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Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

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Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#81

Post by tonyedgecombe »

josteink wrote: post #70
_jal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App signing has always been inexplicably horrible; other than Cupertino contempt for their developers, I really don't know what would explain it, it certainly doesn't have to be that way. But things have gotten worse for developers recently with Catalina. I should note that I don't write mac-specific code - I mainly write things that target Linux servers. The Mac has long been the best unix workstation on the market.…

> App signing has always been inexplicably horrible; Maybe on Mac. On Windows you just run signtool.exe and you're done. > I require that my tools do what I tell them, not the other way around. Sounds like you'll be glad once you can ditch that old Mac and get a proper Linux dev-machine ;)

The problem on Windows is getting and/or renewing your authenticode certificate. Dealing with the certificate authority is like spending time in a Gerorge Orwell novel.

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#82

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Frondo wrote: post #58
realusername wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, with all these Gatekeeper changes, it's almost as if Apple doesn't want non-app-store apps at all. Of course that's their idea, The Mac Store has been a moderate failure, so now they are pushing people into it slowly more and more every release. As Apple and Microsoft (with their Windows Store) have learned, if there's a real choice between an app store and a standard install, nobody will pick the app store…

Heh, I actually prefer the app store version wherever I can download it, because I like not having to think about updates; I let the software updater do it. Is this an uncommon attitude?

I used to but then I had one app where the developer switched to a rental model but didn't let existing customers continue with the old model.

I don't have any particular problems with the rental model but in this case I had bought it on the basis of it not being that.

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#83

Post by Razengan »

userbinator wrote: post #55
Razengan wrote: post #53

> In 2003, you could switch the config to Release, hit build, zip the app, and then put on a web server. You can still do that.

...and that's how a lot of stuff is released on GitHub, but you can't get into Apple's walled garden that way.

You can still distribute macOS apps on your own, just have to get users to trust you.

Why do you want to publish on the Mac App Store? If you think there's an advantage, then the costs are justified.

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#84

Post by soapdog »

elsurudo wrote: post #78

Cool story. In a way I'm surprised one would try to adapt the old code after so much time has passed, rather than just starting fresh. It can definitely be interesting, just more... frustrating.

I guess Objective-C/Cocoa might have not changed much between the last HyperEdit version and now. If the developer organized his codebase well, replacing the old webview with the new stuff and so on should be less work than rewriting the whole app (IMHO).

I haven't coded for the mac in more than a decade but what I remember from ObjC/Cocoa was that it was quite pleasant to use and very powerful. By powerful I mean that the ratio between LoC and smiles on my face was skewed towards smiling.

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#85

Post by Lammy »

ihuman wrote: post #66
grishka wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can still make an app for Mac without submitting it to the app store, without having to deal with majority of those issues. Not any more. Apple is so much of a control freak lately that non-app-store apps on Catalina are still required to go through them for "notarization" to be allowed to run on an unmodified OS — and yes that requires the $99 account. For me personally, that's the reason I'm staying on Mojave…

> non-app-store apps on Catalina are still required to go through them for "notarization" to be allowed to run on an unmodified OS Apple tries to hide the option, but you can still run non-notarization software on a Mac. The first time you run the application, open in from the right click menu. It'll give you a warning, and if you select OK it'll run. After that you can just run it by double clicking like normal, and…

That's fine for you and I, but good luck distributing an app to end users that way.

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#86

Post by rickdeckard »

mullingitover wrote: post #75
makecheck wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so frustrating that automation and command-line is treated as almost second-class citizenship on macOS. You know how I log into a remote server securely without ever entering my password? I enter the command "ssh" and the server name. Why the hell isn’t notarization implemented, effectively, as "notarize appname.app" where all the details are resolved securely, just as magically, to your developer keys? Yet if y…

> It’s so frustrating that automation and command-line is treated as almost second-class citizenship on macOS. Sure, they're horrible, but I look at it as Apple generously creating jobs for engineers. I had a full-time job as a build engineer specializing in navigating the Lovecraftian nightmare of iOS build automation. Sure, they could've made it easy, but instead they chose to help transfer large sums of money from…

This is a hilariously weird response to a valid criticism. "Yeah, internet-outages are horrible. And sure, AT&T could fix that. But instead they chose to help people to disconnect from time to time and focus more on their families, which is overall the biggest contribution a company can make to society and should be rewarded by buying more of their services"

I keep seeing this kind of other-worldly self-defense only related to Apple. Positioning a brand as an element of the users' personal identity is truly an impressive thing...

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#87

Post by josteink »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #81
josteink wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> App signing has always been inexplicably horrible; Maybe on Mac. On Windows you just run signtool.exe and you're done. > I require that my tools do what I tell them, not the other way around. Sounds like you'll be glad once you can ditch that old Mac and get a proper Linux dev-machine ;)

The problem on Windows is getting and/or renewing your authenticode certificate. Dealing with the certificate authority is like spending time in a Gerorge Orwell novel.

But unlike with Mac, you are free to shop in the market for the least Orwellian CA, because there’s more than just one.

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#88

Post by ashishb »

dan1234 wrote: post #76
ashishb wrote: post #67

The 99$ annual fee is ridiculous. Big companies don't talk about it because it is a regressive tax. It hurts hobbyist more than anyone else.

I don’t think Apple want hobbyist apps in the store. They want apps that will create revenue and the fee creates a filter of sorts. It would be good to be able to side load hobby apps, but that’s never happening. The fee does also get you 2 tech support requests, which should connect you with their engineers if you need help (never needed this, can’t say how extensive it is). Also, I did read somewhere that they waiv…

Google Play store has a 25$ one-time fee. Much more affordable IMHO than 99$ annual fee. If I am being charged a 99$ fee, I simply can't share my creation without finding a way to make money off of my users. That isn't easy. Future hobbyists will be created on non-Apple platforms.

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#89

Post by andai »

ken wrote: post #63
kick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a question you get a lot, and I apologize in advance if it is, but: Why use Mac, if it makes so simple of things difficult?

Because there isn't any other operating system that makes all the things I want to do with a computer any simpler. We've got only 3 major desktop operating systems, and they're all overly complex and poorly designed in lots of ways. Since the late 1990's, I've alternated: I use a Mac for a while until I get fed up with it, and then I use Linux for a while until I get sick of that, and then I go back. (I've used Windo…

> I just need enough time to forget how much I hated the other one.

This is exactly how it is for me! Except I switch between all three. It's like StarCraft, each has its strengths and weaknesses.

Same way with iOS and Android. iOS is much nicer to use until I run into the inevitable, "Oh, i'm not allowed to do that", so I just carry two phones around...

Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

#90

Post by Nextgrid »

kccqzy wrote: post #6
lorenzfx wrote: post #5

> I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say the amount required to learn to distribute software exceeds the amount I needed to know to write the first beta of HyperEdit! I wonder if it would have gotten off the ground if I started today. This mirrors my feeling. It might be easier to learn to program say TypeScript or Go today than it was to learn php or C in the late 90s, but actually creating a complete program, d…

Same story in cloud. It takes less effort to write the program than to properly set up CI/CD, permissions, auth, auto-scaling, backup, monitoring, and so many more.

To be fair, bare-metal dedicated servers are still a thing, end up cheaper than the equivalent cloud offering on bandwidth alone (as they usually come with unmetered bandwidth), and you can just SFTP your project in there and run it with nohup (not saying it's a good idea, but if you're just playing around then it's perfectly fine).
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