The future of macOS >
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It’s hard to pinpoint what the true future of Apple’s desktop and mobile operating systems will be. But map the trajectories of Big Sur and iPadOS 14 and the two potentially collide – Apple silicon and the A-series chips of mobile devices are from the same family, meaning Big Sur can run iOS and iPadOS apps natively.
There’s more than a chance that Apple goes the whole hog, completely aligning its desktop and mobile operating systems as one. In mobile mode, an iPhone could act like an iPhone, but dock it with a monitor and you’d get a more complete macOS interface. Samsung has tried similar with DeX, bringing detailed desktop apps to docked S-series phones, and it works well, even if it’s not too widely used. There’s probably too much value in Apple’s laptop and desktop division for it to abandon non-mobile hardware – but there’s a vast existing userbase which Apple could drag on to the desktop with little effort.