[lambda_lover]

> "A decision to go with ARM technology in computers might lend it credibility where it has failed to gain a foothold so far."

> "Apple is working on a new software platform, internally dubbed Marzipan, for release as early as this year that would allow users to run iPhone and iPad apps on Macs"

Two things here:

1) I'm OK with breaking the Intel near-monopoly on x86. I'm not OK with moving to a walled garden where Apple forces you to publish apps through their App Store with a paid dev account, etc. just for the privilege of users on their platform. ARM doesn't necessarily mean this, but it is a different CPU arch. When Apple transitioned to Intel/x86 from PowerPC, Intel processors were performant enough compared to PowerPC processors to provide a pleasant emulated PowerPC environment for applications build for PowerPC. I don't think that a switch to ARM would provide this benefit, and afaik Intel's mobile offerings aren't that far off from ARM efficiency. So what's the benefit? Just vertical integration, I guess? Escaping Intel's backdoors and high prices?

2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this? The way I see it, web apps are perfectly adequate for the desktop environment when it comes to stuff like checking my bank account or browsing Hacker News. I don't want to deal with a desktop app to do any of the stuff I can currently do via a browser. Is there actually a use case?

3) Given the hellscape of bugs currently present in iOS/macOS, does anybody have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on this scale? It sounds like the sort of thing that requires a lot of talent and a lot of focus. Apple has the capital for this, but not the environment, imo.

Seems to me like this could be the nail in the coffin for Macbooks that's been pending since the merger of the macOS/iOS teams and the introduction of the controversial TouchBar/USB-C Pro.

[htormey]

“2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this? The way I see it, web apps are perfectly adequate for the desktop environment when it comes to stuff like checking my bank account or browsing Hacker News. I don't want to deal with a desktop app to do any of the stuff I can currently do via a browser. Is there actually a use case?”

Right now many new desktop apps are just badly ported web apps wrapped in electron. They are slow and eat a lot of memory as all of their UI is a being rendered in a glorified standalone chrome tab.

This is less about iOS apps on OSX and more about making it easier for the iOS developer ecosystem to build desktop apps. Right now it’s web teams that are building desktop apps because for most companies it’s too expensive to hire a dedicated desktop team. Even big apps like slack/WhatsApp use electron.

Making it easier for iOS developers to build desktop applications with the APIs they currently use should hopefully lead to higher quality apps.

[so33]

The best case scenario is that Apple has cooked up some sort of awesome translation layer between the Cocoa Touch APIs and Cocoa, letting iOS apps function almost like native macOS apps. Hopefully this will happen. But I won't let it go past hope.

[emodendroket]

Don't a number of iOS apps use essentially the same technique?

[htormey]

Most if not all of the top 100 mobile apps are native applications.

Hybrid mobile frameworks like Cordova tend to get a bad rap these days especially with the arrival of more performant alternatives like React Native.

[emodendroket]

I avoid installing apps for most sites, but I kind of remember in the early days, anyway, people were just sneaking a Web view in there for most of the functionality in many apps.

[bad_user]

If you can build an iOS app, you can build a macOS app too.

Electron apps are not built by iOS developers, but by developers like myself who would rather hit 3 birds with one stone ;-)

And no, nothing would change, except the MacBook will get to be even more shitty. We'll remember fondly the MacBook Pro of year 2015 as the last model that didn't suck.

[rdsubhas]

> 1) .... why? ...

You're already scratching the surface: vertical integration, backdoors and high prices, power and battery life optimization, lesser effort for an app developer to publish to all platforms, develop-once-run-everywhere, ...

Looks like you're looking for one "The Reason" - but there doesn't need to be one. If a layperson like you or me is able to provide 5-10 reasons, then its likely there could be 100-1000 reasons internally, and all of them add up.

> 2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this?

Of course yes. As an app developer and as a consumer - convergence and bringing my apps and data across all platforms is no longer an "optional" thing anymore, its mandatory even for a ToDo list app, or email, or IM and everything else. Web apps suck at power efficiency - see the situation with Slack/Electron/Chrome/others on desktop, especially when it comes to stuff like hardware bound work (video/audio, digital image and movie processing, hidpi wor and much more).

If you don't need all this, and all you need is just a chromebook with a browser, its fine, it has and will keep working. It also ties in to why you're confused "why this is required" in so many ways. You may not be the target audience here.

> 3) Given the hellscape of bugs currently present in iOS/macOS, does anybody have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on this scale?

This one answers itself. If a fragmented platform doesn't work and has lots of bugs - then it makes all the more sense to invest all resources in one platform/arch to have better focus and lesser bugs to tackle. Everyone doing rewrites know that there will be short-term pains, but that has to be balanced with the larger picture - otherwise we'll just keep hating new releases but there will be no solutions other than "let's do only bug fixes for next 1-2 years" aka platform stagnation, and users still won't be happy :)

[lambda_lover]

Good point on 1) -- basically, Intel has produced enough problems for a high enough cost that there's reason enough to try alternatives.

On 2)... I hate web apps. Probably much more than your average layperson. Electron is miserable in my experience -- laggy, high memory/CPU user, non-native feel, but I think a web app in a browser is OK. There are really two different use cases I see here. a) Take TurboTax, for instance. I don't want to download a TurboTax app for my computer. I'd only use it once or twice a year. But it works well in a browser. It's complex enough that a web app is justified. b) Spotify. It needs to interact with local files, and I usually have it up in the background. A web app doesn't work well for this. Unfortunately Electron doesn't work well for this either.

I think if this is executed well it could be amazing -- what if layouts scale beautifully onto a laptop screen, so I can use an iOS app instead of an Electron app for Spotify/Slack/etc? If this happened, the benefits could trickle down into iOS, making it a more useful platform. On the other hand, layouts might not scale well for larger screens, and iOS apps on macOS could end up neutered and even less useless than a current webapp. Hopefully the former case happens, but lately Apple makes me feel like the latter is more likely.

3) I'm not really convinced that this will reduce bugs. In my experience, combining two pieces of software into one just makes the resulting monolith harder to reason about because it doubles complexity at high levels and increases complexity exponentially at low levels. But maybe that says something about my development skills :)

[aeriklawson]

If I read that correctly, I don't know where you're extrapolating that Apple is making this move to replace macOS with iOS / a walled-garden where nobody can create apps for Mac except by selling them through the App Store. If Apple wanted to do that, they would just sell iPads and stop selling MacBooks.

As for 2), I think that's a nice convenience - if you're a developer you wouldn't have to to worry about emulation.

> does anybody have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on this scale

Is it really that crazy they would rewrite parts of their OS to target a new architecture? A large undertaking sure, but not that ridiculous... This is Apple, not some random startup lol.

[lambda_lover]

Absolutely true-- Apple is, after all, one of the most valuable companies in the world. But I think recent issues in iOS and macOS hint that they might not be one of the most talented software companies in the world. If regular maintenance and feature updates are bringing their OSes to their knees, what will a massive spec change do?

[samcat116]

Random, probably not true thought: large portions of their OS developers have been working on this rewrite, hence leading to the "increase" of bugs on macOS right now.

[pertsix]

Not having to emulate iOS apps on macOS will be a boon for Xcode developers.

[adamson]

I doubt iOS devs are very high up on the list of parties to please with this move

[jluxenberg]

iOS apps do not run via emulation on macOS; they are compiled for x86_64 and run as a normal process.

[tinus_hn]

And it’s actually a pre that every iOS app works on multiple architectures. If Apple ever wants to change iOS to run on a different type of CPU it’ll be easy.

[gsnedders]

And they've already made advantage of that, with the move from A32 to A64.

[dawnerd]

> does anybody have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on this scale?

Inn their current yearly OS release cycle? Nope, not at all.

[saagarjha]

Why rewrite macOS? All they have to do is recompile it for ARM. We know they're already doing basically this for iOS.

[tambourine_man]

>So what's the benefit? Just vertical integration, I guess? Escaping Intel's backdoors and high prices?

Yes, and perhaps better power/performance ratio. Possible iOS binary compatibility as well.

It should be an easier transition than from PPC -> Intel, since at that time, most big apps used CodeWarrior and had to transition to XCode along with the architecture move.

[mmcconnell1618]

iOS Apps on MacOS is a good reason for Apple to incorporate touch screens. Today, they say the trackpad is superior because you aren't raising your hands up to the screen. Touch optimized iOS apps would be a compelling reason to include this feature and motivation for many people to upgrade their MacBooks.

Also, the Microsoft Surface Book Pro has a detachable screen that is a stand alone tablet. What if Apple is designing for an iPad to be the main screen with a base that houses external GPU, battery, keyboard, etc. iPad production ramps up, iPad users can "upgrade" to a full laptop, laptop users are automatically in the iOS eco-system.

[dwighttk]

Maybe a trackpad with a screen behind it. Apple already has an A series chip running the touchbar. Why not an iPhone under the trackpad?

[lambda_lover]

I believe it's a T series, though your point still stands. I think I'd personally far prefer a display under the trackpad (though I don't think it's necessary at all) to a TouchBar or a touchscreen laptop. But I think I'm very much in the minority.

[dwighttk]

You are right, T-series.

I'd join you in that minority.

[petecox]

2) macOS tablet.

Android apps on Chrome OS tablets are a thing now.

With macOS on ARM, the iPad Pro and MacBook lines merge, as the hardware internals converge.