Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
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Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
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Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#2I was thinking initially that it'd be an especially challenging thing bringing code from OS 9 into the modern era, then I realized that MacOS (formerly OS X) is almost twenty years old.
I've got some old PHP code that dates back to the 90s and is still running although I had to make some changes when my web host EOL'd PHP5 (I'd note that some of the files have a .php4 suffix).
Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#3The old app really still looks quite nice. Even windows 98-era apps look pretty good in a way.
One part of me doesn't like how much space is wasted by the new Mac UI trends shown in the second screenshot, mostly the left side panel. But I understand screens are different these days as well.
Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#4The old app really still looks quite nice. Even windows 98-era apps look pretty good in a way. One part of me doesn't like how much space is wasted by the new Mac UI trends shown in the second screenshot, mostly the left side panel. But I understand screens are different these days as well.
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Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#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, distributing it, having it run or accessed by users is much harder than when I learned to program back then.
Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#6> 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.
Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#7> In 2020, distributing requires learning the intricacies of certificates, code signing, provisioning profiles, hardening, notarization, .dmg creation, gatekeeper, and paying a $99 per year fee.
I had to manually create, sign, and notarize a Mac app the other day and it was total madness. It took multiple tabs of Apple documentation (new documentation, I might add, created this year because everyone complained last year about how the process was impenetrable) and back-and-forth with some seasoned Mac devs before I had something that would launch successfully on a fully updated, GateKeepered system.
Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#8The old app really still looks quite nice. Even windows 98-era apps look pretty good in a way. One part of me doesn't like how much space is wasted by the new Mac UI trends shown in the second screenshot, mostly the left side panel. But I understand screens are different these days as well.
Thanks! Apps back then also tried much more to adhere to the Mac HIG, and in doing so it was pretty easy to wind up with at least not an unattractive app.
I assume you are referring to the inspector panel on your other left; the two main reasons it is wider are (1) that it shows HTML5 validation error text descriptions in the 3rd tab and (2) this is the same width we use in our other application Hype, so they now look like they belong together. I did have a moment of feeling that I was contributing to the "war on information density" with this change.
Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#9Maybe I was just the right age as a teenager back then and it does feel cliche to say, but there really was something special and magical about Mac software like this back in those days. I miss the pinstripes and aqua glossiness, but also the fact that software in other platforms just seemed so boring in comparison!
Re: Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App
#10> 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.
I think that's doing it wrong because you don't need those features until you do... At which point you should invest in them. Otherwise, I don't see the benefit of having them. If all you end up with is one user.