Tag: Macos

Categories
news

Yummy for Mac

I’m happy to announce the immediate availability of Yummy, our Pinboard.in client, for macOS 11 (and later).

Yummy 3.6 for Mac

As far as I know, Yummy is the longest-serving Delicious and Pinboard client. It’s been continually in the iOS and iPad App Store since 2008, with dozens of free updates, keeping pace with iOS developments and adding new features. And now it’s here on the Mac.

Using Apple’s Catalyst technology, I have brought the full feature set over. Like the iPad version, it supports multiple accounts, full-text search, local access to all your bookmarks, downloaded to your machine and available offline. It has the same built-in web browser and the same three-pane view introduced in version 3.6 on the iPad, Shortcuts and the share extension, so you can save your bookmarks from Safari and other applications that support Mac standards.

There are a couple of minor things that didn’t make it to the Mac, but that’s mostly because they don’t make sense. I have some ideas on how to make it an even better Mac “citizen” over the next few releases, but it already has menus and partial keyboard support. There’s always more that can be done, of course, but, as they say, “perfect is the enemy of good.”

It’s taken a long time to finish this release. It took longer than expected to port and then a frustrating few weeks getting it through Apple’s review process, but I’m very happy that it’s now available to download. I hope you like it.

Categories
trivia

WWDC 2022

For those who are not “in the loop,” WWDC is Apple’s developer conference, where they announce all the new software releases for the year. Usually the new updates are made available in September and October, but we get a preview of what’s coming in June.

So, what happened this year?

I don’t think there’s anything earth-shattering for Wandle Software. The improvement to SwiftUI should be beneficial, as should the enhancements to Catalyst. App Intents should make the Shortcuts that were included in Yummy 3.6 a little bit more useful.

I’m going to take a look at the new home screen widgets for iPhone, but I’m not convinced that this is the right place for Quick Calendar. You’ll also be disappointed that Apple did not allow widgets to be interactive, so the long wished-for ability to move back and forth between months is still not possible. Maybe next year.

My favourite new feature, PassKeys, is the beginning of the end for passwords, but there’s no immediate application of it in any of our apps.

All good stuff. We’ll continue to support the latest operating systems of course.

As a consumer, I’m most excited about the watchOS updates. The improvements to the Workout app look great. But — and this is important — I have not installed any of the new operating systems on my devices.

Please don’t install the betas on any of your devices!

I have not tested our apps on the new operating systems yet, and, even if I had, there has not been enough time to resolve any issues. Be patient.

Categories
news

Yummy Update

A few weeks ago I said that there would be a new app, Yummy for Mac, coming along very shortly. What happened? Has the window for “very soon” not passed?

Well, yes, is the short answer. Those familiar with the Apple app ecosystem may well be able to predict what happened: App Review.

I did not expect Yummy to pass App Review on the first attempt, but since the iPhone and iPad versions have passed the same process many, many times over the years I did not anticipate what did happen. They said that they were unable to review the app since they can’t see what it does. As a third-party Pinboard client, I am not able to provide a sample username and password.

As App Rejections go… this is not entirely unreasonable. It does make me wonder how they’ve been reviewing the iPhone app. But it does present a problem. How can Apple see the app if I am unable to provide valid credentials?

The solution comes from the product’s history. Those with long memories may recall that Yummy used to be a client for a site called Delicious (hence the name). For a while after that, it supported both Delicious and Pinboard and, now that Delicious is defunct, it only allows Pinboard accounts.

With Yummy 3.6.0 for Mac, this changes again. The new version now also supports local accounts. You can now add bookmarks to your Mac and they won’t be uploaded to the cloud at all. I’ll be honest: the main motivation for this is to pass App Review. However, I have had requests for something like this in the past so hopefully, it will prove useful for some users rather than just Apple.

Since the Mac and iPhone apps both share a common code base, this feature will be coming to iOS in the next version, too.

With this additional account option, Yummy should be able to enter App Review proper and, with any luck, will actually be approved. There’s no guarantee that further obstacles will not be created, so please cross your fingers!

Categories
news

Quick Calendar 1.3.2

Version 1.3.2 of Quick Calendar is currently with Apple and, with luck, will be available for download as you read this. This version is for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

Version 1.3.2 checks off pretty much every feature request I’ve received for Quick Calendar since version 1.3 came out late last year.

  • Option to show the week number
  • Option to change the first displayed month
  • Option to use the “system” highlight colour
  • Customise the first weekday in the Watch app
  • Localised in French, German, Spanish and Portuguese

Most of these are self-explanatory, so I won’t go into any detail. A couple of them need some context.

The second feature I lied about: the ability to change the first month displayed is not a popular request. The request I get is “I’d like to be able to move to the next and previous months,” though often the message is not that polite. The amount of abuse I’ve received for removing this feature has been shocking. Pretty much every negative review on the App Store is about this.

But I didn’t remove the feature because I wanted to. I removed it because Apple provides no way to implement it! Big Sur uses a completely different way to display widgets and it does not provide interactivity. (So the people threatening to use a competing product were barking up the wrong tree.)

The best alternative I’ve been able to figure out so far is to have the ability to start on a different month other than the current one. I appreciate this isn’t ideal, but without the ability to add buttons I’ve not come up with anything better.

Finally, I’ve localised the widgets and the Watch App into a handful of languages other than English. If you have any corrections for what’s there in French, German, Spanish or Portugues, please let me know. Similarly, if you’re interested in localising into any other language, please get in touch.

I hope you’re enjoying using the widgets. Remember, if you do, I really appreciate any donations. It takes a lot of effort to keep it up to date with the latest Apple technologies — the widgets in iOS 14 and Big Sur were a complete rewrite of the older widgets — and other feature requests.

Update, 7 March. Apple approved the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch version but rejected the Mac version, for reasons unrelated t the new features.

Update, 14 March. I submitted a fix to Apple. Second time lucky?

Categories
support

Quick Calendar Interactivity

If you’re using Quick Calendar on a Mac and you’ve not yet upgraded to macOS 11 Big Sur, you might be aware that the “<“ and “>” buttons allow you to move from one month to the next.

Big Sur Quick Calendar Widget
Big Sur Quick Calendar Widget

I’ve had a couple of emails from people who have upgraded to Big Sur asking where those buttons have gone in the new widget and when they might be coming back.

The bad news is: this is not a feature that I took away, but one that Apple made impossible to implement. Widgets in Big Sur are just not interactive. You can’t add buttons or other traditional user interface elements. Notice that even Apple’s Widgets are display-only.

So what can we do? Other than a couple of “long shot” ideas that I won’t discuss until I’ve done some testing, there one thing.

The simplest thing would be to add an “offset.” Currently, the Widget displays the current month plus the next two or four if there’s space. Instead of showing the current month first, it could show, say, last month. This will likely make it into the next version.

If you have any other ideas, please suggest them in the comments below. I can’t promise anything but I’m always happy to hear them.

Categories
support

Wandle Apps and macOS 11 Big Sur

If you upgraded to macOS 11 last week, hopefully, you also got the latest version of Quick Calendar which also includes a new Widget.

Something that you might have seen in Apple’s marketing literature is the ability to run iOS apps on the Mac. To be clear: this is not something that works on existing Mac, only on the brand-new-out-this-week Apple Silicon-based Macs. And the obvious question is, what about Wandle Software’s app? Can you run them on new Macs?

Big Sur Quick Calendar Widget
Big Sur Quick Calendar Widget

There are two answers to this. The first one is yes. I’ve allowed Yummy to be downloaded from the Mac App Store. I turned off the ability to download Quick Calendar since there’s already a Mac app.

But the second answer is: I don’t know. I don’t have an Apple Silicon Mac, so I’ve not tested it. It might work well, or it might not work at all. This also means that if you have problems, I can’t really help. If I hear about a lot of problems I’ll probably disable downloads until the point that I can adequately test it.

So, if you have a new M1 Mac, I hope you enjoy your new toy and I hope my apps work well on it! Please let me know your experiences in the comments below.

Categories
news

Quick Calendar 1.3.1 (macOS)

If you’ve been following along to the earlier happenings in the world of Quick Calendar, this new version should not be a Big Sur-prise (sorry).

Earlier this year I migrated the Watch app from its old watchOS foundation to an entirely new SwiftUI base. I don’t normally talk much about the internals, but this time it’s important. I was able to use exactly the same code to build the widget for iOS and iPadOS 14. Again, I’ve been able to use exactly the same code to build a new widget for macOS 11.

There’s currently feature parity between the iOS and macOS versions of the widget (or will be when version 1.3.1 for iOS is released). So you get multiple sizes. You get the ability to change the “today” highlight colour. And you can change the week start day from your calendar default — this is probably the number one feature request.

What I’m talking about here is a completely new widget for macOS 11 (and above). You’ll need to update your Mac to the latest release to make use of this new widget. Quick Calendar still comes with the “old” widget, unchanged from the previous version.

The software is currently with Apple for review. I’m hoping that it will be available for download at the same time as Big Sur itself.