Categories
support

SSL/TLS

You probably didn’t notice, but I’ve switched the website back from using a secure connection (with the padlock in your browser) to an insecure one. My web host has messed up and is serving the wrong certificate which makes the site inaccessible. I’ll switch it back when they’ve fixed it.

Some things like pictures may not display correctly. No personal information is stored here, there’s no real security risk.

Update: It’s now fixed and we’ve reverted back to secure-by-default.

Categories
news

Quick Calendar 1.1.1 for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch

As the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system heads to iPhones around the world, you’ll be pleased to know that an update of Quick Calendar compatible with it is already available for download.

As you can gather from the version number, it’s a very small update. There are basically two changes.

First, it works with Dark Mode on the iPhone. And the iPad, but the public version of iPadOS won’t be out for another week or two.

Second, I enabled the “works without iPhone” option on the Watch app. Due to a lack of test hardware, I’ve not been able to test it but in theory it should work. Let me know if you try it successfully!

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
news

www.cut end of life

It’s time to say goodbye to the second app that Wandle Software released: www.cut, the “no touch” URL shortening app. I’ve dropped the price to zero and it will be removed from the store in a few days.

It’s never easy to end of life a product, but the fact is the use case for it no longer really exists.

In 2009, URL shorteners were all the rage. Twitter didn’t have its own but did have a 140 character limit for each message. Most people who shared links used at least one service. Most of them had “bookmarklets” that (kind of) worked on early iPhones. If I remember correctly, some did have apps but they weren’t very good. They worked with a single service and required many taps to do the one thing you really wanted to do.

www.cut’s unique selling point was that, once configured, you could shorten a URL without even tapping a button (other than the home button to exit): you launch the app with a URL on the clipboard and it pastes the shortened one back on the clipboard. I though it was a neat idea. App Store review often had other ideas, complaining, in essence, that the UI was too sparse. They weren’t wrong, per se, as much as missing the point. In the last few years, each update has taken several rounds in review to be approved.

I’ve used it as a “playground,” rewriting both the UI and the backend several times over the years to try out new Apple technologies. I also used it to experiment with different business models (it started as advertising supported, then an IAP and finally paid upfront). I’ve even used it myself a lot! But all good things must come to an end.

Thank you to everyone who downloaded a copy. I hope you liked it.

Categories
news

Quick Calendar 1.1

Quick Calendar version 1.1 is just now on its way to the App Store, ready for download!

Which version, you ask? The Mac version or the iPhone version?

Quick Calendar for Apple Watch

All the above. And more!

Version 1.1 on the Mac brings a couple of frequently requested features:

  • Support for macOS Mojave. This means, mostly, it works much better when using Dark Mode
  • You can now change the colours of the days

And, of course, there’s the usual minor changes and fixes.

Version 1.1 of the iPhone version brings support for all of Apple’s recently released new hardware. And by that I don’t just mean the iPhone and iPad, but the Apple Watch, too!

The Watch app allows you to skim back and forth, month-to-month, using the digital crown. (Really annoys me that you can’t do that in the month view in the Calendar app!) There’s a complication that can be used instead of Apple’s date complication on some watch faces.

As before, Quick Calendar is free to download. No purchase is required to get its full functionality, but if you like it please do add to the Tip Jar available in both apps.

Categories
support

Support Questions

Looking in the support mailbag, I noticed a couple of good questions recently that I thought would be worth sharing more widely.

How do you switch the calendar to the Dark theme?

Quick Calendar for the Mac is a useful widget for Notification Centre. Mojave is the New Shiny from Apple. While Quick Calendar works on Mojave, it doesn’t fully support all the new things currently — it comes out in the wrong colours when in dark mode for example.

The good news is that I’m working on a new release that will support Dark Mode and also have a couple of other new features.

Despite being free to download, keeping it working on the latest operating systems does take time and effort. Your donations to the tip jar keep it alive!

Any news about Quick Calendar for iPhone/iPad?

I lied, no one asked about this, but since I’m already talking about the Mac version… Anyway. There’s a new version. It should be released at the same time as the new Mac version. I can’t commit to a timescale, but it should be relatively soon.

Yummy 3 asks for my Pinboard account name and password — where is that info stored and how secure is it?

In hindsight I’m surprised that no one has asked this before — it’s a good question. It’s partly answered in the Privacy Policy (“Wandle apps do not collect analytics that can be traced back to a specific user; Wandle apps do not “call home” periodically”), but a more complete answer would be:

It’s stored in your iPhones keychain, which is the technology Apple provide for storing things like passwords. The password is sent to pinboard to access your bookmarks over a HTTPS (i.e., secure) connection. If you have iCloud Keychain enabled, it may be encrypted and sent to Apple’s servers. Wandle Software has no way to access either your username or password.

Categories
news

Yummy 3.2.2

A new version of Yummy is on the way to the App Store.

Sadly, this version removes support for syncing with Delicious.com. The Delicious API has been broken since March so it feels dishonest to claim support when we’re not able to. I apologise if you’re affected by this change but I’m afraid it’s outside our control. Please contact Delicious if you would like to bring back this functionality.

Categories
news

The future of Yummy

Back in March I wrote about a Delicious API outage. I assumed that it was a short term problem caused by them moving web hosts. But it’s now July and the service is still not back, meaning that users of Yummy and other third party clients still see no error and no bookmarks. (Actually, it’s worse than that: half the web site seems to be broken, with dead images and links abound. I think the whole endeavour is over.)

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.

Because of this, I will shortly be sending an update to Apple that disables Delicious support. After this, it will only sync with Pinboard.in.

Categories
news

CameraGPS 1.1.1

I’ve seen a few reports of CameraGPS randomly stopping recording trails. This is both disappointing and confounding. Disappointing because, obviously, this is the whole point of the app. And confounding as I have never seen it happen myself, despite using the app most days.

So, in this new version of CameraGPS, I have made a number of speculative changes that should either improve reliability on their own or at least give better information about how to track down any problems if they do occur.

An incomplete list of changes looks like this:

  • Turn off trail “pausing.” Your iPhone typically turns off recording when you stop moving for a period of time. It seems to be unreliable resuming again when you start moving. This may reduce battery life but should stop CameraGPS “randomly” stopping recording.
  • Better save state when CameraGPS goes into the background. This means that in low memory situations it should more reliably re-launch.
  • Correctly show in the UI when “Significant update tracking” is not available on the current device
  • Automatically add a log file when emailing support
  • New feature: split trail. When you are recording, there is now a “scissors” icon that allows you to create a new segment in your trail. (Previously you could achieve the same effect by stopping and starting recording.)
  • Rename trails in the iPad version

I hope these changes have the desired effect. If not, please contact me using the Support button in the About screen of the app. I can’t fix bugs that I don’t know about!

 

Categories
support

Using CameraGPS when offline

I’m going to create an FAQ for CameraGPS now that it’s becoming clearer what the most frequently asked questions are! The most frequent so far have all been around how it works when away from a good data connection. So here are few of the obvious questions. Please ask any more you have in the comments.

Can I record trails when I have no data connection?

Yes.

Will I still be able to see the map when offline?

Maybe.

When you view a map on your iPhone, iOS remembers (caches) as much of the map as it can. So, if you look at a map and then switch on AirPlane mode, you will still be able to move around a little and zoom in.

The same thing happens when you start a trail in CameraGPS with a strong data signal and then spend the rest of the day away from the cell network. Parts of your trail that were visible when you started the trail will probably be visible even when offline. New parts will not. Also, you won’t be able to switch views and expect to see it update. Your best bet at getting the most data available offline is to use the normal map view. As you would imagine, using the satellite view takes up more space.

How big is this offline cache?

The area available varies depending on a lot of factors, few of which you or I can control. To give you some idea, I was able to cache a lot of the Bay Area (the City, Berkeley, the southern part of Marin) when I was there a couple of years ago.

Can I tell CameraGPS to remember bits of the map in advance so it will be available when I’m offline?

As far as I know there is no way for me to do this. The best I can offer is suggesting that you view the area you’re planning on visiting shortly before you lose your data signal.

Can I save to Dropbox or Box when offline?

No. You should get an error message saying so.

Is there anything else that won’t work?

It won’t be able to copy your data to iCloud — though it will upload the data when you later get a data connection.

And it won’t be able to correctly name any new segments of your GPX trail (you can see them in the “Options” screen). Again, it should fill in the gaps once you have a data connection.