Apple News, Voice Memos, Home and Stocks Mac Apps to Get Major Updates to Make Them More Mac-Like

The Apple News, Voice Memos, Home and Stocks apps on the Mac will be getting major updates and new designs to make them more Mac-like, Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi told CNET in an interview.

News, Voice Memos, Home, and Stocks were all apps that were ported over to the Mac in 2018’s macOS Mojave as part of the precursor to Project Catalyst, Apple’s newly announced feature designed to let iOS developers easily adapt their apps for the Mac.

Since their Mac launch, the four apps have mirrored the style of an iOS app, offering little more in terms of design and functionality. Now that Project Catalyst has launched, though, Apple plans to revisit these early Mac app ports.

Federighi says that because the underlying technology has improved over the course of the last year, the apps will be “automatically” upgraded thanks to Project Catalyst’s more unified, native Mac framework. Apple also plans to make additional improvements on top of that to create a Mac experience.

“We’ve looked at the design and features of some of those apps and said we can make this a bit more of a Mac experience through changes that are independent of the use of Catalyst, but are just design team…