The idea of a cross platform action between iOS and MacOS has been on the table multiple times, but recently we’ve heard CEO Tim Cook putting a cork in that. And now the rumor is back in full force. The first news about the plan came in December and it was hinted that the feature would debut at WWDC 2018. The event starts next month and an Apple watcher has a theory about it.
Apple watcher John Gruber claims that Apple could still be working on a project of the sort, a device expected to arrive with MacOS 10.15 AND iOS 13 in 2019. The project was formerly known as “Marzipan”, but it’s also said to have switched names. A declarative control API is being quoted now and it seems that instead of writing procedural code to make a button and put in a view, that button is declared and its attributes use a form.
The whole industry goes towards declaration and Apple may also do that. Interestingly, the analyst mentions more of a coding approach, rather than real cross platform. Seeing how you can get notifications and calls from your iPhone to the Mac, there are already things happening via cross platform. The Safari windows and options are synced, contacts too, content, so why not apps?
The problem is that you can’t use the same app in the same way on the iOS device and on the macOS one, so for now they’re staying separate. Apple has received a lot of criticism for stability and security, so they may want to handle that in iOS 12, before going on to do bigger things.
