I just downloaded this app and somehow just the experience of writing in it feels so good. Kudos for simplicity and clarity of thought to prioritize experience over effort.
9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
331–340 of 405 posts
Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#332Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#333Amazing story!
Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#334The ability to go low/no-dependencies, as mentioned in the blog post, is one of my favorite things about Apple platforms. It’s not just possible but practical to build a capable, highly polished app without bringing in anything third-party thanks to the richness and depth of AppKit/UIKit. Few frameworks can compete, with even other juggernauts like Qt coming up short in comparison.
I've built my note-taking app[1] in Qt, and while I worked hard to make it look good, I'm very satisfied with the result. Also, it turns out to be much faster than comparable native apps (performance benchmarks available on the website). [1] https://www.get-plume.com/
Looks great! Did you use QT Quick or the Widgets?
Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can write app that will work on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android using Delphi.
The Windows 7 example on their home page does not inspire confidence. I'd much rather be locked into macOS than be locked into this
I brought it just as an example of what is possible. I do not give rat's ass whether it "inspires one's confidence" and who wants to be locked into what.
Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#336All the "fringes" stuff is where the magic is. The author suggests that no one notices some of the refinements, well this may be true on day one, but people discover these touches as they grow more familiar. Those subtle thoughtful additions are what makes the difference between an app I like using, and one I love using. They help me feel a couple of things: 1) A connection; I feel like I noticed something just for t…
Apple has a lot of niceties like this in their software. I've had so many times I thought "I wonder if I can do this?" and it just works because a designer thought of it before me. Prime example I stumbled upon recently: In Apple Music, you can press+hold an album or song to pop open an action menu. I use this a lot for adding songs to the queue. There's an item to add it next in the queue, and another to add it last…
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Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#337Great read! A question for the author (as I see they're in this thread and hopefully still around!) -- do you have any good resources and recommendations for learning AppKit and Mac development in general? I've been (very slowly) dabbling around writing a Game Boy emulator in Swift and, surprisingly, some of the biggest difficulties I've had have been actually getting stuff on-screen, rather than the emulation itself…
Thanks! Can't recommend anything specific, to be honest. I've been piecing together information from old Apple docs, StackOverflow, API header files, and a bunch of really weird blogs. A lot of trial and error as well. I think your best bet is ChatGPT. It has seen every possible use-case of Apple APIs from GitHub so it should know a lot. I've gotten some good tips from it for very specific things that did not exist o…
I'd second ChatGPT for development in general.
Whilst I'm just a web developer, I've had times, even using third party libraries that aren't particularly well documented, where ChatGPT seems to have a shockingly good grasp of the library and seems to understand it better than the documentation does.
It's a lifesaver honestly.
Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've built my note-taking app[1] in Qt, and while I worked hard to make it look good, I'm very satisfied with the result. Also, it turns out to be much faster than comparable native apps (performance benchmarks available on the website). [1] https://www.get-plume.com/
Looks great! Did you use QT Quick or the Widgets?
Must be Widgets since using QML at work makes me regularly wanna rip my hair out. Its one of the worst frameworks Ive used once you go beyond simple hello world programs.
Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#339nice write-up
Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great writeup. Enjoyed even the transparency on pricing thinking, but one price that doesn't seem to have been experimented with is allowing a one time purchase that is not an in-app purchase. In-app purchases make your app unavailable to company employees where the company manages the Apple device using MDM and purchases software using e.g. Apple Business Manager or the older volume purchasing. The $99 opt…
Thank you for the suggestion! I've always avoided non-App Store distribution to keep things simpler. It's a nightmare to manage many different licensing schemes. Now I don't have to have any backend. Everything is done via the built-in, robust App Store mechanism that just works. I hope Apple will figure something out in the future. And I think they will since they want to increase their "Services" revenue as hardwar…
App store, just charge your lifetime price, instead of free with IAP.
So you'd have 2 apps listed:
- Paper (Lifetime) ... $99
- Paper ... Get
Companies can buy employees the first one because it has a price.
> Everything is done via the built-in, robust App Store mechanism that just works.
Good call, and so true.