Apple Follows in Microsoft’s Footsteps. Again (Premium)

There's a well-worn narrative that Apple innovates and Microsoft follows. But as I've often pointed out, the reverse is more often the case. And the s revelation this week that Apple will reportedly bring its iOS mobile apps platform to the Mac is just the latest example.

As you may have read, Apple is reportedly working to bring iOS apps---for iPhone and iPad---to the Mac. This is an area where Microsoft came first: It added a new mobile apps platform, first called Modern and now called Universal Windows Platform (UWP), to Windows 8 in 2012. Google followed next, by bringing the Android mobile apps platform to Chrome OS, its own desktop platform; that work is ongoing but it was announced in mid-2016.

The question here is what took Apple so long.

Fans of the Cupertino consumer giant will cart out another well-worn narrative, in this case that Apple only implements new technologies, or new ideas, or whatever when it makes sense. The idea is that Apple somehow always gets the timing just right.

That's cute. But it's also bullshit.

The reality is that Apple has been hemming and hawing on the very obvious need to bring multitouch and other mobile technologies to the Mac. And that, in doing so, it has disadvantaged its legacy platform and its loyal power user customers for far too long.

Years ago, Apple spoke about the "virtuous cycle" that the success of iOS provided, that it could bring ideas from iOS, like a grid of icon launchers, a notification center, and the like, to the Mac; that success, it said, would float all boats.

But even the most diehard Mac fans will tell you that Apple has largely ignored the platform in the years since. And has missed an opportunity to bring the most important iOS features and functionality to the desktop. Even lowly Chrome OS, which runs on devices that cost as little as $200, supports both multi-touch and smart pens in addition to Google's popular mobile apps and Play Store.

Missed opportunities have a way of catching up with you. And when Apple jumped the shark in late 2016 by releasing a MacBook Pro with a touchpad the size of New Jersey and the first-ever touch screen---which was not the actual display of the device---customers finally screamed that they had had enough. Apple, for perhaps the first time ever, was on the receiving end of bad PR, triggered by its own stupid decisions, and by its own fans.

Look, a good idea is a good idea. And giving new life to an aging and legacy desktop PC platform by adding a mobile apps store and accessibility to a successful mobile apps platform is a good idea. It was a good idea when Microsoft announced it in 2011. And a good idea when Google did so five years later.

But consider these two additional points.

Microsoft is already racing ahead to bring Windows 10 to the ARM chipset and to let all Windows PCs, including those based on Intel, to utilize mobile connectivity functionality at a low level. Apple is further behind than you may...

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