Transference: Mac to iPad to Mac to…
Apple’s California Streaming event has come and gone: new iPhones, new iPads (Mini!) and a new, more expansive Apple Watch. Overall, I think it’s fair to call this a refinement year, which is fine. iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 are coming on September 20, in time for those new iPads. Monterey, however, while also in public beta…is still AWOL. MacOS releases always arrive a bit later, so this isn’t completely surprising. But I’m concerned about key features that are either pushed back (SharePlay), or missing altogether: namely, how Universal Control has yet to make an appearance in the betas. Given how complex this probably is to pull off and to troubleshoot, its absence is troubling this late in the game, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it delayed to a later update. Not the end of the world, but Apple used to be excellent at shipping what they announced; their batting average has slipped quite a bit these past couple of years. We’ll know soon enough.
Still, all in good time. And the truth is, I haven’t been this excited about the Mac in years.
That M1 spark
Back in January, I wrote about the harrowing adventure that led me to purchase an M1 MacBook Air. This was entirely out of necessity, but I had this to say a few weeks later:
For years now, I viewed my Mac as an isolated object, desk-bound and stuck to old paradigms. New OS versions were like wallpaper, adding colour and motifs to a structure that remained dated. Is it the new car smell that makes me feel so differently about this computer? That’s probably part of it. But I believe it’s the sum of many small details—Touch ID, Sidecar, the snappiness of the M1—contributing to a sense of wholeness. The result is that I’m moving towards a unified set of interactions, across all devices.
For context, this was in reaction to the way iOS and iPadOS had taken centerstage for me, with the Mac becoming a satellite, a niche device solely relegated to either music, photography, or film production. A truck. In terms of UX, this was also a machine increasingly operating from a private, solitary island.
What most excites me about Monterey is its accelerated focus on a unified toolset. Beyond Universal Control, I’m looking forward to finally gaining access to iOS Shortcuts on the desktop—this, alone, will streamline all devices into a much more powerful system. But as a very longtime Mac user, I’m downright fascinated by the way Apple’s multiple OS strategy has slowly steered me towards a vastly different interaction model. No small feat because, just to clarify, by “longtime” I mean macOS 7.1 on an LC 630with 4 MB of ram. Yes, megabytes. The days of newsgroups and AOL and eWorld and paper magazines shipping with CD-ROMs. DVDs? Nope. Streaming? Please. The Web is in its infancy, confined to Mosaic. For decades, the Mac WAS computing for me: its windowing paradigm, its spatial relationships, and its chaos too, with multiple windows overlapping each other, and that crowded desktop I could never keep clean.
It wasn’t until 2015, with the iPad Air 2 and iOS 9, that my habits began to change:
All of these changes are obviously bound to mobility and an increasing need to be productive anywhere, anytime. But I believe that's only part of the story: design also plays a role here. In many situations using these apps is no longer a compromise: I prefer the iOS workflow. The form factor of these new devices combined with touch, with an operating system and apps tightly built around a simple interaction model...all of it has changed our expectations, modified how we anticipate to interact with software. And given how much we use our phones and tablets, it's hard to prevent these new patterns from taking over our reflexes and becoming the new normality.
Babel
The way I organize the Mac is now highly influenced by the monolithic nature of iPadOS—I can’t stand overlapping windows anymore. Apple’s answer is Spaces and full-screen apps, but while this is perfect on a MacBook, I find the amount of negative space on a 27” screen overwhelming, for anything but production software. Recently, I installed a small (free) app called Rectangle that’s had a massive effect on my workflow. Its sole purpose is to snap, move and resize windows to various layouts, using keyboard shortcuts. I barely use this in “laptop” mode...but I’m fully addicted to it when the M1 Air is on the desktop, connected to an external display. I’d never realized the amount of time wasted fiddling with windows during a day. With this, I can now instantly configure them side by side, or full centre, or move them from one screen to the other, all without ever touching the mouse. In a way, it’s made the Mac more iOS-like in spirit (task-focused, less noise), while maintaining the power and versatility of the system (multiple apps and windows). I could’ve done this a long time ago, but that’s what I mean by Apple steering us elsewhere: iOS/iPadOS created a craving for this more structured approach. One informing the other. This, I believe, is where we’re headed with Monterey, once all the pieces come together. It’s not about convergence in the sense of homogeneity, but about unifying the language these devices speak, and finding balance.
Removing friction is my mantra these days... I think we’re getting there.
