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

iPhone 17 Pro Lower Logo Feature 1

iPhone 17 Pro Coming Soon With These 14 New Features

Monday June 30, 2025 1:08 pm PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are less than three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max in September this year. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an...
Apple Watch Ultra Night Mode Screen

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Launching Later This Year With Two Key Upgrades

Wednesday July 2, 2025 1:13 pm PDT by
The long wait for an Apple Watch Ultra 3 appears to be nearly over, and it is rumored to feature both satellite connectivity and 5G support. Apple Watch Ultra's existing Night Mode In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is on track to launch this year with "significant" new features, including satellite connectivity, which would let you...
iPhone 17 Pro Lower Logo Magsafe

iPhone 17 Pro's New MagSafe Design Revealed in Leaked Photo

Wednesday July 2, 2025 8:37 am PDT by
The upcoming iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are rumored to have a slightly different MagSafe magnet layout compared to existing iPhone models, and a leaked photo has offered a closer look at the supposed new design. The leaker Majin Bu today shared a photo of alleged MagSafe magnet arrays for third-party iPhone 17 Pro cases. On existing iPhone models with MagSafe, the magnets form a...
Wi Fi WiFi General Feature

iOS 26 Adds a Useful New Wi-Fi Feature to Your iPhone

Wednesday July 2, 2025 6:36 am PDT by
iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 add a smaller yet useful Wi-Fi feature to iPhones and iPads. As spotted by Creative Strategies analyst Max Weinbach, sign-in details for captive Wi-Fi networks are now synced across iPhones and iPads running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. For example, while Weinbach was staying at a Hilton hotel, his iPhone prompted him to fill in Wi-Fi details from his iPad that was already...
iPhone 17 Pro in Hand Feature Lowgo

iPhone 17 Pro Max Battery Capacity Leaked

Thursday July 3, 2025 5:40 am PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro Max will feature the biggest ever battery in an iPhone, according to the Weibo leaker known as "Instant Digital." In a new post, the leaker listed the battery capacities of the iPhone 11 Pro Max through to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and added that the iPhone 17 Pro Max will feature a battery capacity of 5,000mAh: iPhone 11 Pro Max: 3,969mAh iPhone 12 Pro Max: 3,687mAh...
iOS 18

Apple Releases Second iOS 18.6 Public Beta

Tuesday July 1, 2025 10:19 am PDT by
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6 updates to public beta testers, with the betas coming just a day after Apple provided the betas to developers. Apple has also released a second beta of macOS Sequoia 15.6. Testers who have signed up for beta updates through Apple's beta site can download iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6 from the Settings app on a compatible...
maxresdefault

New MacBook With A18 Pro Chip Spotted in Apple Code

Monday June 30, 2025 8:05 am PDT by
Apple is developing a MacBook with the A18 Pro chip, according to findings in backend code uncovered by MacRumors. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Earlier today, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Apple is planning to launch a low-cost MacBook powered by an iPhone chip. The machine is expected to feature a 13-inch display, the A18 Pro chip, and color options...

Top Rated Comments

Fzang Avatar
78 months ago
It’s funny, because the iPad app shown looks like a stretched iPhone app.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
casperes1996 Avatar
78 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
78 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
78 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
78 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
78 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)