from Hacker News

Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App

by tumultco on 5/5/20, 9:02 PM with 102 comments

  • by saagarjha on 5/6/20, 12:04 AM

    > 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.

  • by stevoski on 5/6/20, 5:03 AM

    I created a commercial Mac desktop app in 2008. I sold it off late last year (2019).

    It stopped being fun somewhere along the way. This was partly because I never knew what new requirement Apple was going to add with each new annual release of macOS. Would my app work? Would it not work? How many days, weeks, or more of work would I need to do to keep my app working while not actually making it better for my users?

  • by lorenzfx on 5/5/20, 11:57 PM

    > 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.

  • by spongeb00b on 5/6/20, 12:08 AM

    Maybe 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!

  • by dhosek on 5/5/20, 11:26 PM

    I 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).

  • by bluedino on 5/5/20, 11:29 PM

    The 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.

  • by ashishb on 5/6/20, 5:30 AM

    The 99$ annual fee is ridiculous. Big companies don't talk about it because it is a regressive tax. It hurts hobbyist more than anyone else.

  • by Razengan on 5/6/20, 3:25 AM

    > In 2003, you could switch the config to Release, hit build, zip the app, and then put on a web server.

    You can still do that.

  • by lemax on 5/6/20, 1:17 AM

    This feels similar to Glitch, FKA HyperDev, Fog Creek's developer playground.

  • by rcarmo on 5/6/20, 7:36 AM

    I still use Tumult's Hype 3 (Pro, I think) to do HTML5 animations - it's pretty great, even if moving to 4/Pro for the (very few) features I'd like to have seems a bit steep at $99.

    Whisk appeals to me because I _know_ it's going to be a polished, lightweight app, but with VS Code having quite usable previews I don't see the value of its current price point (to me).

  • by elsurudo on 5/6/20, 8:36 AM

    Cool story. In a way I'm surprised one would try to adapt the old code after so much time has passed, rather than just starting fresh. It can definitely be interesting, just more... frustrating.

  • by earthboundkid on 5/6/20, 1:36 AM

    Every modern web framework has auto reload, so this is an app that’s only targeting people who know HTML well enough to hand write a page but don’t know about modern web development. Good luck, but I can’t imagine it’s a growing market.