BigDann

hblaschka said:

One should not forget about HomeKit - there are a lot of Smart Home Gateway Users eagerly waiting for being able to a) expose their connected devices to HomeKit and b) integrate HomeKit-Devices into their Gateway. A lot of work has been put into this area by 3rd party gateway developers lately and all of them are waiting for the Go of Apple (my vendor has it running in beta and it works as designed - one-directionally integrating Z-Wave/ZigBee and Enocean-Devices into HomeKit only so far).

HomeKit itself will without any doubt be more integrated into Voice services and hopefully into macOS (a dedicated Home app is still missing), while a lot of supported functionality is generally missing from the iOS Home App UI at the moment. I doubt that HomeKit will be exposed to 3rd party Voice systems, though.

Mike Wuerthele said:

Rayz2016 said:

k2kw said:

AppleInsider said:

Portent of the future

Speaking about telling developers what to expect in the future, Apple previewed the fruits of project "Marzipan" at WWDC. Instead of a straight emulation layer, it turned out to be a framework and API for porting over iPad apps to the Mac.

While I'm certain that this can be used for good or evil, skillfully or poorly, it isn't a regression. I also believe that it is an early step for migrating at least some of the Mac line to ARM, as the porting friction reduces even further as the technology is finally released to developers in full in 2019.

But, like we said on the AppleInsider Podcast on Friday, this reveal of what is rumored to be called Marzipan is about step two of a twenty step process.

"Marzipan is about step two of a twenty step process." - best description of what I believe will be an evolution of both iOS and macOS to create new and enhanced versions of both over many years. Now I believe that way down the road macComputers will support Touch and the iPad will support the mouse. It's like when Job's said "Stylus. yuck" but apple came out with a Pencil that is better. When the "merger" is done it will be without compromises and the experience on both will be better.

Of course! Of course! I didn't see it at first, but now it's perfectly clear.

For weeks, I've been wondering why AppleInsider has insisted that Apple was planning an emulation layer so that iOS apps can run on Macs, when the initial report they cribbed from, seasoned developers, experienced journalists, and just about everyone in between said that Apple was coming up with an API to make it easier for themselves and developers to port applications between iOS and MacOS. AI was getting it so badly wrong, I was starting to wonder if they were just saying it to generate page clicks. No they weren't; they really did just get it badly wrong.

It made no sense at all to me (and I suspect it had @StrangeDays shaking his head in wonder too).

But as it turns out, AppleInsider simply made the classic mistake of the inexperienced journalist and rookie police detective: they started with what they wanted to believe, and then worked in reverse to find evidence to make it fact.

In this case, AppleInsider (and you) want to believe that Apple will merge the Mac and the iPad into some sort of bastardised hybrid FrankenMacPad. The reason that you want this is the same reason that is behind every odd request that shows up here: price. Rather than caring if this would actually work, what folk are thinking is "if Apple made such a machine, then I wouldn't have to buy two machines". Any compromises such a device would suffer would be complained about endlessly of course, but at least you got it for a cheaper outlay than buying a Mac and an iPad.

But back to the original point: this pattern of thinking leads to two strange phenomena that are unique to the Mac world:

1. X-Files Case Number 7737228728: The Internal Reality Twist. When a senior Apple exec goes on stage and drops a twenty-foot on-screen "NO" to the question of merging MacOS and iOS, what folk here think is "Well, it was an on-screen "NO", rather than a real, touchable "NO" pressed from Apple-crafted ceramic and honed smooth with lasers and a Jony Ive talkover explaining, in soothing British tones, how the massive "NO" was made. Since it's not a tangible "NO" then it's not a real "NO", so that means that they're planning on merging iOS and MacOS two years from now!"
2. X-Files Case Number 7737228729: The Historical Reality Twist. When Steve Jobs said Apple won't do something; then years later, Apple does it, then this is proof that they can change their minds. 

Actually, I'm going to stop there, because point #2 is perfectly reasonable: if Apple didn't change their minds when they've taken the wrong path, then the company would never have survived this long, and that is an indisputable fact. The problem is the Historical Twist part. In this case, folk tend to make up their own words for what was actually said, so that it can reinforce what they're actually wishing for. Here's a video:



Jobs did not say "Stylus … yuk!"

What Jobs actually said was, "If you need a stylus then you've already failed."

The difference is subtle, but if you don't get it then you don't really understand why the iPad succeeded where so many before it did not. Jobs did not say that they would never have a stylus; what he actually said was that from day one the iPad was designed so that it wouldn't need one. This requirement shaped how the tablet was built, how iOS was designed, how apps would look and how folk would interact with them. Thanks to Jobs's insistence that Apple's designers would not assume a stylus would ever be available, they came up with a system that could happily work with a finger or a stylus.

The whole premise that Apple will make a FrankenMacPad because they once said they wouldn't make a stylus is flawed – because Apple didn't say they wouldn't make a stylus. In fact, if anything, Jobs statement about the stylus proves he believes that the best devices have to be designed from the ground up to support one overall style of interaction for the best possible user experience, so if anything, the stylus quote (the real one) actually points to a future without a FrankenMacPad

So, does this mean that Apple will never make a hybrid? No, of course not. As I've said, Apple can and does change its mind. But as things stand, they've already made prototypes; the ergonomics over long periods of use don't work. From my own experience, when I work with hybrids, I tend to just use them as laptops, and most of the folk around me tend to do the same thing. So is there is no current plan to make on? Nope. Sorry, there isn't. This Marzipan is not the first step to a hybrid, it's just another step along an endless road to make iOS and MacOS work better together, without compromising devices running either.

"But if Apple doesn't think touchscreens belong on the Mac, then what about the Touch Bar huh? Yeah, clever clogs! What about that??"

That is not a touch screen, it is a touch keyboard, and we know that Apple has loved touch keyboards for years.


One other thing: Jobs's statement on the need for a stylus bears greater weight when you remember that the iPad was actually conceived before the iPhone.

You're making a few assumptions here.

1) That I believe that a hybrid device is coming. I have never said that. ARM-powered Macs != hybrid Mac and iPad. It's just a Mac, running macOS, with an ARM processor. The Intel Macs were no longer PowerPC Macs, they were Intel Macs.

2) I am on record for well over a year saying that Marzipan isn't an emulation framework. Not just in multiple editorials, but on the AI podcast, and my own. AI is not some monolithic agency with planning meetings on common opinions and interpretations.

Those two make the rest of your assumptions about this editorial problematic.