Topsy Turvy World

WWDC 2020 has come and gone, and I've had time to think things through a little bit since then. As the presenters were going through the details of MacOS Big Sur, aka MacOS 11, I remember crying out: "That's it, we're getting touch-based Macs !" My feeling, at that moment, was based solely on the design language of the new OS: bigger controls, buttons, surfaces etc. Since then a lot more evidence has come to light to lend credence to that theory.

• First of all there is the general idea of an entirely new hardware line, no longer based on Intel processors, but using what is being referred to as "Apple Silicon". A golden opportunity to modify something as fundamental as "input methods".

• Add to that the fact that there were sessions at WWDC that dealt specifically with design for screens with rounded corners (a la iPad and iPhone screens).

• Go one step further: on the new Mac hardware you'll be able to run iPhone and iPad apps, unmodified. Care to do that with a mouse or trackpad ? I think not.

So, looking back at my last blog entry here, I had it wrong. I was imagining a big change in the way we use the iPad. I thought we would see the introduction of Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro for iPad. And while that may still happen one day, what we're getting instead is a way to run iOS and iPadOS apps on the Mac. Exactly the other way round. And that brings me to the biggest change this might mean to me, personally: here I am using the Magic Keyboard for iPad, hardly ever touching the screen of that "touch-first" device, while I might very soon find myself leaving finger prints all over my Mac screen, a traditionally keyboard and mouse driven machine. Le monde a l'envers.