I can’t help but wonder if — given equivalent knowledge of UIKit and AppKit — iOS development isn’t harder now than Mac app development. At least for some kinds of apps.

Mac apps don’t have to deal with size classes, safe area insets, two very different classes of devices, getting killed by the system, a split view controller that isn’t suitable for some common purposes, presentation controllers, user activities, and — toughest of all — background app refreshing.

And some things that were Mac-only, such as multiple windows and contextual menus, are now iOS features too.

Even if I’m wrong, I can’t help but notice, as we work on NetNewsWire for iOS, that iOS development is starting to approach Mac-app-like complexity, and is already more complex in some areas.