Jason Snell's dive into macOS Mojave


Jason Snell has an extensive review/preview of the macOS Mojave public preview. The release is available to anyone daring enough to try it out. For those who would prefer to wait, this column gives a nice look at what's coming.

One spot that stood out was the start of Apple porting iOS apps to macOS. Apple brought a few of its core iOS apps (Stocks, News, Voice Memos) to the Mac and the results seem mixed.

Looking at the four apps making their way across this fall, it’s hard to tell if Apple is foreshadowing a broad rethink about how Mac apps should be designedâ€"single-window interfaces with control panes on the leftâ€"or if the similarities in design are more a side effect of the limitations of the current UIKit-on-macOS process.

We’ve got a year to ponder what the future of the Mac might be, whether bringing apps designed for touchscreens augurs the arrival of touchscreens on the Mac, if iOS developers will bother to put the work in to bring their apps to macOS, and any number of other ruminations. In the meantime, here’s hoping that Apple irons out some of the quirks in these four apps and then keeps improving the method by which they were translated, so that next year’s apps are rock solid

I've never been a fan of the bringing touch interfaces to a desktop/laptop. It feels like you need to pick an interface (mouse/keyboard vs touch) and stick with it. It's difficult to make an interface work well across all control inputs. With that said, I do appreciate the touch capabilities on PC laptops and I use this for scrolling and clicking. I still, however, don't use touch for controls, which is would cover Jason's comments.

So, this will be something to watch whether Apple and developers will take the time to deliver great interfaces for iOS apps ported to macOS.