Apple MacOS 10.15 Catalina can run iPad apps - but iTunes gets the heave-ho

Unification of MacOS and iOS taken one step closer

Apple MacOS 10.15 Catalina, demonstrated at the company's WWDC 2019 event in San Jose, California, will be able to support iOS apps designed for the iPad.

Codenamed ‘Marzipan', it follows on from tests in porting native iPad apps, such as Stocks and News, to the current version of MacOS. With MacOS 10.15 Catalina, the feature will be rolled out fully, enabling iPhone and iPad apps to be run easily on the Mac.

According to Apple, transforming an iPad app into a MacOS app will be as simple as ticking a box, with Xcode introducing MacOS-specific controls like cursor and window controls into an iPad app's framework. This means UIKit developers will only have to maintain a single codebase to create apps that work on iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

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Apple is also introducing a new Sidebar feature, that enables the iPad to be used as a second display for Macs, making third-party solutions, such as Astro HQ's Luna Display, largely redundant.

MacOS 10.15 Catalina will also be the first version of MacOS that doesn't include iTunes. The music app, long regarded as an integral part of setting up an iPhone, is being broken up into three separate apps: Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Podcasts.

MacOS 10.15 Catalina will also introduce voice control to the Mac. It's intended primarily as an accessibility feature - Cortana on Microsoft Windows 10 hasn't exactly proved popular - but enables anyone to operate their Apple Mac entirely by shouting commands at it using Siri speech recognition technology,

It will also offer some souped-up security features; Gatekeeper now checks all apps for security issues, all apps are required to get permission before accessing user documents, and the side button on the Apple Watch can now be used to approve security prompts. There's also a new 'Find My' app that combines Find My Friends and Find My iPhone, and will disable your laptop if it gets stolen.

Elsewhere, MacOS Catalina features Screen Time, redesigned Notes and Reminders apps, and a new Safari start page that uses Siri Suggestions to throw up relevant content.

MacOS 10.15 is available to developers from today and a public beta will be available to Mac users later this month. It'll be available to download on all mid-2012 Macs or later in the autumn.

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