John Voorhees (Mastodon):
Yesterday, during Gamescom’s opening night ceremonies, Netflix Games released a trailer for Monument Valley 3. The franchise’s sequel from Ustwo Games, which has been in development for five years, will be published exclusively on Apple’s App Store and Android by Netflix Games on December 10th. Monument Valley 1 and 2 are also moving to Netflix Games on September 19th and October 29th, respectively. Both games previously launched on the App Store as paid titles and were later added to Apple Arcade.
Jason Snell:
Netflix has been slowly rolling out a big catalog of games, tied to a Netflix login. There are loads out now, including the excellent Lucky Luna and Laya’s Horizon (both from Snowman, developer of the excellent Alto’s series of iOS games).
Matt Birchler:
Out of curiosity, I checked out the full list of game they currently have available to subscribers, and it’s pretty good! It’s similar to Apple Arcade, but what stands out to me is that it has more of the sorts of games that appeal to me. Below are some standouts, some of which are on Apple Arcade as well, and some that were game-of-the-year contenders in the larger gaming space outside of iOS.
Joe Rosensteel:
Wow. I wonder what the story is behind the scenes that would lead to this (the story is “a truck full of money”). If there was a pantheon of iOS games, the previous Monument Valley games were surely in it.
See also: Filipe Espósito.
Previously:
Update (2024-08-22): John Gruber (Mastodon):
I think Netflix is doing what Apple claimed they were doing with Apple Arcade — except Netflix didn’t lose focus five minutes into the initiative.
[…]
Apple has botched this. It’s hard to believe, but they have. The general gist among game developers is that Apple is a hard-driving partner with whom, mostly likely, you’ll break even at best.
Sumocat:
The major flaw in Apple Arcade is revenue sharing. It’s complicated, pays out over time, and there’s no way of knowing how it will pay out. Netflix pays for content upfront. Easiest way to get paid for anything.
Apple Arcade Business Game iOS iOS 17 iOS App Monument Valley Netflix
Many Tricks (release notes, tweet):
Moom 4 has a completely revamped user interface designed to help you get the most out of Moom. Gone is the multi-tabbed non-resizable window, replaced with this new resizable window.
[…]
The pop-up palette is both customizable and expandable, supporting up to 61 of your own custom actions.
You can use folders (and folders within folders) to organize your actions.
[…]
Every custom action can be renamed, not just saved layouts.
[…]
Any saved layout can be added to a screen edge in Moom’s snap feature. Once you’ve done that, drag a window onto that region, and the associated saved layout’s window locations become drop zone targets[…]
[…]
That Hover entry in the sidebar? It’s an entirely new way of working with windows. By defining some modifier key combos, you can move and/or resize any window—even one in the background—by simply holding down the defined modifier key combos and moving your mouse.
[…]
Chains—combinations of multiple actions—now have two operating modes. As before, they can run as one command (e.g., resize this window and move it to the other display), or they can run sequentially, executing each action in the chain each time the keyboard shortcut is used (e.g., move from one-third left to center third to right third).
This looks really great. With the launch sale, new licenses are $10 (vs. $15) and upgrades are $6. Apple never did add an entitlement for accessibility access, so with the major version upgrade Moom is no longer grandfathered and has to leave the Mac App Store.
Previously:
Update (2024-08-22): Rui Carmo:
The key highlight for me is the new “drop zones” functionality, which looks a lot like the Windows PowerToys’ FancyZones feature I have come to rely on.
Update (2024-09-10): See also: Mac Power Users Talk and Hacker News.
timenova:
The thing with most of these macOS window managers is they lack support for workspaces, an essential feature in WMs like i3.
An API for Spaces is long overdue.
Many Tricks:
But the big news in Moom 4.1 is the expanded access to drop zones: You can now activate drop zones in three different ways, including by holding a modifier key (Shift, Fn, Command, Option, and Control) down while dragging a window. This means you can quickly access any of five different layouts’ saved window locations simply by holding a key while dragging a window.
Update (2024-10-09): John Gruber (Mastodon):
What a perfect example of the shortcomings of the Mac App Store.
Stefan Arentz:
Everyone clicks Allow. Nobody can asses this properly. This is why the bar is so high.
dmitriid:
Indeed, and that is also on Apple: they made sure that no one cares about security popups and made sure that actual useful and pro apps cannot be distributed through the App Store.
The bar isn’t high. It’s crooked and twisted.
Mac Mac App Mac App Store macOS 14 Sonoma Moom Spaces
Jacob Bartlett:
While I recognise many of these words, I frankly didn’t know what most of these actually do. I don’t even know what these things are called.
It turns out the term is “type attributes”.
[…]
Today, we’re going to work together to understand type attributes in detail by recreating the meme step-by-step — you’re welcome to open a Swift playground and code along.
Previously:
Language Design Programming Swift Concurrency Swift Programming Language
Anders Borum (via Miguel Arroz):
Patreon being forced to pay creators through in-app purchase reminded me of a cool app I made two summers ago.
VPN clients on iOS lie on a spectrum between selling you out to data brokers or being expensive subscriptions.
Having prior experience with Digital Ocean my app made it easy to spin up droplets configured as VPNs ready to use from your iPhone.
It was so fast that droplets could be launched on-demand and shut down fast keeping costs extremely low.
The app used OAuth to act on behalf of users on their personal Digital Ocean accounts making the cumbersome task of setting up a truly personal VPN available to the less technical or less patient user.
App Review rejected the app because I didn’t collect payment to Digital Ocean through in-app purchase.
Tried to appeal and spoke to Apple on the phone arguing that the payment was outside my control and that my app was a privacy boon but they did not care.
Patreon was already collecting payments from supporters on behalf of creators, and Apple wanted a cut. You can think the cut is too high or disagree on principle, but it at least makes sense. In this case, Borum didn’t even want to be in the business of selling Digital Ocean hosting services. He just wanted to make a utility to help people use their existing accounts. At least Apple is not requiring him to become an AWS reseller…
Previously:
App Store App Store Rejection In-App Purchase iOS iOS 17 iOS App Virtual Private Network (VPN)
