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steventroughtonsmith
marzipanify
Objective-C2018–2019
steventroughtonsmith / marzipanify

marzipanify

Convert an iOS Simulator app bundle to an iOSMac (Marzipan) one (Unsupported & undocumented, WIP)

3Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
957GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Convert an iOS Simulator app bundle to an iOSMac (Marzipan) one (Unsupported & undocumented, WIP)

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month3 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-06-17 07:09:48 UTC to 2019-03-07 15:04:00 UTC.

012018-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 commentsJun 20182018-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsOct 20182018-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 commentsMar 2019

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Jun 20182018-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-07-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Jul 20182018-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20182018-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20182018-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20182018-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20182018-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20182018-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20192019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Mar 20192019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-04-01 00:00:00 UTC110

What Hacker News says

3 sources
A lot of people are focusing on the user experience in their commentary here, which I totally get, and I would argue is the most important part of this initiative. I personally have a lot of open questions about how a user interface will work across different paradigms (touch and cursor). The first Marzipan apps (News, Stocks, and HomeKit) have lots of weird corner cases and sharp edges. Specifically, some of the "elder statesmen" of Apple commentariat see Marzipan as a threat to the old Mac indie app ecosystem. I get that, and I think that there are definitely some aspects of the old paradigm that are at risk (ie, AppleScript integration, etc). However, I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here. 1) Apple is unmatched in their ability to design user interfaces. It is entirely possible that they will come up with a solution for cross-
Read the rest
paradigm interface that works, or come up with a system to "translate" an interface for multiple target paradigms. 2) Apple has a history of successfully pulling off large transitions like this. In fact, they might be the only company that has done this successfully multiple times. (That is, architecture change and UI framework migration). On top of that, I think all the doubt and suspicion has to be weighed against the following upsides: 1) The upside for the Mac is enormous. The sheer amount of software that could immediately become available on the desktop would probably be the worlds biggest inflow of software to any operating system, ever. And, it is, for the most part, good software. 2) This is mostly a move on behalf of developers. I get the "but no one asked" responses, but the developer story here is probably one of the major reasons Apple undertook the work (that and ARM). 3) This is Apple's answer to Electron for the Mac. It will undoubtedly be better in user experience, performance, and resource usage. (We will have to wait and see whether it is successful, though). Stephen Troughton Smith [0] has had one of the most refreshing takes on Marzipan that I've seen. He maintains an open source tool [1] that will get your iOS app to run on Marzipan. [0] - https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith [1] - https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/marzipanify
In Apple to Target Combining iPhone, iPad and Mac Apps by 2021

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