Growl in Retirement • Hacker News Board

Re: Growl in Retirement

#231

Post by baryphonic » Sun, Nov 29, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #63

perardi wrote: post #2

Pour one out for a fondly remembered enhancement to Mac OS X. In a somewhat similar nostalgic vein, I remember haxies… https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Haxie …and as linked in the blog post, Adium. https://adium.im Seemingly indispensable apps/applets/desk accessories that were either made unworkable by security changes, Sherlocking, or just the changing services we use. (Just look at those Adium services, and wistfully…

I sorely miss Adium. I’ve learned to accept that I just have half a dozen mostly feature compatible chat apps open to communicate with the people who use them... but Adium was a real gem. I had it configured to minimal everything and never thought about what protocol I was using. Just a consolidated list of people and a tiny window with active chats in tabs. I’ve seen several attempts at unifying the current chat lan…

Hear hear. Adium was almost a vision of how things could have gone. Now I have five different dedicated desktop chat apps, four of which run in Electron-based abominations (driving up CPU and GPU utilization) plus Apple Messages. It's a disgrace. The days when I could have AIM, FB messenger and GChat all side-by-side in a native app are missed.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#232

Post by kevin_nisbet » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:08 AM UTC

specialist wrote: post #205

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience in Canada from several years ago, the business teams in wireless telcos don't see it as providing you internet on device x. The ip connection on a device is a gateway towards a service, and the telecoms want to be providers of services, and the differentiator from competitors is having better and different services. In my opinion the biggest fear of those business development teams is to be treated a…

This jives with my own experience. Great comment, thanks. One group was trying to monetize services which were already free. Like make a list of data provided by stock mobile runtimes (Android, iOS), such as location data, and then create a developer portal for accessing that same data thru web services. I'm having trouble remembering the details because I didn't even understand it at the time. My buddies were contra…

Much of what you said rings true with me and brings back chills of having a meeting to plan a meeting to discuss actually doing work, except for one piece.

> The carriers would print money forever if they simply fired everyone unrelated to the actual network (cables and towers) and charged everyone a flat rate. And some overhead of the basic infrastructure services like provisioning numbers and 911.

In my experience with these projects, I'm not sure it's safe to conclude that they add up to enough to significantly change the economics of the network. I know working on the projects feels like a huge waste of time and energy, but we're talking a million dollars here and there, when the cables, towers, and core people are spending 500 million plus per year. I'm sure it adds up, but all businesses have overhead, and I don't see it as a game changer.

As for charging a flat rate, I'm actually of the opposite perspective. I realize it's probably unpopular for this community, but for a long time I've been an advocate that mobile usage should be metered by use. The problem I have with the flat rates, is the users who use less always end up subsidizing the power users who use significantly more. Much of the network investment goes into supporting the top end users, but it's everyone else who has to pay for it. For wireline access this might be a bit different roi calculation, but for mobile wireless I think this is a real economics problem, and flat rate is not an incentive for a carrier to support or retain a power user who wants to use lots of data.

So personally I prefer a model that works more like electricity usage or filling a gas tank, where you pay for what you use, and you naturally get a feel for watching 4k video all day costs more. This of course needs the tools in place to understand where the usage is coming from, not to surprise anyone, etc, etc, so it's not a perfect model, but compared to years ago and the rates that could be offered, it seems atleast to me like a more natural model.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#233

Post by fierarul » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

latexr wrote: post #228

fierarul wrote: post #206

I'm still salty that the macOS Notification Center was introduced as a "for-pay" API as it initially worked only on AppStore apps and then on signed apps. I'm still not sure if it works on unsigned apps, but considering all apps must be notarized on macOS, it doesn't really matter anymore.

> I'm still not sure if it works on unsigned apps You don’t even need an app; you can show a dialog from AppleScript. Using a shell: /usr/bin/osascript -e 'display notification "whatever"' You can add a title, subtitle, and sound[1]. Adding a custom icon is trickier and does require a built app. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

I knew you can use `osascript` but this still does not tell me if it works with unsigned apps or not. For all we know `osascript` is signed which means it respects the rules.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#234

Post by kule » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 9:16 AM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #115

liquidise wrote: post #6

> Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X They are right to say this, as the current Notifications system in OS X is ripped nearly pixel-for-pixel from Growl's implementation a decade ago. Like Spaces, Quicksilver, Cover Flow and others, Growl paved the way for a lot of the usability enhancements OS X gobbled up in recent years. Apple folks: take note. These are r…

> you might find another OS starts to benefit I actually really truly hope this happens. I want to see the same sort of love macOS gets from developers, showered on some/any open source OS (e.g. on some Linux/FreeBSD/etc distro). I've been using Linux for nearly two decades, since I was 12 years old . (I still remember the excitement of installing Linux dual boot on my parents' PC years ago.) I've been wishing and wa…

For the record I'd love this too, I just don't see it happening anytime soon.

I've been thinking about this recently I'm not not sure the (vocal) Linux community would accept what it might take.

* Developers want to work on projects that interest them and provide a benefit to others.

* However, developers also want to make a good living so they need an audience willing to pay money and make it worth the time it takes to polish something to a decent finish.

* Some developers would prefer to keep their code closed-source.

(Again the vocal) Linux community all to often comes across as everything should be not only be free open-source also free to buy - it's almost a dirty word if you charge for software.

Additionally on the Apple-side of things:

* There's a culture of what constitutes a good app, it drives a certain perfectionism to the final polish that you rarely see in linux desktop apps. Personally I've not seen a huge amount of apps on linux that cater for different user audiences. As technical aware users we vastly over-estimate the amount of technical knowledge and patience an average user has to figure something out.

* Apple is now offering an audience from a multitude of devices. You can build your app for a watch, phone, tablet or desktop. e.g. if someone buys your app on the iPhone they are more likely to be interested in your apps for other devices so there's more opportunity to cross-sell.

Ubuntu is probably the closest I see to being able to set some proper direction here. But I've yet to see them double-down and really set their mind to it, they seem to set a direction hold for while then back-down and go another direction. From the outside, it seems like anytime they've really tried to do something different or _the horror_ make some money it seems to just rile up the vocal linux community.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#235

Post by toyg » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

jolux wrote: post #218

coddle-hark wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy access to a huge library of books is one of the main selling points of the Kindle. DRM is good for Amazon.

Yeah, because they wouldn’t be able to offer it otherwise. If they could offer the same content without DRM at the same price, I’m certain they would do it. Apple did with the iTunes Store.

They wouldn’t, simply because their position as the dominant player in ePublishing gives them a massive incentive to lock-in users. Which is what their DRM does: you cannot move books to non-Amazon devices, so you’re stuck on Kindle forever. That this also satisfies publishers is something of a side-effect.

They did the opposite with music (they actually sold simple standard mp3s, unlike what you get from iTunes) because they were challengers, not incumbents, so the priority was to attract users.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#236

Post by seized » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #71

liquidise wrote: post #6

> Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X They are right to say this, as the current Notifications system in OS X is ripped nearly pixel-for-pixel from Growl's implementation a decade ago. Like Spaces, Quicksilver, Cover Flow and others, Growl paved the way for a lot of the usability enhancements OS X gobbled up in recent years. Apple folks: take note. These are r…

How do you send a notification now without Growl? Each time I try to google for a tutorial, they all say “just use growl.” Ultimately I gave up and installed growl, and it works quite nicely. I’d just like to pop up a notification programmatically via a bash script. :)

Pushover. Dead easy to use in a bash script etc with curl or wget. It also has an email gateway.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#237

Post by hansvm » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #232

specialist wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This jives with my own experience. Great comment, thanks. One group was trying to monetize services which were already free. Like make a list of data provided by stock mobile runtimes (Android, iOS), such as location data, and then create a developer portal for accessing that same data thru web services. I'm having trouble remembering the details because I didn't even understand it at the time. My buddies were contra…

Much of what you said rings true with me and brings back chills of having a meeting to plan a meeting to discuss actually doing work, except for one piece. > The carriers would print money forever if they simply fired everyone unrelated to the actual network (cables and towers) and charged everyone a flat rate. And some overhead of the basic infrastructure services like provisioning numbers and 911. In my experience…

I'd be more okay with metered billing if:

- The fees weren't disproportionate with respect to any infrastructure investments. Why should my internet bill triple over the span of a few years while speeds decrease unless I call, wait on hold for a day, and ask to cancel service?

- There weren't an aspect of double dipping -- why are we being charged for peak bandwidth (with absolutely no guarantee of reaching those speeds) and _also_ being charged for exceeding bandwidth caps equivalent to a few dozen minutes of full use? Why is that "extra" bandwidth more expensive than buying several extra full internet plans?

- It didn't open the door to metering different content sources differently based on the ISP's monopolistic whims.

There are physical bandwidth limits, and those need to be allocated somehow, but the status quo isn't great.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#238

Post by latexr » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 8:15 PM UTC

fierarul wrote: post #233

latexr wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still not sure if it works on unsigned apps You don’t even need an app; you can show a dialog from AppleScript. Using a shell: /usr/bin/osascript -e 'display notification "whatever"' You can add a title, subtitle, and sound[1]. Adding a custom icon is trickier and does require a built app. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

I knew you can use `osascript` but this still does not tell me if it works with unsigned apps or not. For all we know `osascript` is signed which means it respects the rules.

You can call `osascript` from inside your app, or you can export an AppleScript script as an app. So yes, it works on unsigned apps. It has the same Gatekeeper caveats as any other unsigned app, but there’s nothing about notifications that’s especially locked.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#239

Post by K7PJP » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

tabob wrote: post #163

I can say that Growl and desktop notifications are the very first thing I disable. Not once on 20 years of computing did I ever think: “I want applications to interrupt what I’m doing and steal my limited ADHD focus because they’re lonely and need attention”.

I loved Growl because it helped me manage my ADHD, I could monitor conversations without switching apps. For some of us communication is the main purpose of computing.

The issue today is that every application now offers notifications, and only some of them are useful. So disable the ones you don't need.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#240

Post by jolux » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #235

jolux wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because they wouldn’t be able to offer it otherwise. If they could offer the same content without DRM at the same price, I’m certain they would do it. Apple did with the iTunes Store.

They wouldn’t, simply because their position as the dominant player in ePublishing gives them a massive incentive to lock-in users. Which is what their DRM does: you cannot move books to non-Amazon devices, so you’re stuck on Kindle forever. That this also satisfies publishers is something of a side-effect. They did the opposite with music (they actually sold simple standard mp3s, unlike what you get from iTunes) bec…

iTunes has not sold music with DRM since 2009.

I assure you that they care much more about you buying books from them than about "lock-in" from you using their apps and buying their devices. Proof: their apps absolutely suck and their devices are not much better. The devices exist to get you to buy more books from them. It is absolutely not a side-effect that their DRM satisfies publishers.