It is something that many of us expected, and that is one more step on the inevitable path (more than many it weighs) towards a final unification of Apple's desktop and mobile software. Bloomberg has announced the company's secret plans that include the possibility of developing cross-platform applications that work on both Mac and iOS.
While the App Store is one of the big hits of Apple's mobile platform, the Mac App Store has not finished booting and is light years away from the iOS store. Applications that are barely updated, users who hardly use it ... as the Apple store is conceived right now, it seems that it will not work, and that may have originated this plan to unify applications.
The idea would be to develop a single application that works on both iOS and macOS. Obviously the app would not be the same on both platforms, because one is designed to be used on touch screens and the other is not, but it would detect at all times the device in which it is being used and it would adapt to its screen and adjust its interface. This is what already happens with the universal applications valid for iPhone and iPad.
The next logical step would be to unify both app stores. De fact the store for macOS has not changed despite the complete redesign of the App Store on iPhone and iPad, which may be a sign that the last one is going to end up eating the first one. This unification of stores and applications would greatly facilitate the work for developers who would not have to choose which platform to focus on. Applications such as Twitter, Pixelmator, Spark, Telegram, WhatsApp and many others would be the immediate beneficiaries of this decision, and users as a consequence, too.
When will this change come? Bloomberg notes that unification won't arrive until fall, with the release of iOS 12 and macOS 10.14, the next operating systems that Apple will launch in October, and which will be announced at WWDC in June, where Apple will announce these changes. It seems more and more evident that the unification of Apple's software is inevitable, despite the fact that the company has discarded it time and time again ... although it would not be the first time they have to rectify it.