It’s no secret that Apple is working to make iOS and macOS apps play nicely with each other. This is part of a project codenamed Marzipan that the company talked about at its Worldwide Developer Conference last year. That’s what resulted in iOS versions of Home, News, Stocks, and Voice Memo being brought over to macOS 10.14 Mojave. According to a new report, Apple is going to take this one step further by actually combining apps made for iOS and Mac devices by 2021.
What that means is that there will be a combined universal app that would work across iPhones and iPads in addition to Mac machines. Bloomberg reports that Apple is going to manage this in stages. Developers will initially be allowed to bring their iPad apps to the Mac later this year through a new SDK and that this would later be extended to iPhone apps in 2020. Apple is said to unveil this SDK at WWDC 2019.
These plans don’t sound that different compared to what Microsoft has been trying to do with the Universal Windows Platform. It pushed the idea of a single app for Windows-powered tablets, PCs, and phones but gave up on the phone part of this in 2017. Despite allowing for a combined universal app, Apple is expected to keep the iOS and Mac platforms separate.
This announcement will most likely be made by the company at WWDC 2019. Apple is yet to confirm the dates of this year’s developers’ conference.
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