Apple is exploring shared apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac. They could arrive as early as next year

The Bloomberg server came up with a very interesting piece of news this afternoon that potentially concerns all users of some Apple devices. According to sources inside the company, who wished to remain anonymous, Apple is working on the so-called "Marzipan" project, which should unify the way developers create their applications. So, in practice, this would mean that the applications will be somewhat universal, which would make the work of developers easier and, in turn, bring more frequent updates to users.

This project is currently still in a relatively early stage. However, Apple counts on it as one of the important pillars of next year's software, i.e. iOS 12 and the upcoming version of macOS. In practice, Project Marzipan means that Apple will somewhat simplify the developer tools for creating apps, so that apps will be very similar regardless of the version of the operating system they run on. It should also be possible to create a single application that implements two different control methods. One that will be touch focused (i.e. for iOS) and the other that will take mouse/trackpad control into account (for macOS).

This effort was initiated by users who complain about the functioning of the Mac App Store on Apple computers, or they are not satisfied with the state of applications in which they are. It is true that iOS applications develop much faster compared to desktop ones, and updates come to them with much greater regularity. This unification would therefore also serve to ensure that both versions of the applications would be updated and supplemented as often as possible. Just look at how both app stores look like. The iOS App Store saw a major change this fall, the Mac App Store has been unchanged since 2014.

Apple is certainly not the first to try something like this. Microsoft also came up with a similar system, which named it Universal Windows Platform and tried to push it through its (now dead) mobile phones and tablets. Developers could develop applications within this platform that were compatible with all versions of Windows, be they desktop, tablet or mobile.

This step could lead to a gradual connection of the classic App Store and the Mac App Store, which would essentially be the logical outcome of this development. However, this is still a long way off and there is no indication that Apple will actually go down this path. If the company sticks to this idea, we might first hear about it at June's WWDC developer conference, where Apple presents similar things.

Source: Bloomberg

Discussion of the article

[DusanK]

Hurrah, hurrah, we're waiting... Pages and Numbers will be even more fucked up on the Mac...