ThinkMac SoftwareSayonara Direct Downloads
It’s with a heavy heart that I’m discontinuing direct sales of iKanji and iKana for macOS. Given their low direct sales and how onerous the new notarisation process is, it just doesn’t make sense given the limited time* I now have to work on my apps. They will now be exclusively available on the Mac App Store. I’m happy to transition existing…
Updates, updates everywhere!
Hard to believe 2015 is nearly over already isn’t it? Lately I’ve been hard at work on a bunch of updates to my various Mac apps. All of which are live for direct download customers. If you use the Mac App Store, so far only the iKana update is live, but the others should get there eventually. In semi-related news, I’ve now migrated the ThinkMac Store…
iKanji 2!
Joining NewsLife and iKana, iKanji is the 3rd ThinkMac Mac app to graduate to version 2.0! It’s been under development for a good few months and it’s great to finally have it ready to put into your hands. As is starting to become the new normal, I find myself with a completed product ready to ship but with the Mac App Store…
Stuck in Review
If you follow ThinkMac on Twitter then you may have noticed about five weeks ago I tweeted “NewsLife 2 submitted to the App Store!”. Unfortunately as of the time of writing its still stuck in review. Now from what I hear from other developers the review time on the Mac App Store (MAS) is longer than on the iOS store. For that…
Back story : how iKana 2 was designed
The most obvious change in iKana 2 is the new visual appearance. After spending a lot of time working with iOS — and with all the media focus these days being on the iPhone and iPad — it’s hard to ignore its influence. Far from being a purely cosmetic change, I think this new UI significantly enhances the usability of iKana. What…
Shareware I can’t live without
There are a number of essential freeware and shareware apps I use all the time for both fun and business. I thought it would be a nice shout out to a lot of the other cool Mac devs out there to write a little about all of them. Adium As much as I like iChat I have a number of friends who…
Designing toolbar icons for Leopard
With its new dark window theme Leopard requires a shift in icon design for things to look right. In particular older icons designed in the 10.0 – 10.4 era often look blurry and indistinct. Why is this? Well often it’s due to drop shadows, vague outlines and colours not being strong enough to stand out well against the darker grey background. Luckily…
InstantGallery 2 update
I really should stop promising software in ‘x’ amount of time because I’m a bit hopeless with deadlines when it comes to software. Needless to say InstantGallery 2 will be fashionably late. It will however seriously rock your world if you want to make amazing photo gallery based websites. I’ve put together a quick videocast to demo how I’ve incorporated lots and…
NewsLife Beta 3 is here
Beta 3 has been a long time coming, mostly due to a crush of icon work that has refused to let up since January. But finally today it’s out. It’s not a massive update by any means, but now the Sparkle update framework is in there it should be easier to roll out incremental updates every few weeks. Beta 3 addresses the…
The Mac App Store and the future of indie development
Posted on December 13, 2015 by Rory Prior
Leave a Comment
If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Mac App Store over recent years, you will have noticed a couple of things; how little it has improved since its launch five years ago and secondly how a steady stream of big name developers from Barebones to Panic, have been forced to pull their apps due to its limitations. The most recent refugee being popular design…
Category: commentary, mac Tags: app store, business, indie life, mac