At WWDC earlier this month, Apple formally unveiled Project Catalyst, a developer toolset designed to ease the transition of iOS apps to Mac. In particular, Catalyst helps bridge the gap and in some cases translate UIKit-based iOS code to Mac’s AppKit.
News, Stocks, Voice Memos and Home were the first four iOS apps that Apple brought to Mac in 2018. haven’t been incredibly well-received since they came to the Mac last year, and this is something Craig Federighi addressed at WWDC.
Apple is now counting on apps built to make them well known and are being converted to the Mac as a way to infuse new energy. It was last year in 2018 when Apple announced a “sneak peek” at four of its own apps that it converted from iOS apps to MacOS. Those four being News, Voice Memos, Home and Stocks. But when the apps showed up, they weren’t greeted with much enthusiasm from Mac users because all four were elementary at best and didn’t take much advantage of Mac’s extra capabilities.
However, the good news is that Apple is fixing them. At 2019 earlier this month, Apple announced, which streamlines the process for all software makers to bring their own iOS apps to Mac. In an interview with CNET at WWDC, Apple software chief Craig Federighi confirmed that the four iOS apps for Mac released last year will get major updates based on the new technology in Project Catalyst. But he also revealed that the apps will get new designs to make them more Mac-like.
“They’re getting improvements,” Federighi said. “The underlying technology has matured…Some of that is super low-level stuff. Some people have dissected those apps and realized that they were sort of two halves: an AppKit half and a UIKit half, literally running in different processes. That’s all unified now. This has become much more of a native Mac framework…So automatically, the apps we built last year are upgraded.”
AppKit is what developers have used traditionally to build Mac apps, while UIKit has been for iOS apps. Project Catalyst unites them.