I note that the author of the article begins by saying one thing and then closes by saying another.
In the first paragraph....
"One of the interesting things about the trajectory of iOS development over the past couple of years is how Apple has continued to extend its capabilities, bringing it continually closer in functionality to OS X."
Doesn't Einstein's Theory of Relativity imply that motion is relative to the perspective of the viewer (cut me some slack here). The point being, we can't say if iOS is moving closer to OS X or if OS X is moving closer to iOS.
I would see the author's premise as incomplete because the cross fertilization between OS X and iOS is definitely bi-directional. Lots of the new "features" or "technologies" in Yosemite and El Capitan were extensively field tested in iOS. Face it both open source Darwin Unix kernel. OS X and iOS are basically GUI frameworks riding on the same open source Darwin kernel which was derived from BSD Unix. At this point the biggest difference between the two is Finder or the lack thereof.
Twenty five or so years ago there was a relatively short lived buzz in computer science from a proposal to do away with hierarchical file structures altogether and access files not through application types but by content. Theoretically that had a lot of traction and at least one OS was constructed along those lines. It never gained popularity for several reasons instead it went underground while awaiting developments.
- There was too much investment in proprietary application technology for developers to be willing to risk the change to a new paradigm
- The proposal envisioned all files being based on a common open source markup language independent of either applications or file type (document, spreadsheet, database, etc.)
- The same file couild be opened and edited by a word processing, app, spreadsheet app, database app, etc. and the choice of app would be based on user preference and the task at hand and not tied to proprietary technologies
- File access via content and/or tags not necessarily file names or physical location in storage.
When the proposal was originally made there were too many essential technologies that either did not exist or were incompletely developed not to mention the processing
horsepower was simply not available yet.
Segue to the latest versions of iOS and OS X.
- There is still a huge amount of inertia in software development as a result of training, cost of change, lack of incentive to change. Developers who converted from procedural code (Basic, Fortran, Cobol, C) to object oriented design, development, and coding found that for the most part all of the investment in procedural coded applications was a wash and had to start over from scratch. As a result most of the code from the major software developers (Adobe, Microsoft, etc.) is still procedural and exceedingly difficult and expensive to modify or change. Small developers and Apple who made the transition to OO found their long term maintenance, development costs, and turnaround time dramatically reduced and in Apple's case that was roundly criticized by Wall Street which is notoriously short sighted. This is still a barrier to change.
- Viable open source standards for universal markup languages exist today and are used in a surprisingly large number of places. The .odt, .ods, .odp formats used by OpenOffice and its siblings being an excellent example. Even Microsoft's .docx and .xlsx formats are semi-successful attempts to make those open source standards proprietary.
- Spotlight in OS X, together with its various permutations such as smart folders provides the necessary global access by content or tag function. (Yes Spotlight has its critics but IMHO that is more a matter of what users — including me — are accustomed to and lack of integration into applications.)
So what was once a radical and to many an unthinkable proposal has now become a viable possibility in OS X and iOS and the vector of Apple's development is obviously headed in that direction.
To widen the field still further, and likely to upset the traditionalists even more, throw in iCloud. As I view iCloud , and I think this is also Apple's view and perhaps the view of the majority of the computing community, the computing environment is moving, or in many cases has already moved, away the individual device to the cloud. In Apple's case specifically iCloud. The desktop computer, the smart phone, the tablet are no longer viewed so much standalone devices, rather as portals to the cloud. Given that paradigm it is inevitable that OS X and iOS are cross fertilizing each other's development process and they are drawing closer together.