They already have one App Store where a single purchase gives you a cross platform app with a different frontend across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

Unifying the Mac frontend into that ecosystem just seems like the obvious conclusion.

I don't know that they'd strictly be the same executable, but at least as far as the user is concerned they would be the same piece of software. From a developer perspective, multiple UIs built with slightly different flavors of AppKit depending on the UI paradigm, including the Mac which is currently targeted by AppKit.

This doesn’t work for professional apps, many of which are a collection of work areas controlled by tens or even hundreds of menu options.

iOS doesn’t handle that kind of UI well.

There’s also the cost issue. All but the most exotic iOS apps cost less than $100. Many professional apps cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

It’s not just a fundamentally different market. The products are fundamentally different in critical ways.

I can imagine a hybrid MacPad product - maybe a dual-panel clamshell - but if it’s done badly it would be the worst of both worlds.

I auspect it could a succesful replacement for the iOS product line, with dual MacPadOS and iOS support.

But I can’t see it working for professionals without a lot of breakage.

I don't see it taking over for everything necessarily, but there are a lot of places it would help. Like Paprika Recipe Manager, which costs $5 for the iPhone/iPad universal app, but if I wanted the Mac version it's $30. Part of that is a "because I can" pricing, the market will bear it because there's just not that much competition compared to iOS apps. Another part is "because I have to," it's a much smaller market and a bunch of additional work to make the Mac version, so the price has to cover those costs with fewer users.

If it didn't need a totally separate UI framework, ports like this would take less effort and more apps would do it. Maybe you can't sell it for 6x the cost any more, but a comparatively small amount of work gives you a leg up on the competition.

Twitter is another example. They killed the native Mac client earlier this year and said "For the full Twitter experience on Mac, visit Twitter on web."