mergeconflict241
James: [00:00:00] Frank it is your favorite topic for podasting ever. We're talking about Mac development developing next on and for the Mac. Yes. Yes, 
Frank: [00:00:18] yes. Yes. I didn't know what you were going to say. I thought Nintendo might be releasing a new product. Truly James, every time we record, I'm kind of hoping Nintendo has released a new product, but if not, then I want to talk about the Mac and I'm so excited.
Great. Thank you. What are we talking 
James: [00:00:33] about though? All right. We're talking about three things today. Frank. Now just wait for me to get through all the three things. You don't know what they are, but it's going to happen. I'm very excited about it. Number one. We're going to talk about M one processors and the D T K program that is coming to a close.
So that's number one, number two, we're talking about monetization of Mac apps and the true potential that we all have that we don't know. And then number three. Frank released a new app on the Mac. And we're going to talk all about that, which kind of is part of number two, leading into number three.
How's that 
Frank: [00:01:04] sound? I am so excited. I am so here for this, as the kids would say, um, I, I think we're finally gonna get to continue that  we overdid it a little bit. Heard from a few people saying I'm a little tired of the . So we took a break, but we're back back with the M ones. I'm excited for that. Uh, yeah.
So big news in the M one world, uh, we finally got an email from Apple, letting us know what was going on with the DK, because those came out way back in July. Should I want to say, but it doesn't feel like we've heard from Apple at all. Since that time, like they, they arrived on our doorstops. We were all very happy.
We recorded a bunch of podcasts about it, and then Apple went silent and we hadn't heard anything back from them. And it was honestly a little bit confusing because none of us knew a what to do with these things because they weren't. Actually useful. We can talk about that. And B uh, if we would get anything in return for them.
So what happened, James? 
James: [00:02:07] Well, Apple sent us a little email that says, Hey, we're just letting everyone know that this program is coming to a close and we're going to want those DTK is back. And that was pretty excited because as you know, Frank and our listeners may know my DTK stopped working about a month after I got it throughout the months, it stopped updating and I couldn't update it.
And I can't, I can't even turn it on anymore. And I emailed the Apple and they said, Sorry, keep it for now. And I said, okay. Um, all right, 
Frank: [00:02:36] that's a CDK classic. Uh, yeah. Uh, beta hardware go 
James: [00:02:41] figure. And if people remember, we, I paid $500 for the opportunity to get this hardware early to task. And I did report a bunch of bugs and they fixed a bunch of my bugs.
So that was kind of cool. Like the first few days I found tons of bugs and on it as well. And it's cool to see a big Sur early and things like that. Uh, and of course, to see. Do you know what the future of this M one stuff would be, but they sent us an email and said, Hey, this is coming to a close and we're in the future at some point soon, no timeline.
We're going to tell you how to send it back to us. I hope you kept everything that we sent you include in the 
Frank: [00:03:17] box. Let me interrupt you here now, James, this is very critical. Where are you able to find the 
James: [00:03:21] box? Oh, a nice little nook in my closet. That is the TK zone, baby. It's like, this is where the DTK stuff goes and nothing else is here.
And it's the original box. Original packaging, all the goodness. And it's in, it's in it right now. It's ready to go home, Frank. 
Frank: [00:03:37] Uh, I I'm very proud of you, but I'm also very proud of myself because I was able to maintain the box, which I have been bringing, cleaning, like the devil during this pandemic. Like I basically sleep code and clean my apartment now and just throw things out.
So I thought it was a small miracle that I still had that box, but I still had it too. So go us. 
James: [00:03:59] Nice. Well, they said we were going to want that original box back to no, I think they did say an all original packaging. 
Frank: [00:04:08] I'm pretty sure they did. It made me nervous. 
James: [00:04:11] And they're like, obviously you're a Mac user, you know, you have all of your original boxes for everything that you've ever purchased.
So, and they said that they were going to give you a $200 credit off of  devices. And I was like, cool. That sounds great. 
Frank: [00:04:25] Yeah. Yeah. So that was the big question we all had in our heads of a, would there be any trade because we signed an agreement basically saying they owe us nothing. We are leasing these devices.
We have to return them. No guarantee, nothing else. Uh, so the big question we all had was what was. What was the trade-in going to be like? So we got the email 200 bucks and I'll admit that I was a little bit disappointed only because the internet had gotten me all hyped up. I had, when I first bought, bought whatever, leased the DTK, I was a hundred percent into, I'm just throwing 500 bucks away in order that I can test my apps out, which is fine.
I'm an app developer. It's my career. I can do that. Um, I was hoping though, because the internet kept getting my hopes up that I don't know. They'd give me a Mac pro with an XDR monitor and a couple of iPads off to the side for, you know, being such 
James: [00:05:20] a good sport. Yeah. Okay. Right. 
Frank: [00:05:24] Internet promise to us.
Well, 
James: [00:05:26] and I believe the last time this happened from the power PC to Intel swap, they, they were pretty gracious in, uh, the upgrade offer that they gave developers 
Frank: [00:05:38] back also more expensive developers paid $1,500, what? 10, 15 years ago. So the finances were quite a bit different. In this case. Yeah. Say that I'm still rocking my $1 Apple TV that I got as a developer.
That was when the new, uh, I don't even remember what it was like the first Apple TV that you could develop apps on maybe. And, uh, They were selling them to for $1 to developers. And that was fun to get back in the day, still using it. 
James: [00:06:12] I still have mine yet. It's still sitting around. It's 
Frank: [00:06:16] not plugged in. Ah, poor little Apple TV.
James: [00:06:19] No, I want it the 4k stuff, because that one has the Apple fitness plus on it. Yeah. 
Frank: [00:06:25] So you, you, you said you're a D D okay. Broke after a month, but I'll say I wasn't happy with the D D K because when big Sur was finally released, the D DK was not able to do the, kind of the thing that I cared most about, which was run iOS apps off the app store.
That was the experience I wanted to test out and play with the D K because it wasn't. And Amazon processor, it was just an iPad and a box. Uh, it wasn't capable her. It wasn't allowed, I don't know, you know, most of the technical or whatever, uh, it wasn't allowed to run those apps. And so that was kind of a little heartbreaking and the DTK just wasn't as valuable to me as I'd hoped.
It was. That's why I drove across the state to buy an M one when they came out. Yeah, 
James: [00:07:14] I that's the main reason I wanted to, to run it as well. I wanted to see Island tracker on it. I wanted to test my applications. It was cool to test my existing applications format, like my stream timer. Just make sure it was working and all good and good to go.
But I feel like that was the biggest issue. Now. Apparently the internet I did not, I did not follow any threads and read anything about this. After I got the email, I was like, cool. Archival, wait for the return thing. Cause you, by the way, you have to return it or else. You, they, they pretty much said they're going to revoke your Apple developer account.
And it has an Apple developer. We do know that because a lot of people are like, well, don't return it. And then it'll be like the Apple one where, you know, Apparently there's an Apple to trade-in program. There's not very many Apple ones in the world or something. I'm like, I'm not going to get my developer account revoked.
That seems like a bad idea. I signed an agreement with Apple. I'm not backing out on that thing. 
Frank: [00:08:06] Sure. No that that's my livelihood. Could you imagine losing your livelihood over a stupid $500 device? Terrible. No, no, no, no. I'm really happy. Yeah. Cut the box. You're making me super paranoid right now. So yeah, we got a new email and, uh, so, okay.
The internet was complaining. I caught that much, but mostly I think were the people I saw complaining were doing it graciously. They're like, yeah, yeah. Uh, 200 hours. It's not what I was hoping for, but it's still nice that. Apple's giving us something, but I guess, uh, Apple didn't like what they were hearing and thought they could do a little bit better than that.
So what happened? So it 
James: [00:08:43] got another email that said, Hey, we heard you, we heard you loud and clear and. And we're going to do two things. One is we're going to give you $500 a store credit that you can use on any product in the Apple app store, which interesting. And, uh, also you have the whole year to use it instead of, until like may or June or something like that.
So, Um, I guess that means, should we wait for the MTU process or this fall? 
Frank: [00:09:07] I should do, um, one S M on X. We don't know what it's going to be. Yeah. Um, I was thrilled with this news. Not only the money's good, obviously, because it's almost a wash then for what we paid for these devices. But like a lot of other developers I'd already raced ahead and bought the M one, you know, I'd already put more money down.
So this is kind of nice. Um, I can go find something at Apple that costs 500 hours and get that instead, because I've already put money into an M one. I don't think you need to machines. You know, it's not like I've owned them iPads where it's kind of fun to collect them. I am not going to start collecting Macs.
So. I would probably find another nice step device or something for testing to spend the money on. What about you? What are you going to do with your new found fortune? Well, I, 
James: [00:09:58] yeah, I knew what I was going to do now, based on this conversation, I might do something different based on what you're about to recommend or not.
So I have an old Mac book pro 2013 late model, which is great. And it is, it is basically at end of life because. Big Sur is the last S update that it's going to get? Um, yeah, we assume because, uh, it's the last model that can get this one and, uh, and it's, it's very buggy. I would say it's probably the most buggy as Oh S.
On this device yet. I mean, I had it, I was in a bootleg earlier this week. Oh no. Yeah. I had to the P Ram reset to get it out and the Ram and other things, I got it out and I got it out. But. Um, I was like, well, I wanna, I guess I'll get a Mac book air because I hear they're screaming fast and you recommended it.
And I was like, maybe it's time to go over. And with $500, I can upgrade it a little bit. I was just going to get their money back. That's the thing. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I would've thought $400. So a hundred dollars for shipping and logistics. I dunno, but anyways, but now should I wait for the fall when there's going to be a processor bump?
Is there going to be a processor bump or should I go now? You know what I mean? Uh, my 
Frank: [00:11:10] personal recommendation is go now. Um, I'm sure there will be. There will be. And the app one, I like it for a couple of reasons. It's a good ship. It's fine. If there is a speed improvement, the silly thing has eight cores.
I promise you, there are no apps out there that take advantage of all those cores. If there was, I would be saying, Oh, definitely hang on. Because whatever app uses all those cores, but no apps are single-threaded, it's annoying. And so you're not, you're not gaining anything. Um, by building out the chip. Now, if they increase the actual megahertz of it, but then you're killing your battery life and you're killing other things about the computer that are very nice.
You might need a fan. And those kinds of things, I think, uh, as developers, you should. Go get the cheapest STEM one. You can or go get the, a nice one if you can afford it. Um, because they're excellent computers, uh, for a V one, we've talked about it. It's surprisingly good for a V1. And chances are these are going to be well.
They are the oldest model of this type, this generation that is the perfect test device. Because going back in time, there may be a point where the new iOS needs an  to run and therefore the . Fallout, but they will be the best device up to that point for making sure that your apps run well on an M one. So all of that's to say, I think it's still a good ship to go by 
James: [00:12:40] right now.
I really want to get one only because. Every single new Mac that people buy will have an M one chip. You know what I mean? And I've had a few people hit me up on Twitter that are, they say they're having issues and it's on M one, but I don't actually think it's an issue, but like, it'd be nice to have an M one to verify that I'm not crazy.
You know what I mean? Um, so that would be the only logistical reason that I would do that. And I would say I would get a Mac mini, however. I don't want to hook it up to a monitor. So I think I'll just, and you know, the Mac book air is going to be so much lighter than this five pound Mac book pro 2013. I mean, I love this device and great keyboard works really good.
Um, yeah. I dunno. How many ports does the Mac book air have? Does it have real 
Frank: [00:13:27] ports? No, it doesn't have real course, actually it has an audio Jack for some reason. Um, but to, uh, USB-C or Thunderbolt three-ish ports on it. 
James: [00:13:40] The thing is I'm like, Oh man, what if I wait? And then I hear that they're bringing back the lightening.
Maybe I should wait until WWDC. No, they wouldn't be 
Frank: [00:13:47] there. There's there's always rumors of Meg safe coming back, but honestly, I I've adopted the USB-C lifestyle and I'm kinda not regretting it. Things have been working out pretty well in that world. It it's an interesting computer because it's not perfect.
I really enjoy saying how fast it is and all that stuff. But truth is like, there's a lot of Intel code out there. And basically the only things that are running native arm on it are is Apple software. Everything else like today right now, whenever we're recording this most stuff is Intel on it. It's it's getting to be a little bit.
Of a game of mine, of seeing how much of my dev tooling I can get to be arm on that processor, but you definitely take a little performance hit going through Rosetta. Rosetta is amazing. It is wonderful. It is a technical achievement. But it's still slower than running native, you know, eight of his native, if you want to be right at the full speed of that processor.
Yeah. And so we're still in a funny little stage, like all of 20, 21 is going to be us updating software on this computer. So I don't want to give the impression that this thing is like a magical utopia of computing. You know, the silliest, strangest things don't work on it on top of that. It's. Big Sur, which has yet another like security model and all that stuff.
So all that's to say, um, It's still a death machine. It's wonderful, but it's not perfect still. I think 
James: [00:15:20] also, I, even though this MacBook pro is ready for retirement, I don't think I can get rid of it yet because I still want an Intel Mac around. I think I have to, for some foreseeable future because of the test matrix.
So it is kind of nice. I have an old iPhone six, which can't upgrade pass iOS 12, and it is really nice to have that. So. I'm thinking I'll keep it around. I was thinking about maybe, you know, can I gift it to someone I do with you and you, I mean, all these things, like I think I got to keep it though. We are 
Frank: [00:15:48] stuck with Intel on Mac for a long time.
Like I'm going to be shipping version, an Intel version of I circuit minimum five years. Maybe longer, hopefully not, but minimum five years, imagine all the, everyone who owns a Mac out there right now today, which obviously isn't as large as windows and PCs and all that. But it's a lot of people that's all Intel.
It's not going anywhere. They're not throwing it in the garbage. I hope people aren't, it's still a good computer. So you're going to need an Intel dev machine for a while. It's still good. I 
James: [00:16:24] swear. And I guess also if I get a Mac book, get a Mac book air, there's no touch bar. So that's a big benefit. So that touched me that it's got to go away.
Right? It's 
Frank: [00:16:32] going to it's. Got it. Yeah, it's it. It's just depends on what you want to use it for. I was very happy with my mini. It's a great little computer has all the ports. You know, you plug it in. It works good, good to go. I only got the air because I'm hoping this pandemic ends at some point and I can resume traveling and I wanted a good sturdy travel laptop because like you actually, my laptop aged out, we talked about on the show before.
I couldn't even get it up to big Sur. So I just needed a new travel machine. 
James: [00:17:00] Yeah, I like it. All right. Well, let's take a break and thank our amazing sponsor this week. Listen, I literally just updated an app Island tracker. It's completely free on the app store. Now within that purchases, optionally is of your playing animal crossing and go grab, grab this app, track your turnips, but I use sync fusion controls extensively so much that I literally just had a webinar about how much I use and love St.
Fusion controls, forcing fusion. Okay. This great is super meta, right. I love everything about it because no matter what you're building, whether it's a Xamarin app, a web application, a desktop application, whether it's run in C sharp or JavaScript or some other language, they have amazing controls and integrations for all of your applications.
Literally, no matter what you want, you want like list views. You want sliders, you want, you want pickers. You want mass things. You want graphs and charts. I have everything. Do you need a part of data and PDFs or maybe Excel spreadsheets or word documents. They got libraries to do that too. They have everything covered.
It's amazing. I love seeing fusion because not only is it like very simple, straight pricing on everything that you may need, but additionally, they have a great community edition that you can tap into as well. Now, if you're like me, you're probably like, wow, I need all these things in my app right now.
Where do I go? Simple sync fusion.com/merge conflict. It's their website slash merge conflict, sync, fusion.com/marriage conflict. Or there's a link down there below. Listen, I love them. I think you're going to love them. I hope you do. I bet a lot of people write into the show telling me how much, like it's been awesome to find sync fusion, put them in their absence, saves so much time.
It's all about productivity. Stop writing, more custom controls and just, just using fusion. St fusion.com/merge conflict, and they say fusion, their sponsor in this weak spot. That's a whole new off the cuff that was all off. 
Frank: [00:18:46] Thank you. Sync fusion. I kind of am very sad that I missed your a little demo there.
I would have really enjoyed seeing 
James: [00:18:52] that. Oh, it's on YouTube. I'll put that in the show 
Frank: [00:18:55] notes. Thank you. Yeah. I love the, I love to see how people use controls, not just the controls themselves. You like to see them. 
James: [00:19:02] Yeah, actually I had to, um, it was really, it was a fun webinar and I'll get back to the Mac book stuff.
It's a fun webinar because I, I went in and I've given him kind of like, uh, the. Azure and Xamarin side of Island tracker demo presentation before. But this one, I was really focusing on sync, fusion, plus tips and tricks and my learnings and like how I optimize things. And then I also spent a lot of time, like we're describing what is animal crossing?
What is this game? Why do I care about turnips? Why is there a stock market? You know what I mean? So that was quite fun. I did it with, you know, um, images and, and a bunch of things. I thought it was fun. You know, just tell me what you think. Um, it was, it was a go, I was like a month ago, so it wasn't too long 
Frank: [00:19:42] ago.
So I always, uh, presentations with a theme like that. Like when the demo topic is interesting, you know, you can only have the cup Tessa. Or contested checkout things so often. Yeah. Contoso, Contoso. Thank you. Was so close. 
James: [00:19:57] There's um, tailwind trailers, tailwind traders can toast them. Yeah. 
Frank: [00:20:02] Yeah. That was the classic.
The tailwind one. That was, what was that? Access one of the defaults in Microsoft access. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. So, James, um, we've been talking about pricing models for a while now, but you just sent me a screenshot just before we started recording about your new app is released on a Mac. Oh, S tell 
James: [00:20:25] me law.
Yeah, well, you know, I'm a big fan of echo S I released our talking about my stream timer. Everything starts with a mine, my cadence, my stream timer, my mind. And I released an update, uh, for this, um, today and well, it's pending my release apparently. And I was thinking about monetization and you and I talked a lot about.
Um, in-app purchases, subscription models, paid models. And I had someone reach out to me recently. It was an instructor. My stream timer is a very simple app. And if you're near to the podcast, I'll describe it as when you're live streaming. You want to have a countdown, like a clock that's counting down.
And we use tools like, uh, OBS, which is open broadcast software. And, um, Streamlabs OBS, which is Streamlabs as a company that like, you know, Kind of white labeled it and, um, you can add a label to display tax and you can also read from a file. So I said, well, I can make an app that has a countdown. So you can say, what, what is it going to display?
And every second accounts down and it just writes to the file every second, you know, every half, a second, every quarter to three quarters of a second and display that on the app. And I called it my stream timer, put it off for me and it, and you use it Frank and I used it too. 
Frank: [00:21:45] I use it every week. It's it's, it's the app that I use the most of yours because I still don't trade turnips must be on honest.
Um, it's such a hack. I can't not your app. I'm sorry. The whole label thing. And OBS, like you're just reading from a file and it reads from that file, like every second or something, it's the weirdest hack. But if you can imagine any app, you write that dumps out some stuff to a text file, you can put it on screen.
So you had that wonderful idea of I'm going to. Put a bunch of controls in the app and make it real useful. So the reason we were, we would talk about it is you and I would talk about like download numbers off the show and that kind of stuff. And you would tell me your numbers for it. I'm like James, that's your most popular app.
It is. And we keep talking about monetizing all these other apps, but your one most popular app by orders of magnitude of wide margin, it was the one that you were not monetizing at all. And I was like, okay, I see a problem here, James. I suggest that, and this is me talking, you know, I I'm terrible at monetization.
I'm terrible at picking pricing, I think. But, uh, I was like, dude, you gotta, you gotta put at least something in there. So what did you do? 
James: [00:22:58] Well, it's funny because this app, I started on windows. I brought it to Mac via Xamarin forms and I released a UWP app via Xamarin forms, which makes it easier to monetize on windows and.
You know, th that does well. Uh, it's I got to say nearly 15,000 downloads between the two Oh SS. Um, I don't have, I don't track any activities, so those aren't active users, but just downloads. I believe that the pandemic maybe brought more people into live streaming and other areas in which people would be live streaming like businesses.
And, uh, recently had a lot of. Outreach of questions from like brand new people, broadcasting such as teachers and like yoga instructors were reaching out to me. 
Frank: [00:23:40] No workouts. Sorry. Just, yeah, I wasn't thinking of that. Great. Got it. 
James: [00:23:46] Workouts, cooking classes. I mean, anything that you would want to do, and if you don't want it to just be a zoom thing and you want it to be one directional, it's that, but also a lot of people are getting into the, um, Uh, virtual webcam, right?
And OBS, you can say, create a virtual webcam in anything on the screen. You can have green screen, you can do all this stuff inside of OBS, and that is your webcam. So there's all these other use cases, even if you're just a teacher inside of zoom. 
Frank: [00:24:14] Yeah, let's pause here. Cause this is a super cool tip and trick.
I'm sure everyone's figured out their own webcam setups by now. We're all stuck in phone calls. Um, but, um, uh, it's, it's nice to be able to set up OBS yourself, even if you're not live streaming on the internet, but just to work as a virtual cam, as you said, you can get a little plugin, like a virtual cam plugin and that way, no matter what software you're using, you can control.
What's actually being. I'll put there so you can have all your timers if you want to do something crazy like that, but it's just more about control. You don't have to worry about the app doing something silly with your camera, or I don't know if you want to. Yeah. If you want to blind out different spots in the background, you can reliably do that.
James: [00:24:59] Yeah. And, and I was getting all this feedback and I thought, man, you know, Frank was kind of onto something that this is the most downloaded app and yet I'm not I'm and I'm adding a lot of feature requests based on what people have been asking me. Cause they're good feature requests. Like I can do that.
Like I can add that thing. I, you, you gave me some, you like wanted some different things. I know I can do that. And um, I was like, okay, well maybe I'll put in app purchases in this. And I was like, maybe I'll put it in a pro mode. Right. I'll put an a pro mode. Uh, I'm a big fan of promos, cause everything has a pro mode.
And I didn't know if Apple would allow this because I don't want to, I don't want to. Lock any features of the app. I just want to way that basically people could Venmo me. Right. And like here's an in-app purchase. Thank you very much. And I, I saw this in another app or the, the health, the heart cast app, which broadcasts your Apple watch to like an iPad, your heart, heart rate.
And he had something in there to developer, which was a promo code. That was just a dollar 99. Thank you token. I was like, man, well, they allowed this. Maybe they'll do this. So I was talking to this teacher and I'm and I'm, and I'm getting ready to like implement this. And I asked funny enough, I asked the teacher, um, You know, what do you think about if I was to put in a purchase?
Cause they were asking if they could, if they could send me money. And I was like, well, I've been thinking about putting it in a purchase, like some sort of pro mode, like, well, how does that sound and how much do you think I should charge for it? And then, cause I was going to do four 99 big fan of four 99 and um, you know, two coffees and.
They come back to me and I'm like, you should put in levels, a bronze, silver, and gold level. And I was like, well, this is genius. And like, they're like, you know, if someone wants to give you a a hundred dollars, don't let them not give you a hundred dollars. 
Frank: [00:26:47] Was this a yoga instructor who was this? 
James: [00:26:50] This is a school.
It's a school, a teacher, a university at a university. 
Frank: [00:26:54] Oh, it's always those university professors. They've always got a little eye toward the business. All my professors were like that too. I was an 
James: [00:27:04] economics teacher. 
Frank: [00:27:07] That is really funny. Um, I agree with them though. I think we've had that discussion before, perhaps when I was talking about tip jars.
I didn't. Yeah. Tip jar in Coca for awhile, a patron support in Calca. And I think, gosh, I would have even said it was, you gave me that advice of. Or maybe it was like a, a patriotic thing or I get hub sponsors, thing of just, you know, have a couple of high-end ones just in case someone wants to give you a bunch of money that don't stop them.
James: [00:27:38] You know, if someone wants to give you money. Well, I think wasn't it, uh, Yeah, I think I've been yelling at you to add a new tier to, to, to, for your Patriot, your GitHub, sponsorships or whatever. Like if I have more options than five, well, I guess, no, you did. Do you do have more than now than five don't you?
I think I took 
Frank: [00:27:55] your advice. Honestly. I think our flirt, like a few ridiculous tears, just hundreds. There was someone out there ridiculous. Who really wants to sponsor me. They would be at St yeah. 
James: [00:28:05] Figure. Why not? So I went on this journey and I have the inept billing plugin. And I hopped into your stream on Sunday, and I asked you a completely off question topic that you completely ignored.
So I said, fine, I'll go do it myself. 
Frank: [00:28:17] Gosh, darn it. I missed it. Then I, I did I, did I address it and ignore it or not address it? 
James: [00:28:25] Oh, you just skimmed right over it. And I was like, I don't want to into the development. I'm not going to stop him. Um, so I went out, it was a nice day on Sunday and. Um, you know, the nice thing about Mac OS is that it also uses store kit, um, for the main API.
So for me to bring over support, which people have been asking for, for like three years from I'd already sports, iOS and TVs, but to bring it into Macko S I there's a few APS that don't exist because store kit on iOS has been out for longer than it has been on Mac iOS, which is an important thing to remember, but, um, What I had to do was comment, a few lines of code.
Like there's no receipts. You have to like query the, something else to get receipts, like at a system level and app level. And it's not on the actual thing that's brought back, but then also iOS originally had this amazing API when you were I to make a purchase, which was to just give it a string, like the ID say, please go buy this ID.
And that has been deprecated a lot. So it still totally works. And that's what I use for iOS. Now, maybe I'll upgrade it, but the Mac OS one doesn't have that where you can't create an SK product from us from a skew, you have to go query the products and then, you know, feed it, that, that product that you have.
So I had, luckily I had that, I already have that logic in the, in the library. So within two hours, Frank, I had the library updated out on new, get updated. Good to go. I slapped, I literally, now I have a view model that is just like copy and paste, this view model. And you got to in-app purchases in your app.
You know, I'm not subscriptions nons. Non-consumables, I'm a big fan of that. And, and bingo, bingo. Like I got three in that purchases and you can buy all three. You want to give me, I guess it would be $35 total, five, 10 and 20. And I have it's bronze. It's it says David it's just bronze, silver, and gold. And all it does when you buy it, the button goes away and it's all like bronze, bronze unlocked, silver on mocked gold online.
It's 
Frank: [00:30:35] amazing. Do you at least put that text in the correct color? So like, Oh, you just a little gold coin or a bronze coin in the upper right. Or something like that. Just let me know that I'm 
James: [00:30:46] gold level. Jane, don't worry, Frank, that taxed is in the correct color of your award that you've unlocked.
Frank: [00:30:53] Fantastic. 
James: [00:30:55] And that's the starting point. Maybe I'll do more things, but I don't want to clutter other parts of the UI or other things, but it's like when you go to the it's, it's a patron tab and when you go there, um, you can do these things. And I was like, I had it as normal tax. And then I was like, I bet if I don't do that, Frank is going to say something.
So I made it, I made it bronze, silver and gold for the different OSS, um, and paid for 
Frank: [00:31:17] that yellow text. Yo, I want my yellow text. That 
James: [00:31:20] works. That's good. Unless it is bronze and gold. Always work good. No matter what the theme is, but silver does not. So I believe that when it's light theme, I do dark gray, so it was close.
Frank: [00:31:32] I could do. Yeah. I was even going to say a black would be fine in that case. Uh, yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Uh, I'm curious to see how it does for you. Um, yeah, we do. It's an interesting market out there. Um, they definitely like the free apps, so we'll, we'll see how it goes, but I'm very proud of you that at least.
There is the potential to make money off of your most successful app. So, um, yeah, that's all there is. And I'm proud that you, uh, are keeping up with the Mac software honestly. Well, mostly because that's the version I use. So it's the version I care most about, but I know you, you do a lot of back, do a lot of iOS, but you really love your windows.
So I appreciate it. 
James: [00:32:13] I've been, you know, I, this update will go out first on Macko ASIN. I guess because that person was using Macko S and I was like, all right, cool. And then I figure why not, but I use the Mac, the windows version personally the most, but, uh, yeah, I, I was I'm an into it. I think that there's great opportunity on the Mac.
I wrote a blog post today on how I brought my. In that billing plugin cross-platform to Macko ass and what the changes I needed to make and why I did it. And I even did a sweet shout out to ice circuit 3d, which we'll talk about here in a second. Um, but it kind of inspired me, you know, whenever you do something, Frank, I also need to do something to make myself good.
Again, like I am an app developer Frank's over here making billions of dollars. I need to at least put out an app that's free that no one will give me any money on, but maybe. So 
Frank: [00:33:01] with that attitude. 
James: [00:33:03] Well, you know, I think, I think, you know, I'm learning a lot from you and I think there is great potential on the Mac.
Um, even though, you know, windows obviously out scales Mac, but I think that. There's this new generation of, of people like these, these instructors and yoga teachers that are in this space that I'm in. And when someone's in the space that you're in, you're like, Oh, there's like cool things. And I want to support it.
So I have the windows update pretty soon. Luckily it's a hundred percent cross-platform and in-app purchases totally work already with my billing library. But, um, yeah, I'm, I'm pretty excited about it. And I think that, you know, people shouldn't overlook the Mac because you know, when Donna Maui comes out later this year, it'll have built-in Mac support.
And, um, through catalysts, which you won't even need my billing library for Mac, it'll just work for iOS and everything will work magically. Uh, but you know, there's, there's sort of something to think about is, Hey, how much energy or effort should I put into, into this app? And the answer is probably a little, you know, and, and make it be a little bit reactive and look pretty, you know, Energy into the Mac and think about, you know, what you're doing over there.
Same thing with the  stuff. Like, should it be there? Should it not be there? Test it out. Which another good reason to have an M one processor, Mac, but I think there's potential, especially if you already have the iOS app or you have something else and based on your app, if it a good fit, you know, there's some potential there.
And I feel like with you, Frank, you're almost stepping stop. I think that what, like 75% of your apps have a Mac version as well. 
Frank: [00:34:35] Yeah, pretty much. Um, you know, and it's always for a, kind of a funny reason, it turns out Zack Mac development. So like classic app kit access through C-sharp is an amazing development experience.
Um, the, the tools are fast and kind of bug free because it's not really a special version of motto. It's just model running on a Mac. It's happy the Jet's running. You know, nothing special is really happening. So the debugger is happy. Um, you have access to all of.net, all of nougat. You have access to all of Apple.
Um, their compile times are. You last five seconds or less, and the app is up and running instantly. It's just an amazing development experience. So yeah, 
James: [00:35:28] the archiving, when you are kind of, your application takes 10 seconds and you're like, uh, did I miss something right? Is this my apps only 16 megabytes?
Or what's that? What's that? I'm so good. What's going on here? What's going on here? I don't even AOT my apps cause they're so fast. Yeah. 
Frank: [00:35:43] And no one does that, but I tell you, you hit that AOT button and it's, redonkulous like you double click the icon and the apps up instantly. It's just amazing. I love the Mac.
It's a great development experience. Uh, all your windows users, I'm sure you have a lovely development experience too. I'm just saying, uh, so when I'm writing an app, um, Let's take I'd circuit 3d. For example, I started on the iPad. That was, I designed the UI to be comfortable on the iPad. I developed the interaction model on the iPad.
I did all that stuff on the iPad. Most notably James, because stupid metal apps back then could not run in the simulator. So I had to make sure that I did everything on the iPad. But that was getting frustrating. So just kind of on a whim, I really was focusing on iPad. I built a Mac version of the app just because the debugging experience with so much faster builds so much faster, you know, all the things that we just said.
And, um, I just kept working on it and working on it. Yeah. 
James: [00:36:46] A trick that some people do on windows, even if you're not going to ship like a, a windows application, um, If you're just doing iOS and Android development, a lot of developers will add a UWP head project and they'll do all their debugging and their logic there because it's a faster loop because of simulator going to a device, no matter how hot and fast hot restart is and how fast, you know, the Xamarin team can make it deploy.
There's all these compilation, additional steps compared to just running on a Mac or running it on windows. So they'll do that. And, and that was the biggest, one of the bigger reasons besides like Donna and I, we support this fall that the hot reload came to UWP and the teams work together to get that all working in the pipeline because there's multiple things going on there, um, to get that working because now you can just.
Go to town and do it there, you know, and actually that works on a Mac too. So if you have a Mac version you're using Xamarin forms or your Mac that also works with, with hot reload, which is, which is pretty cool. And I use it all the time. So it's, it's nice 
Frank: [00:37:49] sidebar. We, we really have to do a whole episode on hot reload because that has just completely changed xamarinforms development.
That has just made it so much more pleasant. It's made me want to write things in SAML and you know, me, I'm native all the way, but I'm like, it's just such a better development experience. You know, I'm just, I just wanted a good development experience and it runs just as well on device. Okay. So I'll hold that.
Um, but yeah, this week I decided, uh, To release the Mac version of ice circuit 3d, which I was super excited about because like I said, I started on the iPad. I started this Mac version just for my own convenience, but then quickly discovered, gosh, darn it. This app is really good on a Mac and, um, it really needs to be exposed in that light.
So I really was just trying to focus on one O S but then just realized that it's excellent on both. And I wanted to expose that now. If this, if I was starting today, I would probably still just focus on the iPad version and use Mac catalyst to do. The Apple version, because it's, it's definitely not as good as app kit.
You can do so much more in app care, but it does 95% of what Africa does. And it's the 95% that you actually care about. And so I'd probably do things differently, but because I had spent two and a half years essentially refining this Mac interface, I decided it would be silly to throw all that work out.
And so I decided to keep pressing forward and rebellious the app kit version of it. 
James: [00:39:27] Nice. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a thing where it's like, well, we've already been so long. There's always a, what if, if I could go back and what if this thing existed? You know, I already, already did it. I mean, you always have the potential to, in the future, um, to change it over, right.
Just like you right now, my app is working really good. With the Xamarin forms version and maybe in a, maybe this fall or maybe next year, I'll put it on Donna Maui. Maybe I won't write Xamarin forms of support. It would be in for another year after that. So I have like a while to figure that out. And, and then, you know, or maybe.
And the catalyst version will be so good. Right. That's the other thing too, is I've been sort of thinking is like maybe the catalyst version will be amazing and maybe I'll do this thing because it's not an iOS app, right. It's not an iOS app, but I think that maybe the catalyst version will look prettier than my Mac version of the app, because I don't know how to make pretty, I don't know how to make pretty Mac apps.
You do like even, you know, even. The app stat, which we don't talk about a lot. Like, even that UI is very pretty, like, is this a very pretty looking app? And like, my apps are like labels and buttons. That's all they need to be at this point and like terrible tabs. But you know, they get the job done, but I wish that I could make pretty apps, but you know what my apps do look very good.
My iOS apps. Thanks. All right, Frank. So you released it. Opportunity. Now you said you were going to do these app groupings. I mean, you, you put this, the thing is you now made two apps. I'm assuming that there's a bunch of shared code and logic between them besides bits of the UI. So did you put them out separately?
Like I circuit was, you know, on iOS, on a Mac and you know, me or people buying it twice, you know, what was your thoughts there? What was your final conclusion seeing that they didn't release at the same time? Which I also thought was fascinating. 
Frank: [00:41:23] Yeah, it's a brave new world out there. It's, it's kind of weird.
It's blowing my mind a little bit about how we release apps now, but what you can do. And what I chose to do was to make it a, a single app across all the apps, stores, iOS iPad. Macko S it's a single app. You buy it once you get it on all three platforms as a developer, that means there are two binaries that I upload.
The iOS universal binary and the maca West binary. It's kind of interesting because before I uploaded the macro West binary, if someone had an M one Mac, they could actually get the iOS version and run that. But the moment I upload the maca West binary. That one kind of disappears off the store so he can no longer yeah.
Get the iOS version of the app on a Mac as far as I understand, at least because the app store is going to use my Mac binary as a preference. So it's a little bit weird. Honestly, it was a tough business decision to make because they are two separate apps. They have. They both require different amounts of effort and that kind of stuff.
But I learned some lessons from the past and was really able to get the code, uh, really shared between the two. You know, I'm just realizing I have to do one of my classic shared code pie, charts, things for this. Um, James, I want to announce at this moment in time that I did something absolutely insane in this app and.
I implemented a version of UI CA a very, very simple version of UI kit on app kit. So I wrote my own little Frank catalyst Mack catalyst, because I didn't want. When you write co cross-platform code it, necessitates that you abstract your code across those things. So you need things like MVVM or interfaces and things like that.
And I just didn't want to take that extra level of abstraction. So what I decided to do was all in, on UI kit. So, you know, focused on the iPad version of the app. And then whenever I wanted to compile the Mac version, I just hand implemented. All of UI kit as whatever it needed to be on Mac. And so that's what has enabled me to keep a really good, uh, co-chair between the two platforms.
Ridiculous. Huh? 
James: [00:43:50] That's a pretty, I mean, it's, it's sort of the Xamarin forms in a way, right? I mean, it's, it gets to a single API and that's, you know, that's just going to make you more productive as you're adding new features and doing things you may not, there's going to be a little bit of, you know, Leeway and energy and effort up to that point.
But then afterwards, once it's there, you can kind of kick through it and crush it. Uh, so, and continuously add features. So I think that is really, that's a great idea. I think that's pretty cool actually. 
Frank: [00:44:21] I thought it was so silly when I did it, but it's one of those ideas that just worked out because you nailed it.
It was all upfront time. And I just haven't really had to go back to that code. It mostly just kind of works. Cause you know, like the majority of UI libraries is simple. UI labels, UI label, UI button is UI button. There's nothing magic going on there. You know, it's easy to write. Labels and buttons is cross-platform both UI kit and app kit has stack views.
They both have collection views. They both have list views. So it's really just a matter of mapping the API APIs together, figuring out sunlight, clever little Cody tricks, and it's not perfect. Um, there are a few eyesores to the UI that I don't like, and that are a direct result of that translation layer that I've written.
But for the most part, it's enabled me to get the code basis. So in sync that I felt comfortable releasing them under one. Product banner that is, I'm not charging twice for them. And I've heard from very kind of people. They're like, Oh, Frank, I would have paid twice for your hap. Um, but the truth is over the years, um, People have always questioned.
Why do I have to pay for a Mac version and an iOS version? And you write an email response and you say, look, because I have to spend a lot of time on the two. And I'm an indie developer. You know, my time is everything basically. And people are generally understanding, but I just got to kind of a little tired of writing that email to be throwing honest.
And I like simplicity. This is a simpler model. Um, Again, I'm probably leaving money on the table. I feel like I say that every episode, but this is a model that I'm happy with. And, um, Sure. It's a model customers are happy with because they're getting three versions of the app for the 
James: [00:46:09] price of one. And, you know, the question always comes down to is, well, what is that percentage of people that would have bought it twice?
Is it 80%? Is it 50%? Is it 10%? Is it 5%? 80%? It's not 80%. Yeah. And that's how you make the decision overall. And. You know, maybe more people will know, use the Mac application and then buy your other Mac applications that are out there. There's always that sort of side effect that you can tweak things a little bit there too, which is fascinating.
Um, so it's cool that you've gone through this experiment. See how it works out overall, and then I'm fascinated too. Cause what you said intrigued me, which was. When you release the Mac version of the app that removed the M one version of the iOS app on M one devices, which means now that application is going through Rosetta and is actually the Mac version of the app, which is probably better 
Frank: [00:47:02] question Mark.
Yeah, it's a little bit tricky because you are sacrificing some CPU performance because it has to go through that translation layer. Now the good news is that translation layer is pretty darn good. And the times I noticed that it slowest are when it's doing G code. So I made the extra step of AOT team, all my code.
They had a time compiling if you haven't heard of that one before. And what's nice about that as it doesn't have to go through the Git. So Rosetta is able to do its full optimization pass and everything's able to run nicely. That's right. When I can compile an AOT, uh, arm and one version, a hundred percent will.
But if you're running a Mac Mac app out there, and especially if you're coming from iOS, where we just live in an IOT world, we're very accustomed to it. Our libraries support it. Turn alt on and your app most likely will be a lot happier on . 
James: [00:48:00] Oh, nice. That's a good pro tip from the Frank Krieger. Well, I'm excited about it and another will have very much more to discuss in the future.
Uh, you know, when I first asked you, how's it doing? And you're like, well, you know, a weekend isn't a week and a weekend. Isn't a good verifications. And we'll, we'll check back in. On both of our apps, frankly, we'll we, we usually do those recaps maybe in the next, uh, lightning lightning topic, which is going to be nine weeks away.
So that's probably a good enough time for us to figure it out and go from there. But Frank, yeah, also I will put links to your blog. It's a great end of the blog on the creation of ICER get 3d. And I'll also link to my, in a purchase blog, 11 Frank blogs, because they're nice and in-depth and awesome. So hats off to you.
Frank: [00:48:40] I, I put big pictures in this one. I like blogs that have pictures. That's what I've decided. So I try to put big pictures in all my articles. So yeah, I wrote a little a, the tech of ICER 3d go read it. It's worth, it's worth five minutes. 
James: [00:48:56] And if you want to support me and Frank, even more in this podcast specifically, you can become a Patrion subscriber and.
I guess I'd call them a subscriber, but patron patron, uh, we've been doubling down and reinvesting in our Patrion page. We're not putting out weekly, exclusive behind the scenes episodes over there. They're short and sweet, um, 10, 15 minutes or so, whatever the top of our mind we do one this week on the podcast industry that was quite fun to go through.
And, um, yeah, you can go on and we have an exclusive discord channel that you'll be part of, or you can always. Yeah, hop on our normal discord channels as well, which is quite fun. Um, and we've streamlined that and you also get all episodes. Yeah. So when I'm done editing them, you get them immediately one podcast feed for all the goodies and bonus episodes.
Um, but yeah, go check it out at patrion.com/emerge, conflict FM, or just go to merge conflict RFM and all the links to all the good things are at the top of that page, but that's going to do it for this week. So until next time I'm James Monson Magno. 
Frank: [00:49:54] And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for listening.