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Mac App Store - Guilty Pleasure
I feel bad when I read tales from developers such as this:
As a Mac App Store developer whose apps have been in the store since the beginning, it’s not a great feeling to know that any critical update might be held up because Apple decided to get more uptight about something that was OK for the past 8 years. - Daniel Jalkut on Micro.blog
I feel even worse because it was the same weekend that Daniel emailed me to say he had changed some code which would hopefully remove an image uploading issue I was having with MarsEdit. And I had opted to purchase MarsEdit via the Mac App Store that very same day.
It hadn’t even occurred to me to purchase via his web site, even though he might have made a few extra dollars or cents that way. Like I have done so many times, I checked where it was available and defaulted to my purchase via Apple.
Woe is the Store of Apps for the Mac
I have read many an article telling us why the App Store is broken. And I am on board with those for the most part. I am sure it’s not perfect. Okay, I know it’s not perfect.
From the 30% cut that Apple takes from all sales, reduced to 15% for subscriptions lasting more than 12 months, to the technical restrictions with iCloud, sandboxing, etc. Not to mention1 the lack of contact developers have with their customers. The list is long.
There have been well publicised cases of high profile companies leaving the Mac App Store, and then equally well publicised stories of some of them returning - no doubt, one has to think, with a little encouragement from Apple. I am sure this to and fro will continue for some time.
But…
Let’s hear it for the Mac App Store
The Mac App Store provides users with security. Of different sorts:
Not every Mac app is the greatest example of app development, and there is an argument that a greater degree of quality checking should be included in the app review process, but at least I can be reasonably assured that anything I install will play nice with my system and other applications. This means I am less likely to be installing a keylogger, virus, etc. I am less likely to putting the data on my Mac at risk to unexpected appropriation. My system and my data is safer.
I can more or less trust Apple with my banking details, at least in so far as I can trust anyone. Financially - compared to the wide range of developers that they represent who have not built up any relationship with customers - I am confident sharing credentials with them.
And as much as developers the world over would love to have a database of thousands of potential customers to leverage for marketing upgrades, their other apps, or other services, I am glad that this is something I have to opt into by signing up to a mailing list or otherwise connecting with the developer.
None of this is to suggest that Mac developers should not be trusted to write software, process payments, or manage a mailing list. Just that there are millions of people out there making software, and I think it’s good to have a proxy in place that can be trusted. I mostly don’t have to consider who the third party developer is.
And for those Mac owners who are new to the platform, or who lack confidence in the complexities of installing computer software, the App Store model offers all of the above alongside a unified search system2 and one-click installation.
Thanks to Daniel
I would like to see changes to App Store policies, for both developers and users. But on balance, where possible, I will mostly likely continue to support developers through via the App Store rather than purchasing direct.
While we wait until Apple lowers their fees and is more transparent their app review processes, I am grateful to the developers who jump through the hoops to keep their software available in the Mac App Store. Thanks, Daniel.
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Day 34 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: always animated
I still have a ways to go with animations. Whether that is what animation to use, or how best to invoke them. It’s not a topic on which I have much dwelled to date. But…
Challenge complete, even if I didn’t provide much creativity.
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Day 33 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: fighting transitions
The Canvas live preview is great for making UI changes. But when it fails to display transitions correctly and you play with code for 30 minutes to try to work out why… and it turns out it works fine in simulator and on device.
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Day 32 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: you lost that animated feeling
If only the genie effect offered us three wishes rather than three approaches to animating views. Perhaps I need to clean that lamp. Or perhaps I need new wishes.
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Day 31 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: always avoiding work
Is it cheating to use
mapandreducebefore they are introduced?Take a good look at what you want to do, and try to come up with the long-term lazy way, not the short-term lazy way. (Larry Wall)
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Day 30 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: copy and paste
When you are tired and find yourself copying the code and pasting into Xcode, you know that you are not giving this endeavour your full attention. Must try harder.
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Day 29 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: objectionable-c
Background information today, including bridging to old code. Presumably the trend is to deprecate the Objective-C frameworks and replace them with Swift equivalents?
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Day 28 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: always sleeping
Today I mostly preferred VStacks and Steppers over Sections and Pickers. But I loved getting rid of a modal dialog box and replacing it with a live value.
Actually, I always like getting rid of modal dialog boxes.
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Hello theme edits to date:
- played with colours and the animation
- formatted dates
- swapped the direction of next/previous buttons
- added category labels to each post
- added FontAwesome-powered links
Still to fix:
- year boundary pagination issue
- fix About and add Now pages
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It’s taken two years, but: I have finally set up my Micro.blog, have been building up micro-posting habits with routine repetition, have a vague plan to kick start longer form posting, and have even been theme editing. 🚀🌙
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Day 27 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: okay dad, whatever
Well, my first experience with building an app that uses machine learning and my Mac is telling me I need to go to bed earlier. Or stop consuming caffeine.
This training data may not be robust, but the potentional here is huge!
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Day 26 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: Skynet 1.0 alpha
Not much SwiftUI today. A little bit about dates and calendars. With “hard” warnings. A little bit of machine learning. With “easy” disclaimers. I love living in the future.
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Day 25 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: a little quarter given
It’s been a long day, so I didn’t embellish today’s challenge, nor did I tidy up the code with any custom views, etc. Plain and simple wins the race today. 🐢 Job done. 🏁 Maybe make it bling tomorrow? 🤔
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Day 24 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: always decomposing
I like the programmatic approach to UI design, but straightforward View decomposition, coupled with custom views/modifiers, is the golden key that unlocks the magic chest of jewels and treasures.
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One to One - Reflection
As a new term begins in a brand new decade, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on technology in our classrooms.
I have now worked in my current school for longer that I have been with any single employer; at the start of the 2010s I was Head of Computing. This gave me and pupils in our department privileged access to technology every day; access to tools which encouraged independent problem-solving, access to tools that supported richer content creation and consumption, and access to the ever broadening frontier of information that the Internet was providing. That access enhanced learning.
The rest of the school worked like most schools at the time; a few laptops which could be booked out but rarely were, and even more rarely to good effect, and three and half general purpose computer suites which could also be booked as required. For a school of around 1000 pupils, having about 80 pupil facing, general purpose computing devices was woefully inadequate. But normal in the sector.
There was money spent on tech in schools. Let us not forget the interactive whiteboard investment made in Scottish education over the last 20 years. How can we? No matter how hard we try. The money rarely resulted in tech being in the hands of the pupils.
The Problem
Despite my classroom being a hub of technological potential, the pupils then went home to a mixed selection of toys. There was undoubtedly the occasional home brew Linux proxy server in built in a bedroom to bypass the school filtering system, but that was not typical. The technology, for some classes, was available for as little as 40 minutes a week.
And I was so much better off than the Modern Studies teacher who wanted to carry out an impromptu online activity in the classroom, perhaps in response to breaking news of the day. Filling out a booking form, walking their class across the campus, and then discovering that a quarter of the machines in the computer suite would spend half of the lesson updating to the latest patch of Windows. Did I say “impromptu”?
If only pupils had their own device. In all classes, and at home.
This is old hat now - it’s widespread, although certainly not ubiquitous, for schools to either have or be investing in their own one-to-one deployments. It was a different world nine years ago. It’s also not enough just to throw devices, network connectivity, or money at the problem. There have been many one-to-one device deployments worldwide in the past decade, but what proportion of them have been successful, and by what criteria? The research is still limited in scale and scope.
Perhaps it’s not even the correct problem. But it’s the one I identified.
The Solution
Here’s the thing. The plan is that this is the first in a series of posts I write to capture my own journey through a one-to-one deployment. So the ‘solution’ will build up over time. It will include pitfalls and suggestions, and might then serve as a roadmap for others - or perhaps a series of warning signs.
There are a number of topics I have sketched out to cover, but I am open to questions and suggestions - so get in touch if you want me to cover anything in particular. Details to follow.
The Verdict
So, you might be the kind of person that likes to read the last few pages of a book first. You are keen to know whether the deployment worked? Minimising the number of spoilers…
My school still has three and a half computer suites, but they are almost never used. One-to-one devices are used in eight year groups of the school, from Primary 6 through to the end of secondary, and there is a class sets of devices for use by younger years as well as devices in the nursery. We have repeatedly invested in our infrastructure and software systems as device and network usage has grown.
Personally, I am trusted with a class far less often these days, but I can now more confidently rely on the learning experience being as rich and topical as the combined creativity of myself and my class allows, and I know the potential is more or less uniform for the pupils once the bell rings.
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Day 23 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: it’s all in the details
If what you wanted was a great overview of how SwiftUI views and modifiers work, today is the day. Nice and clear.
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I wonder how few schools even knew of the existence of SQA Performance Reports?
Perhaps they should be wrapped into a national QA framework for all schools? Rather than being sold as a service.
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Day 22 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: neverending story
Rather than have an endless game, I popped a restart button into GuessTheFlag, but it should really have a destructive warning alert of some kind as it currently zeroes the score with a single tap.
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AR - Supremacy or Hellscape?
The Coming Supremacy of AR - Allen Pike
Leaving aside whether any company can be entrusted to curate our Augmented Reality experience without it being a “hellscape”, I did think the potential of AR could only be unlocked when John Gruber had his previous question addressed:
Why would people who don’t need glasses want to wear thick glasses all day? And they think it will replace phones in a decade? Do we really want our phone display in front of our eyes all day? I just don’t get it.
However, I share Allen Pike’s optimism that the technology will mature to the point of being useful for consumers:
Apple may be optimistic in thinking that the timeline will be only 10 years long, but it seems clear to me that if physics really do make a good AR headset possible – glasses that can usefully and practically render information interleaved with our natural vision – it will change everything.
And his two dozen potential AR features sure sound compelling.
So, the question is not can we build it, or even will they wear it? Rather, what are the minimum set of features the average user will trade a “hellscape” for?
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Day 21 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: do you have a flag?
SwiftUI has managed a great balance between simple and powerful with UI declaration across horizontal, vertical, and layered axes - with modifiers allowing fine tuning. I now need to see the same UI on different devices.
