The future has never looked brighter for Apple’s Mac computer line. They are just beginning a two-year transition from Intel to Apple Silicon and the early results are stunning. This is the kind of innovation that will power Mac desktops and laptops through the next decade–and likely leave other computer makers scrambling to catch up. But could they somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? There’s some reason to think they might be about to. Turning the macOS into a houseboat might do it.
You know what I’m talking about. Sometimes when you combine two things the result is…less than the sum of its parts. I call them houseboats–not a very good house and not a very good boat. If Apple attempts to merge iOS and macOS we could end up with just such a monostrosity.
There are signs that Apple is heading in this direction. Apple’s M1 processor is one. Macs with M1s under the hood can, for the first time, run iOS apps natively. It’s a curiosity now, sure, but does it portend bigger things in the future? And macOS Big Sur has got some very iOS-looking interface changes. (Look at your dock icons and then have a look at your iPhone home screen, for example.)
If you ask industry analysts and tech pundits, they’ll tell you that Apple must do this to be competitive with Windows-based computers which have had combination touch and mouse/keyboard interfaces for years. Apple must ship Macs with touchscreens and this of course necessitates having the OS navigable by touch and also by the keyboard/mouse combo.
“See these two laptops? Well this one has a touchscreen…that you can, you know…touch. Like so!”
If you ask me, most industry analysts and tech pundits can piss off. Their collective understanding of Apple and their products has always been, shall we say, less than perfect. Remember when Apple had to create a Chromebook or face certain death? Yeah.
I also remember Windows 8, Microsoft’s first real foray into Houseboat OS territory. I myself used Windows 8 on a daily basis at that time. I kept telling myself I’d get used to it, but after a year had gone by I found that I hated it even more than when I started. It was even worse on tablets. It’s easy to forget, but the chief architect of Windows 8 was fired just a month after its release. I would argue that even all these years later Windows 10 still suffers from some of the same problems.
This is exactly the albatross new Macs don’t need hanging around their necks. It’s the kind of blunder than can set back an OS–and an entire product line–for years.
Still, I don’t mean to say that it can’t be done right. Maybe it can. But all evidence points to it being extremely difficult to pull off. If anyone can do it, maybe Apple can. But I’m not holding my breath.