Apple Inc. wants to make it easier for software coders to create tools, games and other applications for its main devices in one fell swoop – an overhaul designed to encourage app development and, ultimately, boost revenue.
The ultimate goal of the multistep initiative, code-named “Marzipan,” is by 2021 to help developers build an app once and have it work on the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers, said people familiar with the effort. That should spur the creation of new software, increasing the utility of the company’s gadgets.
This seems more of a repitition of what we already knew than truly new information.
Hooray, soon we’ll be able to use terrible mobile user-interfaces on desktop machines.
Why does this make me think of Windows Phone/Mobile 7/8/10? I guess it’s true that humans don’t learn from history, even very recent history. Apple surely must know that, though they allow for creating different user interfaces for each platform here, that most developers won’t bother to do it. They might for iPad vs iPhone, which is one of the main reasons the iPad doesn’t suck the way most other tablets do, but for Mac? Somehow I just don’t see it happening.
OK, let’s not panic… Android apps, Android TV apps, and WearOS apps can share parts of the codebase without having the same UI. Bascally, it’s possible to have one app with more than one “heads” (and have it so that not all “heads” provide access to the whole business logic, for example the “wearable” head could provide access only to the most basic parts of the business logic).
I don’t think Apple would be dumb enough to pull a Metro. Just like they weren’t dumb enough to shove OS X into a tablet like Microsoft did with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.
Sure, it’s possible to have an “one-size fits all” UI, but you lose all the unique features of each input method and end up with squares on a screen.