Apple’s Catalyst program is now in full swing, bringing your favorite iPad apps to MacOS. Todd Benjamin, MacOS product marketing director, provided an update, saying Mac owners will benefit from a whole new app selection pulled from the iPad ecosystem.
Apple first teased Mac Catalyst during its WWDC conference in 2018 followed by a full-blown reveal during the following annual conference. It enables developers to easily port their apps from the iPad to MacOS, resulting in the Mac App Store’s new section labeled Apps You Love, Now On Mac, shown below.
“For iPad developers, MacOS Catalina makes it easier than ever to bring your apps to the Mac. The process starts by checking a single box in Xcode,” Apple states from inside the Mac App Store. “For Mac users, that means many great iPad apps will soon make their way to the Mac.”
Highlighted apps include Carrot Weather, GoodNotes 5, Rosetta Stone, PDF Viewer, Post-It, Twitter, and many more.
Benjamin said in a recent interview that iPad app developers don’t need a second MacOS team. Instead, Mac Catalyst gives them a “huge head start” in the development process. It also expands their reach into an ecosystem that was otherwise inaccessible due to resources.
“For many of the early Mac Catalyst developers, it was their first time ever developing an app for the Mac, and it’s amazing what they’ve been able to achieve in such a short time,” he said. “We’re learning a ton from these early adopters and are planning additional resources and support to help them create amazing Mac experiences with Mac Catalyst.”
Mac Catalyst is certainly good news for Mac owners. The Mac App Store isn’t exactly overflowing with the apps end-users consume on iPhones, iPads, and even Android devices. Twitter, in fact, removed its app from the Mac App Store in early 2018, wanting Mac owners to use the website instead. Now it’s back.
With Catalyst alongside MacOS 10.15 Catalina, there’s now new hope for a more robust Mac App Store.
“Catalyst is a great, long-overdue initiative to bring MacOS and iOS closer together, to help the platforms learn from each other,” says developer Troughton-Smith. “I can clearly see it as the obvious path forward for any new apps I will be writing.”
Affinity’s new all-in-one creative app is finally coming to the iPad, nearly a year after Canva launched the redesigned desktop version for Mac and Windows. Creatives have been asking for the iPad release ever since, especially because files created in the new Affinity app cannot be opened in the older V2 iPad apps.
Affinity already has Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps on iPad, but the new release combines those tools into the same unified app that Canva launched on desktop last year.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Apple has just launched its latest iPad mini with a notable set of upgrades, including an OLED screen, improved speakers, and a more resilient build. It also gets a new chip, and the whole package costs $200 more than its predecessor. But if you look closely at Apple’s online store, you’ll realize that $699 isn’t enough to get you the most powerful version of the A20 Pro chip inside this tablet. In fact, even if you pay $800 for the 256GB model, you still won’t get the beefiest variant. Only when you jump to the 512GB trim, which costs an absurd $999, do you get the most powerful flavor of the A20 Pro.
The $999 model gets more than extra storage