Next Marzipan Apps: Podcasts, Apple Music, TV App, Books

[ipedro]

Home, Stocks and Voice Memos were the first of what Apple calls a multi year project to port iOS apps to macOS.

Which ones are next?

The Podcasts app is still missing on macOS. There’s been speculation that it’s being rebuilt for iOS. That would provide a good opportunity to design it so it works on both iOS and macOS via Marzipan.

Other features built into iTunes on macOS but have their own apps on iOS are good candidates for Marzipan versions: Apple Music and the TV app. Books would allow Audiobooks to be removed from iTunes.

Simple apps that are low hanging fruit for Marzipan ports: Find my iPhone and the Weather app.

I think that we’ll see a steady release of these apps in between major macOS versions. They’re not core apps so they can be released whenever they’re ready.

 

[thingstoponder]

Music, TV, and Podcasts is my number one wish for macOS. Books is already on macOS but I wonder if they will combine the apps in the future and start replacing apps like Notes and Maps with Marzipan versions. I also wonder if they can add features specific to macOS and then just hide them in the iOS versions. I dislike Windows 10 a lot but the one thing I like is some modern apps will scale for different sizes and automatically add elements and shift them around like a modern responsive website. For instance the Calculator app will start adding scientific options and other stuff if you make the windows larger. I hope Apple goes things way with iOS/macOS apps.

 

[hevaKmaI]

Honestly I’m surprised Messages wasn’t in the first ones. It’s a bit of a train wreck on macOS, especially compared to its iOS counterpart.

 

[thingstoponder]

Honestly I’m surprised Messages wasn’t in the first ones. It’s a bit of a train wreck on macOS, especially compared to its iOS counterpart.

I'm guessing they'll convert existing apps for the next release.

I'm excited for Marzipan. Phone apps on a desktop doesn't sound appealing, but the thing that Apple has an advantage in is having loads of actual proper tablet apps which are pretty much the same as desktop apps as far as UI is concerned. Tweak some buttons and scaling and you're good to go.

 

[afir93]

I'm guessing they'll convert existing apps for the next release.

I'm excited for Marzipan. Phone apps on a desktop doesn't sound appealing, but the thing that Apple has an advantage in is having loads of actual proper tablet apps which are pretty much the same as desktop apps as far as UI is concerned. Tweak some buttons and scaling and you're good to go.

Hopefully you're right. With how huge of an improvement the iOS 12 Apple Books app is, I was really underwhelmed to see that the macOS Apple Books app has almost no changes at all in Mojave. As an avid eBook reader, I would love for them to get equal in functionality in the next release.

I'd love to see an improved iMessage app on the macOS-side of things aswell, these visual message effects that were added in iOS 10 still haven't found their way to the Mac in Mojave. Simply being told "Message sent with bump effect" and the like on the Mac is really underwhelming. A dedicated Weather app (instead of just the tiny widget in Control Center that's missing a lot of information from the iOS-counterpart) and a Find My iPhone-app would be fantastic aswell.

About the other stuff, I'm more skeptical. Podcasts on the Mac is already part of iTunes. The only way I see separate Podcasts, (Apple) Music, Movie/TV-show-apps and the like coming to the Mac is if iTunes is dropped completely. And while there would be some great advantages about splitting iTunes up like that, I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to it because there will most certainly be features of iTunes that will be dropped completely with that.

 

[redheeler]

Phone apps on a desktop doesn't sound appealing, but the thing that Apple has an advantage in is having loads of actual proper tablet apps which are pretty much the same as desktop apps as far as UI is concerned. Tweak some buttons and scaling and you're good to go.

Not really true as tablets use touch-based input while Macs do not. Windows 8 did a good job showing why a touchscreen tablet UI doesn't always work on desktop.
[doublepost=1534869795][/doublepost]So far Apple has done a decent port of the iOS News and Stocks apps over to the Mac, but I'm not convinced there won't remain some things that feel like they were designed for touch input on a tablet rather than a desktop with a mouse or trackpad. That will likely be true for most iOS apps that come to the Mac. But at least it's better than not having them at all.