PaintCode 2

http://www.paintcodeapp.com/intro

by normanv • 12 years ago

126 71 12 years ago

paintcodeapp.com

jfisk872• 12 years ago

Wow, if you bought version 1 they have no upgrade price :(

jcomis2• 12 years ago

That's the trend lately. App store doesn't support that sort of pricing model.

jfisk872• 12 years ago

That's pretty bad way to alienate your loyal customers. They can still have users email them and issue download codes after paying through their website.

eridius2• 12 years ago

OmniGroup found a way to effectively get upgrade pricing with the App Store, but it requires your app have two modes: Regular mode, and an in-app purchase to Pro mode. With that setup, you can offer discounts for the IAP to previous customers (basically, by having 2 IAPs that unlock the same functionality, but you only present one to the user). So your repeat customers still need to pay full price for the Regular edition but their Pro upgrade is cheap (or free).

Of course, most apps don't really split into Regular and Pro very well, so this solution won't work for a lot of people.

ThomPete• 12 years ago

It's free to upgrade if you bought after April

jamra2• 12 years ago

I bought mine in February. Haven't used it once. I emailed support. Not even a whimper of sympathy.

cwyers2• 12 years ago

Looks pretty nifty, but I wish it would mention what it runs on (it looks like OS X only, but would it kill them to just say that?)

manmal• 12 years ago

No it definitely also runs on iOS, and, interestingly, Xamarin: http://docs.xamarin.com/samples/PaintCode/

I met the authors in person > 1 year ago, when they were thinking about whether Java (Android) code generation would make sense. Would love to learn that they made it happen too.

jcomis2• 12 years ago

I think they are referring to what platform the actual app runs on, not the code it generates, which appears to be OS X only.

scrumper4• 12 years ago

I just bought PaintCode 1, about a week ago. Sad^h^h^h Happy - free upgrade woo!

M4v3R• 12 years ago

Try and contact the authors, it's likely that they will give you at least a better upgrade price for version 2. Some companies also give out upgrades like that for free for people who bought previous version just before the launch.

scrumper4• 12 years ago

It's on the Mac App Store, which doesn't permit this kind of thing.

It's not so bad: I'll try the free trial and if it fixes some of the problems I have with PaintCode 1, I'll pay for the upgrade. The app itself is a tool which helps me make money so it's not hard to justify.

I'm starting to think that an honorable and smart thing for developers to do is to run a sale a month or so before the release of a new paid version on the app store.

VeryVito• 12 years ago

If you bought it after April 1, the upgrade is free. Email support for info (as seen in the blog post here: http://www.paintcodeapp.com/news/introducing-paintcode-2)

scrumper4• 12 years ago

Outstanding. Cheers VeryVito.

mournit• 12 years ago

I am feeling increasingly frustrated by product websites that assume I already know what their product is. This seems to be especially prevalent on sites of tools meant for developers.

Please, don't make me have to guess by reading your tooltips, feature blurbs, and customer quotes like they are puzzle pieces to the question of "what the hell is this thing!"

At least PaintCode is kind enough to give an overview in their documentation.

johnward• 12 years ago

My first impression when I got to the page was ok what does this thing do? A simple blurb about what this thing is may have sparked some interest.

SaladFork• 12 years ago

For those looking:

PaintCode is a vector drawing app that turns your drawings into Objective-C or C# drawing code in real time.

icoder• 12 years ago

I glanced over the website and missed that, now on mobile I'm only reading the comments and see that it is quite relevant for me. So thanks :)

evv• 12 years ago

Oh, really? I don't personally develop iOS apps, but as a technical guy, I understood what this thing is within 10 seconds of the page loading.

It is a technical product with a niche. Maybe they weren't trying to market to you?

ertdfgcb• 12 years ago

I was pretty sure I knew what it was in 10 seconds, but they didn't tell me, so I had to guess. My guess was slightly off - I thought this was for making websites. It's better they tell me what their thing does rather than making me guess, even if it's an easy guess.

thenomad• 12 years ago

Yep, I had no idea what it was either.

And it looked interesting!

iambateman• 12 years ago

I downloaded it and wasn't sure what it was. Still not sure. ;)

shaunol• 12 years ago

This is becoming an increasingly common and frustrating thing for products posted here to HN.

How did this product even get to the front page when it's almost impossible to actually tell what it is or the problems it solves?

I scrolled down past the screenshot expecting to read an introduction about it and now we're suddenly talking about StyleKits??? Huh?

E: Quite ironic that the URI path is /intro and the main header "Introducing PaintCode 2", when the page does everything except introduce the product.

fredsted2• 12 years ago

How did this product even get to the front page when it's almost impossible to actually tell what it is or the problems it solves

Just read the first couple lines on the screenshot. It's the first thing you read when you visit the page:

"Use built-in vector drawing tools to design controls" and "PaintCode instantly generates Objective-C or C# code from your drawings"

That's explanation enough for me, didn't you see that?

jamra2• 12 years ago

Paintcode is like a niche photoshop for iOS. You draw graphics inside the program and it gives you the custom drawing code in objective c.

The use case is if you decide to draw something custom in iOS like a specialized progress bar or a control that you wish to animate as you scroll your finger across the screen, you can make it much easier with this tool.

jasonlotito4• 12 years ago

When I loaded the page, it said this:

"Drawing Tools - Use built-in vector drawing tools to design controls, icons and other graphic elements."

And

"Code Generation - PaintCode instantly generates Objective-C or C# code from your drawings."

Seems obvious to me what it does. I literally have to do nothing besides open my eyes to get that information.

Couple that with the screenshot, and the name, and the fact that the price is presented front and center, I can't help but wonder what information is missing?

CatMtKing• 12 years ago

Looks like Flash for iOS apps.

general_failure• 12 years ago

Nice, Apple itself is a customer. That's a big thumbs up.

In general, do you have to contact companies and ask them permission before you put them on the customer list?

brixon• 12 years ago

You hide it in the terms of service and hope that the person at the company buying it bypasses official procurement (i.e. buys the software with corp credit card).

Where I work the procurement organization will required that verbiage is removed.

josephschmoe• 12 years ago

I suspect you can just add them so long as you don't have an NDA. It might result in losing them as a customer if they had an expectation of privacy (for example, if it affected one of their acquisitions) - but that's usually done through an NDA.

kingnothing• 12 years ago

You generally ask the company for permission, and they generally say yes because it's free marketing for them.

giovannibajo1• 12 years ago

I bet Apple didn't give them permission, they never want their logo to be used for marketing purposes for any reason. There are no takeaway Apple-branded gadgets for instance (while I have tons of tshirt/pens/gadgets with logos/products of any technological company in existence), and many shopping malls in which Apple has a store can't show an Apple logo on the big ads panels outside.

sjtgraham• 12 years ago

When have you ever seen Apple as a reference customer? This was probably some unfortunate Apple employee using their corp email account for the receipt to be sent to. It could have even been a retail employee, which isn't as much as an endorsement as an engineer working on UIKit for example.

supercoder• 12 years ago

I'd love to actually know how Apple are using this , especially in what apps.

All apps I've seen come from Apple tend to prefer rendering resources using images rather than code, even where you might assume something is done in code to start with, at least on iOS anyway.

kitschpatrol• 12 years ago

Fantastic progress on a great app!

Seems like a candidate for an Apple acquisition and then integration in Xcode 6. A bit of a stretch, but such a move would align with the trend of baking interface builder, particle effect editors, etc. right into the IDE. (Designer <--> developer workflow considerations aside...)

mrbill• 12 years ago

What's the difference between this and something like Interface Builder?

sritch• 12 years ago

Interface builder is pretty limited for customizing design elements.

spiralganglion• 12 years ago

The animated bubbles make it very hard to read the text they connect to. Very distracting. But otherwise, the look of the site is absolutely gorgeous, and I'm really curious to see all the improvements.

habosa2• 12 years ago

I would KILL for something like this on Android. I know on Android it's not standard to layout UI in code but even just a better Android WYSIWYG layout xml designer would be wonderful. People have proven that it's possible to create gorgeous custom Android apps but it's definitely easier on iOS.

ww520• 12 years ago

I don't think it is what you think it is. It is not a UI layout design tool. It's a tool to build vector-based control icons and graphic.

habosa2• 12 years ago

It looks like you can create vector-based custom controls and export them as Obj-C code. Custom controls are a real pain to layout on Android, so this would be great.

JRobertson• 12 years ago

As someone who has fairly limited exposure to mobile application development I have to ask a basic question, what are the use cases for this tool?

I can tell that it turns vector into code, but why not just include the vector in the app?

fatboy• 12 years ago

From what I understand, there's a performance gain from doing the drawing directly.

thought_alarm• 12 years ago

Actually, there's a performance hit when drawing directly (via [UIView drawRect:])

The point of PaintCode is to allow dynamic manipulation of an image. If you don't need a dynamic image, the best option is a .png; second option is drawing once to a UIImage.

_zen• 12 years ago

This seems like a cool way to learn Objective-C and iOS development.

Can I make an entire working app using this, or is it only meant for prototyping/mock-ups?

eddieroger• 12 years ago

PaintCode is meant to replace the need for images by giving you the equivalent code for basic images. Their initial claim to fame with version 1 was being "Retina ready," since the images are drawn in code instead of PNGs. It is a very good way to learn Quartz and CoreGraphics, but not necessarily the best way to learn ObjC.

I used PaintCode in a project I worked once, and it was a lot more work than I wanted for just asking my designer to give me an @2x image. If you work with designers who do vector art already, you're not going to gain much. The StyleKit class is slick, though, so I may revisit this once again.

VPrime• 12 years ago

This was our experience as well. We used it for a few things, but in the end it was faster for us to just create a @2x image.

interpol_p• 12 years ago

The greatest benefit I can see with PaintCode is the ability to make parameterise-able images with expressions. Creating cool little dynamic vector images that can be driven through your code (gestures, accelerometer, etc) seems really nice.

nikster• 12 years ago

I am wondering if PaintCode would allow my designer to draw up a complete UI - e.g. all screens so I could just use that.

What I do now is I get the designs in some sort of intermediary format, e.g. InVision or whatever, then I have to go and measure everything and all the pixel distances, then re-create it in Interface Builder. It's retarded.

mrmondo• 12 years ago

It really annoys me that the website doesn't even say what the product is / who it is intended for.

NIL8• 12 years ago

Lighten up people. I understand the frustration, but OP is not ALL of those posts you're referring to. He's one guy that posted a link looking for feedback.

OP: I like this and think it has a nice, fresh look to it. Look forward to playing around with it. Thanks.

thomasjoulin• 12 years ago

Wow, tough crowd! I'd be curious to see what some of the commenters have shipped...

One question for the PaintCode team if they read this: is it possible to have dynamic star shapes? i.e I set it grows with the frame

This update looks awesome, can't wait to use it

PaintCode 2

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