- cross-posted to:
- apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world
US antitrust case against Apple’s App Store exclusivity is ‘firing on all cylinders’::The US antitrust case against Apple’s App Store exclusivity is “firing on all cylinders” according to the head of the…
That’s so interesting. I hope that once they lose control of iOS, they allow iPads and even iPhone to run full macOS when docked.
It could work like the steamdeck where it can be in desktop or handheld mode. When in handheld mode, certain apps that run in the background, like Dropbox would stop running to maximize battery life or something.
Apple’s been moving toward unifying their OSes for over a decade now. They’re playing the long game. They probably still have another decade (or two) to go.
Apple’s stance now is clear: developers need to make universal apps if they want them to run on both platforms, using tools and frameworks that are common to both. It’s much easier to make an iPad app run well on a Mac than vice-versa. I use some Mac apps that were ported from iPad, and the experience ranges from “okay” to “perfect”, depending on how much care the devs put into it. This is obviously the future of Mac software development, but it would require rewriting many apps almost from scratch. Apple’s not going to pull that rug out from under us anytime soon.
The next natural step would be to allow iPads to use the “desktop” UI of universal apps when connected to a keyboard and mouse. But I don’t think we’ll ever see iPads running arbitrary Mac apps. When I think of the Mac-only apps I use, I just don’t see how they’d run on iPad. How am I gonna run BBEdit on an iPad when there are hundreds of menu items, and a ton of UI elements that are like 8 pixels square? Never mind the lack of a real file system.
Microsoft tried this with Windows 8. It went poorly. The experience of using desktop apps with a touch screen sucks, and trying to make desktop UIs touchscreen-friendly across the board just handicapped desktop users. Apple has a better strategy here. They’re slowly molding the software ecosystem to make this Not Suck.
I doubt it will be a decade or 2 we are basically there on iPad and android can do this. If Apple opens the flood gates on this devs will jump aboard quickly.
How so? You mean running a full Linux VM or something? Android doesn’t run any desktop apps natively.
if you mean the tablet UI mode, yeah, that’s an easy thing for Apple to implement. I think they already have, more or less. iPadOS already has mouse support.
I’m referring to Samsung and dex mode. There are phones that do this, I just don’t know the official name.
Apple will never do this because it will cannibalize sales.
Ive seen people walk around with an Apple Watch, a MacBook, an iPhone and an iPad, all at the same time. That’s like $4k in lost revenue for Apple if they could replace all of them with an iPhone.
They aren’t restricting iPads to iPadOS because of the App Store, but because they want to sell Macs to those who want to use macOS, ideally in addition to an iPad. I don’t see it happening.
I think they don’t know how to sell an iPad with macOS that restricted to the App Store.
I think they make way more money from the App Store than selling macs.
I think they were trying to find a way to combine the two lines and make them 100% App Store only.
Would be nice. iPad is not a wholly terrible experience to run docked, but it still leaves a lot to be desired compared to a desktop OS.
There’s no way they’ll “lose control of iOS” though. Worst case scenario, they make some concessions like allowing third-party stores, but then just follow Google’s lead and make it as unappealing as possible to sideload apps or install other app stores (and still have their own defaults that can’t be removed).
This, aside from sideloading, would make me actually consider an iPhone.
For me, it is sideloading only. I personally loath android, but I use it for the sideloading. Once apple allows it fully, I’m getting an iphone.