Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

blog.timac.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 145 posts

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#61

Post by GeekyBear »

WoodenChair wrote: post #9

It's really not an impressive showing for SwiftUI. 4 iterations later and after being told it's "the future" in unequivocal terms, it's still at 12% (and only like 3% without any AppKit combined (last chart)). It's not dogfooded for any productivity apps. For Ventura, rewriting "Font Book, System Settings, and Tips" is not exactly confidence inducing. If they rewrote Pages or Final Cut Pro, that would wake people up.…

> 4 iterations later

AppKit (NextStep) has been iterated on for over 30 years now.

Apple's development strategy is like that of old school Microsoft. They make a choice like Win32 and just keep on iterating on it over the long haul. Four years of SwiftUI would still be described as very early days.

Nothing like the development strategy of the week you see Google and the Microsoft of the past decade push as the one true future then abandon almost immediately.

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#62

Post by fingerlocks »

dangelov wrote: post #38

I recently took to rewriting what should be a very simple app from Obj-C to Swift with SwiftUI - because it's the future. The CPU usage was at 5% while idle, just for having a simple tiny pie chart that updates. Not to mention that for some seemingly basic things I still had to use AppKit anyway. Wrote basically the exact same thing 1 day later in Swift with AppKit and NO SwiftUI and it sits at 0% CPU usage with less…

Was this with the debugger attached? Did you do any further profiling in instruments on a release scheme to determine the cause of the cpu usage? You should be able to narrow it down to the specific sys calls.

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#63

Post by filoleg »

mch82 wrote: post #37
filoleg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely like my iPad pro a lot, and use it on regular. And I also think that having some functionally useful version of Xcode on it would be amazing. However, that wouldn't replace macOS for me at all. I see a lot of value in iPad as a device I use on a regular basis, but even with all those features, I still need a general purpose computing machine for plenty of reasons. No matter what featu…

Out of curiosity, do you use a lot of windows? I’ve used a Mac my whole life. Recently, I’m using 4-finger swipe to switch full screen apps. I’m also choosing the “snap” layouts over dragging windows around. It’s useful to have 2 folders on screen to be able to move files between them, but I don’t stack windows like I used to.

> do you use a lot of windows?

I do, yeah. Though I stopped using windows for work and just use it daily for gaming or just general reading/browsing/minor task machine. Occasionally I would write a bit of code on it, maybe a small python script or some in-browser debugging, but that's about it. For work, audio/music recording related stuff, coding side projects, and all other sort of personal usage, it is macOS. I also use linux for work quite a lot, but usually from an ssh terminal on a mac machine.

If I had to put numbers on it, it would be around 60/40 mac/windows split on weekdays, and around 30/70 mac/windows on the weekend. Heavily averaged out, because there are definitely days and even streaks of days when i exclusively use only one OS or the other.

Also, do you mind elaborating a bit on what you meant by the swiping story?

On a personal tangentially related note though, I also like a lot how the swipe gestures are shared between macOS and their touch-based devices' gestures. That's how i accidentally ended up discovering a few nice and useful macOS ones. Once i realized that three-finger gestures on a mac trackpad act as an equivalent of single-finger gestures on iPhones, the first thing i tried was a three-finger swipe left and right. And yup, it was virtual desktop switching. Then i tried a three-finger swipe from the bottom, and it zoomed out and brought up all open windows on screen at the same time, and then returned back to what it was before when swiped back down. Not gonna lie, it felt a bit mindblowing how nicely designed and thought through it felt.

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#64

Post by charlus »

lelandfe wrote: post #57
lancesells wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most new macOS apps from Apple seem to be pretty awful and don't feel like an actual mac app. Home, TV, and Music have some really horrible ux/ui. Music is slightly better than the others but you would think they would have the resources to make these right. TV and Music are subscription-based in a way which seems like a no-brainer to add resources to make a proper app.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/155735766117120... This thread of UI issues with the Ventura System Settings really says it all. Most of this would have been shocking in a different era of Apple.

It’s a beta, this is not shocking in any era of Apple, just access and expectations have jumped ahead.

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#65

Post by [deleted] »

CharlesW wrote: post #59
lelandfe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/155735766117120... This thread of UI issues with the Ventura System Settings really says it all. Most of this would have been shocking in a different era of Apple.

For non-Mac users, Ventura is a forthcoming version of macOS which will be released this fall. Developers are reporting UX issues with beta releases now, and in my experience, many of them will be fixed by release. However, a System Preferences rethink is going to take multiple OS releases to get right.

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#66

Post by yakubin »

jbverschoor wrote: post #2

Yup. and basically all apps (re)created suck big time. They're just iOS ports. You're forced to do litereally everything using your mouse, and for example the Home app, it's basically useless if you want to organize/edit things. We're going to a CRUD operation world, where you have to do every edit one-by-one. And then in a few years, people will be amazed that you can save so much time because of a new "bulk editing…

I started using macOS with Big Sur (still on it) and I don't understand why Apple would remove the ability to select buttons in dialog windows with the keyboard. I've googled it and it seems you used to be able to do that on macOS, but when I follow the instructions on Big Sur, I can't move the selection from the button active by default to the other one (e.g. "Ok" vs "Cancel"). That means my right hand is making runs between keyboard and mouse all the time. Very unergonomic.

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#67

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

WoodenChair wrote: post #9

It's really not an impressive showing for SwiftUI. 4 iterations later and after being told it's "the future" in unequivocal terms, it's still at 12% (and only like 3% without any AppKit combined (last chart)). It's not dogfooded for any productivity apps. For Ventura, rewriting "Font Book, System Settings, and Tips" is not exactly confidence inducing. If they rewrote Pages or Final Cut Pro, that would wake people up.…

>after being told it's "the future" in unequivocal terms

Who told you this? :D

SwiftUI is mostly useful for apps that show a bunch of nested lists. Basically websites, but natively. It's Apple's answer to React Native or something, and it looks cool in demos with the live preview and whatnot. But serious apps like Pages, FCP, Finder, Calendar, etc. will never be written with SwiftUI. The paradigm is just too wasteful for these kinds of interactive apps.

Heck, large apps aren't even using Swift! It's just too inefficient at their scale. And before you say it's due to legacy ObjC code - no, Facebook rewrote Messenger from scratch in ObjC(++) a few years ago. Swift is cute, but it lacks the maturity and stability of ObjC.

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#68

Post by TakeBlaster16 »

tmpz22 wrote: post #55
lancesells wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most new macOS apps from Apple seem to be pretty awful and don't feel like an actual mac app. Home, TV, and Music have some really horrible ux/ui. Music is slightly better than the others but you would think they would have the resources to make these right. TV and Music are subscription-based in a way which seems like a no-brainer to add resources to make a proper app.

Like most big tech companies I'm sure they find success metrics in every project they do. Especially the ones consumers hate.

Our telemetry says users are spending more time than ever before in the settings app. Engagement is up! Good work, team!

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#69

Post by mietek »

linguae wrote: post #29
rvanmil wrote: post #7

I remember making fun of Microsoft trying to combine mouse and touch in a single UI. And yet here we are, Apple doing the same thing to macOS, resulting in the same shit desktop/mouse experience that macOS has become. I understand the reasons but it seems so incredibly un-Apple to sacrifice UX for this.

Exactly. I haven’t upgraded my Macs since Mojave, for this and other reasons. I’ve grown increasingly disillusioned with the direction of the Mac under Tim Cook. What happened to the Macintosh emphasis on building software for creators that was easy to use? Last year I moved on to Windows 10 on a Surface Pro and a dual boot Windows 10 and FreeBSD with KDE on a Ryzen 9 workstation. I still have my 2013 MacBook Air and…

I would love to use such a desktop environment. Do you have a link for your project?

Re: Apple’s Use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in macOS

#70

Post by ProfessorLayton »

charlus wrote: post #64
lelandfe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/155735766117120... This thread of UI issues with the Ventura System Settings really says it all. Most of this would have been shocking in a different era of Apple.

It’s a beta, this is not shocking in any era of Apple, just access and expectations have jumped ahead.

Software bugs notwithstanding, the actual design choices made in the settings menu are baffling.

Having items needlessly nested under modals/popups is a design choice and the complaints have little to do with the fact that the beta is buggy.

Post reply on HN