an iPad can do.
I DO want to run iOS apps on my MacBook because there are apps I use on iOS that don't exist on macOS and this just seems to be a happy in-between.
Can you give some examples of apps that you run on IOS that you would want? When I looked at the apps I have, there is either already a Mac app (calendaring, email, maps, music, 1Password), it makes more sense to use a web browser (Netflix, AirBnB, CVS, Wells Fargo, PayPal), or doesn't have too much value on a non-mobile device (Waze, Camera, Uber, Lyft, parking, mass transit apps, SkyView, most games). Even the list of apps that Apple is touting aren't really all that useful for me and frankly in the case of Home seem pretty crippled by being tailored for IOS. A complete rewrite without all the sacrifices that IOS entails would be a much better move in my opinion.
iOS apps being ported to MacOS and using cursor input? Hmmm...
To all those Mac Bigots whining about the possibility of an iPad with cursor input: We Just Moved One Step Closer.... Don't look back: It's coming up fast!
I would tend to agree. If the iOS apps still look like iOS apps, but they incorporate the mouse, which is the only way to navigate the app now that there's no touch screen on the Mac, that it will quickly become obvious whether mouse support would aid or hinder the navigation of apps on iOS. Those that have been clamoring for mouse support on iOS will essentially have a bullet proof way to confirm their claims, while Mac users will likely see these app interfaces as greatly over simplified and in need of touch screens.
Even now, I'm so used to touch based interfaces, that I instinctively reach out to touch my Mac display, where such action is just more intuitive than locating the cursor to make the interaction. Likewise, I routinely start looking for my Mac whenever I want to do any serious typing on my iPad, or need a mouse for fine manipulation of a webpage, or otherwise. The Pencil makes some of those tasks easier on the iPad now, but for most I go looking for a Mac. If my iPad supported a mouse, I'd be inclined to use it for more things than I do at the moment.
Porting iOS apps into the Mac environment is really going to blur the rules Apple has been trying to contain for each device, and finally force their hand.
It kinda sounds like they are though. iOS apps running on a Mac, you're running one UI inside another. What do you think the next step would be, separating them? Don't think so.
Not really. This is NO different to using Wine to run Windows apps on UNIX based platforms. You're not running a UI per se you're converting a UI to run on another UI. For developers what this means is you write the app for one UI and the OS converts it into its own UI. There's not a huge performance hit doing this than say doing what Parallels and VMWare do because you're not running an entire OS in a virtual machine. There is however a small hit but given the way that iOS is built on the same foundation of macOS then the performance hit for this will be negligible especially given the processing power of a desktop/laptop processor.
Having fooled arond a bit with XCode and app development in general I really wish Apple would do something about XCode and how it works. I suspect that the biggest problem with Mac development and the lack of apps there is that it is a strange platform to develop for.
I'm a complete noob to Xcode but I don't agree with you at all. What's so difficult to learn with Xcode? I suspect you're thinking about Swift but then you're writing for a completely new programming language and one that makes far more sense than C++, C# etc.
No - I don't want to run iOS apps on my MacBook .. I want a mac that do all the cool things an iPad can do.
I DO want to run iOS apps on my MacBook because there are apps I use on iOS that don't exist on macOS and this just seems to be a happy in-between.
If you want a Mac to do all the cool things an iPad can do then get a sodding iPad that CAN do all the cool things a iPad can do because... well it's an iPad already. It's not rocket science.
The reason I want iOS apps running on my macBook is simply because I need a macBook but I also have an iPad 3 that can only go to iOS 9. One app I use all the time will run on iOS 9 but it has issues with the share panel which is the way it does things to share the data files with iOS, Windows, and Android. There is no macOS version and using the app on iPhone can be tricky in order to get the most out of it. But if this app was useable on macOS then I can do that side of thing on the Mac then upload the datafile to the iPhone and use it in a reader capacity which works well.
Just because the use case doesn't exist for you doesn't mean that it's a rubbish idea.
That's not what this is. You completely misunderstood the presentation. This isn't "iOS apps running on macOS". This is Apple making it easier for developers to make macOS apps by adding UIKit so they can just take their iOS app and make UI tweaks so it's more usable on a non-touchscreen device. It's to get more apps into the Mac App Store. These are full-fledged macOS apps.
It kinda sounds like they are though. iOS apps running on a Mac, you're running one UI inside another. What do you think the next step would be, separating them? Don't think so.
Not really. This is NO different to using Wine to run Windows apps on UNIX based platforms. You're not running a UI per se you're converting a UI to run on another UI. For developers what this means is you write the app for one UI and the OS converts it into its own UI. There's not a huge performance hit doing this than say doing what Parallels and VMWare do because you're not running an entire OS in a virtual machine. There is however a small hit but given the way that iOS is built on the same foundation of macOS then the performance hit for this will be negligible especially given the processing power of a desktop/laptop processor.
Having fooled arond a bit with XCode and app development in general I really wish Apple would do something about XCode and how it works. I suspect that the biggest problem with Mac development and the lack of apps there is that it is a strange platform to develop for.
I'm a complete noob to Xcode but I don't agree with you at all. What's so difficult to learn with Xcode? I suspect you're thinking about Swift but then you're writing for a completely new programming language and one that makes far more sense than C++, C# etc.
No - I don't want to run iOS apps on my MacBook .. I want a mac that do all the cool things an iPad can do.
I DO want to run iOS apps on my MacBook because there are apps I use on iOS that don't exist on macOS and this just seems to be a happy in-between.
If you want a Mac to do all the cool things an iPad can do then get a sodding iPad that CAN do all the cool things a iPad can do because... well it's an iPad already. It's not rocket science.
The reason I want iOS apps running on my macBook is simply because I need a macBook but I also have an iPad 3 that can only go to iOS 9. One app I use all the time will run on iOS 9 but it has issues with the share panel which is the way it does things to share the data files with iOS, Windows, and Android. There is no macOS version and using the app on iPhone can be tricky in order to get the most out of it. But if this app was useable on macOS then I can do that side of thing on the Mac then upload the datafile to the iPhone and use it in a reader capacity which works well.
Just because the use case doesn't exist for you doesn't mean that it's a rubbish idea.
Actually it’s better, the UIKit framework (I’m assuming not all controller classes will be included) runs native on Intel/macOS just as it does on ARM/iOS. The interaction is a little different but it’s not even a conversion.
Lobby that app Developer hard to port your favourite app to macOS. That goes for everyone.
From your later post, I knock up small iOS front-ends (mainly POCs) on an old Core2Duo iMac - an iPad Pro would be fast enough for minor projects and as an entry point for Xcode.
Don’t tell me you made it to WWDC, I’ll be jealous.
It kinda sounds like they are though. iOS apps running on a Mac, you're running one UI inside another. What do you think the next step would be, separating them? Don't think so.
Not really. This is NO different to using Wine to run Windows apps on UNIX based platforms. You're not running a UI per se you're converting a UI to run on another UI. For developers what this means is you write the app for one UI and the OS converts it into its own UI. There's not a huge performance hit doing this than say doing what Parallels and VMWare do because you're not running an entire OS in a virtual machine. There is however a small hit but given the way that iOS is built on the same foundation of macOS then the performance hit for this will be negligible especially given the processing power of a desktop/laptop processor.
Having fooled arond a bit with XCode and app development in general I really wish Apple would do something about XCode and how it works. I suspect that the biggest problem with Mac development and the lack of apps there is that it is a strange platform to develop for.
I'm a complete noob to Xcode but I don't agree with you at all. What's so difficult to learn with Xcode? I suspect you're thinking about Swift but then you're writing for a completely new programming language and one that makes far more sense than C++, C# etc.
No - I don't want to run iOS apps on my MacBook .. I want a mac that do all the cool things an iPad can do.
I DO want to run iOS apps on my MacBook because there are apps I use on iOS that don't exist on macOS and this just seems to be a happy in-between.
If you want a Mac to do all the cool things an iPad can do then get a sodding iPad that CAN do all the cool things a iPad can do because... well it's an iPad already. It's not rocket science.
The reason I want iOS apps running on my macBook is simply because I need a macBook but I also have an iPad 3 that can only go to iOS 9. One app I use all the time will run on iOS 9 but it has issues with the share panel which is the way it does things to share the data files with iOS, Windows, and Android. There is no macOS version and using the app on iPhone can be tricky in order to get the most out of it. But if this app was useable on macOS then I can do that side of thing on the Mac then upload the datafile to the iPhone and use it in a reader capacity which works well.
Just because the use case doesn't exist for you doesn't mean that it's a rubbish idea.
That's not what this is. You completely misunderstood the presentation. This isn't "iOS apps running on macOS". This is Apple making it easier for developers to make macOS apps by adding UIKit so they can just take their iOS app and make UI tweaks so it's more usable on a non-touchscreen device. It's to get more apps into the Mac App Store. These are full-fledged macOS apps.
Right. Apps that look like they are optimized to run on a touch screen. Running as Mac apps, requiring a mouse and keyboard, with no option to touch anything. Of course, when Mac apps look identical to iOS apps but actually use a mouse an keyboard to navigate it, it's hard to imagine the crowd that's been demanding mouse input on the iPad for years aren't going to be given new ammunition for their cause -- and they won't be wrong. Apple markets a keyboard for the iPad, to be used exactly like a MacBook, yet for some reason there was no cries about ergonomic fatigue in marketing that product. Yet, they still maintain a mouse is not necessary to improve the experience, despite now telling us it is definitely inferior experience to lift one's hand to touch the screen.
It kinda sounds like they are though. iOS apps running on a Mac, you're running one UI inside another. What do you think the next step would be, separating them? Don't think so.
Not really. This is NO different to using Wine to run Windows apps on UNIX based platforms. You're not running a UI per se you're converting a UI to run on another UI. For developers what this means is you write the app for one UI and the OS converts it into its own UI. There's not a huge performance hit doing this than say doing what Parallels and VMWare do because you're not running an entire OS in a virtual machine. There is however a small hit but given the way that iOS is built on the same foundation of macOS then the performance hit for this will be negligible especially given the processing power of a desktop/laptop processor.
Having fooled arond a bit with XCode and app development in general I really wish Apple would do something about XCode and how it works. I suspect that the biggest problem with Mac development and the lack of apps there is that it is a strange platform to develop for.
I'm a complete noob to Xcode but I don't agree with you at all. What's so difficult to learn with Xcode? I suspect you're thinking about Swift but then you're writing for a completely new programming language and one that makes far more sense than C++, C# etc.
No - I don't want to run iOS apps on my MacBook .. I want a mac that do all the cool things an iPad can do.
I DO want to run iOS apps on my MacBook because there are apps I use on iOS that don't exist on macOS and this just seems to be a happy in-between.
If you want a Mac to do all the cool things an iPad can do then get a sodding iPad that CAN do all the cool things a iPad can do because... well it's an iPad already. It's not rocket science.
The reason I want iOS apps running on my macBook is simply because I need a macBook but I also have an iPad 3 that can only go to iOS 9. One app I use all the time will run on iOS 9 but it has issues with the share panel which is the way it does things to share the data files with iOS, Windows, and Android. There is no macOS version and using the app on iPhone can be tricky in order to get the most out of it. But if this app was useable on macOS then I can do that side of thing on the Mac then upload the datafile to the iPhone and use it in a reader capacity which works well.
Just because the use case doesn't exist for you doesn't mean that it's a rubbish idea.
That's not what this is. You completely misunderstood the presentation. This isn't "iOS apps running on macOS". This is Apple making it easier for developers to make macOS apps by adding UIKit so they can just take their iOS app and make UI tweaks so it's more usable on a non-touchscreen device. It's to get more apps into the Mac App Store. These are full-fledged macOS apps.
Apple markets a keyboard for the iPad, to be used exactly like a MacBook, yet for some reason there was no cries about ergonomic fatigue in marketing that product. Yet, they still maintain a mouse is not necessary to improve the experience, despite now telling us it is definitely inferior experience to lift one's hand to touch the screen.
Touch by exception and touch by rule aren’t the same thing.
On looks there’s no problem; the iOS simulator shows most UIKit viewcontrollers can be used with a pointer but it’s not ideal. Two-finger drag over an iPad’s onscreen keyboard and there’s your cursor. AppKit viewcontrollers have had discretionary scroll bars, for trackpad enabled devices, for some time.
Comments
Microsoft have a UWP/Metro mobile version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. It looks like they ate from their pie...
https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9WZDNCRFJB9S
https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9WZDNCRFJBH3
https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9WZDNCRFJB5Q
https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9WZDNCRFHVJL
Personally I use these versions when making annotation in Office files from my SP4. This is a good example where it makes sense to have a desktop and a mobile applications.
I suppose we should consider a failure too when Apple added a keyboard to use the iPad Pro as a desktop replacement, right?
You aren't going to see iOS apps running on your Mac. You're going to see Mac apps.
Can you give some examples of apps that you run on IOS that you would want? When I looked at the apps I have, there is either already a Mac app (calendaring, email, maps, music, 1Password), it makes more sense to use a web browser (Netflix, AirBnB, CVS, Wells Fargo, PayPal), or doesn't have too much value on a non-mobile device (Waze, Camera, Uber, Lyft, parking, mass transit apps, SkyView, most games). Even the list of apps that Apple is touting aren't really all that useful for me and frankly in the case of Home seem pretty crippled by being tailored for IOS. A complete rewrite without all the sacrifices that IOS entails would be a much better move in my opinion.
Why the hell would you ever want that?
Even now, I'm so used to touch based interfaces, that I instinctively reach out to touch my Mac display, where such action is just more intuitive than locating the cursor to make the interaction. Likewise, I routinely start looking for my Mac whenever I want to do any serious typing on my iPad, or need a mouse for fine manipulation of a webpage, or otherwise. The Pencil makes some of those tasks easier on the iPad now, but for most I go looking for a Mac. If my iPad supported a mouse, I'd be inclined to use it for more things than I do at the moment.
Porting iOS apps into the Mac environment is really going to blur the rules Apple has been trying to contain for each device, and finally force their hand.
Lobby that app Developer hard to port your favourite app to macOS. That goes for everyone.
From your later post, I knock up small iOS front-ends (mainly POCs) on an old Core2Duo iMac - an iPad Pro would be fast enough for minor projects and as an entry point for Xcode.
Don’t tell me you made it to WWDC, I’ll be jealous.
On looks there’s no problem; the iOS simulator shows most UIKit viewcontrollers can be used with a pointer but it’s not ideal. Two-finger drag over an iPad’s onscreen keyboard and there’s your cursor. AppKit viewcontrollers have had discretionary scroll bars, for trackpad enabled devices, for some time.