Maybe the documentation has disappeared online, or maybe it was only ever available via word-of-mouth fifteen years ago, but I lost about four hours the other night trying to figure out how to make the dropdown choices in my NSPredicateEditor show user-friendly names instead their actual key paths.

So, I did what I almost always do when I face a situation of deep despair on my Mac. I reached for the greatest Swiss Army knife of them all – Keyboard Maestro – and came up with an incredibly lo-fi solution that isn’t as feature rich as what those other apps offer or as convenient as Dock folders (when they don’t disappear), but it works for me!

As apps deviate further and further away from the HIG with custom UI, whether for design reasons or in the pursuit of a mythical, cross-platform code base that management thinks will cost less, we lose the benefits of a well reasoned platform that was formerly easy to work with and a joy to use.

…I’m just glad I’m to the point in my nerd existence where I can be happy applying a fix and not caring about the real underlying issues that don’t concern me.

If you’ve been following along at home, you might remember that I started building a Mac app for managing my personal finances last April. Think of it as a powerful, privacy-focused, native alternative to Mint.com. Quicken, but not awful. Since then, I’ve helped shipped a huge redesign to the app at my 9-5 job as… Continue reading →