Over the last few years, Apple has gone through some internal changes. The iOS and macOS development teams were merged, which led to renewed speculation surrounding future plans to merge the two operating systems. While that may sound feasible to some, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, is very much against the idea, shooting it down in an interview this week.
Users have been calling on Google to merge ChromeOS with Android for a while now, and it looks like a similar calling has been placed on Apple with iOS and macOS. However, speaking with the Sydney Morning Herald (via 9to5mac), Tim Cook explained that Apple intends for the iPad and Mac to remain as two separate products that serve different use cases, adding that merging the two would water one or the other down.
“We don’t believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both The Mac and iPad are incredible. One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two … you begin to make trade offs and compromises.”
Cook added that while merging iOS and macOS could lead to greater efficiency within Apple, that's not the end goal. Apple wants to give “people things that they can use to help them change the world or express their passion, or express their creativity”.
KitGuru Says: iOS works great for tablets, but it wouldn't work so well for a Mac system, and you can same about macOS on an iPad. While having some cross-platform app functionality would be great, combining both systems into one OS seems like a step back after so many years of developing them both separately.