fifafu

You can get the same in Germany with the much simpler GmbH or UG. GmbH & Co. KG is much more complex and mostly used to save some taxes in some scenarios.

(However I absolutely agree that all of this is much too complicated and slow here in Germany)

yes you can do a lot background UI interaction using the AX APIs. Displaying a second cursor is also simple, just a borderless, transparent window that moves around.

For the few things you cannot achieve with the Accessibility API's there are ways to post events directly to an app - even though CGEventPostToPid is mostly broken when used on its own. These require a combination of CGEventPostToPid and CGEventTapCreateForPid. (I have done a lot of this stuff in my BetterTouchTool app)

Sadly, solutions like BetterTouchTool and InstantSpaceSwitcher won't work for me because I prefer to use my trackpad to switch spaces.

One of BetterTouchTool's first features ~17 years ago was trackpad gesture customization, it is still one of the most important things you can do with BTT! ;-) You'd just need to assign the "Move Right a Space (without animation)" and "Move Left a Space (without animation)" actions to trackpad gestures in BTT.

that is weird, BTT's space switching should really be instant when used via keyboard shortcuts. (Developer of BTT here)

One advantage of BTT's current implementation is that it still allows you to move windows to the next/previous space while dragging them and simultaneously executing the "Move Left / Right a space" action. In that case there will be an animation but it will at least work.

If you just need an image storage solution: no, but then you don't need Immich. If you want the feature Immich offers: yes

the code I got is pretty maintainable and it’s all standard kotlin & jetpack compose. Even the ui tests converted nicely. The big effort was the initial conversion of the app to Android, for maintenance I won’t necessarily use LLMs

I recently stumbled upon this (and it sounded great!), but was already too far in the development cycle of a medium sized Swift UI iOS app. Instead I used ChatGPT & Claude to convert the SwiftUI Code to Kotlin & Jetpack Compose & Material3. This worked crazy well. The generated code worked almost instantly and basically just needed small modifications for the styling /theming. I think the similarities in SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose make this a great match for LLMs

I think the fourth reason that has been discussed here and in Jeff's post also sounds plausible:

- somebody wants to push his app with fake reviews, however that would be easy to detect / trace back. Thus that person buys additional positive fake reviews for other apps (that are not in competition with his apps). This makes it really hard to tell which of the apps "purchased" the fake reviews.

at least BetterSnapTool was never available for free and I believe I can see the spikes in sales when the fake reviewers did purchase (just before they reviewed). Not sure whether one can check the pricing history of an app, maybe there are some sites which collect that data?

what would they gain from this?

BetterTouchTool is overkill for most users who only need window snapping :-)

I‘m the developer of BetterSnapTool & BTT and have also discovered & reported these fake reviews to Apple about three weeks ago on July 2. They are investigating and keep deleting (some of) the fake reviews, but I have no idea who is responsible for them or what they want to achieve

I‘m the developer of BetterSnapTool and have also discovered & reported this to Apple about 3 weeks ago on July 2. They are investigating and keep deleting (some of) the fake reviews, but I have no idea who is responsible for them or what they want to achieve.

you can reorder the status bar icons by holding cmd & dragging

unfortunately I removed Leap Motion support a few years ago ;-(

Haha, yes Leap Motion was a lot of fun and I think the BTT integration landed me my first job (@Siemens) after university. That must have been almost 10 years ago -- yep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDJKFtLDx4k

In case you are already using my BetterTouchTool app: I have created a little tutorial & example preset here on how to use it for status item management: https://community.folivora.ai/t/bartender-controversy-tutori...

You can add feature requests there, it should be pretty simple to extend BTT to support the remaining required features.

I have also recently been approached by shady companies trying to buy my app (I'd never do that) - maybe they are currently targeting apps that require special permissions?

In case you are already using my BetterTouchTool app I have created a little tutorial & example preset here on how to use it for status item management: https://community.folivora.ai/t/bartender-controversy-tutori...

You can add feature requests there, it should be pretty simple to extend BTT to support the remaining required features.

great, thank you!

On the website Ente mentions the AI features are not yet ready and can not be used on phones yet. Is there an approximate timeframe on when they will be usable (on Desktop & Phone and if possible even shared in a family)? I use the search & face recognition on Google Photos a lot. Once that works on Ente, I‘ll try to switch :-)

I‘m absolutely fine with having the ML run on my Desktop as long as it syncs to the phone as well.

I replied to a post asking „And if PWA were such a threat to Apple's business then why are they allowed in US.“

Whether Web Bluetooth, Web HID etc should be implemented in a browser engine is really irrelevant in this context - but the thing is they CAN be implemented in a browser engine. So can pretty much any native functionality currently guarded by the App Store.

Well on desktop Chrome/Edge has a high enough market share that the client would not have cared.

I don’t think Apple can tell alternative browser engines what features it will allow and which not. Or is there something in the EU regulation that says browser engines must follow a standard?

One example: a while ago I worked on a bluetooth le based companion app for industrial sensors. The client would absolutely have built this as a web app if iOS had offered web bluetooth. With alternative engines this would be possible and Apple does not want these kind of applications outside the App Store.

With the right engine basically any kind of app could be created as a webapp / pwa

So in the US it doesn’t matter because users are still stuck with Safari there

I have been using Sparkle in my apps for almost 15 years now (for millions of updates). It has always worked perfectly well for me. Really great project and still very active.

do you have an example where induction is less flexible? (of course assuming you have the proper cookware)

sure you can. why should gas be better for roasting?

Going full indie.

I‘d guess it’s because Grammarly enables full accessibility support in Chrome to be able to access the browser elements similar to e.g. a screen reader. This is off by default and has caused me various issues in the past when enabled (e.g. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=136448... ). However it’s probably good that the Accessibility functions get more exposure due to this.

Maybe it’s because Grammarly enables full accessibility support in Chrome to be able to access all elements in the browser (similar to a screen reader). This has caused me various issues in the past (e.g. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=136448... ). However it’s probably good that the Accessibility functions get more exposure due to this.

Apple once rejected an app of mine for being "useless". App review even called me to tell me my app is useless and will not be approved to the Mac App Store.

~12 years later thousands of people have used that little useless app (KeyboardCleanTool, a very small free app to block all keyboard / touch bar input). People have used that app in ways I'd never have imagined (e.g. letting toddlers hack on their keyboards or letting their cats sleep on the laptop).

What is useful or not is really subjective.

in this example it's showing the seconds on the clock, which might be useful to some. (Just pointing out that using < 0.1% of the total CPU (depending on how you'd weight the efficiency cores) should not be a dealbreaker if you like this feature)