Mac Apps are Back!
By: Can Balkaya
Tags: iPhone, Mac, App Store, Apple, Application

Mac Apps are Back!

With the first Apple Silicon M1 Macs, many applications that we use on iPhones and iPads come to the Mac App Store. Here is why. Can Balkaya Follow Dec 12, 2020 · 4 min read

Image Source: Apple Newsroom

In 10th November, Apple introduced the first Apple Silicon Macs: MacBook Air, 13” MacBook Pro and Mac mini.

These devices include M1 chip that Apple designed for the first time for Macs. (If you want to learn what is M1, you should definitely check this out.)

Thanks to this M1 chip (and its predecessors as we will see later), iPhone and/or iPad applications will now be able to run inside Macs! This kind of application is called “Universal App”. Thanks to universal apps, as I said before, you can develop applications that run on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.

Before universal apps, there were two ways to develop a Mac application: AppKit and Mac Catalyst.

AppKit is the framework used for Mac application development for years. AppKit is quite old technology. That’s why it is not nearly possible to find AppKit developers right now. (Therefore Mac app market was not doing well.)

Mac Catalyst is a much newer technology than AppKit. (Apple introduced this technology at WWDC19 last year.) Mac Catalyst turns your iPad apps into a Mac app very quickly.

Image Source: Apple

Apple introduced another technology at WWDC19 that allows you to develop apps on different platforms quickly, apart from Mac Catalyst. I think this technology is even more exciting than the Mac Catalyst. It’s called “SwiftUI”.

SwiftUI is a new technology that allows you to create application interfaces on all Apple platforms. Even if you are going to develop simple applications, SwiftUI is for you.

Image Source: Apple

At WWDC20, Apple announced that we (developers) could create universal apps with SwiftUI. In other words, the codes you write with SwiftUI can run on both macOS, iOS and iPadOS. Even you can make your app work on Apple Watch by creating a watchOS extension and creating a similar interface.

I don’t want to go into more technical details because this article is not about coding. (You can take a look at the links I have placed in this article to learn more about these topics.)

In short, it is now much easier to develop a Mac application compared to previous years. That’s why app developers and companies started to turn to Mac apps.

Among Us & HBO Max Apps

Even large application developers like Adobe and Omni Group have already made universal versions of their Mac apps.

Extra, Darkroom that has grown very well in recent years has launched Mac app.

Darkroom’s Mac App

Thanks to universal applications, many other application developers such as Darkroom have easily opened up to Mac app market.

Back two years ago, Mac application development was very difficult even for companies, but now even personal developers can quickly release Mac versions of their applications. It’s even easier to build a Mac app from scratch.

I don’t want to say anything ambitious enough to return the Mac market to its former glory with Universal apps and Macs with Apple Silicon, but it really can happen.

I really hope that the Mac market will grow much bigger than before with universal applications and new Apple Silicon Macs.

In terms of software, hardware and even design, Apple products are closer to each other day by day. This is really exciting me, especially as an app developer. I’m looking forward to Apple’s future innovations.