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Tag: Apple

Over 20 years of native, cross-platform app development and still going strong

The recent news about Microsoft discontinuing Visual Studio’s support for Mac has got us talking about longevity in the field of software development. We all know technology changes rapidly and you, and the tools you use, can’t afford to stand still. Here’s an infographic that illustrates how Xojo’s been continually updating and modernizing since 1996 while other development tools come and go.

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Microsoft’s Visual Studio for Mac Discontinued; Is it really safer to buy from a big name?

Microsoft recently announced that they are discontinuing Visual Studio for Mac, which was only just introduced in 2016. So how “safe” is relying on a big company for your development tool, really? If you are an enterprise company with a large investment in software and IT, you might want to take a look outside the big names and see what Xojo can offer. Xojo makes it quicker and easier to try out software ideas before you commit expensive development resources to your primary tools. And we’ve been dong it since 1998, with a focus on native, cross-platform development.

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Xojo and Apple Vision Pro

Apple has released the developer documentation for Vision Pro, their recently announced mixed reality headset. So far, it looks promising that iOS apps written in Xojo will just work. Of course, we don’t yet have one of these to use for testing. If we did, we’d be too busy playing with it to write this blog post, however we have tried running some Xojo iOS projects in the Vision Pro Simulator and they work without modification so that’s a very good sign.

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Moving Forward & Giving Back: iOS and macOS Products from Greg O’Lone

My new path has taken me deep into the world of iOS and macOS and I thought I would create some projects & products which would benefit Xojo apps on those platforms by creating some products which expose some of the larger frameworks which are not already available but also cannot be accessed by declares alone…

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The Versatility of Xojo

Many people around the world are celebrating the holidays by giving gifts, which means more and more people are organizing Secret Santa events. In November of 2018, Jérémie Leroy had the idea of making a Secret Santa iOS app. 3 years, 32 languages and 6.5 millions downloads later, Jérémie incorporated Xojo Web to improve his highly successful Xojo iOS app. Secret Santa is a prime example of what is possible and how you can leverage your Xojo skills to expand to other platforms when you need to.

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My Thoughts on the WWDC 2022 Keynote

I’ve learned over the years not to have any specific expectations from Apple’s WWDC keynote. Some years they introduce something big and new that we were pretty much expecting. Other years they blindside us. As the CEO of a company that creates tools for building apps for most of Apple’s ecosystem and given Apple’s history of secrecy, I’m understandably curious just how blindsided I might be each June. Fortunately, this year’s keynote was filled with features that ranged from mildly interesting to really awesome but all incremental improvements across Apple’s software line.

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On-Device iOS Debugging in Xojo

You may or may not be aware that running iOS projects in the Simulator does not allow you to check all of your app’s features. There are a few features which rely on hardware capabilities which the Simulator cannot emulate. This can make it hard to track down bugs, and the only recourse is console logging. Starting in Xojo 2022r1 it’s possible to run your apps right on a physical device connected by USB.

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QuickTip: Using SF Symbols in macOS … revisited!

Earlier this year ago I wrote a post about using the SF Font symbols on macOS Picture.SystemImagein iOS apps. However that technique has some downsides. For one, the symbol glyphs are hardcoded, which means that it’s not possible to access the new symbols added to the SF Font by Apple. In addition, it isn’t possible to set the font weight and scale for the glyph. In this new post, I’ll show a more flexible way to work with these symbols on macOS 11+.

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