Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Apple Developer App for Mac

Juli Clover:

The Mac version of the Apple Developer app will mirror the iOS version, offering up a Discover section with new and relevant developer news, a videos section with sessions created by Apple engineers, and a WWDC section.

The WWDC section of the app will allow developers to access Apple’s keynote event on Monday, June 22, as well as the Platforms State of the Union and more than 100 technical and design-focused engineering sessions.

Unfortunately, it’s an unpolished Catalyst port. We’re still waiting for the Catalyst improvements that Craig Federighi said to expect last June. Many Mac developers are still using macOS 10.14, so they won’t be able to run the app.

See the comments from:

Previously:

Update (2020-06-18): Marcin Krzyzanowski:

NSDateFormatter.timeZone would help with worldwide remote dates.

Benjamin Mayo:

The enforced 2/3rds UI scaling sets an app two steps back from the get go. Most UI controls require manual customisation and reimplementation to make them look and act like their macOS counterparts. Some elements like sidebars do transform their behaviour when running on the Catalyst idiom, but the Catalyst stack seems unfinished as it doesn’t accurately recreate how an AppKit source list works. It is just wrong.

[…]

If you use AppKit, you can make a bad app. If you use Catalyst, you can easily make a bad app. At the same time, Catalyst is attracting developers who cannot justify to allocate resources to Mac-specific work. […] I am sad that Apple — the platform owner and biggest company in the world — is leaning on Catalyst so heavily, and not even setting a good example in the process.

John Gruber (tweet):

As things stand right now, Catalyst seems like a framework written by people at Apple who don’t know what makes for a good Mac app, for iOS developers who don’t know what makes for a good Mac app.

No one would be happier than me to see big news on this front next week at WWDC. But man, what a sad statement about Catalyst the Mac Developer app is. It’s not like Catalyst heralds a new style of Mac app — it’s not about an old style vs. new style. It’s just about paying attention to details or not.

See also: Rob Griffiths.

Update (2021-10-20): Paul Haddad:

Please tell me I’m not the only one who tries to press the space key to pause video in Developer app. Wouldn’t be so bad if it did nothing, but it changes the search term and clears the view I’m watching.

1 Comment RSS · Twitter

Well, this certainly bodes well for next week.

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