The iPhone Duo is finally out, Apple’s first foldable, starting at a cool $1,999, and the internet has already found its favorite complaint: the apps. A big, beautiful folding screen, and a bunch of third-party apps that show up on that gorgeous inner screen letterboxed with black bars like it’s a DVD from 2004. Reviewers called out apps like Telegram and Disney Plus as not optimized yet, and Engadget’s Sam Rutherford summed it up: “The difference between optimized and unoptimized apps is the biggest growing pain you’ll face on Apple’s first foldable.” (via tom’s guide)
Fine. New form factor, developers need time, Apple says devs are “rapidly updating” their apps. I get it. But it got me thinking about an app support problem that isn’t new at all, that Apple could have fixed years ago, and that got a lot dumber this week.
Exhibit A: Minecraft
Minecraft Bedrock Edition runs great on my iPhone. It runs great on my iPad. Touch controls, controller support, the Marketplace, Realms, all of it. And most importantly, Bedrock is the version that lets you play with your friends on Xbox, Switch, PlayStation, Windows, and phones.
Now sit down at a Mac. You get Minecraft: Java Edition. Java is a perfectly good game, the modding scene is legendary, but its cross-play is Windows, Mac, and Linux Java players only. Bedrock cross-play is Windows, Xbox, Switch, PlayStation, and mobile. The two don’t talk to each other. Mojang spells it out on its own help pages.
So the kid with the iPad can jump into a world with their cousin on a Switch. The same kid on a Mac, signed into the same Microsoft account, cannot. Same company, same game, same family of Apple chips. Different answer.
And this isn’t a hardware problem. Things are bad enough that a fan developer has been working on an unofficial project called Blockintosh to get Bedrock running on Apple silicon Macs, because apparently Apple and the company that owns Xbox couldn’t sort it out between them.
The checkbox that ruins everything
Here’s the part that drives me nuts. Ever since the M1, Apple silicon Macs can run iPhone and iPad apps straight from the Mac App Store. No port, no rewrite. Apple’s own developer documentation says these apps “use the same frameworks, resources, and runtime environments” as they do on iOS and iPadOS, and they show up on the Mac by default. Unless the developer goes into App Store Connect and unchecks “Make this app available.” (Apple’s developer docs)
That’s it. That’s the wall. A checkbox.
Minecraft’s iPhone and iPad app doesn’t show up for Apple silicon Macs in the Mac App Store. Given that the default is “available,” that pretty strongly suggests someone on the Minecraft side unchecked the box. Microsoft hasn’t said why, as far as I can find. People have literally posted on Minecraft’s own feedback site asking them to just flip it back on.
Is the iPad version a perfect Mac game? No. It’d need decent keyboard and mouse support to feel right. But “not perfect” beats “not allowed,” and Mojang already has keyboard and mouse controls in the Windows version of Bedrock. They know how.
And now the Mac has a touchscreen
This week Apple announced the MacBook Pro with a PROLED XDR display. Yes, a touchscreen Mac. After years of Apple people telling us touchscreens on laptops were a bad idea, here we are. It starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch, ships November 6, and Apple says “macOS automatically translates touches into clicks.” (apple newsroom)
Think about that. The single biggest argument against iPad apps on the Mac was “these are touch apps, and the Mac doesn’t have touch.” Well, now it does. Apple just built the ideal machine for running iPhone and iPad apps, and developers can still say “nope, not on that one.”
So I can tap my way around macOS on a $2,899 laptop, but I can’t tap my way around the Minecraft app I already paid for on my iPad. Cool. Very Pro.
Apple should make it the rule
Apple loves telling developers what they have to do. Use our payment system. Follow our design rules. Support the latest screen sizes. Apple even made a “Made for iPhone Duo” badge to nudge developers to optimize for the foldable. So here’s a rule I’d actually like to see:
- If your app runs on iPhone and iPad, it runs on Apple silicon Macs too. No opt-out checkbox.
- If it genuinely doesn’t work on the Mac, fix it or ship a real Mac version. Apple already lets a Mac version replace the iPad one in the store.
- Give developers a “works with touch Mac” badge and actually promote the apps that do it right.
I know the counter arguments. Some developers don’t want to support another platform. Some apps rely on hardware the Mac doesn’t have, like cellular or the rear camera. Some companies have a separate Mac app they want to sell. Fine, carve out the edge cases. But “we’d rather you buy a different version of our game” or “we just didn’t feel like it” isn’t an edge case.
It’s one chip family, one App Store, and now one touchscreen. Why can’t I run ALL my apps on my Mac? Apple, you built the hardware. Finish the job.
