6 ms·

Apple Fooled All Mac Catalyst Developers

40 points by DeusExMachina 4y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Catalyst was never meant to be anything more than a transitional stopgap (see: "Carbon").
shaicoleman 4y ago
Context: "Mac apps built with Mac Catalyst share code with your iPad apps, and you can add more features just for Mac. The latest desktop-class features in iPadOS 16 translate beautifully onto macOS 13." https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/ https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/
Daedren 4y ago
Catalyst was a nice idea, and while buggy at release, it was as per usual for Apple. But yeah, once SwiftUI released it was a no-brainer this would happen. There's no way Apple would invest further into AppKit/UIKit after releasing it, that's not how they do things. This is how it has always been.
jeroenhd 4y ago
Maybe it's my non-Apple user perspective, but Catalyst has always been quite a strange product. The theory behind why Apple won't just add a touch screen option to their Macbooks already is that macOS wasn't designed for touch so the experience would be terrible, which I can understand, but then they released this tool to xopy/paste phone apps to their desktop plarfoem Surely Apple has seen Windows 8 and realised these touch approaches will always be suboptimal at best for non-touch devices? Surely they realise that such platforms are doomed if you don't implement the same system APIs on every target OS? Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but I don't understand why users would be interested in these applications. I'd much rather have an Electron app than a weird cross platform abomination myself.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >Surely Apple has seen Windows 8 and realised these touch approaches will always be suboptimal at best for non-touch devices? Windows 8's demise stems from its schizophrenic design language, something Windows still suffers to this day (though it's getting better). Touch interactions in and of itself on Windows is fine and sufficiently servicable. It's not as quick as keyboard nor as comfortable as mouse, but it certainly works and is by far the most intuitive to the touchscreen generation.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Very true, if you have a touch screen then Windows will work fine. However, macOS doesn't have touch screen support, so the change in paradigm will be as jarring as during the introduction of Windows 8, back when desktops and laptops had didn't get produced with touch screens except for extremely niche models. WinRT was an excellent platform to use (with no apps to take advantage of the hardware) but Windows 8 on a non-tablet is as jarring as mobile apps running on desktop. They work, but that's about all the good things you can say about them.
- favaq 4y ago
  I have never used one, but I will never understand in what situations does a touchscreen on a desktop or a laptop make any sense at all. Maybe if I used one it would click for me but I don't get it. I imagine myself poking the screen of a laptop, the whole thing wobbling, all full of greasy fingerprints... it makes me cringe.
  - newaccount74 4y ago
    I thought the same until I got a surface studio. The touch screen itself is useful when multiple people use a computer. Much nicer if everyone can interact with the screen vs. asking the person holding the mouse to scroll down a bit. But the real game changer is the stylus. Annotating PDFs, signing contracts, kids doing school worksheets, the whiteboard app... It's amazing how much more naturally you can interact with a computer if you can just draw on it. I love my big iMac, I just wish it came with a stylus.
danabrams 4y ago
Remind of this Steve Jobs quote: “This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features.” Talking about 3rd parties, but the same problems seem to be limiting the cross-platform Catalyst system as well. SwiftUI seems like a better approach if only because Apple is trying to make it a unified platform, instead of abstracting on top of two different platforms.
- ksec 4y ago
  There are a lot of things that seems strange in terms of software direction in Post Steve Jobs era. And I blame it on the somehow popular Craig Federighi. Catalyst, Swift are two prime example. The whole thing feel very Microsoft to me. I seriously doubt any of these would fly under Steve or Scott Forstall.
lawgimenez 4y ago
Catalyst is never going to work. We tried it with our team back then and it's just utterly bad and depressing. This is the same issue currently with SwiftUI multiplatform, SwiftUI's button and textfields on iOS looks so good but on macOS it's pure comedy.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  In my experience, there's never been (and, I suspect, never will be) a true "cross-platform" system. There's just no substitute for platform native. I include hybrid systems, and frameworks like Qt in that statement. Even though I can write a UI in SwiftUI that will work on all platforms, I have no illusions that it is something that I could ship to customers, with a straight face.
  - AdamN 4y ago
    The only way cross-platform works is if both platforms are in lockstep with the interfaces they supply. Of course that will slow down development on both platofrms. In some cases, this works great right now for mature interfaces and you can use certain tools on FreeBSD, Ubuntu Linux, and RedHat Linux interchangeably because they are using consistent interfaces. Where the interfaces aren't strongly consistent (or there are leaky abstractions), then it all falls apart.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    >In my experience, there's never been (and, I suspect, never will be) a true "cross-platform" system. Chrome, otherwise known as Electron. It's not great, it's fucking terrible actually. But it's cross-platform, it gets shit done, and it's clearly good enough (relatively).
    - shakow 4y ago
      That's desktop only. We already have Qt playing in the same ballpark, and doing both better and worse depending how you look at it. Nice cross-smartphone-tablet-desktop however is a no-app's land.
suction 4y ago
[dead]
meindnoch 4y ago
So... are you finally willing to let go of the cross-platform UI pipe dream?
deafpolygon 4y ago
Did anyone see MAUI quietly leave the room?
- Kipters 4y ago
  I will never get over how Microsoft screwed up Xamarin to go the Xamarin.Forms and MAUI route
adamwiggins 4y ago
Our team's experience has been the exact opposite: Catalyst let us create a beautiful, fully-native Mac app[1] that shares the bulk of its code with its iPad counterpart. A few bumps here and there but overall a good experience. [1]: https://museapp.com/how/ipadmac/ https://museapp.com/how/ipadmac/
disgruntleddev 4y ago
It saddens me to say this, but it seems that in the software engineering department at least, Apple is stuck creating a lot of deckware. What I mean by this is that there seems to be a cultural environment in creating new products that look great at a keynote launch, but then post launch are abandoned. Many bugs remain indefinitely post-launch. Many features seem to languish to become replaced with something nearly identical and also not finished. Often you'll hear the advice to 'file a Radar (Feedback)', but among developers for Apple platforms it's become a running joke. It seems just to disappear into the aether without comment or resolution. The internal teams have moved on to the next launch. It's tiring year after year to see polished marketing videos tell you 'what's now possible' but for it to be so unusable due to a myriad of bugs. And worse is the lack of acknowledgment – please don't send developers down a dead end if you know API isn't production ready. Let them know, communicate where it falls short – we can handle it. At the end of the day, I just wish they'd slow down and polish what is already there.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >Many bugs remain indefinitely post-launch. Many features seem to languish to become replaced with something nearly identical and also not finished. Often you'll hear the advice to 'file a Radar (Feedback)', but among developers for Apple platforms it's become a running joke. It seems just to disappear into the aether without comment or resolution. The internal teams have moved on to the next launch. First time? :V This isn't an Apple-specific problem.
  - disgruntleddev 4y ago
    Yes, that's exactly the attitude I'm referring to. Apple used to hold themselves to a higher standard.
AnonHP 4y ago
Tangentially, from a user’s point of view, Catalyst apps are kinda like Electron apps. You can spot one just by using it for a short while. The user interface inconsistencies and the subpar keyboard support (even below the base level on macOS) make it unpleasant to use. Apple’s own Catalyst based apps on macOS highlight its weaknesses. As a stop gap arrangement, it may have some value. But I can’t stomach the thought that this would be the permanent way to develop iPadOS and macOS apps.

40 points by DeusExMachina 4y ago

Catalyst was never meant to be anything more than a transitional stopgap (see: "Carbon").

Context: "Mac apps built with Mac Catalyst share code with your iPad apps, and you can add more features just for Mac. The latest desktop-class features in iPadOS 16 translate beautifully onto macOS 13." https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/ https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/

Daedren 4y ago

Catalyst was a nice idea, and while buggy at release, it was as per usual for Apple. But yeah, once SwiftUI released it was a no-brainer this would happen. There's no way Apple would invest further into AppKit/UIKit after releasing it, that's not how they do things. This is how it has always been.

jeroenhd 4y ago

Maybe it's my non-Apple user perspective, but Catalyst has always been quite a strange product. The theory behind why Apple won't just add a touch screen option to their Macbooks already is that macOS wasn't designed for touch so the experience would be terrible, which I can understand, but then they released this tool to xopy/paste phone apps to their desktop plarfoem Surely Apple has seen Windows 8 and realised these touch approaches will always be suboptimal at best for non-touch devices? Surely they realise that such platforms are doomed if you don't implement the same system APIs on every target OS? Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but I don't understand why users would be interested in these applications. I'd much rather have an Electron app than a weird cross platform abomination myself.

Dalewyn 4y ago
>Surely Apple has seen Windows 8 and realised these touch approaches will always be suboptimal at best for non-touch devices? Windows 8's demise stems from its schizophrenic design language, something Windows still suffers to this day (though it's getting better). Touch interactions in and of itself on Windows is fine and sufficiently servicable. It's not as quick as keyboard nor as comfortable as mouse, but it certainly works and is by far the most intuitive to the touchscreen generation.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Very true, if you have a touch screen then Windows will work fine. However, macOS doesn't have touch screen support, so the change in paradigm will be as jarring as during the introduction of Windows 8, back when desktops and laptops had didn't get produced with touch screens except for extremely niche models. WinRT was an excellent platform to use (with no apps to take advantage of the hardware) but Windows 8 on a non-tablet is as jarring as mobile apps running on desktop. They work, but that's about all the good things you can say about them.
favaq 4y ago
I have never used one, but I will never understand in what situations does a touchscreen on a desktop or a laptop make any sense at all. Maybe if I used one it would click for me but I don't get it. I imagine myself poking the screen of a laptop, the whole thing wobbling, all full of greasy fingerprints... it makes me cringe.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  I thought the same until I got a surface studio. The touch screen itself is useful when multiple people use a computer. Much nicer if everyone can interact with the screen vs. asking the person holding the mouse to scroll down a bit. But the real game changer is the stylus. Annotating PDFs, signing contracts, kids doing school worksheets, the whiteboard app... It's amazing how much more naturally you can interact with a computer if you can just draw on it. I love my big iMac, I just wish it came with a stylus.

danabrams 4y ago

Remind of this Steve Jobs quote: “This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features.” Talking about 3rd parties, but the same problems seem to be limiting the cross-platform Catalyst system as well. SwiftUI seems like a better approach if only because Apple is trying to make it a unified platform, instead of abstracting on top of two different platforms.

ksec 4y ago
There are a lot of things that seems strange in terms of software direction in Post Steve Jobs era. And I blame it on the somehow popular Craig Federighi. Catalyst, Swift are two prime example. The whole thing feel very Microsoft to me. I seriously doubt any of these would fly under Steve or Scott Forstall.

lawgimenez 4y ago

Catalyst is never going to work. We tried it with our team back then and it's just utterly bad and depressing. This is the same issue currently with SwiftUI multiplatform, SwiftUI's button and textfields on iOS looks so good but on macOS it's pure comedy.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
In my experience, there's never been (and, I suspect, never will be) a true "cross-platform" system. There's just no substitute for platform native. I include hybrid systems, and frameworks like Qt in that statement. Even though I can write a UI in SwiftUI that will work on all platforms, I have no illusions that it is something that I could ship to customers, with a straight face.
- AdamN 4y ago
  The only way cross-platform works is if both platforms are in lockstep with the interfaces they supply. Of course that will slow down development on both platofrms. In some cases, this works great right now for mature interfaces and you can use certain tools on FreeBSD, Ubuntu Linux, and RedHat Linux interchangeably because they are using consistent interfaces. Where the interfaces aren't strongly consistent (or there are leaky abstractions), then it all falls apart.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >In my experience, there's never been (and, I suspect, never will be) a true "cross-platform" system. Chrome, otherwise known as Electron. It's not great, it's fucking terrible actually. But it's cross-platform, it gets shit done, and it's clearly good enough (relatively).
  - shakow 4y ago
    That's desktop only. We already have Qt playing in the same ballpark, and doing both better and worse depending how you look at it. Nice cross-smartphone-tablet-desktop however is a no-app's land.

suction 4y ago

[dead]

meindnoch 4y ago

So... are you finally willing to let go of the cross-platform UI pipe dream?

deafpolygon 4y ago

Did anyone see MAUI quietly leave the room?

Kipters 4y ago
I will never get over how Microsoft screwed up Xamarin to go the Xamarin.Forms and MAUI route

adamwiggins 4y ago

Our team's experience has been the exact opposite: Catalyst let us create a beautiful, fully-native Mac app[1] that shares the bulk of its code with its iPad counterpart. A few bumps here and there but overall a good experience. [1]: https://museapp.com/how/ipadmac/ https://museapp.com/how/ipadmac/

disgruntleddev 4y ago

It saddens me to say this, but it seems that in the software engineering department at least, Apple is stuck creating a lot of deckware. What I mean by this is that there seems to be a cultural environment in creating new products that look great at a keynote launch, but then post launch are abandoned. Many bugs remain indefinitely post-launch. Many features seem to languish to become replaced with something nearly identical and also not finished. Often you'll hear the advice to 'file a Radar (Feedback)', but among developers for Apple platforms it's become a running joke. It seems just to disappear into the aether without comment or resolution. The internal teams have moved on to the next launch. It's tiring year after year to see polished marketing videos tell you 'what's now possible' but for it to be so unusable due to a myriad of bugs. And worse is the lack of acknowledgment – please don't send developers down a dead end if you know API isn't production ready. Let them know, communicate where it falls short – we can handle it. At the end of the day, I just wish they'd slow down and polish what is already there.

Dalewyn 4y ago
>Many bugs remain indefinitely post-launch. Many features seem to languish to become replaced with something nearly identical and also not finished. Often you'll hear the advice to 'file a Radar (Feedback)', but among developers for Apple platforms it's become a running joke. It seems just to disappear into the aether without comment or resolution. The internal teams have moved on to the next launch. First time? :V This isn't an Apple-specific problem.
- disgruntleddev 4y ago
  Yes, that's exactly the attitude I'm referring to. Apple used to hold themselves to a higher standard.

AnonHP 4y ago

Tangentially, from a user’s point of view, Catalyst apps are kinda like Electron apps. You can spot one just by using it for a short while. The user interface inconsistencies and the subpar keyboard support (even below the base level on macOS) make it unpleasant to use. Apple’s own Catalyst based apps on macOS highlight its weaknesses. As a stop gap arrangement, it may have some value. But I can’t stomach the thought that this would be the permanent way to develop iPadOS and macOS apps.