The iOS – OSX Divide

Posted on July 26, 2012
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Neven Morgan has a great post about the coming iOS – OSX divide. He makes a point I’ve made here several times.

As casual users choose iPads and iPhones over computers, the percentage of Mac users who are high-tech professionals is only going to increase. 

However he notes a problem I’ve noted but I don’t think I’ve ever discussed here.

And the Mac App Store, in its current incarnation, just isn’t built for us. It’s built for people looking for casual apps and games. (Sorry, there’s one more category: Apple’s own apps, which don’t have to play by Apple’s rules.) And that’s also fine. But put the two facts together—the loss of casual users to iOS, and the loss of non-casual apps on the App Store—and it starts to look like a problem.

 

That is the MAS really is oriented around apps more in a fashion of the iOS app store (IAS). There are differences. OmniGraffle and even Pixelmator are vastly more powerful than equivalent apps for iOS. But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. The types of apps that many Pro users want aren’t suited for the MAS. Even apps like Final Cut Pro X or Aperture often involve the use of plug-ins that can’t come from the MAS. So it’s almost a bit misleading to count them.

Of the applications targeting pro-users more and more of them are fleeing the MAS. Morgan notes that this is a problem for Apple.

And the Mac App Store, in its current incarnation, just isn’t built for us. It’s built for people looking for casual apps and games. (Sorry, there’s one more category: Apple’s own apps, which don’t have to play by Apple’s rules.) And that’s also fine. But put the two facts together—the loss of casual users to iOS, and the loss of non-casual apps on the App Store—and it starts to look like a problem.

It’s good for us Mac users that we don’t have to limit ourselves to apps from the Mac App Store; good old direct downloads still work fine. But it’s not good for the Mac App Store that we will probably increasingly take advantage of that option in the future.

In a way the MAS with its rules and limitations is targeting a lot of the same group who might primarily use iOS but need something just a little bit more powerful. (I think this is the target audience of the MacBook Air as well) Now that’s not entirely true of course. I’ve bought plenty from the IAS and MAS. But the target is a little different. General consumers. 

The problem is (and I’m sure Apple is aware of this) as iOS becomes more and more powerful more and more people will come to primarily use iOS devices. Right now the primary problem is media. People have dozens of gigabytes of data in home movies and photos. iOS can’t handle that. If Apple makes iCloud usable for 100 – 200 GB at a cheap rate that might change. If they come up with something like a NAS that works seamlessly with iOS to store these files without a full Mac then I think all bets are off.

The primary limits on iOS thus is more networking infrastructure than anything else.

Right now OSX is about 20% of Apple’s business. I expect that’ll continue to shrink as iOS cannibalizes more and more. The big question then becomes what Apple will do with OSX. If a combination of iCloud and a cheap reliable NAS take too much they may simply abandon the market. If they don’t though then pros and prosumers will make up most of Mac sales. That means Apple will have to significantly change their Mac focus back to pros.

Related posts:

  1. The iOS Multitasking Problem
  2. Pushing News to App Users
  3. Applescript: Not Dead Yet
  4. Appigo & Trademarks
  5. App Store and APIs
  6. The Only Fix?

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