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  • # articleOct 1, 2020· 5 min

    The App That Never Was

    <p>While using one of my favorite iOS Shortcuts the other day, it occurred to me how much things have changed in six years.</p> <p>I say six years ago specifically because it was in 2014 that I made an iOS app called Upshot.</p> <p>Sadly, Upshot never saw the light of day because I couldn't get it past App Review for very dumb reasons. Lucky for you though, after I show the ridiculously simple Shortcut that I now use instead, this gives me the opportunity to tell you my very favorite App Store rejection story.</p>

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  • # articleSep 26, 2020· 7 min

    Digital Heirlooms

    <p>If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you'll find that I take preserving our (my family's) digital memories and history seriously. </p> <p>However, if I were to die tomorrow, the app I made for my son and installed on his iPad this morning will stop working in one-hundred and ninety-two days. Not for any technical reason. Not because of future software incompatibilities. If his iPad remained in working order for another hundred years, it wouldn't even matter. This digital heirloom will self-destruct as soon as my developer certificate expires.</p> <p>And it's all due to an arbitrary decision on Apple's part.</p> <p>I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say that future historians and even archaeologists are going to revisit our time and be furious at the direction our industry turned towards using consolidation, monopoly power, and artificial restrictions to protect profits at all costs.</p>

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  • # articleSep 21, 2020· 2 min

    Sample Code to Make your Mac App Open at Launch and How to Handle Global Keyboard Shortcuts

    <p>After my post last week about the updates I made to my audio app Ears, longtime internet buddy @macrael asked:</p> <blockquote> <p>@tylerhall Do you use libraries for the hotkey-setting UI or the start-on-launch stuff? I'm putting together my first Mac app and am looking into those parts rn.</p> </blockquote> <p>I do, actually. In addition to replying to MacRae on the nightmare birdsite, I thought I'd post the two helper projects here for anyone else searching.</p>

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  • # articleSep 17, 2020· 7 min

    Listen Up

    <p>One of the best things that have come out of the pandemic for me has been my little Mac app, Ears. I had the idea for it and built it about a month into quarantine because I was in so many remote meetings throughout the day. And depending on the time of day, how much notice I had before the call, if my kids were around, all sorts of reasons – I found myself frequently switching my Mac's audio between speakers, AirPods, headphones, etc. It was a pain, so I built Ears to make that easier.</p> <p>Since that first release in June, I've been refining the app to fit my workflow even better. And tonight, I'm delighted to push out a new release with additional features for all the work-from-home-warriors out there jumping between calls.</p>

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  • # articleSep 11, 2020· 4 min

    Don’t Let Experience Get in Your Way

    <p>A coworker and I have been working crazy hours since March on a huge new product feature – him on Android and myself on iOS. Quite frankly, it's maybe the best work we've done in our careers. And work I, at least, wasn't sure we were even skilled enough to pull off. When we first pitched it to the client, we asked for eight weeks of uninterrupted dev time to build an MVP. They gave us five.</p> <p>If he and I had predicted these challenges upfront, I'm not sure if we would have pitched the work at all. But we missed them. And now I think that's a good thing. Because, unfinished loose ends or not, we now find ourselves mere weeks from shipping the best work we've ever done.</p>

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