Jean-Louis Gassée on iOS to macOS porting, and some possible motivation

Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note, starts things off by talking through the Marzipan rumors and then Craig Federighi’s famous “No.” slide, followed by the details of the Marzipan announcement.

All good, but what I really liked was when Jean-Louis turned to the numbers:

By some measure, there are approximately 2.1M iOS apps in Apple’s App Store. By contrast, macOS apps number in the low thousands — a slightly misleading measure since some Mac apps are available independent of the regulated App Store. But with that caveat, iOS apps certainly outnumber macOS apps by at least an order of magnitude — a ratio that parallels the macOS vs iOS revenue and unit numbers.

He follows that with a slide that lists revenues for the 2017 Xmas quarter, AKA, 3Q2017:

  • iOS revenue: $68 billion
  • Mac revenue: $6.9 billion
  • iOS units sold: 90.4 million
  • Mac units sold: 5.1 million

And this conclusion:

The iOS-macOS UIKit bridge will pump new blood into the (relatively) anemic Mac app world. The arrangement will benefit everyone: iOS developers will find new customers on the Mac, customers who pay multiples of $10 vs single digits for iOS apps; Mac users will be given a wider choice of apps; and Apple gets a livelier macOS store.

Well said, Jean-Louis. Per usual.