thall

Do good. Get even more apps.

Last year when I rebooted my little software company, one change I made was "Do Good. Get Apps" – which means, instead of buying my products, you can make a donation to one of nine nonprofit organizations, and I’ll send you a free license for the app of your choice. Starting today, I’m choosing a nonprofit organization of the month. I’m still offering a free license for any app if you send me your donation receipt, but now, any donation of $30 or more will receive a license for ALL of my current apps: TextBuddy Fastmarks Ears Rebudget Spotish In …

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Twelve Years of Planning

I wrote back in April I’m still here – but have gone quiet as I focus on wrapping up two years of work on a project that means a great deal to me. When all the dust settles and Iris ships, it will be closer to two-and-a-half years of writing code and over twelve years of planning what this app needs to be. Version 1.0 won’t be all those ideas, but it will be a solid beginning. As I said before, now would be an excellent time to join the no-spam mailing list for Iris. You’ll receive early access and …

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Straight out of 2003

This post is way off-topic, but I hope you won’t mind a quick story about 90s boy bands and eighteen-year-old websites. In high school, my little sister was a rabid *NSYNC fan. Posters covering every square inch of her bedroom – my mom driving her from one end of the state to the other for her first concert, etc. More interesting, though, she took after her geeky older brother (👋) and built an *NSYNC fan website. This wasn’t GeoCities or Myspace – she built and maintained it by hand on a shared web host with her own domain name. Sadly, …

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Ode to That Thing We All Loved Dearly but Also Understand That Its Time Has Passed and We Should Probably Just Move On

This post started as an email to Riccardo – a quick response to his iPod memoriam post. But I’ll share it here instead. Many people have written tributes (laments?) about iPod since Apple formally announced they’d discontinued the product line. No need for me to add to that chorus. Instead… Today, a coworker came into town who I hadn’t seen this year. Because I’m a crazy person, I noticed and commented that their Apple watch was gone – replaced with a regular watch. I stopped wearing it a few months ago except when I exercise. I feel so much…better…now. My …

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The First Version of the Final Thing

Hello. I’m still here – but have gone quiet (and will probably remain that way a while longer) as I focus on wrapping up two years of work on a project that means a great deal to me. Honestly, I hope it will be the first version of the last thing I ever build. Time will tell if that’s overly ambitious or just naive. But step one is shipping the damn thing. If you’d like to learn more about the thing, now would be a great time to join the mailing list. No spam. Promise. But, you will get a …

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Half-assed Followup

I never know when it’s better blogging etiquette to update a published post with new information or to publish a followup post instead. But given the chance to use "Half-assed" in two consecutive article titles, I think the prudent choice is to seize that opportunity. After I posted "Half-assed Mac Apps" a few days ago in response to this article from Riccardo Mori, Christian Tietze wrote his own take on the matter, which spawned this Hacker News thread. Be sure to scroll all the way to the end of Christian’s post as he’s adding additional reactions and links on this …

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Half-assed Mac Apps

This week, Riccardo Mori published a piece about the recent perceived decline in Mac software titled “A brief reflection on Mac software stagnation”.

I was going to reply with a quick tweet-sized comment. But those 280 characters turned into a few tweets, then a full-on Twitter thread, and then – ah, shit – I really should write about this properly.

So here we are this evening. I want to present my short thesis answering Riccardo’s question of why so many Mac Catalyst apps are, at best, Half-assed Mac Apps.

Roar Notifications

As much as it is a job and source of income, for me, building software is also a way to relax, a form of self-expression, play, and in the best moments – joy.

Today, I want to show off a project so far along the joy side of that spectrum that it blows past being silly and borders on pure ridiculousness.

Let’s reskin Notification Center on macOS.

And make it look like Winamp.

A Better Way to Copy Two-Factor Codes on macOS

Back in June, I posted a completely un-serious post that described a ridiculous Rube Goldberg approach to grabbing two-factor authentication codes from your text messages on macOS using Keyboard Maestro (for those of use who don’t use Safari).

How dumb was it? Let’s just say that it relied on taking a screenshot of Notifcation Center and parsing the code out of the image.

A joke, yes, but also a fun distraction one evening.

To my surprise, very nice reader azorpheunt provided a real solution in the comment section earlier today.

Retina Studio

When I tell people, “I started my app business in 2007”, that’s not true. I never meant to start a business – it just happened. Because if I had sat down one afternoon and thought, “I’m going to begin selling software online today,” I sure as hell wouldn’t have intentionally named my company Click On Tyler.

For fourteen years, I’ve hated that name.