I usually take my time to ponder things before publishing a post here. But this time I just wanted to write down a few brief raw thoughts before the WWDC. I’m leaving for a short trip in a few hours, and I’ll probably won’t have time to write anything else before June 3. 

Brent Simmons has written a succinct, spot-on reaction to Steve Troughton-Smith’s piece (Don’t Fear) The Reaper.

So, knowing how this has worked out in the past, why do I fear the reaper?

Because bringing UIKit brings no new power. If anything, it subtracts power. UIKit apps — at least so far — are all sandboxed and available only via the App Store. They don’t offer everything AppKit offers.

[…]

Getting the Mac OS X transition right was a priority for the company: if it failed, the company would fail. But with this? Not the same story at all. [Emphasis mine here.]

Much of the debate surrounding Marzipan so far has mainly focused on the fear of the decline in Mac software quality. What veteran Mac users are afraid of is a new wave of Mac apps that are little more than crude iOS ports, that don’t look and don’t behave like Mac apps. 

It’s an understandable concern, and a concern I share as well. I’m especially wary of iOS-only developers who limit their use of the Mac to the possible minimum (coding their apps and little more). How can they provide a good experience in the Mac apps they’ll develop via Marzipan if they have little familiarity with Mac OS, its interface and — for lack of a better term — its flow?

They’re not entirely to blame: Apple itself isn’t certainly leading by example on this front lately. Home, Stocks, News, and Voice Memos are apps that look as if they were assembled over the course of a few days by a novice iOS developer or a group of interns at Apple.

But I have other fears.

I fear that Apple’s plan for the Mac is to further close the platform down, so that — like on iOS — the Mac App Store becomes the only source for Mac software. That would be unfortunate to say the least. I want the freedom to purchase, download, and install Mac apps from wherever. I want to be able to give my support directly to a developer by buying their software from their website.

Also, as a consequence, I fear that the Mac App Store is going to become more like iOS’s App Store in every way — with thousands of crappy apps, and terrible pricing trends. Where by ‘terrible pricing trends’ I mean the race to the bottom on the one hand, and on the other hand an increase in subscriptions as the only payment method even for simple utilities and single-purpose apps. (I hope more people realise how subscriptions aren’t sustainable on a large scale for customers). 

I fear that iOS is going to become the new model that dictates how the Mac user interface has to behave. That Macs are going to be considered just as ‘big iPads’, and that paradigms and behaviours that are tailored for iOS and belong to iOS come to replace those paradigms, principles, and behaviours that made the Mac’s user interface great. 

Though of course not all at once, I fear this is going to happen eventually because I have the feeling that Apple — while maybe not reaching the point of merging the two systems completely — wants to somehow ‘unify’ iOS and Mac OS visually and behaviourally in the name of ecosystem homogeneity and the ‘seamless experience’. Whereas I believe both platforms should maintain their own specific strengths, their different ways to be simple and user-friendly, and their different way to be powerful and versatile.

I’ve said it again and again — I’m not necessarily afraid of change, but I’m afraid of change for change’s sake. I’m all for change if it brings unequivocal progress. But I’m afraid that Mac OS is getting repurposed and repackaged more to fit inside an agenda than to keep thriving as a platform with its history, characteristics, and unique features. 

I’ve experienced firsthand all the transitions the Mac platform has gone through, and this is the one that’s leaving me the most apprehensive. Because all past transitions brought clear advantages to the Mac, either from a hardware or software standpoint. The signals were of progress for the Mac platform; or, at the very least, of having to take a step sideways to then take two steps forward. This time it feels that things have to change simply to benefit the advancement of another platform. 

Never before have I hoped so much to be completely wrong about something. As Simmons concludes, I hope so very badly that I’m wasting my time with my worries.

Further reading

• Just before the WWDC (June 2018)
• Speculation and dread for the next transition (April 2018)