Why losing some customers may be good for the Mac

There's been discussion for years about Apple's vision for the Mac. The argument goes that iOS brings the majority of Apple's revenue, so the Mac plays second fiddle. Remember the backlash around the MacBook Pro introduction, with its TouchBar with embedded iOS, causing Apple to insist that it really really still loves the Mac.

Meanwhile, the iPad is maturing into a productivity device. iOS on iPad feels like a whole seperate OS. Because of this, whole segments of the Mac's typical target audience, such as students and writers, are finding themselves at home in iOS. While existing Mac users are likely to continue using their Macs for the time being, the influx of new users may slow down if iPad Pro sales are cannibalizing Mac sales.

Is this bad for the Mac?

Personally, I think not. I would like to offer the argument that when the Mac loses these "light productivity" customers to the iPad, the result will be a more homogeneous audience for the Mac, one more focused on "power productivity". You could even argue some of those light productivity customers were never the Mac's core audience to begin with - they were invaders, attracted by the halo effect of the iPod, and actually drew Apple's attention away from the Mac's core audience of creative professionals.

Having those users gradually leave the Mac platform again in favor of iOS simplifies the mission for Mac team in terms of both hardware and software: focus on creating a system built for raw power, a platform to enable the apps that need it, and on the users that are willing to pay for it. The days where Apple released "prosumer" hardware targeted at mainstream customers while neglecting the hard core may be behind us, ironically thanks to the iOS that many have long blamed for guiding Apple down this path in the first place.

And so, after being adrift around its vision for the Mac for a few years, Apple seems to have found its focus again. WWDC 17 and macOS 10.14 sure seemed to point in that direction: major announcements around macOS were focused on VR or external GPU's. On the hardware side, the iMac Pro and the yet-to-be-demystified "Modular Mac Pro" push in this same direction.

At the same time, this situation does creates a bit of a paradox.

It's probably fair to say that by now, most Mac users are also iOS users. They will experience iOS as their simple platform, and macOS as their power platform - experiencing one as a superset of the other. If I paid more for my Mac than for my iPad, then surely my Mac must be able to do everything my iPad can do and more.

But developers are not getting one platform that is a superset of another - instead they get a platform that's just different, one that is harder to develop for, has an app store with problematic economics, and with a cost / benefit story that is not very enticing. If the choice is between spending 3 months extra development effort to port an iOS app to the Mac, or spending the same 3 months to improve the iOS version to win the fierce competition in the iOS app store, the second is often the more revenue-generating strategy.

So if Apple wants to succeed in its plan to focus the Mac on a core audience of power users, while gradually letting iOS cannibalize the less-demanding users, then I think macOS needs to be modernized as a platform. I think Apple needs to lower the bar for porting iOS apps to macOS, though without going so far as to just push touch-first interfaces into a keyboard-and-mouse environment. Still, I think bringing the two ecosystems closer together will be good for both iOS and macOS. And I think that's exactly what they're working on.

Just my two cents.

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