How the iPad might influence the future of macOS’s interface
It’s hard not to believe that there are some big iOS inspired changes on the horizon, writes Jason Snell
Much has been written – a lot of it by me, admittedly – about how Apple’s commitment to let iOS developers bring their apps to macOS in 2019 has the potential to dramatically change the Mac. But adding iOS apps to the Mac might not be where Apple stops. What if the company uses macOS 10.15 to further unify the interfaces of its platforms?
For all the discussion about whether iOS apps running on a Mac can possibly live up to the platform’s
interface standards, it’s entirely possible that this year, Apple will choose to redefine what it is to be Mac-like in a way that turns iOS and macOS into a continuum of interface decisions that are all, for lack of a better phrase, ‘Apple-like’. Longtime Mac users might chafe, but iOS users might welcome it. As someone who is both, I am not sure where I fall, but it’s worth considering just what Apple might do to make the Mac more closely resemble iOS.
Multitasking changes
Full-screen and Split View modes are already in macOS, just like the iPad. (It also has this fancy ‘windowing’ mode that iOS lacks, but I doubt Apple is eager to introduce arbitrary windows to iOS.) The one iPad multitasking feature macOS lacks is Slide Over, which allows you to place an app on the side of the screen and slide it in briefly when you want, then dismiss it quickly.
I’ve definitely run into times on my Mac when I’ve wished I could quickly view something in an app and then dismiss it. What’s more, macOS already includes Slide Over, more or less – it’s just limited to Notification Centre, which lives to the right side of the screen and can be made to appear by a swipe from the right edge of the trackpad.
More broadly, it’s worth considering where Mission Control gestures make sense on the iPad. This is an area where I’d love iOS to resemble the Mac more than the other way around; I navigate around my Mac endlessly with multi-finger trackpad gestures; I’d love to do the same on my iPad, dragging apps into different spaces.