Ask Paul: May 31 (Premium)

Happy Friday. Here is another great set of reader questions to close out the month.
Macs with iOS apps
dcdevito asks:

Paul, do you think Apple’s attempts to bring iOS apps to the Mac platform will give them a distinct advantage over Microsoft (PCs) and Google (Android/Chrome OS)?

It’s interesting to me that both Google (with Chrome and Android apps) and Apple (with macOS and iOS apps) are mimicking a strategy that Microsoft employed first: Adding a mobile apps platform to a traditional desktop OS. Of course, both Google and Apple have huge advantages over Microsoft in this regard: Both Android and iOS are established, popular, and mature, and the addition of those apps to their respective desktop OSes is a huge win for users, developers, and the platforms themselves.

When I look at these two hybrid platforms (Chrome/Android and macOS/iOS), each has different advantages over the other. Chrome, for example, is the better solution for a world in which most people
“compute” on their phones most of the time and only sometimes need a device with a bigger screen and a real keyboard and mouse/touchpad. Those devices are a lot cheaper, for the most part, too. And they support multitouch and smart pens. There are pure Chrome tablets and hybrid Chrome PCs that work like Surface.

But Apple does have one important advantage: iOS apps that are designed specifically for tablets (iPad) or are hybrid “universal” apps that look/behave differently on tablets are generally superior to their Android counterparts. Where many Android apps are just blown up versions of phone apps on tablets, most iOS apps that work on iPad are customized specifically for the bigger displays and are more sophisticated. They will be a more natural fit on macOS than are many Android apps on Chrome, and will seem more native.

But there are so many questions.

Apple has been making its iPads more sophisticated over time and the iPad Pro, in particular, can serve as a laptop-like device for some people already. Meanwhile, the Mac lacks touch/pen support, and that will make some iPad app interactions awkward unless app developers tailor them for mouse/keyboard (which they probably will in many cases; iOS apps, again, tend to be more sophisticated). Will Apple ever add touch and even pen support to the Mac? And why would they, given that the iPad Pro exists?

And then there’s Windows. A Windows PC is a horribly complex and unreliable device to use if you only occasionally need it because of its bigger screen and keyboard/mouse support. It seems like Chrome OS, or something like Chrome OS, would make more sense for most people. (This doesn’t mean the PC or Windows goes away, only that most people still using that platform over time are power users, gamers, or others with more complex needs.)

This, I think, explains why Microsoft is working on yet another simpler platform that may or may not be called Windows and may or may not run Windows desktop a...