No one doubts that the App Store is one of the main causes of the strength of the iPhone and iPad. Hardware is nothing without good accompanying software, and it's not just a device's operating system that enters this equation. Having a good ecosystem of applications perfectly adapted for your smartphones and tablets is essential, and the (still) big difference between iOS and Android.
Things change when we talk about the Mac App Store, a true failure of Apple that sees how few of the developers bet on its official store for Mac, and those who at some point bet, leave soon and choose to sell their applications outside the official store. However, the "Marzipan Project" can mean a radical change that can also improve the App Store, and largely even the iPad Pro. Announced in June, it went unnoticed but may be Apple's big "cover".
What is «project Marzipan»?
Translated into Spanish it would be "Proyecto Marzipan" but I prefer to translate it only in part, as "Proyecto Marzipan". Announced in June's Keynote at WWDC 2018, which featured iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, It is a series of development tools that Apple will offer to developers to be able to bring iOS applications to macOS. That means that once a developer has their applications ready for iPhone, and especially for iPad, they can easily take them to macOS.
This project was going to be developed in two phases: a first phase in which only Apple would have access to these tools and would bring its own applications to macOS; In the second phase, it would already launch those tools to be developed so that they could bring their own applications to the Mac. The first phase is now over, and anyone who has a Mac with macOS Mojave is already enjoying the first iOS applications on Mac: Home, News, Stocks and Voice Notes. In the coming months will be the time when Apple will launch the second phase and open the project to developers.
What does Marzipan mean for macOS
After months of rumors about the possible merger of iOS and macOS (something that I personally think will come but much later), Apple made it clear that in its immediate plans this option does not exist, but that it did want to bring its iOS applications to macOS . This does not mean that suddenly all the applications of the App Store for iOS will appear in the Mac App Store, far from it. It will be the developers who should want to bring their applications to both stores, but with a tool that makes the task easier and an audience eager for quality applications, why shouldn't they?
Twitter abandoned the development of its Mac application after more than a year without even updating it. Have a development team dedicated to an application with a "sparse" user base it is an effort that Twitter was not willing to sustain. The use of social networks is mainly done on mobile devices, so it did not compensate him to maintain a desktop application, especially when macOS was the only platform on which it existed. The alternative? As with Facebook or Instagram, whoever wants to access Twitter on a computer, do so via the web, at least officially. Many already do so, even knowing that there was an application.
The situation with iOS is radically opposite. We are before an infinitely larger user base, and also users who use their mobile devices in many cases almost exclusively for managing social networks. Twitter would never abandon its application for iOS, even though we can also have web access from Safari. Nobody considers using Twitter from the iPhone or iPad browser, the user experience is dire. Developers know that the App Store is very profitable, and that they reach millions of users around the world who in a couple of steps can download their application on their iPhone or iPad. Also there is no other alternative if you want to be on these devices.
This is great news for macOS and its Mac App Store. If developers know that with little effort they can be in the App Store and the Mac App Store, why not take advantage of it? Let's take a quick look at the top-earning apps on the App Store, and we're sure to find plenty that we'd love to have in a macOS version: Infuse, an excellent multimedia player that many of us use with our movies and series stored on a NAS, or the Plex application, which now we can only use on Mac via the web. What about the Netflix, Amazon Video or HBO apps? Surely many of you hate the same thing as me having to go into Safari and browse your favorites, as well as using a web interface. Photo retouching applications, excellent video editors like Lumafusion (amazing what you can do with this € 20 app on your iPad), opens a new world with enormous possibilities for Mac users.
What does Marzipan mean for iOS
But here not only will Mac benefit, but iOS will also take advantage of this new tool for developers, and especially the iPad Pro. We have been saying for a long time that the iPad Pro already has hardware more than adequate for professional use, I'd say plenty for most users, but the software is failing. Not only Apple has to improve its iOS and provide it with functions that are well differentiated from the conventional iOS, developers should also bet on the iPad Pro as a professional platform, and stop creating "Lite" applications for the Apple tablet. We already have some examples, like Photoshop, but they are too few.
There will no longer be two separate efforts to be on iOS and macOS, developing for a single platform you can be on both, and the main one is iOS. Those professional applications have the possibility of being in macOS, as always, and also in the new iPad Pro, which means having your application in the largest application store in the world. iOS and macOS are not going to merge, but their applications in part are, and it is a great step towards the operating system of the future, and great news for the long-awaited Post-Pc era.