Categories
trivia

Ten years

It was ten years ago that the original iPhone software developer kit was released. I’d just bought an iPhone a couple of weeks earlier so the timing was perfect. I downloaded a copy and… well… here we are. There are a bunch of retrospectives, but here is probably the best.

As for me, I never really intended to start a business. I goofed around with the SDK for a month or two. It was only when the App Store launched without a Delicous.com client that I got serious finishing off the code that I’d started. The end result: Yummy. There have been more apps, the formal foundation of Wandle Software and lots more.

Yummy is still around. As are five other iPhone apps and a Mac app. If you’ve ever downloaded one of the apps, thank you. If not, now’s your chance!

Categories
news

Yummy 3.3.0

Arriving just in time for the iPhone X, here is Yummy 3.3.0. Simply, this is the culmination of lots and lots of small updates, the most visible of which are related to changes in iOS 11 and for the iPhone X.

iOS 11 Search Bar

A simple example: in iOS 10 (and earlier), when you searched for a bookmark, the search box moved up to the top of the screen. The “correct” behaviour in iOS 11 is that the search box is part of the navigation bar. Not a huge difference but one that required a surprising amount of work.

“The Notch” in the new iPhone X means that the way that Yummy displayed its status (in the Status Bar) no longer worked so that needed replacing. I also changed the “bookmark on the clipboard” functionality, making it ask first rather than just present an add bookmark screen.

As always with a new OS release, a few things broke and had to be fixed (3D touch being the main one), but I also spent a lot of time refactoring code and fixing bugs. There is now only one remaining known crasher, which is still one too many, of course.

There are two “buts” that I want to mention. First, given that iOS 11 is now on over 50% of devices I felt this was a good time to drop iOS 9 support. Secondly, I’ve not been able to squish a bug where there’s a visual glitch on the iPad’s bookmark view. Bouncing back to the menu screen is enough to get rid of it but — obviously — I want to do better!

Anyway, lots of under-the-covers updates and updates for iOS 11. That’s Yummy 3.3.0. Hope you like it. It should be available on the App Store in the coming days.

Categories
support

iOS 11, macOS High Sierra and our apps

At this time of year I get the same questions: do Wandle Software’s apps work on the new version of iOS and do you intend to support its new features? 2017 is no exception, so here’s the news about iOS 11.

As far as I know, all our apps will continue to work correctly on iOS 11. In slightly more detail:

  • Yummy. There appear to be some visual glitches that are caused by some changes, but functionality is unaffected. I’ll issue an update to fix the glitch when I’ve figured out what’s causing it. I also plan to support improved drop and drop support, though maybe not with that first version.
  • Quick Calendar. Designed with iOS 11 in mind. I’ve not seen any problems with the Mac version.
  • ShareEverywhere. With the exception of Facebook and Twitter, it should continue to work as before. iOS 11 removes the system level sharers for Facebook and Twitter, and these are what ShareEverywhere uses. I’m currently not clear whether this functionality can be easily restored.
  • Rootn Tootn. I’ve tested and seen no problems. I’ll keep an eye out when the Golden Master is available.
  • www.cut. I’ve tested and seen no problems. On iPad, it even supports the drag-and-drop functionality.
  • Glider. I’ve not tested the beta version of tvOS yet so I’m not sure. However, I do not anticipate any problems and will fix them if I find anything.

The summary: minor fixes, some minor updates. While both new operating systems have some nice new features, they don’t really affect Wandle’s apps.

Categories
news

Quick Calendar (for iPhone and iPad)

Quick Calendar (iOS)

Following the success of Quick Calendar for Mac, I am happy to announce the imminent availability of Quick Calendar for iPhone and iPad. (Okay, the fact that I wanted it also factored into the decision to make it!)

Without wishing to undersell it, it’s basically the same as the Mac version. It shows the current month — or slightly less in the default “small” mode — in the Notification Center. It’s free but you can donate in the main app. There’s no obligation, but if you think it’s useful I’d appreciate the support. It helps keep it maintained on new versions of iOS and potentially funds new projects.

I use it all the time. I hope you find it useful, too.

Update (5 September): now available on the App Store!

Categories
news

Yummy 3.2.3

I’m pleased to announce the latest release of Yummy. It mostly includes a few important bug fixes — including one for a bug which prevented some people from saving bookmarks — but there are also some nice new features too.

  • 3D touch (peek and pop) on bookmark list views
  • Optionally show date in the bookmark list
  • Show count of bookmarks with metadata (HTTP status, thumbnail, etc) in Account setting screen
  • Removal of “Shared Bookmarks” extension for Safari

The last one feels like it needs an explanation. While I don’t collect statistics, I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t a popular feature. But that’s not the reason for its removal. Since it was the only part of Yummy currently written in Swift, it bloated the size of the app quite considerably. But that, too, is not the reason for its removal. The reason, instead, is that Apple no longer seems to allow apps to be submitted with a “Shared Bookmarks” extension! As far as I can tell, Apple never announced this. References to the extension type are pretty much completely gone from the documentation as if it never existed.

So, sorry if you liked “Shared Bookmarks” but otherwise, this is a pretty nice update. I hope you like it.

Categories
trivia

Goodbye Delicious

Delicious has been bought by Pinboard (of all companies) and is going to be switched into read-only mode on June 15.

If you look at what’s been happening in the last few years, that it has been sold (again) and is being shut-down should hardly be a surprise. If you recall, we had to remove support for Delicious in Yummy — an app that was deigned as a Delicious client! — after their API was broken for months. It’s not a pretty end, but it’s still an end that I want to commemorate.

Early version of Yummy

Why would I want to commemorate such a failure? Well, Wandle Software was, effectively, founded becaused I liked and used the service. In 2008, when I first got an iPhone, I used it as a “read later” service; I used it to save and share interesting links; I even pulled its RSS feed into my blog as a kind of micro-blogging service. When the iPhone SDK launched a had a quick play around and figured that I wouldn’t have the time to do much. Then the store launched without a Delicous client and… long story short… I wrote one, called it Yummy and launched it in late August.

As much as I liked and used Delicious, it was flawed even from the beginning. The API was terrible. I did a talk at the London iPhone Developer group ostensibly about API design, but actually a barely disguised opportunity to complain about Delicious. (In short, it’s not entirely clear what the API is designed for. It’s not terribly good at syncing bookmarks. And the methods it did have didn’t work well on a device with 128Mb of memory.)

In addition to being badly design, it was also badly managed. At the time that Apple were taking around two weeks to approve app updates, Yahoo decided to announce a significant change to the API and then released it on the same day. No third party clients supported it. There was no first party app. I won’t recount the complete saga here — I already did that once — but, suffice it to say, it wasn’t pretty.

Having said all that, developing for the iPhone was (mostly) fun. My day-job involved working on “big iron” so making anything work with a single, slow CPU and very limited memory was a challenge. And sales in the first couple of years were in the thousands. Clearly not a huge commercial success, but not bad for a hobby and it encouraged me to keep going.

Meanwhile, Delicous’ death-sprial continued. A sale. Removal of the fun API change above. Brief optimism that things would change. Then the realisation that they wouldn’t.

I wrote this nearly a year ago:

At this point I see no point in maintaining Delicious support in Yummy. When you consider that the app is named after the site this feels a little crazy but pretending that Yummy supports Delicious when it can’t is starting to feel dishonest, even though this is not a problem of my making.

But just becasue we could see it coming doesn’t make the end a happy occasion. Here’s to you, Delicious. I’m sorry to see you go.

Categories
news

HTTPS

We recently switched the website over to use SSL by default. If you experience any problems, that’s probably why. Please let us know on Twitter if you see anything.

Categories
news

Glider

Glider

Did you ever read Ellen Ullman’s novel, “The Bug“? It starts with a description of Conway’s “Game of Life” and the story — without wishing to give too much away — follows a characters obsession with a variant.

Glider allows you to play with the same thing, on your nice, big screen in the living room using your Apple TV. The idea is that even with simple rules, complex behaviours can emerge.

It comes with quite a few fun presets, but you can also draw your own shapes on screen and have it cycle through. Maybe it’ll be static; maybe it’ll cycle through a few iterations; maybe it’ll fizzle out. Find out what happens is half the fun.

It’s available now as a free download for Apple TV. There’s a donate button right inside the app and we’d really appreciate it if you could support the work that went into it and any future updates.

Categories
news

CameraGPS: End of life

Sadly it’s time to say goodbye to CameraGPS, our photo location tagging app. It’s not proved as popular as we hoped and the support load has been higher than anticipated.

To move forward we’d have to make it easier to accurately record a trail, fix a few visual glitches and rewrite the whole iCloud sync engine (the current one is deprecated in iOS 10). It’s incredibly difficult to justify making this investment given the lower-than-anticipated sales.

Despite this, it is still an app that we’re proud of in many ways. It was the first app we developed using Core Data and CocoaPods. Early versions also included the Dropbox and Box APIs, though they were later removed in favour of iCloud Drive (also a first in one of our apps!).

By removing this app from sale, we hope to be able to spend more time supporting our existing apps and creating new ones. If you bought CameraGPS, we thank you support.

Categories
support

Quick Calendar video

I’ve had a few support emails over the last year or so asking how to enable Quick Calendar. In version 1.0.1 I added a better description in the main app, but some people are still unable to get it to work so I thought adding a video might make things easier: