[HN Gopher] Apple's Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in m...
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Apple's Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS
Author : phenylene
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-08-19 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.timac.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.timac.org)
| hbn wrote:
| I hate this consolidation of mobile and desktop apps and I hoped
| Apple would have had the design sense to keep them separate like
| they should be. Mobile and desktop UIs are two different worlds
| with different interaction paradigms. Trying to combine them
| makes an awkward UI that feels good nowhere.
| lancesells wrote:
| Most new macOS apps from Apple seem to be pretty awful and
| don't feel like an actual mac app. Home, TV, and Music have
| some really horrible ux/ui. Music is slightly better than the
| others but you would think they would have the resources to
| make these right. TV and Music are subscription-based in a way
| which seems like a no-brainer to add resources to make a proper
| app.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Like most big tech companies I'm sure they find success
| metrics in every project they do. Especially the ones
| consumers hate.
| mrtksn wrote:
| To some degree yes but it has been great to be able to use
| iPhone/iPad apps on Apple Silicon.
|
| Taps and clicks are completely compatible and the only issues
| come from multitouch interfaces but even they can work well
| with substitutions like scroll to zoom instead of pinch to
| zoom.
|
| Besides, the web has been first-class on both platforms for
| quite some time now and interfaces that work well on both are
| pretty much ubiquitous. It comes with added benefit of UI
| familiarity, be it a Web UI or mobile UI.
|
| Therefore, I think the current issues in some apps are not
| fundamental but simply bad design choices that can be fixed
| with better adaptations.
|
| I also don't expect quick and complete re-write of the
| established apps as re-write with a new UI framework is a
| common death sentence.
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| Yup, but you forget the famous "develop once, deploy
| everywhere" that will give the user "a consolidated
| experience". And allow you to make huge economy on the cost of
| development.
|
| At least they don't suffer from the "it's working on Electron
| and on the web", meaning it will not run any good anywhere.
| Same result at the end though...
| 90minuteAPI wrote:
| Supposedly a major justification for the continued separation
| of Mac and the others (especially iPad) was differing UI
| interaction patterns.
|
| So what are they doing now? Using tools that evolved to serve
| touch-first interfaces to build desktop applications.
|
| The Mac/iPad split grows more confounding with every iteration.
| Now it feels like familiar desktop features are being
| reimplemented poorly in both iPadOS _and_ macOS.
| clairity wrote:
| it's not that confounding when you consider that iphones
| dominate apple's earnings, and so apple wants to unify the
| platforms under ios (via ipados) rather than under macos
| where they have no app store lock-in.
| carlycue wrote:
| In 2021, the Mac grossed $30B. iPad ($30B) and iPhone ($196B)
| together grossed $226B. Mac users might think they're still the
| most important part of Apple but it turns out, the Mac is quite
| insignificant compared to Apple's mobile OS's when you put things
| in perspective.
|
| I am still surprised that Apple is pouring resources into the
| Mac. Nowadays, smartphones and tablets are the main computer for
| 90% of people. The sooner Apple rebuilds Xcode from the ground up
| for the iPad, the quicker we can get rid of the Mac with its
| decades of legacy baggage.
| sharikous wrote:
| > The sooner Apple rebuilds Xcode from the ground up for the
| iPad, the quicker we can get rid of the Mac with its decades of
| legacy baggage.
|
| There is still a market of billions of dollars for those people
| who need a general purpose machine and not a walled garden.
|
| Even if you are right and the mac will be no more, there will
| be people doing general purpose computing on Linux and
| Raspberry pis. Those people will be willing to pay for a better
| experience.
| linguae wrote:
| To be honest, before the release of Apple's M1 Macs in 2020, I
| thought that the Mac was on its way out, especially around 2017
| when we had to endure many years of waiting for new desktop
| Macs (the Mac Mini had a long period between updates from 2014
| to 2018, and the Mac Pro had an even longer period from 2013 to
| 2019). I still think with the gradual adoption of iOS UI/UX
| idioms by macOS and the growing adoption of SwiftUI, combined
| with the fact that Macs now run on Apple Silicon just like
| iPads, that eventually macOS and iOS will merge despite Apple's
| repeated claims to the contrary.
|
| Still, I think this will be a major loss for longtime users of
| macOS who enjoyed roughly two decades of using a well-polished
| operating system that was unabashedly designed for desktop
| computing workloads, unlike Windows and some Linux desktops
| with their confused aims of trying to merge the desktop,
| mobile, and Web experiences. While iOS's success has been
| undoubtedly wonderful for Apple, in some ways the success of
| iOS was the worst thing to happen to the Mac. What hurts in
| particular is that there is no alternative with the polish of
| macOS and its ecosystem; it's all ports of Web apps and mobile
| apps from here on out, with the usability and flexibility
| issues inherent in these engineering decisions, and all running
| on platforms that support the moats that Microsoft, Apple, and
| Google built.
|
| I saw the writing on the wall years ago and my daily drivers
| are now PCs running Windows 10 and FreeBSD. I don't work for
| Apple and I'm just one complainer on Hacker News, and so I have
| little control over the Mac's direction; the best I can do is
| vote with my dollars. But I'm hoping projects like helloSystem
| and ravynOS will gain traction and help keep the spirit of Mac
| OS X alive, and I'm working on my own side project that will
| explore ideas influenced by the classic Mac OS, OpenDoc,
| Smalltalk, Lisp machines, and Plan 9; basically, explorations
| of what could've happened if some of the dreams of early 1990s
| Apple researchers and engineers had been realized.
| freediver wrote:
| > I am still surprised that Apple is pouring resources into the
| Mac. Nowadays, smartphones and tablets are the main computer
| for 90% of people.
|
| All those apps used by people on smatphones and tablets get
| developed on a Mac.
|
| You should also compare sales trends vs point in time stats to
| get a better picture, as Mac sales got a significant boost with
| the introduction of the M1 chip.
| cpach wrote:
| As a Mac fanboi I wish I could refute your argument, but...
| those numbers are pretty telling.
| feifan wrote:
| $30B is still A LOT in absolute terms
| api wrote:
| The iPad can't replace the Mac unless I can run my own software
| on it outside the App Store.
|
| Part of the definition of a "real computer" is that it's truly
| general purpose. Anything not meeting this requirement is a
| special purpose device or at most a "console," which is the
| category I place iOS devices into.
| cglong wrote:
| Unfortunately I don't think a lot of people understand the
| implications of this distinction.
| filoleg wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I definitely like my iPad pro a lot, and
| use it on regular. And I also think that having some
| functionally useful version of Xcode on it would be amazing.
|
| However, that wouldn't replace macOS for me at all. I see a lot
| of value in iPad as a device I use on a regular basis, but even
| with all those features, I still need a general purpose
| computing machine for plenty of reasons. No matter what
| features iPad might end up having in the future, it wont
| replace macOS for me.
|
| Killing Mac not only hurts Mac itself, it also hurts all the
| adjacent products. Two features I personally really like on
| iPad are universal control over mac+ipad screens (one
| keyboard+trackpad controls both devices at the same time, but
| keeping the OS and everything else entirely separate) and the
| extended screen (where ipad can act as a simple external screen
| for a mac, either as wired or wireless). That class of features
| straight up wouldn't exist without mac existing. Hell, part of
| the reason i even use an iPhone is because of how smoothly it
| interacts with macOS (shared clipboard+imessage ftw).
|
| Sure, the general public needs might change, and they might
| swing towards ipads over similar form factor general purpose
| computing devices (aka laptops). I don't see it happening,
| however. The people who would be the ones to do it, they had
| already done it by switching from laptops to smartphones over
| the past decade with the rise of iOS and Android. And i just
| don't see them switching away from smartphones to iPads (or
| tablets in general, for that matter).
| mch82 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you use a lot of windows?
|
| I've used a Mac my whole life. Recently, I'm using 4-finger
| swipe to switch full screen apps. I'm also choosing the
| "snap" layouts over dragging windows around. It's useful to
| have 2 folders on screen to be able to move files between
| them, but I don't stack windows like I used to.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| That argument is shortsighted. Classic business school
| thinking. No consideration of second order effects or long term
| strategy.
|
| Sure, that's where things stand today, but the Mac is part of
| Apples brand. They screw it up enough and iPhone won't win on
| its strengths anymore. Design and execution.
|
| You're on top of the world...
|
| Until you're not.
| carlycue wrote:
| > _Sure, that's where things stand today, but the Mac is part
| of Apples brand. They screw it up enough and iPhone won't win
| on its strengths anymore. Design and execution._
|
| It used to be but not anymore. The iPhone is Apple's most
| important product and the majority of iPhone users aren't
| interested in the Mac.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Let's do a thought experiment.
|
| If the Mac disappeared today in a puff of smoke, would that
| result in less iPhones sold, a less prestigious brand, or
| maybe an improvement?
|
| An additional argument is that companies rarely have one
| major product. Apple is big enough to execute well on
| several synergistic fronts.
|
| $30b is an awesome business all on its own, and
| compliments, not detracts from, the iPhone brand.
|
| Apple should be able to execute in multiple domains with a
| high degree of quality all at once.
| [deleted]
| happymellon wrote:
| That's because the majority of iPhone users are consumers.
|
| The majority of Mac users are producers, creating content
| for the iPhone users. If they kill Mac then their iPhone
| cash cow will dwindle as they will no longer have content.
| 0x457 wrote:
| > The majority of Mac users are producers
|
| That's not true at all, and sounds like Mac user elitism
| that everyone hates.
|
| It is true, that many iPhone users aren't interested in
| mac and some not interested in any kind of desktop/laptop
| device at all. The same true vice-versa - I have a mac*
| and not interested in iPhone and plenty of my colleges
| are the same.
|
| *: One because compliance is easier than on Linux and
| another one because I need to develop for mac and iOS.
| jaywalk wrote:
| This is pretty much only because the Mac is the only way
| to "officially" create iPhone apps.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There's huge amounts of work that can only be done on
| desktop or on laptops, and not on smartphones, simply
| because of form factor. Unless we're imagining a future
| where people plug their phones and tablets into monitor-
| keyboard setups and type away, _all the time_.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Developers, developers, developers...
|
| Now more than ever it's important to keep developers / desktop
| users.
|
| If they destroy macos, lots of developers will actually go
| somewhere else. What do you need these days? Chrome..
|
| If I'd move off of the Apple ecosystem with my laptop, I'd
| probably look into other fields to jump ships as well.
|
| MacOS X became popular bc of developers. We are the ones
| creating things for people.. I hope they don't forget this.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Apple ecosystem developers, developers != UNIX.
| alexashka wrote:
| Meh. Apple has near infinite resources, it can do whatever it
| wants.
|
| The rest of industry has moved on to Electron and keeps bucking,
| trying to get react native or some other cross platform thing to
| work well enough on mobile.
|
| Apple itself uses webviews for complex UI in their desktop Music
| app. Are there any non-trivial apps Apple has created from
| scratch in the past decade using its own libraries and
| frameworks? No, right? Why should anyone expect the libraries
| they themselves don't need or use to be any good?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I'm not sure if Apple is planning on building huge non-trivial
| apps anymore. This isn't a knock against the amount of work
| that goes into creating new versions of their macOS apps. But I
| don't think any of them are creating new transformative
| experiences for use cases that consumers were missing on
| before. Stocks and News are just delivering more content and
| services. This very much reflects Apple's continued focus in
| becoming a services company.
|
| It mirrors what Valve is like these days. It's the Steam
| platform company. They do make a few new games (Artifact, Half-
| Life: Alyx), but nothing transformative like their previous new
| franchises or even sequels were like. So many companies are in
| the platform businesses these days, because it's good to be a
| rentier. So it goes.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Thankfully that is only a bunch of relevant applications,
| mostly forced use at day job, everything else can be ignored.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| _Apple itself uses electron for their desktop Music app._
|
| Really? Do you have a source for this?
| alexashka wrote:
| I've mistakenly conflated Electron with webview use - sorry
| about that. I've edited my comment.
| bobulous wrote:
| Source for Apple Music being an electron app? There is a Apple
| Music related preference pane that is a webview but that is not
| the same thing.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Electron is _not_ a good option either. It defeats the entire
| point of making a desktop app in first place. It 's slow,
| wasteful, abstracts too much of the filesystem away for a
| desktop app, doesn't integrate into the OS, doesn't use the OS-
| provided UI widgets, etc. etc.
|
| It also depends on what you mean by "non-trivial". For me,
| something like Final Cut Pro is non-trivial. I'm yet to see
| that kind of thing (one that's actually used, not just a PoC)
| done in either Electron or Apple's Swift framework-of-the-year.
| dangelov wrote:
| I recently took to rewriting what should be a very simple app
| from Obj-C to Swift with SwiftUI - because it's the future. The
| CPU usage was at 5% while idle, just for having a simple tiny pie
| chart that updates. Not to mention that for some seemingly basic
| things I still had to use AppKit anyway.
|
| Wrote basically the exact same thing 1 day later in Swift with
| AppKit and NO SwiftUI and it sits at 0% CPU usage with less code
| complexity. Maybe in a few years I will give SwiftUI another try.
| skavi wrote:
| It's depressing how few developers would even notice that
| performance degradation, let alone go back in and fix it.
| rvanmil wrote:
| I remember making fun of Microsoft trying to combine mouse and
| touch in a single UI.
|
| And yet here we are, Apple doing the same thing to macOS,
| resulting in the same shit desktop/mouse experience that macOS
| has become.
|
| I understand the reasons but it seems so incredibly un-Apple to
| sacrifice UX for this.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Maybe it's the year of Linux on the desktop!
| pjmlp wrote:
| It already is, running on top of Hyper V, VMWare, Crosvm.
| Razengan wrote:
| As someone who literally abandoned Windows for the same reasons
| (during 8), macOS is still far far from sinking into those
| depths of depravity yet.
| api wrote:
| I wonder if someone inside is still pushing desktop/mobile
| "convergence."
| linguae wrote:
| Exactly. I haven't upgraded my Macs since Mojave, for this and
| other reasons. I've grown increasingly disillusioned with the
| direction of the Mac under Tim Cook. What happened to the
| Macintosh emphasis on building software for creators that was
| easy to use? Last year I moved on to Windows 10 on a Surface
| Pro and a dual boot Windows 10 and FreeBSD with KDE on a Ryzen
| 9 workstation. I still have my 2013 MacBook Air and Mac Pro
| whenever I need a Mac, but my Surface Pro and Ryzen 9
| workstation fit my needs.
|
| With that said, this is an interim solution; I'm actually
| working on my own desktop environment as a long-term solution,
| since I'm disillusioned with what modern personal computing has
| become, devices and software that promote consumption over
| creation, and environments that encourage walled gardens and
| large moats instead of interoperable, interchangeable
| components. What I want is essentially the classic Mac
| interface with Smalltalk- or Lisp machine-style underpinnings;
| the power to mold my environment to my taste, but with user
| applications that abide by the 1990s-era Macintosh Human
| Interface Guidelines, when Apple had UI/UX heavyweights like
| Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini influencing the Mac's
| direction.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Eh, it's not that crazy unless they put a touchscreen on
| MacBooks.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Still crazy.. I want to use my keyboard. My shortcuts, and do
| proper bulk operations. It's just pure laziness from their
| devs. They don't know, they don't care..
| pram wrote:
| Some of the apps they replaced with 'iPad versions' were
| abysmal to begin with, so it's more of a lateral move.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| It's really not an impressive showing for SwiftUI. 4 iterations
| later and after being told it's "the future" in unequivocal
| terms, it's still at 12% (and only like 3% without any AppKit
| combined (last chart)). It's not dogfooded for any productivity
| apps. For Ventura, rewriting "Font Book, System Settings, and
| Tips" is not exactly confidence inducing. If they rewrote Pages
| or Final Cut Pro, that would wake people up. One showcase
| productivity app. The thing is, in its current state, I don't
| they can.
| conradev wrote:
| Why would they rewrite Final Cut Pro in SwiftUI? Rewriting code
| is a large effort and a waste of time without proper
| justification - new developer tooling for UI is not usually a
| good enough justification to rewrite the entire UI
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > Why would they rewrite Final Cut Pro in SwiftUI? Rewriting
| code is a large effort and a waste of time without proper
| justification - new developer tooling for UI is not usually a
| good enough justification to rewrite the entire UI
|
| It's not about Final Cut Pro specifically. It could be a new
| app. It's about having a single showcase complex app that
| says to developers--look hey we can build something really
| performance intensive and sophisticated in SwiftUI. We're
| dogfooding it. Look what can be accomplished with it!
|
| It could be anything--Final Cut Pro, Logic, Pages, Numbers, a
| new productivity app all together. Some showcase
| sophisticated, complex productivity app to show what can be
| done with it and we're in the trenches with you using it.
| conradev wrote:
| Absolutely! So you need to align that goal with a project
| that is actually going to provide value to the end user.
| There aren't enough new features each year to (re)write
| large portions of macOS UI.
|
| The Shortcuts app in macOS 12 and the Settings app in macOS
| 13 are almost entirely SwiftUI and the most substantial
| projects in this regard
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Even John Gruber has been down on the Settings app,
| courtesy of Niki Tonsky's preview
|
| https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/08/15/ventura-
| system-...
| jarjoura wrote:
| The iPodification of the Mac has been so utterly jarring to me.
| Little nuances in productivity have been reduced to accommodate
| porting over a platform that was designed for touch.
|
| Microsoft tried for a decade to merge touch design in a desktop
| space and it was whole-heartedly rejected in the marketplace.
| Funny that Apple has been trying the same thing long after I get
| the sense that it no longer matters.
|
| I'm not against the idea of unifying the underlying frameworks,
| but they went with a lowest common denominator approach. In my
| mind, that is a failure of execution on their part.
| koinedad wrote:
| SwiftUI has been a pain to learn because it's young and you still
| need to learn UIKit or another framework to get unsupported tasks
| done. So basically need to learn the old frame and the new just
| to use the new. At least that's been my experience not knowing
| the older frameworks myself.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Yup. and basically all apps (re)created suck big time. They're
| just iOS ports. You're forced to do litereally everything using
| your mouse, and for example the Home app, it's basically useless
| if you want to organize/edit things.
|
| We're going to a CRUD operation world, where you have to do every
| edit one-by-one. And then in a few years, people will be amazed
| that you can save so much time because of a new "bulk editing"
| feature.
|
| Ahh such great times with Office in the 90s.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Basically Apple pre-OS X.
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