28 ms·

Show HN: Applite – Clean Homebrew front end app for macOS built with SwiftUI

280 points by milanvarady 3y ago

macrael 3y ago
My first thought is that it's a classic macOS dev strategy to take a CLI tool and build a UI for it. In retrospect brew is a perfect candidate
- donatj 3y ago
  It's been about a decade since I ran desktop Linux in any meaningful capacity but I feel like that was the way a significant portion of the gui apps worked.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    Xcode is easily the largest (non-game) app on my computer, and it’s really just a glorified CLI client.
    - blashyrk 3y ago
      This becomes painfully obvious once the backend inevitably crashes at some point and the functionality of the editor is reduced to that of Notepad until you do a full restart
threesevenths 3y ago
Any tracking or privacy concerns we should be aware of that a polite adds on top of home brew? For example, does a polite collect data on the type of device, installed casks, user data, anything?
- milanvarady 3y ago
  Applite developer here. No, Applite has zero tracking built in, it's a 100% free and open-source. Only Homebrew tracks the number of downloads.
  - vaxman 3y ago
    If you want to track, charge or close-source your code, it is okay, the Streisand-effect from all the freeloaders will save you.
- driggs 3y ago
  This is in the FAQ, which you don't even need to click to read from the front page: https://aerolite.dev/applite/index.html#details https://aerolite.dev/applite/index.html#details > Q: What information does Applite track? > A: None.
kryptozinc 3y ago
What is your monetization strategy with this app?
- merryje 3y ago
  It has an MIT license on GitHub https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite
  - EduardoBautista 3y ago
    I am not a license expert, but doesn't MIT mean we can build upon it with proprietary changes and then sell it as proprietary software?
    - xcdzvyn 3y ago
      Yes.
    - paxys 3y ago
      Yes. You can also sell the project as-is with zero changes if you want. The only thing you have to be wary of is trademarks, which normally aren't covered under standard OSS licenses.
- notpushkin 3y ago
  Does everything have to have a monetization strategy?
  - rubicon33 3y ago
    As a user of an app, its always a fair question to ask. "Free" usually means you are the product.
    - princevegeta89 3y ago
      "Open Source" means you are not though.
fewald_net 3y ago
So many animation on this website.
- dreadlordbone 3y ago
  Thats AOS for ya [1] [1]https://michalsnik.github.io/aos/ https://michalsnik.github.io/aos/
- spiderfarmer 3y ago
  This is the "Username checks out" comment of HN.
- catskull 3y ago
  Just looking at your site now. I'm inspired by your projects page.
  - fewald_net 3y ago
    Thank you very much!
- paxys 3y ago
  Seriously. It's like they found an animation library and couldn't resist using it for every single element on the page.
Syzygies 3y ago
I applaud this, for people who prefer a GUI interface. I started to write something to better organize synchronizing my Homebrew installation across multiple machines, then thought someone must have done this well already. Sure enough, https://pumpingco.de/blog/brewfile/ https://pumpingco.de/blog/brewfile/ A fantastic, clean way to reinstall or synchronize Homebrew setups, using the command line. I'm surprised that Applite doesn't accept a brewfile to ease migration. In my case I depend on Bash, Tailscale, and Ruby as installed by Homebrew, so a clean reinstallation is delicate. I have scripts to make sure I don't screw this up: 1 brew bundle dump.sh 2 uninstall homebrew.sh 3 install homebrew.sh 4 renew bash.sh 5 renew tailscale.sh 6 renew ruby.sh 7 renew brew bundle.sh choose-shell.sh
- JamesSwift 3y ago
  I have an idempotent provision script I use to install/update apps. The homebrew portion is basically brew upgrade HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 brew bundle --file=Brewfile --cleanup --no-upgrade Works really nicely to keep everything tidy, up-to-date, and transferable.
- dividedbyzero 3y ago
  One more neat trick for Brewfiles: They're evaluated as Ruby code, so you can use if-else etc. to conditionally install things on different machines with a single Brewfile. I use that together with yadm to manage both work and private laptops with minimum duplication.
- jmspring 3y ago
  Agree, it's good for those that prefer a GUI. I'm not sure the intended audience since if you are using Brew, you are generally doing a lot of commandline stuff. Your mention of the cross multiple machine synchronizing, however, is interesting! Good to find.
- eviks 3y ago
  how to you update you config with new/deleted apps if you've manually added categories and comments like the blog's author shows on his site?
SmellTheGlove 3y ago
I wonder if you’d have a monetization path here via enterprise support contracts and/or additional device fleet management features. The tech companies I’ve worked at have all had some amount of “use brew to install …” in our dev spinup docs. And IT doesn’t love it because when they get asked to support it, there’s no quick way to see what’s installed or what version without logging into the specific machine. And for whatever reason, it’s also challenging to roll out dev laptops with specific packages already installed. I presume it’s because maintaining them is difficult.
- tough 3y ago
  This sounds like a great idea and a good COSS lifestyle company to run
- tmikaeld 3y ago
  That's my first thought as well, there's a lot of IT companies supporting Macs that would LOVE a tool like this, especially if it's commercially supported.
  - _1 3y ago
    My company manages Macs with jamf. It comes with a "self service" tool that can install oss apps, apps we've licensed, change configurations, etc.
    - baal80spam 3y ago
      Same here. There are at least a few of such tools, and they are highly customizable.
- ljm 3y ago
  Assuming everyone's on a Mac, I'm actually surprised there isn't that much use of something like homebrew-bundle[1]. It's definitely nicer to have your tooling run natively rather than, say, trying to wrap everything in Docker, or trying to get everybody on board with nix or guix. I think the only real issue here is that you can't really pin to specific versions unless a formula exists, and there is no guarantee that a formula with a pinned version will stick around because homebrew likes to stay lean. So to that extent it can still be unclear what version of software someone is running on after enough time. [1]https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle/ https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle/
dimmke 3y ago
There’s another decent application for this called Cakebrew, but not sure if it uses native Apple UI APIs
- milanvarady 3y ago
  As far as I know, Cakebrew is no longer maintained. There are quite a few alternatives though, you can see the full list on the GitHub page (https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite#alternatives https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite#alternatives)
server_man3000 3y ago
Dude, neat!
sharp11 3y ago
I'm not the target audience (I prefer CLI), but as an iOS dev just wanted to say kudos. Great idea and looks to be very well executed. I'm curious to know how your experience with SwiftUI was on MacOS?
- milanvarady 3y ago
  Very mixed. I hadn't done any app development before this project, only games with Gamemaker and the Godot engine. Coming from that background, SwiftUI was very easy to pick up. In general, if SwiftUI has the feature or UI element you want, it's super nice and concise. If it doesn't, you're pretty much screwed. Also, Apple doesn't really understand the term "backwards compatibility" when it comes to SwiftUI. Without doing a ton of work on workarounds, I was only able to target Ventura or newer.
efitz 3y ago
Where do the app icons come from?
- milanvarady 3y ago
  From a similar project called App Fair (https://github.com/App-Fair/App https://github.com/App-Fair/App). They have a separate repo containing supplemental data for casks.
adamredwoods 3y ago
Neat project, can I swap out brew and use macports?
- milanvarady 3y ago
  No. I'm not currently planning to add macports support. If a lot of people request it, I might consider it, but it would be a lot of work.
  - e12e 3y ago
    Tbh, I'm not sure if mixing the two in one app would make sense. Maybe a second app at one point? I moved from macports to brew as for a long while there were no build servers for arm for macports - having to regularly build clang and gcc from source just to patch a few utilities is not much fun. But I believe that's been fixed for a while. I honestly think brew's policy of "latest, nothing or @specialcase" isn't great for a stable work environment. But it has a lot of mind share. In my view NixOS is too much, GNU Guix for better or worse won't support propitary toolchains like Mac, pkgsrc looks best on paper - but seems abandoned? Which leaves macports as perhaps the best option and homebrew a close second.
    - ljm 3y ago
      I find myself preferring macports for a lot of things, but homebrew has brought its own niceness to the table. It's just a bit of a nightmare as a software author because so much rework is done to repackage your stuff in n formats: one for nix, one for guix, one for debian, one for redhat, one for homebrew, one for macports, snap, flatpak, AUR, cross-compilation for alpine, maybe add a PPA in there for the ubuntu fans...and then some of them try to wrap packages on npm, rubygems, pypi, etc. it's all done by the community but at the same time, so many of the people you want to help with your software won't touch it if their only option is to clone the repo and compile it (which in itself is simple, if done thoughtfully)
      - e12e 3y ago
        This is one reason I like pkgsrc better on paper. > clone the repo and compile it (which in itself is simple, if done thoughtfully) I find rust to be fantastic in this regard. And golang is quite good as well.
gorbypark 3y ago
Does it only do Casks, or CLI apps as well?
- dmix 3y ago
  Seems to just like my cask apps in the UI.
- milanvarady 3y ago
  Just casks
zapw 3y ago
> What information does Applite track? > None. Absolutely love this part of the page---we need more software with this philosophy. Kudos.
dmix 3y ago
I was browsering through the app list, which is like a store, that's cool. Does anyone know an good open source apps for limiting the amount of time you spend on distracting sites (like HN)? I've found some firefox extensions but nothing very good.
pheeney 3y ago
Installed via brew cask command and get the following error: App load error Couldn't load app catalog. Check internet your connection, or try restarting the app. I am running LuLu which I allowed the process to go through, tried to Retry and Quit but doesn't work for me. My 2c, I like the logo on the website better than the app icon. The heavy drop shadows make it a bit dated. The website logo is minimal and clean in comparison and would look nice in the dock.
- pheeney 3y ago
  I think it was a DNS issue. I changed my DNS servers and now it works. Great project!
campfireshuffle 3y ago
In a similar vein, I created a web tool that can take your cask selection, save it to a temporary link and let you install all apps without creating an account https://coldbrew.vercel.app https://coldbrew.vercel.app
graypegg 3y ago
Nice job! Looks really slick. I totally would’ve made good use of this when setting up a new Mac a couple months ago! Sometimes having browsable categories is perfect when you’re trying to remember everything you normally have installed.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
That looks great! I feel that SwiftUI apps seem to have a fairly “uniform” UI, but it’s actually perfect for this.
malablaster 3y ago
A GUI for homebrew is totally unnecessary.
ccorcos 3y ago
One feature I would love is an ability to export a list of downloaded apps so I can import and re-install from a new machine. Even better if you can sync with Mackup. I’ve been keeping a shell script of all the install commands I run so I can get up and running quickly
- yett 3y ago
  You can already accomplish this with Homebrew. If you type 'brew bundle dump' it creates a Brewfile (basically just bunch of install commands) containing all the apps you've installed via Homebrew. Simply copy this file over your new machine and type 'brew bundle install'.
tony-allan 3y ago
I installed Applite but it didn't automatically pick up already installed brew apps (as shown by "brew list"). I don't really want to install/reinstall them manually. Has anyone who has used Applite got any suggestions?
brundolf 3y ago
Does it delegate to the homebrew CLI or is it a full reimplementation?
- milanvarady 3y ago
  It uses the CLI under the hood
  - brundolf 3y ago
    Fair, reimplementation would have been a huge project. But I would've been excited because the official implementation is so slow :)
koinedad 3y ago
Looks super clean!
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
Bit of a tangent: I noticed in the screenshots a Jetbrains-like logo for an IDE called AppCode. Been considering tinkering with Swift/Obj-C development for a bit. I know XCode's reputation as being awful though, so it sounded great that Jetbrains had a product for this. To my dismay they discontinued it[0] last December. There is at least a freemium/community plugin for Swift support on other IDEs[1]. [0] https://blog.jetbrains.com/appcode/2022/12/appcode-2022-3-release-and-end-of-sales-and-support/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/appcode/2022/12/appcode-2022-3-re... [1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22150-swift-support https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22150-swift-support
- sunnybeetroot 3y ago
  Xcode is great.
  - mobiledev2014 3y ago
    Both are true. Xcode is a disaster, but it's also the best IDE there is.
prxtl 3y ago
This is quite neat! But is it just me or does scrolling in the app feel... unnatural? Specifically in comparison to the rest of macOS?
avinassh 3y ago
I am on macOS Monterey and seems this app requires Ventura or higher. Does it use any APIs from the newer OS version? If not, could you please consider relaxing this and allow older version installations too?
- runxel 3y ago
  Yeah I was wondering the same. Why tf does this need to be on the latest MacOS?
  - avinassh 3y ago
    most likely milanvarady used the defaults from xcode to build and distribute
- milanvarady 3y ago
  I wanted to at least target Big Sur, but the problem is that Apple doesn't understand the term "backwards compatibility" when it comes to SwiftUI. Every new feature they add to SwiftUI is only for the latest version of macOS. And since SwiftUI is a relatively new UI framework, they add things that are missing or greatly improved from the previous solution. In conclusion, if I wanted to add extended support, I would have to put a ton of work into workarounds for features that are Ventura only.
mikkelam 3y ago
Feature suggestion: Add a 'popular' section. Should be easy enought to use the data from https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/ https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/. I also noticed some of the app icons are a bit grainy on the edges. Cool app!
nathansherburn 3y ago
Am I correct that this only shows GUI apps that can be installed via Homebrew? I'm sure I have some command line utilities installed that aren't showing up in Applite.
- milanvarady 3y ago
  Yes this is casks only

280 points by milanvarady 3y ago

My first thought is that it's a classic macOS dev strategy to take a CLI tool and build a UI for it. In retrospect brew is a perfect candidate

donatj 3y ago
It's been about a decade since I ran desktop Linux in any meaningful capacity but I feel like that was the way a significant portion of the gui apps worked.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Xcode is easily the largest (non-game) app on my computer, and it’s really just a glorified CLI client.
  - blashyrk 3y ago
    This becomes painfully obvious once the backend inevitably crashes at some point and the functionality of the editor is reduced to that of Notepad until you do a full restart

threesevenths 3y ago

Any tracking or privacy concerns we should be aware of that a polite adds on top of home brew? For example, does a polite collect data on the type of device, installed casks, user data, anything?

milanvarady 3y ago
Applite developer here. No, Applite has zero tracking built in, it's a 100% free and open-source. Only Homebrew tracks the number of downloads.
- vaxman 3y ago
  If you want to track, charge or close-source your code, it is okay, the Streisand-effect from all the freeloaders will save you.
driggs 3y ago
This is in the FAQ, which you don't even need to click to read from the front page: https://aerolite.dev/applite/index.html#details https://aerolite.dev/applite/index.html#details > Q: What information does Applite track? > A: None.

kryptozinc 3y ago

What is your monetization strategy with this app?

merryje 3y ago
It has an MIT license on GitHub https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite
- EduardoBautista 3y ago
  I am not a license expert, but doesn't MIT mean we can build upon it with proprietary changes and then sell it as proprietary software?
  - xcdzvyn 3y ago
    Yes.
  - paxys 3y ago
    Yes. You can also sell the project as-is with zero changes if you want. The only thing you have to be wary of is trademarks, which normally aren't covered under standard OSS licenses.
notpushkin 3y ago
Does everything have to have a monetization strategy?
- rubicon33 3y ago
  As a user of an app, its always a fair question to ask. "Free" usually means you are the product.
  - princevegeta89 3y ago
    "Open Source" means you are not though.

fewald_net 3y ago

So many animation on this website.

dreadlordbone 3y ago
Thats AOS for ya [1] [1]https://michalsnik.github.io/aos/ https://michalsnik.github.io/aos/
spiderfarmer 3y ago
This is the "Username checks out" comment of HN.
catskull 3y ago
Just looking at your site now. I'm inspired by your projects page.
- fewald_net 3y ago
  Thank you very much!
paxys 3y ago
Seriously. It's like they found an animation library and couldn't resist using it for every single element on the page.

Syzygies 3y ago

I applaud this, for people who prefer a GUI interface. I started to write something to better organize synchronizing my Homebrew installation across multiple machines, then thought someone must have done this well already. Sure enough, https://pumpingco.de/blog/brewfile/ https://pumpingco.de/blog/brewfile/ A fantastic, clean way to reinstall or synchronize Homebrew setups, using the command line. I'm surprised that Applite doesn't accept a brewfile to ease migration. In my case I depend on Bash, Tailscale, and Ruby as installed by Homebrew, so a clean reinstallation is delicate. I have scripts to make sure I don't screw this up: 1 brew bundle dump.sh 2 uninstall homebrew.sh 3 install homebrew.sh 4 renew bash.sh 5 renew tailscale.sh 6 renew ruby.sh 7 renew brew bundle.sh choose-shell.sh

JamesSwift 3y ago
I have an idempotent provision script I use to install/update apps. The homebrew portion is basically brew upgrade HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 brew bundle --file=Brewfile --cleanup --no-upgrade Works really nicely to keep everything tidy, up-to-date, and transferable.
dividedbyzero 3y ago
One more neat trick for Brewfiles: They're evaluated as Ruby code, so you can use if-else etc. to conditionally install things on different machines with a single Brewfile. I use that together with yadm to manage both work and private laptops with minimum duplication.
jmspring 3y ago
Agree, it's good for those that prefer a GUI. I'm not sure the intended audience since if you are using Brew, you are generally doing a lot of commandline stuff. Your mention of the cross multiple machine synchronizing, however, is interesting! Good to find.
eviks 3y ago
how to you update you config with new/deleted apps if you've manually added categories and comments like the blog's author shows on his site?

SmellTheGlove 3y ago

I wonder if you’d have a monetization path here via enterprise support contracts and/or additional device fleet management features. The tech companies I’ve worked at have all had some amount of “use brew to install …” in our dev spinup docs. And IT doesn’t love it because when they get asked to support it, there’s no quick way to see what’s installed or what version without logging into the specific machine. And for whatever reason, it’s also challenging to roll out dev laptops with specific packages already installed. I presume it’s because maintaining them is difficult.

tough 3y ago
This sounds like a great idea and a good COSS lifestyle company to run
tmikaeld 3y ago
That's my first thought as well, there's a lot of IT companies supporting Macs that would LOVE a tool like this, especially if it's commercially supported.
- _1 3y ago
  My company manages Macs with jamf. It comes with a "self service" tool that can install oss apps, apps we've licensed, change configurations, etc.
  - baal80spam 3y ago
    Same here. There are at least a few of such tools, and they are highly customizable.
ljm 3y ago
Assuming everyone's on a Mac, I'm actually surprised there isn't that much use of something like homebrew-bundle[1]. It's definitely nicer to have your tooling run natively rather than, say, trying to wrap everything in Docker, or trying to get everybody on board with nix or guix. I think the only real issue here is that you can't really pin to specific versions unless a formula exists, and there is no guarantee that a formula with a pinned version will stick around because homebrew likes to stay lean. So to that extent it can still be unclear what version of software someone is running on after enough time. [1]https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle/ https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle/

dimmke 3y ago

There’s another decent application for this called Cakebrew, but not sure if it uses native Apple UI APIs

milanvarady 3y ago
As far as I know, Cakebrew is no longer maintained. There are quite a few alternatives though, you can see the full list on the GitHub page (https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite#alternatives https://github.com/milanvarady/Applite#alternatives)

server_man3000 3y ago

Dude, neat!

sharp11 3y ago

I'm not the target audience (I prefer CLI), but as an iOS dev just wanted to say kudos. Great idea and looks to be very well executed. I'm curious to know how your experience with SwiftUI was on MacOS?

milanvarady 3y ago
Very mixed. I hadn't done any app development before this project, only games with Gamemaker and the Godot engine. Coming from that background, SwiftUI was very easy to pick up. In general, if SwiftUI has the feature or UI element you want, it's super nice and concise. If it doesn't, you're pretty much screwed. Also, Apple doesn't really understand the term "backwards compatibility" when it comes to SwiftUI. Without doing a ton of work on workarounds, I was only able to target Ventura or newer.

efitz 3y ago

Where do the app icons come from?

milanvarady 3y ago
From a similar project called App Fair (https://github.com/App-Fair/App https://github.com/App-Fair/App). They have a separate repo containing supplemental data for casks.

adamredwoods 3y ago

Neat project, can I swap out brew and use macports?

milanvarady 3y ago
No. I'm not currently planning to add macports support. If a lot of people request it, I might consider it, but it would be a lot of work.
- e12e 3y ago
  Tbh, I'm not sure if mixing the two in one app would make sense. Maybe a second app at one point? I moved from macports to brew as for a long while there were no build servers for arm for macports - having to regularly build clang and gcc from source just to patch a few utilities is not much fun. But I believe that's been fixed for a while. I honestly think brew's policy of "latest, nothing or @specialcase" isn't great for a stable work environment. But it has a lot of mind share. In my view NixOS is too much, GNU Guix for better or worse won't support propitary toolchains like Mac, pkgsrc looks best on paper - but seems abandoned? Which leaves macports as perhaps the best option and homebrew a close second.
  - ljm 3y ago
    I find myself preferring macports for a lot of things, but homebrew has brought its own niceness to the table. It's just a bit of a nightmare as a software author because so much rework is done to repackage your stuff in n formats: one for nix, one for guix, one for debian, one for redhat, one for homebrew, one for macports, snap, flatpak, AUR, cross-compilation for alpine, maybe add a PPA in there for the ubuntu fans...and then some of them try to wrap packages on npm, rubygems, pypi, etc. it's all done by the community but at the same time, so many of the people you want to help with your software won't touch it if their only option is to clone the repo and compile it (which in itself is simple, if done thoughtfully)
    - e12e 3y ago
      This is one reason I like pkgsrc better on paper. > clone the repo and compile it (which in itself is simple, if done thoughtfully) I find rust to be fantastic in this regard. And golang is quite good as well.

gorbypark 3y ago

Does it only do Casks, or CLI apps as well?

dmix 3y ago
Seems to just like my cask apps in the UI.
milanvarady 3y ago
Just casks

zapw 3y ago

> What information does Applite track? > None. Absolutely love this part of the page---we need more software with this philosophy. Kudos.

dmix 3y ago

I was browsering through the app list, which is like a store, that's cool. Does anyone know an good open source apps for limiting the amount of time you spend on distracting sites (like HN)? I've found some firefox extensions but nothing very good.

pheeney 3y ago

Installed via brew cask command and get the following error: App load error Couldn't load app catalog. Check internet your connection, or try restarting the app. I am running LuLu which I allowed the process to go through, tried to Retry and Quit but doesn't work for me. My 2c, I like the logo on the website better than the app icon. The heavy drop shadows make it a bit dated. The website logo is minimal and clean in comparison and would look nice in the dock.

pheeney 3y ago
I think it was a DNS issue. I changed my DNS servers and now it works. Great project!

campfireshuffle 3y ago

In a similar vein, I created a web tool that can take your cask selection, save it to a temporary link and let you install all apps without creating an account https://coldbrew.vercel.app https://coldbrew.vercel.app

graypegg 3y ago

Nice job! Looks really slick. I totally would’ve made good use of this when setting up a new Mac a couple months ago! Sometimes having browsable categories is perfect when you’re trying to remember everything you normally have installed.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

That looks great! I feel that SwiftUI apps seem to have a fairly “uniform” UI, but it’s actually perfect for this.

malablaster 3y ago

A GUI for homebrew is totally unnecessary.

ccorcos 3y ago

One feature I would love is an ability to export a list of downloaded apps so I can import and re-install from a new machine. Even better if you can sync with Mackup. I’ve been keeping a shell script of all the install commands I run so I can get up and running quickly

yett 3y ago
You can already accomplish this with Homebrew. If you type 'brew bundle dump' it creates a Brewfile (basically just bunch of install commands) containing all the apps you've installed via Homebrew. Simply copy this file over your new machine and type 'brew bundle install'.

tony-allan 3y ago

I installed Applite but it didn't automatically pick up already installed brew apps (as shown by "brew list"). I don't really want to install/reinstall them manually. Has anyone who has used Applite got any suggestions?

brundolf 3y ago

Does it delegate to the homebrew CLI or is it a full reimplementation?

milanvarady 3y ago
It uses the CLI under the hood
- brundolf 3y ago
  Fair, reimplementation would have been a huge project. But I would've been excited because the official implementation is so slow :)

koinedad 3y ago

Looks super clean!

TheCapeGreek 3y ago

Bit of a tangent: I noticed in the screenshots a Jetbrains-like logo for an IDE called AppCode. Been considering tinkering with Swift/Obj-C development for a bit. I know XCode's reputation as being awful though, so it sounded great that Jetbrains had a product for this. To my dismay they discontinued it[0] last December. There is at least a freemium/community plugin for Swift support on other IDEs[1]. [0] https://blog.jetbrains.com/appcode/2022/12/appcode-2022-3-release-and-end-of-sales-and-support/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/appcode/2022/12/appcode-2022-3-re... [1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22150-swift-support https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22150-swift-support

sunnybeetroot 3y ago
Xcode is great.
- mobiledev2014 3y ago
  Both are true. Xcode is a disaster, but it's also the best IDE there is.

prxtl 3y ago

This is quite neat! But is it just me or does scrolling in the app feel... unnatural? Specifically in comparison to the rest of macOS?

avinassh 3y ago

I am on macOS Monterey and seems this app requires Ventura or higher. Does it use any APIs from the newer OS version? If not, could you please consider relaxing this and allow older version installations too?

runxel 3y ago
Yeah I was wondering the same. Why tf does this need to be on the latest MacOS?
- avinassh 3y ago
  most likely milanvarady used the defaults from xcode to build and distribute
milanvarady 3y ago
I wanted to at least target Big Sur, but the problem is that Apple doesn't understand the term "backwards compatibility" when it comes to SwiftUI. Every new feature they add to SwiftUI is only for the latest version of macOS. And since SwiftUI is a relatively new UI framework, they add things that are missing or greatly improved from the previous solution. In conclusion, if I wanted to add extended support, I would have to put a ton of work into workarounds for features that are Ventura only.

mikkelam 3y ago

Feature suggestion: Add a 'popular' section. Should be easy enought to use the data from https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/ https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/. I also noticed some of the app icons are a bit grainy on the edges. Cool app!

nathansherburn 3y ago

Am I correct that this only shows GUI apps that can be installed via Homebrew? I'm sure I have some command line utilities installed that aren't showing up in Applite.

milanvarady 3y ago
Yes this is casks only