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iOS Plus: Imagining a Mac that runs iOS apps
Inspired by a Bloomberg report that Apple may introduce a way for iOS apps to be converted to run more easily on macOS, a couple of weeks ago I came up with a list of iOS apps that I’d like to see on the Mac.
After Apple’s recent Chicago event to launch the new iPad, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke to an Australian writer and told him that rumors of merging the Mac and iOS weren’t true. I was maybe ten feet away from them when this happened, and it was a media scrum—not the kind of place where a CEO does anything but restate the existing company line. (In the same conversation Tim Cook literally said “I use everything and I love everything.”) I’m not entirely convinced that Apple’s long-term approach to its platforms is to keep the Mac alive long enough for iOS to evolve so that it’s able to painlessly replace it.
But what if we take Tim Cook at his word? Any Mac-iOS merger would probably be many years from now, so regardless, if the Bloomberg report is true, Apple will be pushing the iOS and macOS app worlds closer together much sooner. What does that mean for the Mac, and how we use our Macs every day?