I don't think we'll ever see a Mac tablet, just like I don't think we'll see an iPadOS laptop. But when it's incidentally helpful, yeah, it's good to have touch support. It's why I'm glad the iPad now supports trackpads and mice.
Sure, you don't want to reach up to the screen to interact with software regularly.
But for those apps that aren't built using Catalyst and don't have a Mac version, developers can just let customers download them through the Mac App Store with no additional work.Īnd while these apps will undoubtedly be useable with a mouse or trackpad (it works with the Xcode Simulator, after all), the best way to use them is still going to be through touch. If a developer wants to use their iPad app as the basis for a custom Mac experience, they can do so using Apple's Catalyst tools to turn those iPad apps into native Mac experiences. Starting when these new Macs ship, iPhone and iPad apps will be able to run on macOS without any modification whatsoever. And because these new Mac chips will run on the same instruction set as the chips for iPhone and iPad, Apple has announced a new feature coming to Macs running on Apple silicon: iPhone and iPad apps. But there's one more factor that makes the prospect at least more plausible than it used to be: Apple silicon.Īpple is transitioning the Mac lineup to its own in-house chip architecture, the same kinds of chips that it's been putting in iPhones and iPads for the last decade. Now, this isn't to say that there are definitely touch Macs on the way.