It's been long in the coming, and finally Apple has made it possible for iOS developers to adapt their apps for MacOS with an updated UIKit that makes it easier to port to Mac computers.
While both iOS and MacOS already share some features, such as Launchpad and the dock, but the idea of merging the two operating systems is still not feasible at least for the foreseeable future according to Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering at WWDC 2018.
Apple's UIKit tools will help developers to bring iOS apps to MacOS starting in 2019, with the developers able to adapt their apps to Mac features not present on iOS apps, which features include: mouse input, window resizing, scroll bars and related controls, copy and paste, and drag and drop, among others.
Albeit, MacOS and iOS apps are written with frameworks, the two software can run tasks such as accelerating graphics, rendering text or tracking fingers on a touch screen.
But, the difference in the devices make porting an app from one to the other pretty hard at the moment. So Apple intends to bring some key frameworks from iOS down to Mac, thus allowing developers to leverage iOS software for building Mac apps.
The question of whether Apple will merge MacOS and iOS may perhaps be liken to the rumor of Google's planned merger of Android/Chrome OS, and afterwards face-out the later, which has remained elusive.
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