These days mark the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X, later renamed as macOS.

Really the underlaying tech is the same, but the naming allows them to move past 10.X into other unexplored territories.

There’s a lot of talk these days about Macs, specially after the introduction of Apple Silicon, which certainly is an exciting move. There was some years where there was debate over the tech world on whether Apple should drop the Macs and focus on iPads or iPhones. Because the old Personal Computer paradigm is dead, right?

Nonsense.

While the famous analogy by Steve Jobs about cars and trucks is valid (just because there’s more cars that doesn’t mean that the trucks are getting nowhere, as they are more suited to certain tasks), I think it doesn’t capture really the essence of why smartphones and tablets are not really replacements for Personal Computers (being that desktops or laptops)

It’s not only that the virtual entirety of software that runs in iPhones and iPads is built in Macs. It’s that their builders uses Macs for their main workflows.

Sure, there’s some people that can run their work in iPads or even 90% of their flow in smartphones. But the form factor makes much more productive to work in a full personal computer. With a good keyboard, with key shortcuts, with more space in the screen. The fact that the iPad uses now an external keyboard is prove of that.

Obviously, macOS is tailored for all those elements, in the same way that the iPhone is for being handled with a hand, with less precision input. Writing a long email becomes more complicated, copy/paste is sensibly more frustrating. The Mac makes all those actions easier.

And that’s why the Mac is the lynchpin of everything at Apple. Because it’s at the source of all other products. It’s where the iPhone is designed and where the iPad and Apple TV apps are written.

macOS is Apple’s core.