Where these are all great suggestions and ideas, I think it might be just to much for the first version.
Main goal is to make the transition to the first standalone application version as smooth as possible. Therefore, all requests of new features or iOS apps are (currently) not feasible to solve.
Therefore, the best is to give Isaiah the space and time to create Stacks 5.
Further feature requests are welcome for upcoming versions.
Of course! I don’t think anyone was suggesting otherwise. Isaiah has all the time he wants. I think the discussion was nothing more than the excitement all this has created for the future. Imagine Isaiah creating software with no restrictions at the speed he and his team normally roll. Good days ahead for sure!
Well the Apple Silicon codebase essentially means same code for all their devices now – A series (mobile/iPad) / M series (desktop/laptop), and there’s an M1 iPad of course. So I don’t think a big deal. Presuming Stacks App will be Mac only, I’m not sure what the point in developing an Intel x86 version would be. So the way forward would be ARM and its broader compatibility…
Code base, yes, but that’s where the similarities end.
There’s a couple of problems that pretty much rule out an iPad version of Stacks.
1. User interface guidelines
i(Pad)OS en macOS have very different UI guidelines and different ways for devs to build the UI.
If you develop an app in Xcode you have the choice to build a mac and an iOS version side by side. But you still have to take into account the rules (guide lines) and limitations that each OS has, and those rules and limitations are very different.
For example, a user interface like RW has, is not allowed on i(Pad)OS. By extension, Xcode doesn’t offer any way to build a mac like UI on the iPad.
The other way around (so putting your i(Pad)OS app on the mac) is supported on M1 based macs, but i(Pad)OS has a some pretty big limitations (no menu bar, no pop ups or pop overs, limited drag and drop capabilities etc.). You wouldn’t want your mac user base to suffer through that, honestly.
2. App store rules
Loading extensions (like stacks) is also problematic on i(Pad)OS, as the app store rules limit that to great extend. Basically you wouldn’t be able to load stacks into your project without Apple approving each stack.
But I don’t think Apple would approve any stacks. That’s because the app store also has a rule that your app cannot interpret code. That’s why you don’t see emulators or VM like applications in the app store. Stacks could be seen as a code interpreter, as the stacks themselves are basically small programs that output something when called.
None of these limitations apply on the mac, as you’re not bound to using the mac app store (also, the mac app store has way more relaxed rules compared to the i(Pad)OS app store).
I am not sure about this comment, because stacks add-ons are not compiled, they are just HTML/CSS/JS. But I am far from an expert here.
It’s great to see this discussion about an iPad app. Just a small reminder there won’t be one for the first version.
Cheers!
Yeah fair enough. Certainly easier going in the iOS->MacOS direction. Plenty work without anything further needing to be done, but many even in this case require GUI tweaks. So in the other direction, far more complicated.
That’s exactly my point: IpadOS/iOS apps are not allowed to interpret code, be it JS, C++ or otherwise. Interpreting JS is only allowed by the built-in Safari browser (technically webkit) and only for displaying webcontent.
Yes it was mostly excitement 🤩 at the possibilities…. at having a dedicated app that was no longer divided and that feeling of the brakes coming off…
No need to apologise. This thread has a billion comments on it and it would help if the conversation were separated into different discussions. And they’re just discussions, which Is what forums are for.
When it’s ready.
@drewisum I’m not sure why you are worrying. It takes time to make software. This is Isaiah’s first app. Even for veteran software developers … making predictions on when things will be released is difficult. Heck, who knows when RapidWeaver 9 will be released. There’s certainly no guarantee it will happen this year either.
You’ll just need to live with some ambiguity. That’s life. There’s no practical reason, at this point, to worry: RW8 and Stacks as a combo should work fine for at least 2 more years. (Maybe not much more, … but again that’s difficult to predict.)
No, that’s not my understanding of “vaporware”. In most usages of that term it means a software product that has been promised, and promised within a specific timeline, but is way overdue on that promise (or implied promise). No timeline promises have been implied so far.
Vaporware tends to imply software that has run out of funding money or the developer has pretty clearly given up on the project. Neither of those are the case currently with Stacks 5. (Who knows … it might turn out to be true at some point but we’re not there yet by a long shot). I don’t consider RW9 vaporware either even though there are also only vague indications it may come out this year. Again … it may turn into vaporware … but it’s not there yet.
No, absolutely not. Then also RW9 would be ‘vaporware’ and every other software which is actually being worked on. I think we can rest assured that both Stacks App and RW9 will be available this year. Until then (and if we want, even beyond that) we can still use RW8 and Stacks 4. So everything will be good in the end…
I can’t wait for the new Stacks5 to come out, as it will be the only software I will use.
My only doubt is if from so many RW projects that I have the translation in Stacks5 it will be painless.
But I’m sure, sure, that Isaiah will do a great job as he has always done over the years.
Thanks Isaiah you did approach and allowed people, like me, who did not understand anything about building websites (thanks also to the help of this community), and in a simple way, to build wonderful sites.
So, let me see if I understand…
People who won’t upgrade to Rapidweaver 9 will keep a Mac in Big Sur or early Monterey forever to be able to keep old stacks working?
What will happened if Mac OS California (name invented) arrives next year and won’t support Rapidweaver 8? And all the new features of the new macOS you won’t be able to use them because of that?
And for the people that said they will buy Stacks 5 app, what will happen if Apple won’t let you sell your app in the App Store because of sandbox issues? Or even worst… What happened if Apple ban your app because someone internally show Apple a copy of all the unprofessional back and fourth arguments about a process of making app gone public!?
And to top your nightmare with a cherry, the only app available is Rapidweaver 9? What would you do?
Think about this. “It’s not about of what we are afraid for, it’s about embracing what we are afraid for” - Nobody
Hejsan
I do not understand why you think Rapidweaver 8 will not work in future updates of macOS. You keep repeating that. I run Rapidweaver on the latest macOS on a new M1 Pro MacBook, and I have no issues with any stacks. A few plugins do not work but they are so old that it does not matter, they are replaced by newer stacks doing more or less the same. The fact that Rapidweaver 8 runs on macOS now, makes it certain that it will run in the foreseeable future also. So no need to worry about that.
And your comment about the StacksApp being rejected by the Apple store due to bickering issues like those you bring up is a bit sought out. One can always bypass the Apple Store and buy and download it from a website. You also do not buy any stacks on the app store, so why would you point this out to be a problem?
Kind Regards
Kent
I have to agree with the quote above -
Though the best part of this forum is it can be read by anyone.
A couple of things:
Apple’s admission process for the App Store doesn’t include background checks on bickering or vendettas. Only the code itself and wether or not the app conforms to Apple’s guide lines is checked upon submission.
What apps (available in the mac App Store) can and can not do, is outlined in the Apple Developer Program License Agreement (PDF from Apple.com). In there, you will find paragraph 3.2.2 and 3.3.3, which basically tells developers that:
Other Yourhead plugins might not work on future macOS versions though; Yourhead has discontinued development on some of those (like LockDown) so they will not be M1/Apple Sillicon compatible. This means that they won’t work on macOS versions without Rosetta 2 support.
This means that RW8 and Stacks 4.x are unlikely to break in the near future. In fact, most applications that stop working on OS updates are either apps that install their own kernel extensions or rely on older system calls or API’s (neither of which RW8 or Stacks do). And there’s the small minority that use Apple’s OS updates to sell you new software (Parallels for instance) by simply checking the OS version and refusing to run. Again, neither RW8 or Stacks 4.x does this.
TL;DR
Don’t worry about RW8 and Stacks 4.x compatibility with (near) future macOS updates
Cheers,
Erwin
Chill out and give it a rest.
You have created your own nightmare here by imagining events that might occur in the future to software that doesn’t exist yet, without apparently having the knowledge to even fuel these non events.
If you have any questions about the next version of RW, please address these to Dan or Realmac Software in the Realmac Roadmap thread. He appears to have gone missing from this forum. Just for the record, he also appears to have deleted many of his own posts.