This is poetry. I have been working on a personal project for the last 10 years that replaces every other app I used to use - E-mail, calendar, and all the others we all use on a daily basis - and every time someone sees me using it they ask "Wow, this is amazing, how do I download it!?", and the answer is always the same: you don't. There's a beauty to engineering something having yourself as the target user, and no…
Similarly, albeit with much less effort, I configured (neomutt) into the most beautiful and best, rapid UX mail client ever. I use it at work and for private purposes. People are impressed when looking at it. A handful of them asked for the config. Don't think any one ever got used to it.
An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
161–170 of 296 posts
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#162Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#163This post changed my mind about sideloading on iPhones. Before I read it I was firmly in the camp of “lock it down, so grandma doesn’t get hacked.” But now I just think it stops people from making home cooked meal apps like this. I also think it propagates the notion that computers are magic and should only be programmed by magicians. But no software developer I have ever met has felt this way. I don’t feel this way.
I think grandma-mode should still be the default, but with some arcane startup ritual to enable sideloading that you only have to do once, with said process being replete with "HERE BE DRAGONS" warnings. Basically make it more like a mac or a typical chromebook. Pixel phones still let you root them, don't they?
The EU DMA and the resulting competition may cause Apple to release a lower priced tier for apps with a smaller distribution, and I look forward to that.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's a beauty to engineering something having yourself as the target user, and no one else. 100%, I'm following a similar approach to you with yet another notes app solely for my own use. Have you written more about your personal project anywhere? One thing I only realised once I started building my own tools, is that you become - from day one - an unmatched world-class expert in using that tool. This seems obvi…
One of the worst things in the world is explaining how it works to someone else, then watching them use it poorly. I have a convenience tool I made for myself, but shared with my coworkers. I deeply regret sharing it because nobody knows how to use it effectively
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#165> In our actual world, I built it in about a week, and roughly half of that time was spent wrestling with different flavors of code-signing and identity provisioning and I don’t even know what. I burned some incense and threw some stones and the gods of Xcode allowed me to pass. This resonated with me. This is a major source of friction to "scratching your own itch" in modern software development. Makes it extremely…
It's spectacular how awful Apple's signing/certs/profiles dev UX is.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#166This is poetry. I have been working on a personal project for the last 10 years that replaces every other app I used to use - E-mail, calendar, and all the others we all use on a daily basis - and every time someone sees me using it they ask "Wow, this is amazing, how do I download it!?", and the answer is always the same: you don't. There's a beauty to engineering something having yourself as the target user, and no…
Its like your own self built cottage in the woods.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#167Your writeup, the idea of the app, and how you executed it is a breath of fresh air. The idea of building for a TAM (total addressable market) that is in single digits is a nice contrast to pretty much everything that's out there. Such an app is one step higher than a learning project, with oodles of utility, albeit for one or a few people. But those are the most important people in your life, so its much more fulfil…
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think grandma-mode should still be the default, but with some arcane startup ritual to enable sideloading that you only have to do once, with said process being replete with "HERE BE DRAGONS" warnings. Basically make it more like a mac or a typical chromebook. Pixel phones still let you root them, don't they?
You should check out the arguments in Epic vs Google, where an arcane process to sideload apps was used as a data point against Google. By disallowing any exceptions, Apple can make the case that this is simply not a supported feature of their product. The EU DMA and the resulting competition may cause Apple to release a lower priced tier for apps with a smaller distribution, and I look forward to that.
I know that's what the ruling essentially implies, but that doesn't sound like a reality we should be encouraging or even entertaining, IMO. It's a failure of the US legal and antitrust enforcement system if this line of reasoning is accepted, blatantly so in this case.
I, for one, hope that Apple is eventually forced to open up their platforms to sideloading worldwide.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish more people would take stuff like this, oss it, and disable PR requests and issues. Let others use it / learn / build on it with the clear expectation that feedback and contributions are unwanted.
To be fair, when you do that you would approach coding the application differently, which adds to development time. Also, it can change the whole mentality of developing it. Probably why more people don’t do that, though I agree it would be nice.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly, albeit with much less effort, I configured (neomutt) into the most beautiful and best, rapid UX mail client ever. I use it at work and for private purposes. People are impressed when looking at it. A handful of them asked for the config. Don't think any one ever got used to it.
What about SSO? Sadly, none of the terminal-based email clients I tried supported this, but since you said you use this at work, maybe it supports SSO login to your work email?