Project Catalyst is another deliberate step toward the new hybrid device, which I call macPad. This device will be a fusion of the iPad Pro and the MacBook. Below are the bullet points why I've believed for several years now that the macPad is on the Apple's roadmap even though initially Apple vehemently denied that such device would ever be released.
iPad's touch interface is not suited for a professional use in the upright position regardless of how powerful the CPU and the GPU of the device is. Apple tried to mitigate the lack of a pointing device by releasing the Apple Pencil, but that didn't change the fact that in the upright position, using touch (with a finger or a stylus-like device) is inconvenient. Steve Jobs himself justified the absence of touch screen on the Macs by the same reasoning - it's unergonomic to extend your arm to touch a vertical screen, it's imprecise, and it strains one's arm after prolonged use. It's no accident that Apple has finally announced support of desktop pointing devices (mouse and trackpad) in the first release of the iPadOS.
Apple's A-Series CPU and GPUs designed in house provide excellent power-efficiency-to-performance ratio and outperform Intel lower-end CPUs and GPUs. However, the CPUs and GPUs designed by Apple cannot rival higher-end x86_64 CPUs. Those higher-end Intel CPUs are also much more power hungry with excessive heat dissipation requirements that makes them impossible to be used in a tablet-size device or in a very portable and thin laptop. Therefore, Apple has been able to create the CPUs/GPUs that outperform the ones made by Intel only in the very portable niche of the personal computer spectrum. This means that Apple cannot completely eliminate x86_64-based Macs by transitioning to its own CPU/GPU platform across the entire Mac line of computers. Yet, it's possible to transition lower-end Macs, such as the MacBook, perhaps the MacBook Air, and perhaps the lower-end MacBook Pros to the ARM architecture utilizing the A-Series CPUs and GPUs designed by Apple in house.
Project Catalyst is finally released in the wild so that iOS developers for the iPad can now quickly port their iPad apps to macOS. This decision will make it possible to cross-compile millions of iOS apps that currently work on the iPad. What will it achieve? Within a year, there will literally be millions of cross-compiled iPadOS/macOS apps available on the App Store. Thousands or even tens of thousands of them will be enterprise-level apps that will have two UIs: touch-based UI for iPadOS and pointing-device based UI for MacOS.
The detractors of the hypothesis that Apple is planning a transition from x86_64 to ARM have been saying for a while that the lack of Mac applications supported on the ARM architecture will prevent Apple from making such a move. Additionally, they criticize the idea of the "Rosetta-in-Reverse" emulation framework due to the performance hit that it would take on the Apple's A-Series CPUs, rendering the performance of the x86-based Mac apps on the ARM-based architecture dismal and killing the entire project as a result. It's the old "chicken-or-the-egg" dilemma: how do you transition the hardware platform without having the content built for that platform ahead of the transition? Guess what? With Project Catalyst, the apps will be ready for the new platform before the transition to the new platform commences. The millions of iPadOS apps that will have been already cross-compiled for x86_64-based macOS will be able to quickly recompile for the ARM-based macOS by simply selecting a different macOS architecture in the new version of Xcode. All the UI work required for those apps will already have been done when the developers initially compiled the iPadOS apps for the x86_64-based macOS.
In the past few years. many customers and financial analysts have been extremely critical of Apple for increasing the prices of high-end Macs. What many of us do not realize (and what the Apple's marketing fails to explain to the customers) is that the majority of people who bought Macs in 2018 (when 6-core MacBook Pros were introduced) and in 2019 (when 8-core MacBook Pros were introduced) no longer had to buy Pro-level Macs at those sky-high prices. The type of performance that 6-core and 8-core Macs provide is an overkill for 90% of Mac users, who would be well served by cheaper Macs with lower, yet sufficient, performance available in the lower-end MacBook Pros, the 2018 MacBook Air, and even in the MacBook. Therefore, in the future, Apple will likely draw a line in the Mac offerings between the computers geared to the consumer (priced under $2,000), which can serve 90% of Mac users, and the computers priced well above $2,000, which are geared toward the real "Pro" users, who require extreme levels of performance from their Macs.
I believe that Apple is going to announce a hybrid macPad device during the next WWDC in 2020. By that time, there will have been millions of cross-compiled iPadOS/macOS apps available on the App Store. Apple will use the next generation of A-Series CPUs and GPUs developed in house to combine the functionalities of the iPad Pro and the MacBook in the same macPad device. In my opinion, Apple will continue to support iPadOS-only devices in the non-Pro iPad line; additionally, Apple will continue to carry higher-end x86_64-based Pro-level Macs that will remain macOS-only devices. There will probably be an additional framework released for Xcode that would allow x86_64-based macOS applications to be cross-compiled for the ARM-based macOS platform, which would allow macOS-only applications to be easily ported to the new ARM-based macOS. The new macPad device will look like the iPad Pro but will come with a docking solution - a keyboard/trackpad stand or case combination that will plug in the docking connector on the macPad. When the macPad is undocked, only the touch (iPadOS) UI will be exposed in the apps. When the macPad is docked, only the pointing-device-based (macOS) UI will be exposed in the apps. The look and feel of the cross-compiled iPadOS/macOS app will change based on whether the macPad is docked or undocked.
The following product lines will result from the Apple's transition to the ARM architecture:
iPhone: ARM
iPad (non-Pro): ARM
macPad (hybrid of iPad Pro and MacBook and perhaps MacBook Air): ARM
MaBook Air (may not survive the transition): ARM or killed off
iMac: ARM or x86_64 (4-core)
MacBook Pro (6-core and 8-core): x86_64
iMac Pro: x86_64 (6-core and 8-core): x86_64
Mac Pro: x86_64 (8-core and up): x86_64
Finally, the new hybrid macPad device will cost between $999 and $1999, based on the specs. There will be several configurations of the macPad with different amounts of RAM, perhaps two screen sizes, different amounts of storage, perhaps presence of absence of 5G, etc. The higher-end macPad device will cost $1999 and will include a larger screen size (perhaps 13"), 16 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Wi-Fi 6, and perhaps even 5G cellular card, although the larger screen and the 1TB SSD may take the price above $1999. I expect the macPad to be announced during WWDC 2020, and the release of the macPad to occur in the fall of 2020 for the 2020 winter holiday shopping season.
Great Post. I generally tend to agree with what you are saying. macPad will be a Surface Book that actually works for touch (as an analogy). Although I tend to think that it may take till 2021 for the macPad to come out. There will be a cheaper $300 - $400 version for the educational market in a few years as they have needed that to compete with chrome books. The writing was on the wall when Marzipan came out last year. Anyone who was against this just have to realize that even Apple employees don't want carry two devices (MBP and iPadPro) when they go on vacation. Now they will only need to take on.
I’ll eat my hat (first buying a hat) if anything like MacPad comes to fruition.
The aim of catalyst is to ... drumroll ... sell more Macs. If more apps are ported to the Mac then the windows users with iPhones (the majority) will consider moving more readily. It’s also designed to get native apps on the Mac (as opposed to electron, react etc.) and protect swift as the language of choice for Mac and iOS development. Which isn’t guaranteed.
It will probably also produce more iPad apps with multi window support and in general, as it’s the iPad OS that ports to the Mac and many iPhone developers wanting a foothold on the Mac will produce an iPad app if they haven’t already.
This. Craig and others have said time and again they aren’t merging the two as they serve different purposes and thus have different use cases and UX.
I’ll eat my hat (first buying a hat) if anything like MacPad comes to fruition.
The aim of catalyst is to ... drumroll ... sell more Macs. If more apps are ported to the Mac then the windows users with iPhones (the majority) will consider moving more readily. It’s also designed to get native apps on the Mac (as opposed to electron, react etc.) and protect swift as the language of choice for Mac and iOS development. Which isn’t guaranteed.
It will probably also produce more iPad apps with multi window support and in general, as it’s the iPad OS that ports to the Mac and many iPhone developers wanting a foothold on the Mac will produce an iPad app if they haven’t already.
This. Craig and others have said time and again they aren’t merging the two as they serve different purposes and thus have different use cases and UX.
While I agree, I will point out that this specific wording does not refute the merging of macOS and iPadOS.
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While I agree, I will point out that this specific wording does not refute the merging of macOS and iPadOS.