The problem for me is as much that excellent Mac apps are being replaced by shitty Electron crap as anything else. I relied on Evernote for ages but then it got rewritten as a sluggish web app and now it's just utterly unusable and I have not found anything that fits its place of being a notebook that lives in native apps on my Mac, iPhone, and iPads, and lets me collaborate on some things with my friends who use Windows and Android.
I am sort of starting to maybe substitute Scrivener for it. Which is a super-amazing native app designed for writers that sets a pretty high bar for anyone who wants to "continue to improve writers’ workflows in the coming decade and innovate in that space".
Most of the apps I've installed on my Mac lately are to change the way the OS behaves, to be honest. Like, Bartender is useful and makes dealing with all the little utilities that want to live in the menu bar a lot easier. I'm an artist and Illustrator is my main medium; Time Sink's tracking tells me that I've spent about 3.3 days in Illustrator so far this year, and 9.5 days in Safari, and everything else is measured in hours and kinda looks like a rounding error compared to those two apps.
Desktop apps today are just such a huge regression compared to the past. I was recently looking at software for PDF reading and note taking. I tried all these Electron apps that ran like crap and made the fans spin up on my 2020 MacBook Pro with 32GB. Meanwhile they have far fewer features than a 1990s shareware app. I used Scrivener for a bit but it’s pretty crap about sync so I switched to Emacs with org and pdf-tools. It’s a total hack of elisp and C but it’s vastly more functional than any of the $10/month SaaS note taking platforms out there. Do you remember the essay “worse is better?” Web apps are a manifestation of that.
To replace Evernote I'm actually really happy with Apple's own Notes app. It's native, it syncs with iCloud, you can read your notes on the web, it supports rich text, per-note encryption, checklists, and multiple folders.
Apple decided to deprecate Objective-C and AppKit. The Web is far more stable than native UX widgets, breaks less often nowadays and has a larger pool of developers so its Electron all the way for everyone.
I was really loving Scrivener, then I switched to windows and found out I had to buy a new license to use it on windows, back to just simple text files i guess
If you’re ok with something a little more barebones, I highly recommend Bear App. Been using it for years. It’s super minimal, while at the same time allowing you to achieve everything you need to do. One of those tools that just gets out of the way and you never fuss with it. Also great performance and you can sync it across devices seamlessly.
There is still Evernote Legacy, which is the native Evernote prior to the upgraded nightmare version. I have no idea how long they’ll keep it around, but it’s out there.
• Lunar for adaptive brightness on monitors so I can stop fussing with monitor buttons (https://lunar.fyi)
• Soulver for converting between units/currencies and testing math formulas
• Cleanshot for annotating screenshots (because showing people what button to press to solve their issue is faster than explaining it in words)
• TextSniper for copying uncopyable text
• HyperKey for turning that useless caps lock key into some kind of global modifier
• NotePlan for writing stuff down while still being able to back reference it by day
• MateTranslate for super fast menubar language translation
I guess I have a bit of compulsion to always make my every day work more efficient, while in fact I spend quite a lot of time testing these new apps and readjusting my workflow for them.
Now I feel that they’re an essential part of my workflow, and I feel like everyone’s life would be better if they’d use them.
But actually I have mostly met people who, like the article author, rarely get out of their work routine and don’t need more apps because they don’t encounter new annoyances.
If I could run the Slack or Discord iOS apps on macOS I absolutely would, along with several other apps that have both Electron and iOS apps. Are Catalyst apps as good as true designed-for-mac AppKit apps? Not usually, but they’re still several steps up from Electron apps and I’ll take what I can get.
Unfortunately the companies behind these apps have elected to not allow users to make this choice, so once Universal Control is released these apps will be permanently moving to my iPad.
Other than a couple professional apps, the actual Mac apps I use on the regular are Ulysses, the Affinity suite, nice, little tools like Soulver, and built-ins like Pages. I very much miss the old days of software, not just Mac software — paying for software that was purpose-built, tested, and often, it seemed, liked by its creators was much easier, even at 80s & 90s prices, than dropping $3-$100 on what today is a crapshoot that will likely move out from under your feet with an update six months from now.
Isn't the wider issue that developers follow the money. What's a few million Mac users compared to 100s of millions of iOS users? I can charge a buck and sell a few 100K iOS sales but where is the market for MacOS apps to sell? Is there one?
When the Mac market was much smaller in decades past, there were several extremely high quality developers keeping their lights on by focusing on Mac only software.
Sure, the average developer will target the bigger slice of the pie. But as a user, I don't give a damn about the average developer, I only care about the very best software I can get. And the few developers that targeted MacOS benefitted from having very loyal customers that appreciated high quality software.
Well, the main difference is that Mac users are still largely willing to actually pay for software -- they don't demand that everything be "a buck".
You could write a combination of Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and AutoCAD, and put it on the iOS app store for $2.99 and people would complain about the price.
Fully agree. And in general, developers won't want to spend too much money on osx-only work because other platforms have (like you said) much more users and also a lower maintenance burden.
Native Mac apps tend to require recompile and updates for every minor os upgrade. Electron is slow, wastes battery time, and is usually unsafe, but it'll shield the developer from Apple's aggressive api deprecation.
It's funny to me that there's no acknowledgment that high fidelity web apps and electron apps are taking the wind out of the sails of platform specific desktop app development.
“High fidelity” web apps, and their electron kin are pretty terrible at basic macOS tasks - they generally use non-Mac shortcuts, and lack many of the standard Mac-isms that make mac software pleasant (for Mac users - obviously matching windows behavior for windows users is fine).
To be completely clear: this isn’t just a “web apps being limited by the browser” issue, because the same problems exist in electron apps.
The core problem I think for new Mac apps is the market for apps that charge enough to cover dev costs has shrunk considerably.
The App Store model encourages software that is priced far too low to be cover costs unless you sell in sufficient quantities, but at the same time it’s created the idea that apps should be less than $10 even on non-mobile platforms. The result is that if you’re not a triple-A game with marketing to match you’re unlikely to be able to charge $60.
That means an indie dev needs to serve as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. Whether Mac users like it or not that will in general mean things like electron or crummy iOS ports. Even apple’s own catalyst apps can be annoyingly buggy, what hope does an indie dev have?
I try to stay with the default native apps and programs that comes with the OSes (currently Apple) as much as possible. I have begun to ponder upon and want to go linux once I retire from active work. I try to keep backups of the content in either open or universal formats to be able to move and decouple from Apple smoothly, if needed.
I continue to experiment and tinker with new tools but after using it, buying/pro/premium it, and I begin to realize I just need to learn a little more with the native apps and I can do that smoothly enough that my muscle memory kicks in. Well, I even subscribed to SetApp[1] and use less than 5 App there at most.
My approach these days is -- I need to be able to own and/or control the content but use any tools, and be able to walk of the tools when needed. I try to keep a note about it and will update that -- https://oinam.fyi/digital/apple/
I’m a BBEditer. Have been, since the days of MacOS 7 or 8. Other editors have come and gone, in that time, but I have never found a compelling reason to switch.
There’s a lot of “junky eye-candy” out there. Cool-looking apps that actually fall flat, in their primary reason for existing. I will often try one out, then let it lie fallow. Every now and then, one deserves a place in my canon, but it’s rare.
I love BBEdit. One of the very few paid Mac-only apps I use. Almost everything else I use is either free, cross-platform or Electron-based, or a web app.
Anybody have a list of these so called "old but excellent" Mac apps?
I guess mine would be Typinator. I just picked up a license which is a one-time cost. The product is solid and so is the support. I wish I knew of other types of products like this because I would most likely buy them without hesitation. I'm tired of seeing so many damn subscriptions on my bank statement.
Skill sets are being lost. At one time desktop development was the thing. Now its not. Things get memory holes as technology advances.
Not many brick layers around anymore that could build Brunelleschi's Dome.
I think they serve different purposes.
Catalyst is mostly used when you’ve already written your iPad app (either in UIKit or iOS specific SwiftUI) and now you want to make that app available on Mac without rewriting parts of the code.
You can indeed write a multiplatform app in SwiftUI nowadays.
That’s what I’m doing with Volum (https://lowtechguys.com/volum) which easily shares 95% of the code between macOS, iOS and iPadOS, and only platform specific code like keyboard shortcuts or volume OSD is isolated.
But you kinda have to start with that multiplatform mindset from the start, otherwise you’ll soon find out you used too many custom NSViews and Cocoa APIs, your UI is not designed for portrait mode, and it’s a burden to place #if os(macOS) guards all over the place now.
Agree with the others: SwiftUI is a long, long way from being ready for prime time at this point. In practice you're going to be stuck using a nasty, ugly mixture of SwiftUI and AppKit/UIKit for anything beyond the most basic design, and that way lies madness (at least for me).
But I also agree that SwiftUI is very promising, and I like what I've seen a lot. It's just not there yet.
SwiftUI is still a little rough in some places though it is growing fairly quickly. If you are doing simple UIs where there are already UI components built, it works well, but if you need more custom or more complex you get into the weeds pretty quickly.
Catalyst is helpful for the near term (next few years?) to bring over more complex iOS apps that use the iOS UI framework. That gives developers a product now while they work on a SwiftUI version or whatever direction they end up going.
To the title I respond: its the same answer as any planned obsolecense argument. People don't like paying for sustainability. Would you wan't to just pay someone to keep using your 1956 Kitchen Aide mixer? Just cause it ain't broke yet? Perfection is not a good business model.
[+] [-] egypturnash|4 years ago|reply
I am sort of starting to maybe substitute Scrivener for it. Which is a super-amazing native app designed for writers that sets a pretty high bar for anyone who wants to "continue to improve writers’ workflows in the coming decade and innovate in that space".
Most of the apps I've installed on my Mac lately are to change the way the OS behaves, to be honest. Like, Bartender is useful and makes dealing with all the little utilities that want to live in the menu bar a lot easier. I'm an artist and Illustrator is my main medium; Time Sink's tracking tells me that I've spent about 3.3 days in Illustrator so far this year, and 9.5 days in Safari, and everything else is measured in hours and kinda looks like a rounding error compared to those two apps.
[+] [-] rayiner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|4 years ago|reply
It's good.
[+] [-] ohCh6zos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lenkite|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poisonarena|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dntrkv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyberge99|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kovek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alin23|4 years ago|reply
• rcmd for faster app switching (https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd)
• Lunar for adaptive brightness on monitors so I can stop fussing with monitor buttons (https://lunar.fyi)
• Soulver for converting between units/currencies and testing math formulas
• Cleanshot for annotating screenshots (because showing people what button to press to solve their issue is faster than explaining it in words)
• TextSniper for copying uncopyable text
• HyperKey for turning that useless caps lock key into some kind of global modifier
• NotePlan for writing stuff down while still being able to back reference it by day
• MateTranslate for super fast menubar language translation
I guess I have a bit of compulsion to always make my every day work more efficient, while in fact I spend quite a lot of time testing these new apps and readjusting my workflow for them.
Now I feel that they’re an essential part of my workflow, and I feel like everyone’s life would be better if they’d use them.
But actually I have mostly met people who, like the article author, rarely get out of their work routine and don’t need more apps because they don’t encounter new annoyances.
[+] [-] DavideNL|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GeekyBear|4 years ago|reply
Slack, for example, can be absolutely ridiculous.
[+] [-] kitsunesoba|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately the companies behind these apps have elected to not allow users to make this choice, so once Universal Control is released these apps will be permanently moving to my iPad.
[+] [-] jeffbee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sys_64738|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flenserboy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lupire|4 years ago|reply
You can run that old software in an emulato if that's all you want. And abandonware is free.
[+] [-] sys_64738|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epistasis|4 years ago|reply
Sure, the average developer will target the bigger slice of the pie. But as a user, I don't give a damn about the average developer, I only care about the very best software I can get. And the few developers that targeted MacOS benefitted from having very loyal customers that appreciated high quality software.
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|4 years ago|reply
You could write a combination of Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and AutoCAD, and put it on the iOS app store for $2.99 and people would complain about the price.
[+] [-] fxtentacle|4 years ago|reply
Native Mac apps tend to require recompile and updates for every minor os upgrade. Electron is slow, wastes battery time, and is usually unsafe, but it'll shield the developer from Apple's aggressive api deprecation.
[+] [-] AlabasterAxe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Razengan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olliej|4 years ago|reply
To be completely clear: this isn’t just a “web apps being limited by the browser” issue, because the same problems exist in electron apps.
The core problem I think for new Mac apps is the market for apps that charge enough to cover dev costs has shrunk considerably.
The App Store model encourages software that is priced far too low to be cover costs unless you sell in sufficient quantities, but at the same time it’s created the idea that apps should be less than $10 even on non-mobile platforms. The result is that if you’re not a triple-A game with marketing to match you’re unlikely to be able to charge $60.
That means an indie dev needs to serve as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. Whether Mac users like it or not that will in general mean things like electron or crummy iOS ports. Even apple’s own catalyst apps can be annoyingly buggy, what hope does an indie dev have?
[+] [-] Torwald|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lkxijlewlf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohCh6zos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|4 years ago|reply
I continue to experiment and tinker with new tools but after using it, buying/pro/premium it, and I begin to realize I just need to learn a little more with the native apps and I can do that smoothly enough that my muscle memory kicks in. Well, I even subscribed to SetApp[1] and use less than 5 App there at most.
My approach these days is -- I need to be able to own and/or control the content but use any tools, and be able to walk of the tools when needed. I try to keep a note about it and will update that -- https://oinam.fyi/digital/apple/
1. https://setapp.com
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|4 years ago|reply
There’s a lot of “junky eye-candy” out there. Cool-looking apps that actually fall flat, in their primary reason for existing. I will often try one out, then let it lie fallow. Every now and then, one deserves a place in my canon, but it’s rare.
[+] [-] perilunar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] replwoacause|4 years ago|reply
I guess mine would be Typinator. I just picked up a license which is a one-time cost. The product is solid and so is the support. I wish I knew of other types of products like this because I would most likely buy them without hesitation. I'm tired of seeing so many damn subscriptions on my bank statement.
[+] [-] jslpc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seumars|4 years ago|reply
Surely that can't be a good thing?
[+] [-] pketh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dukeofdoom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilrwbwrkhv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kibranoz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alin23|4 years ago|reply
You can indeed write a multiplatform app in SwiftUI nowadays.
That’s what I’m doing with Volum (https://lowtechguys.com/volum) which easily shares 95% of the code between macOS, iOS and iPadOS, and only platform specific code like keyboard shortcuts or volume OSD is isolated.
But you kinda have to start with that multiplatform mindset from the start, otherwise you’ll soon find out you used too many custom NSViews and Cocoa APIs, your UI is not designed for portrait mode, and it’s a burden to place #if os(macOS) guards all over the place now.
[+] [-] gumby|4 years ago|reply
Even the name gives it away: catalyst is like Carbon or Rosetta — intended to be transitional.
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|4 years ago|reply
But I also agree that SwiftUI is very promising, and I like what I've seen a lot. It's just not there yet.
[+] [-] Tagbert|4 years ago|reply
Catalyst is helpful for the near term (next few years?) to bring over more complex iOS apps that use the iOS UI framework. That gives developers a product now while they work on a SwiftUI version or whatever direction they end up going.
[+] [-] math-dev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chezzwizz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bertez|4 years ago|reply