Categories
news

ShareEverywhere end of life

It’s time to say goodbye to ShareEverywhere, the app I introduced on the same day that iOS 8 launched so people would have at least one app to use with the new “share extensions” feature.

Listening to the WWDC keynote in 2014, Share Extensions struck me as the most important new feature but it was difficult to know who else thought so. How many other applications would launch extensions on day one?

I decided to remove that uncertainty. Rather than wait for services to (eventually) update their own apps, I would write an app to do it all in one place.

It’s the only time that I’ve tried to release an app at a specific time. Working with beta software has its challenges — does this thing not work because I’m doing it wrong or because it’s broken? Working with a deadline can also be tricky. Doing both together… totally not recommended. What I’m saying is, if you know any iOS developers, be extra nice to them every August. Also, ShareEverywhere isn’t exactly as I imagined it when I started. The deadline and the technology resulted in a few compromises I wasn’t entirely happy with. It did, however, work. It got coverage in the Guardian newspaper and it sold okay, especially in the few weeks after iOS 8 came out.

It’s sad to write this so soon after www.cut, but the reasons are actually very similar: few sales, limited utility and the relatively high cost of maintaining it. In 2019, most apps that would benefit from having a Share Extension already have one. And ShareEverywhere is quite difficult to maintain as there are so many services that change and potentially break.

As I did with www.cut, I’ve made it free for now and will remove the app for sale entirely in a few days.

So thank you if you downloaded a copy, I hope you got as much use out of it as I did!

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

ShareEverywhere 1.0.1

The first maintenance release of ShareEverywhere has been submitted to Apple for review. Hopefully it should be available in a few days.

There is one new feature that I would like to draw your attention to:

  • Add selected text in Safari to notes field of supported sharing services

If you’re in Safari and you select some text before you tap “Share,” when you try to share to services that support it, you’ll get the URL, the page title and the selected text.

Other changes include:

  • Show status message when successfully finish sharing
  • Performance improvements in getting webpage title when sharing from Safari
  • Other miscellaneous fixes and minor improvements

This version was almost ready to go the day before iOS 8 went live but Apple did not approve ShareEverywhere until shortly after the release. Since this version was going to miss the first users I figured I may as well wait a couple of days to see if any other serious problems were found (none have as far as I know).