Superabundance of platforms

Exactly 10 years ago to the week, I wrote a post about how Microsoft and Google getting into hardware was transforming the technology landscape. I bemoaned the state of Apple’s platform proliferation, in a section entitled “Apple is balancing a superabundance of disparate platforms.”

But with its product iterations this year, more and more pundits are feeling as though Apple is losing the thread of the mobile revolution it started. Whereas Apple was once the quintessential widget company, masterfully integrating hardware and software together to differentiate its products, its competition has begun adopting its integrated strategy to widespread acclaim. Meanwhile, the consequence of Apple’s runaway success and expanding product lineup is that it now maintains more platforms and services than ever before, with four full operating systems and a myriad of APIs, platforms, and even a full programming language it actively maintains.

As I look back at the rapid-fire product releases in September and October, I keep coming back to the “superabundance of platforms” phrase and the concerns I raised at that time. What’s funny is that this sense of overwhelming complexity came two years before the HomePod created its own headless variant of tvOS now called HomePod Software, three years before iPadOS was forked from iOS in 2019, and seven years before visionOS put iPad apps on your face.¹ The “alphabet soup” of processors I mentioned at the time have quadrupled in the years since.² But with iPhone Duo, HomeView, and the freshly announced touch-enabled MacBook Pro,³ this decade-long trend of fragmentation has accelerated just in the past few weeks.

Consider the iOS developer story before and after this fall’s announcements. Earlier this year, developers needed to accommodate a predictable iPhone form factor, and adapt its layouts for iPad. Many years of different approaches to automatic layout made iPad apps complex, but these enhancements paid dividends if the app was also published to macOS via Catalyst or visionOS. Admittedly, watchOS and tvOS were entirely different beasts, but typically not a major concern for most apps.

With iPhone Duo, there’s an entire new variant of iOS to design for, with six distinct orientations or poses to design for, none of which match the traditional slab smartphone shape. With HomeView, iOS developers gained another target for CarPlay, of all things, to project their apps to a novel squarish screen. And with yesterday’s MacBook Pros, macOS has begun being optimized for touch, with all-new accommodations for touch targets and multitouch interactivity to consider.

Setting aside firmware updates for AirPods and accessories, and focusing instead on the platforms that impact the developer story and include their own user experience, by my count this company maintains:

• 6 distinct operating systems with iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS
• 2 “extension” experiences for iOS apps with CarPlay and HomeView
• 2 distinct variants of iOS, for iPhones “Solo” and iPhone Duo
• 2 distinct variants of macOS, with and without touch
• 4 different UI frameworks for macOS, with AppKit, UIKit, SwiftUI, and Mac Catalyst⁴

I’m not sure what this means, or if it’s a problem necessarily. Perhaps Claude Code and Codex obviate the challenges of addressing this many development targets for many third-party apps. But for a company traditionally associated with relentless focus, it’s increasingly messy for developers, and ultimately users will feel the impact of software less optimized for the device they’re using.