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

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

#81

Post by yakubin »

grishka wrote: post #73
yakubin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 run…

The enter key activates the blue (default) button, the spacebar activates the one with the focus ring around it. You can move the focus ring with tab.

Experiment:

1. Open TextEdit.app

2. Type some random characters.

3. Attempt to quit with Cmd+Q.

4. A dialog box shows up, prompting you to save the file. Hitting Tab just cycles between the "Save As" and "Tags" text fields. There is no way for me to select the "Delete" button with Tab.

Challenge: quit TextEdit.app in that situation with they keyboard, without using the mouse, and without saving a file.

That's a broader topic btw: Apple's apps often make the Tab button only cycle between text fields. In Safari when logging into Spotify I can't reach the "Remember me" checkbox with Tab. It only cycles between the login and password textfields and the URL bar. Luckily, other browsers don't have this flaw.

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

#82

Post by WoodenChair »

GeekyBear wrote: post #61
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 tr…

People were building huge productivity apps on NeXTStep even in the early ‘90s.

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

#83

Post by Shank »

yakubin wrote: post #81
grishka wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The enter key activates the blue (default) button, the spacebar activates the one with the focus ring around it. You can move the focus ring with tab.

Experiment: 1. Open TextEdit.app 2. Type some random characters. 3. Attempt to quit with Cmd+Q. 4. A dialog box shows up, prompting you to save the file. Hitting Tab just cycles between the "Save As" and "Tags" text fields. There is no way for me to select the "Delete" button with Tab. Challenge: quit TextEdit.app in that situation with they keyboard, without using the mouse, and without saving a file. That's a broad…

I believe this is possible if you turn on "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts. I have no idea why this isn't on by default.

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

#84

Post by weikju »

carlycue wrote: post #4

In 2021, the Mac grossed $30B. iPad ($30B) and iPhone ($196B) together grossed $226B. Mac users might think they're still the most important part of Apple but it turns out, the Mac is quite insignificant compared to Apple's mobile OS's when you put things in perspective. I am still surprised that Apple is pouring resources into the Mac. Nowadays, smartphones and tablets are the main computer for 90% of people. The so…

> the quicker we can get rid of the Mac with its decades of legacy baggage

legacy baggage, a lot of which is/was well-designed or well-thought-out baggage, that is also being thrown out the window in the rush to mobile-ify everything, making people less productive overall, because big companies (and users) are bent on the idea that users shouldn't learn how to use their tools.

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

#85

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #67
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…

> Who told you this? :D

Apple explicitly said so in a WWDC 2022 video. I think it’s the State of the Platform one, or if I’m wrong, the one titled like What’s New in SwiftUI. Their statement is that while UIKit and Objective-C will serve us for a long time, the best way to write new apps for Apple platforms is with Swift and SwiftUI.

I don’t believe that though. Swift is a great language, I agree, but UIKit is way ahead of SwiftUI and I would never use SwiftUI in a product where meeting deadlines matters, at least not in the next 3 or more years.

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

#86

Post by yakubin »

Shank wrote: post #83
yakubin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experiment: 1. Open TextEdit.app 2. Type some random characters. 3. Attempt to quit with Cmd+Q. 4. A dialog box shows up, prompting you to save the file. Hitting Tab just cycles between the "Save As" and "Tags" text fields. There is no way for me to select the "Delete" button with Tab. Challenge: quit TextEdit.app in that situation with they keyboard, without using the mouse, and without saving a file. That's a broad…

I believe this is possible if you turn on "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts. I have no idea why this isn't on by default.

That works, thanks! Although there is a weird bug that going forward with Tab cycles through everything and goes back to the first field, whereas going back with Shift+Tab stops at the first field.

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

#87

Post by cr__ »

yakubin wrote: post #81
grishka wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The enter key activates the blue (default) button, the spacebar activates the one with the focus ring around it. You can move the focus ring with tab.

Experiment: 1. Open TextEdit.app 2. Type some random characters. 3. Attempt to quit with Cmd+Q. 4. A dialog box shows up, prompting you to save the file. Hitting Tab just cycles between the "Save As" and "Tags" text fields. There is no way for me to select the "Delete" button with Tab. Challenge: quit TextEdit.app in that situation with they keyboard, without using the mouse, and without saving a file. That's a broad…

CMD-Delete almost always serves to press the Delete button or the equivalent in those dialogs. Not sure how you're supposed to find that out though!

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

#88

Post by yakubin »

cr__ wrote: post #87
yakubin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experiment: 1. Open TextEdit.app 2. Type some random characters. 3. Attempt to quit with Cmd+Q. 4. A dialog box shows up, prompting you to save the file. Hitting Tab just cycles between the "Save As" and "Tags" text fields. There is no way for me to select the "Delete" button with Tab. Challenge: quit TextEdit.app in that situation with they keyboard, without using the mouse, and without saving a file. That's a broad…

CMD-Delete almost always serves to press the Delete button or the equivalent in those dialogs. Not sure how you're supposed to find that out though!

TIL. Thanks!

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

#89

Post by alexashka »

trinix912 wrote: post #32
alexashka wrote: post #28

Meh. Apple has near infinite resources, it can do whatever it wants. The rest of industry has moved on to Electron and keeps bucking, trying to get react native or some other cross platform thing to work well enough on mobile. Apple itself uses webviews for complex UI in their desktop Music app. Are there any non-trivial apps Apple has created from scratch in the past decade using its own libraries and frameworks? No…

Electron is not a good option either. It defeats the entire point of making a desktop app in first place. It's slow, wasteful, abstracts too much of the filesystem away for a desktop app, doesn't integrate into the OS, doesn't use the OS-provided UI widgets, etc. etc. It also depends on what you mean by "non-trivial". For me, something like Final Cut Pro is non-trivial. I'm yet to see that kind of thing (one that's a…

I hear you on the downsides of Electron. The upsides are that there is a plethora of ready-made UI and backend integration solutions to choose from and an abundant pool of candidates to hire from, for a reasonable wage.

I don't think there are more than 1000 people worldwide who have shipped a moderately complex mac-native app within the past decade.

Apple doesn't seem to think it a problem - they're well on their way to becoming a company people despise but continue using, like Microsoft, Google and the rest of em.

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

#90

Post by Nextgrid »

alexashka wrote: post #28

Meh. Apple has near infinite resources, it can do whatever it wants. The rest of industry has moved on to Electron and keeps bucking, trying to get react native or some other cross platform thing to work well enough on mobile. Apple itself uses webviews for complex UI in their desktop Music app. Are there any non-trivial apps Apple has created from scratch in the past decade using its own libraries and frameworks? No…

> Apple itself uses webviews for complex UI in their desktop Music app

And that's why that new app is complete garbage. If you think iTunes was bad, this is much worse. iTunes at least had some actual functionality - its replacement has mostly whitespace.

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