{"id":17948,"date":"2017-05-10T13:59:45","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T17:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=17948"},"modified":"2017-05-10T16:28:22","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T20:28:22","slug":"30-years-of-popchar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/10\/30-years-of-popchar\/","title":{"rendered":"30 Years of PopChar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Günther Blaschek<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It all started back in 1987, when I tried to find a few special characters in the Symbol font. Apple’s Key Caps utility was not very helpful because I had to try all sorts of keyboard combinations to see which characters were available.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

“Desk accessories” were an exception, as they were accessible from the Apple menu and could open a window on top of the current application. I therefore created a desk accessory called “Character Map” which displayed all symbols in a given font and let me copy and paste them into a text document.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Starting with version 3 (2006), PopChar had a search function for finding characters by their Unicode name. But what do you do if you don't know the name of a character?<\/p>\n

In 2014, we extended PopChar 7 with a graphical “shape finder”.<\/p>\n

Click a button, draw a shape and let PopChar search for characters that look like this.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

To survive all these changes, PopChar has been redesigned and re-implemented from ground up again and again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is a good example of an app where the paid upgrade<\/a> model worked well. Looking at the initial version, you might have thought that it was pretty much done. It solved the problem; how many more features<\/a> could it need? It doesn’t seem like the kind of app that would need a lot of maintenance or that customers would want a subscription<\/a> for. Yet platforms changed, Unicode and Emoji emerged, and the app continued to receive development attention and thrive<\/a>. By App Store standards, 30 Euros is a lot for what seems like a little utility, but it’s a deceptively small app. There is a lot of functionality and design there, and from what I’ve heard from customers over the years, people love it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Günther Blaschek: It all started back in 1987, when I tried to find a few special characters in the Symbol font. Apple’s Key Caps utility was not very helpful because I had to try all sorts of keyboard combinations to see which characters were available. […] “Desk accessories” were an exception, as they were accessible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1421,101,257,133,295,423,30,32,1381,1517,258],"class_list":["post-17948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-app-subscriptions","tag-business","tag-emoji","tag-font","tag-history","tag-keyboard","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macos-10-12","tag-popchar","tag-unicode"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17948"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17961,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17948\/revisions\/17961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}