Long time readers will know that I’ve long held the belief that OSX and iOS were bound to merge at some point in the future. For me the reasons for thinking this are wide and varied, but it is most easily seen in ever vanishing delineation between the two hardware lines that support them. The iPad Pro was the last volley that iOS launched against its OSX brethren and, for me, was the concrete proof that Apple was looking to merge the two product lines once and for all. Some recent off-hand remarks from CEO Tim Cook convinced many of my line of thinking, enough so that Tim Cook has come out saying that Apple won’t be developing a converged Mac/iPad device.
That statement probably shouldn’t come as much of surprise given that Cook called the Surface Book “deluded” just under a week ago. Whilst I can understand that it’s every CEO’s right to have a dig at the competition the commentary from Cook does seem a little naive in this regard. The Surface has shown that there’s a market for a tablet-first laptop hybrid and there’s every reason to expect a laptop first tablet hybrid will meet similar success. Indeed the initial reactions to the Surface Book are overwhelmingly positive so Cook might want to reconsider the rhetoric he’s using on this, especially if they ever start eyeing off creating a competing device like they did with the iPad Pro.
The response about non-convergence though is an interesting one. Indeed, as Windows 8 showed, spanning a platform between all types of devices can lead to a whole raft of compromises that leaves nobody happy. However Microsoft has shown that it can be done right with Windows 10 and the Surface Book is their chief demonstrator of how a converged system can work. By distancing himself from the idea that the platforms will never meet in the middle, apart from the handful of integration services that work across both platforms, Cook limits the potential synergy that can be gained from such integration.
At the same time I get the feeling that the response might have be born out of the concern he stirred up with his previous comment about not needing a PC any more. He later clarified that as not needing a PC that’s not a Mac since they are apparently not Personal Computers. For fans of the Mac platform this felt like a clear signal that Apple feels PCs are an also ran, something that they keep going in order to endear brand loyalty more than anything else. When you look at the size of the entire Mac business compared to the rest of Apple it certainly looks that way with it making less than 10% of the company’s earnings. For those who use OSX as their platform for creation the consternation about it going away is a real concern.
As you can probably tell I don’t entirely believe Tim Cook’s comments on this matter. Whilst no company would want to take an axe to a solid revenue stream like the Mac platform the constant blurring of the lines between the OSX and iOS based product lines makes the future for them seem inevitable. It might not come as a big bang with the two wed in an unholy codebase marriage but over time I feel the lines between what differentiates either product line will be so blurred as to be meaningless. Indeed if the success of Microsoft’s Surface line is anything to go by Apple may have their hand forced in this regard, something that few would have ever expected to see happen to a market leader like Apple.
