Apple's Project Catalyst Team Shares Thoughts on Limiting Compatibility to iPad Apps, Quality Concerns, and More

Apple in iOS 13 and macOS Catalina introduced Project Catalyst, designed to allow iOS developers to port their iPad apps over to the Mac with little effort, making it simpler for developers to design cross-platform apps.

Ars Technica recently spoke with some of the Apple team members responsible for creating and promoting Project Catalyst, and it's worth a read for those who are interested in the feature.

project catalyst
Apple decided to allow developers to port ‌iPad‌ apps instead of iPhone apps because it's a "more natural transition" bringing an app from an ‌iPad‌ to a Mac due to the closer display sizes. From Todd Benjamin, Apple's senior director of marketing for macOS:

Just design-wise, the difference between an iPad app and an iPhone app is that the iPad app has gone through a design iteration to take advantage of more screen space. And as you bring that app over to the Mac... you have something that's designed around that space that you can work with and that you can start from.

Ali Ozer, Apple's cocoa engineering manager, also said that choosing the ‌iPad‌ pre-empts user concerns about mobile ports spilling over to the desktop. "This is one way of making developers aware that an ‌iPhone‌ app in its current form might not be the right design," said Ozer.

Developers who have already used Project Catalyst have been able to port ‌iPad‌ versions of Twitter, TripIt, and Asphalt 9: Legends to the Mac. The developers that have worked with Project Catalyst told Ars that it was, on the whole, simple to use and "able to just work," as one Twitter developer said.

As for quality concerns, Apple's Catalyst team expects public reviews to be a major factor when it comes to ensuring Mac apps offer a rich, Mac-like experience. From Shaan Pruden, Apple's senior director of partner management and developer relations:

"Then we come down to customers' reaction and ratings and all of that kind of stuff. Which hopefully will drive the right behavior for a developer, which is to do the work and do it right and don't be lazy."

The full deep dive into Project Catalyst can be read over on the Ars Technica website, and it goes into detail on just how Project Catalyst functions, what developers think of the feature thus far, and it shares Apple's thoughts on SwiftUI.

Popular Stories

Beyond iPhone 13 Better Triad

Apple's 20th Anniversary iPhone May Finally Go All Screen

Tuesday April 15, 2025 6:31 am PDT by
Apple is preparing a "bold" new iPhone Pro model for the iPhone's 20th anniversary in 2027, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. As part of what's being described as a "major shake-up," Apple is said to be developing a design that makes more extensive use of glass – and this could point directly to the display itself. Here's the case for Apple releasing a truly all-screen iPhone with no...
maxresdefault

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 12 New Features

Sunday April 13, 2025 7:52 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and ...
CarPlay Hero

Apple Releases Wireless CarPlay Fix

Wednesday April 16, 2025 11:28 am PDT by
If you have been experiencing issues with wireless CarPlay in your vehicle lately, it was likely due to a software bug that has now been fixed. Apple released iOS 18.4.1 today, and the update's release notes say it "addresses a rare issue that prevents wireless CarPlay connection in certain vehicles." If wireless CarPlay was acting up for you, updating your iPhone to iOS 18.4.1 should...
iOS 19 Roundup Feature

iOS 19 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Tuesday April 15, 2025 7:37 am PDT by
The first iOS 19 beta is less than two months away, and there are already a handful of new features that are expected with the update. Apple should release the first iOS 19 beta to developers immediately following the WWDC 2025 keynote, which is scheduled for Monday, June 9. Following beta testing, the update should be released to the general public in September. Below, we recap the key...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday April 17, 2025 4:12 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
Apple 2025 Thumb 1

10 Products Still Coming From Apple in 2025

Friday April 11, 2025 4:14 pm PDT by
Apple may have updated several iPads and Macs late last year and early this year, but there are still multiple new devices that we're looking forward to seeing in 2025. Most will come in September or October, but there could be a few surprises before then. We've rounded up a list of everything that we're still waiting to see from Apple in 2025. iPhone 17, 17 Air, and 17 Pro - We get...
AirPods Pro 3 Mock Feature

AirPods Pro 3 Just Months Away – Here's What We Know

Friday April 18, 2025 5:16 am PDT by
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
iOS 18

Apple Releases iOS 18.4.1 With Bug Fixes

Wednesday April 16, 2025 10:11 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4.1 and iPadOS 18.4.1, minor updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating systems that came out last September. iOS 18.4.1 and iPadOS 18.4.1 come two weeks after the launch of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. There have been complaints about ...
iPhone 6s MacRumors YouTube

Apple Says These Products Are Now Vintage

Tuesday April 15, 2025 9:53 am PDT by
Apple today updated its vintage products list to add the 2018 Mac mini and the iPhone 6s, devices that will get more limited service and repairs now that they are considered vintage. The iPhone 6s initially launched in 2015, but Apple kept it around as a low-cost device until 2018, which is why it is only now being added to the vintage list. The iPhone 6s had Apple's A9 chip, and it was...

Top Rated Comments

Fzang Avatar
76 months ago
It’s funny, because the iPad app shown looks like a stretched iPhone app.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
casperes1996 Avatar
76 months ago
...it's a "more natural transition" bringing an app from an iPad to a Mac due to the closer display sizes.

I call BS. Why can't an iPhone app be ported to macOS - and retain it's original size or form factor??

And not *every* app *needs* additional screen space. I just want to be able to use some of the apps on the desktop, so that I can have them open with my other macOS apps at the same time.

There are already macOS apps that do this: the window is about the size of an iPhone.

Seems more like a resources decision: they didn't have or want to utilize people to make this happen. Or a marketing decision: they wanted to get it out ASAP and iPad was the easier / quicker path.

If it's *truly* a design decision, well, I'd look at the decision makers on the design team. Doesn't seem like a smart decision to me. More users have iPhones and iPads, and are less likely to use or discover an app that's iPad-only+macOS.
From a technology perspective it'd require very very very little to add iPhone apps to the mix if you limit them to iPhone size on the Mac with no resizing. Definitely not a matter of resources.
But if that's the app you want, a developer could make an iPadOS variant of the app that does nothing but take the iPhone version of the app to the iPad, compile it for the Mac, disable resizing and set the window to be like an iPhone and release it as a Mac app without an iPad variant. It's a few hoops, but it's still an easy process.

This was definitely made as a conscious decision, and a good one at that. Furthermore, this will bring more iPhone-only apps to the iPad too likely.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pdaholic Avatar
76 months ago
Gotta love how that iPad app in the photo takes advantage of all that screen space...
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
KazKam Avatar
76 months ago
Yeah, I'm still extremely skeptical that this will result in any apps that truly transcend OS/device. It takes a lot of consideration to make an iOS app look decent on both a phone and an iPad (trust me, I know), and it takes even more to make it look native/comfortable in a desktop environment.

With so much consideration needed to make an app look/feel at home on that many screen sizes and input methods, you might as well go back to writing native iOS and Mac apps. Otherwise, we're just going to get stuck with a glut of "Mac" apps that look extremely out-of-place. It's going to be the Mac platform that suffers from Catalyst. Separating the wheat from the chaff is about to get a lot more difficult.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TMRJIJ Avatar
76 months ago
The three columns Twitter app looks like am iPhone? How many 3 columns iPhone apps you know and can list?
[doublepost=1562013917][/doublepost]





Can’t you see that on the iPad there is a Safari window and not an app?
This is not a Safari Window. This is the Twitter app on iPad. That’s really how it looks.


Attachment Image
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pdaholic Avatar
76 months ago

Can’t you see that on the iPad there is a Safari window and not an app?
Can’t you see the irony of the article referring to taking advantage of the larger screen when only a third of it is used in the photo?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)