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Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

You can run iOS apps directly on M1 Macs. Some developers flip a bit to disable this, but there any many that don’t.

In this case, the app is running in a sandbox with a user-space that simulates the iOS user-space [0].

> Your apps use the same frameworks and infrastructure that Mac Catalyst apps use to run, but without the need to recompile for the Mac platform.

> Although you can run your iOS apps unmodified on a Mac with Apple silicon, Mac Catalyst lets you build your app specifically for macOS and customize your app’s behavior on that platform.

Mac Catalyst was a multi-year effort by Apple. Doing the same to run macOS apps on iOS would probably be even harder due to how complicated macOS is compared to iOS.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/runn...

It seems you agree, except previously you said “Likewise, you can't just run a iOS app on macOS. You need to recompile your app with Mac Catalyst for it to work. Even then, it's a bit jank.” That’s not true, you can just run an iOS app on macOS.

I edited my original comment. The "It's a bit jank" part is still true though. When you enable running your app on macOS without compiling specifically for macOS with Mac Catalyst, it still uses Mac Catalyst, but transparently. So, you still get all the issues of Mac Catalyst, but without the compiler warnings. Your application may crash or behave strangely.

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