Update: Apple's Communication When Your App Gets Delisted

When I posted End of Line: SleepMute for macOS is no longer for sale and removed SleepMute from sale, I didn't expect Apple would be say anything else about it.

Yesterday, Apple sent me this:

Another grace period surprised me. Doesn't affect my decision, but if you need it that's good to know!

End of Line: SleepMute for macOS is no longer for sale

With sadness & some relief, SleepMute for macOS has been removed from sale on the App Store. Since this is a eulogy, might as well lay out some final stats: 

• The only AppKit app as Tangerine Element I ever released
• When the site was rebuilt with Wordpress, I never put SleepMute on it
• Last version: 1.1.1 released March 27, 2012. 
• Unreleased version: 2.0 created February 18, 2016 on the App Store.
• Final Rating: 3.8 ★★★★☆ on 16 Ratings
• Since April 1, 2015 (which is "Lifetime" App Store Analytics):
• Sales: 208 units
• Price: $0.99
• Revenue: $28
• I definitely had more sales than that before 2015.
• Final App Store listing screenshot:

SleepMute on the App Store

Why remove the app now?

I've been thinking about removing the app from sale for a long time. There were many reasons:

• Very little time to work on the app since 1.1.1 was released, 🫢, over 12 years ago.
• App was written in Objective-C using AppKit and even older C APIs. 
• Not an easy codebase to jump into when working with Swift, SwiftUI, & UIKit during the day
• Apple Sherlocked most of the functionality!
• The only feature left was pausing/unpausing iTunes Apple Music when sound was muted/unmuted
• macOS stopped leaking sound while asleep a while ago
• Apple first removed the startup sound from Macs, then brought it back, and finally put a switch in System Settings → Sound

macOS 15 Sound System Settings

I probably would've kept holding out hope that I'd find time (I had features planned!) indefinitely, but Apple forced my hand. On October 25, 2024 I received an email from App Store Connect's App Review team that said I had a new message: 

App Store Connect email about SleepMute

I'd expected something like this since Apple posted Clarifying criteria & new timing extension for App Store Improvements process on April 29, 2022. I'd also had a tab open for years to Benoit Pasquier's post When to remove your iOS app from the App Store which I'd found very thoughtful.

Still, I opened the message on App Store Connect a tad hopeful I had more time, but that flame was quickly put out when I saw the title App Store Improvement Notice. Time was truly up.

App Store Connect App Store Improvement Notice for SleepMute

What features were planned for SleepMute 2.0?

Mic Mute Hot Key

Ever use video conferencing software and while in a meeting, you mute yourself? Then you switch to another window and it's at that exact moment you get asked a question that you should answer quickly Everyone struggles to get back to the window and unmute that app, which wastes everyone's time. All the video conferencing apps do it slightly different too.

Wouldn't it be great if macOS had a way mute or unmute the active microphone while in any app?

I thought so too and was going to add this so SleepMute. With each macOS release, I expected Apple would add this feature to the menu bar Microphone icon with Standard or Voice Isolation. They haven't yet and thankfully there are some apps in the App Store that do.

Jason Snell @ Six Colors wrote that Mic Drop mutes your microphone everwhere. 

I tried it just today and it's nicely done. You have to trust an app like this because muting a video conference can't fail. I really like the ON AIR icon you can put in the menu bar.

Turns out there a lot of these since the last time I searched so take a look.

Get Mic Drop on the App Store.

Sound Mixer

I can't believe macOS 15 still doesn't have a sound mixer. I wanted to do something simple to control the relative volume games to FaceTime or Discord which is a never ending challenge. Struggled with this so much when playing Baldur's Gate 3. 

Rogue Amoeba has been a leader in macOS sound related apps for as long as I've been using Mac apps. They've got a great app called SoundSource that does a comprehensive job. It's perhaps a tad more complicated than what I had in mind, but there's no denying they have the skills and the business to build a great app. I can't compete with that!

App Rename

If I added these features, surely SleepMute would have to be renamed. I was leaning toward Mutetation.

Did I accomplish what I wanted with SleepMute?

I made SleepMute to stop my Mac from waking up my infant son 14 years ago with random noise when our home iMac shared a room with him. It worked great and did what I needed it to do for a number of years. As he got older and we switched living arrangements, the iMac wasn't in his room. 

My need for the feature diminished and so did my desire to work on it. Ultimately, that's what I learned. Side projects are usually born from a personal need. Once no longer a concern for you, it's hard to keep driving yourself forward.

These days, I'd much rather explore Final Cut Pro to make videos for Travel by Marisa or explore visionOS apps so really that tells me retiring SleepMute is the right decision.

Quit and Close Tab Confirmation for Safari on macOS

A few weeks ago, John Gruber posted Quit Confirmation for Safari on MacOS. I was inspired to make a few changes to Mr. Gruber's script and add a couple more.

Check out my AppleScripts GitHub repo for quit confirmation on Safari and Chrome as well as a tab close confirmation on Safari.

Apple's 64-bit Unification is Prep for ARM Macs and Mac/iOS Shared Apps

• iOS 11 and apps are 64-bit only
• macOS 10.13 is the last release to support 32-bit apps without compromise
• Mac App Store as of 1/18 mandates new apps support 64-bit and updates to existing apps must support 64-bit by June 2018
• Xcode 9.3 includes diagnostic tools to make sure your apps are 64-bit compatible
• Xcode 9.3 makes it a warning to build to for 32-bit architecture (Apple Developer Account Required)
• …
• Project Marzipan, combined iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps, is in the works
• Apple will replace Intel with ARM CPUs in Macs by 2020

Apple Glass Will Replace Dumb Glasses

I’d never heard of iDropNews before today, but they have some beautiful renders of a potential Apple Augmented Reality (AR) product called Apple Glass:

They got me thinking. Let’s just say Apple is working on AR glasses for a launch in Fall 2020.

The biggest feature isn’t Augmented Reality…

It’s the Dumb Glasses market, stupid!

Any facial augmented reality solution is going to fail if they aren’t fashionable and are user hostile to spectacles, contacts, and sunglasses. Apple has more than likely come to the same conclusion after seeing the Google Glass debacle. A high level of fashion has to be baked into the product.

To maximize their market opportunity, Apple must be working on vision correction as a core feature. The market looks enormous. An estimate from Grand View Research says the worldwide eyewear market was $102.66B USD in 2015.

In North America, the majority of the eyewear market is spectacles:
 
If Apple is going to sell a lot of Glass (or whatever they’re called), they need to replace dumb spectacles. Is Apple going to make lenses custom lenses for this product? I don’t think so.

What I’d be betting on is that Apple will ship a product that has dynamically configured vision correction. This doesn’t mean optometrists go out of business, but instead of walking out of the office waiting for new glasses, they just send your new prescription to Apple Glass (and you get a copy in the Health app on iOS) and boom, you see at 20/20 or better again. Apple could also take a huge chunk out of Luxottica. This Snopes article has the best breakdown on truth and rumor about their market share I can find.

If you wear contacts, no problem, Apple Glass just turns off all corrections.

Wait, you also switch between indoor spectacles and sunglasses? No problem, Apple Glass darken like transitions (or better?).

That’s right, Apple Glass would also darken like transitions (but better?).

Apple Glass would also be compatible with contact wearers by turning off vision correction.
Need bifocals? No problem, Apple Glass can handle it.

The keynote practically writes itself…

WWDC 2020 - June 8

Tim: Today were announcing three products.

Tim: An Augmented Reality headset

Tim: Vision correcting glasses

Tim: Polarized sunglasses

Tim: …

Tim: Are you getting it yet? This isn’t three products, it’s one.

Tim: I’d like to show you Apple Glass

This would be the culmination of Tim Cook’s Apple. He’d be 60 years old, just shipped Apple’s most revolutionary product since the iPhone, and with plenty of time to pursue any other projects he wished.

Does Apple Glass cannibalize any other Apple products? Apple Watch shrinks a bit as some users that want Glass decide they don’t need Watch too. But if Apple Watch enhances the AR experience through arm motion tracking, Apple Glass could be purely additive.

Apple Glass complements iPhone for the foreseeable future due to processing power/battery life issues.

Update

I didn’t realize when I opened Seeking Alpha this morning it was about Apple’s AR opportunity.

Plan on using Face ID on iPhone X in your iOS app? You must include NSFaceIDUsageDescription in your Info.plist

I’ve already shipped an app that is accessing Face ID on iPhone X, but while testing an unrelated feature the other day, I saw the alert on the left. I thought I had read everything that I needed to about Face ID implementation, but this had slipped past me.









I parked it for a while, but I happened to open the docs on LAContext on an unrelated issue when I saw the Important information on the right.



When you click on NSFaceIDUsageDescription you see the description on the left. I didn't experience any forced app quitting behavior on device or simulator, but your experience may vary.

With NSFaceIDUsageDescription added to Info.plist, and a key of “Secure Account Access” like in the right screenshot, users will see a prompt like the one on the right when the app tries to access Face ID the first time.

Glad I caught this in the “one to fix all the iPhone X issues” release of the app I’m working on.

How I was Accidentally Credited by Apple on a macOS Security Update

curl

We would like to acknowledge Dave Murdock of Tangerine Element for their assistance.

That’s from the end of About the security content of macOS Sierra 10.12.6, Security Update 2017-003 El Capitan, and Security Update 2017-003 Yosemite.

I wasn’t aiming to obtain such credit, all I did was File a Radar on curl.

Why?

I have no end of trouble downloading Cocoapods, Ruby Gems, Node modules, using Terminal at my day job.

They have a proxy server connected to my Active Directory credentials. For GUI based apps, macOS combined with a little Apple utility called Enterprise Connect configures everything as soon as I make a connection to the network.

However, anything that is strictly command-line is not guaranteed to work.

A bunch of co-workers and I have taken matters into our own hands and written a script that runs in our .bash_profiles. It sets these environment variables when started a shell automagically based on the current username and password:

http_proxy

https_proxy

no_proxy

Both http_proxy and https_proxy have traditionally been set to the same thing, a proxy server like http://proxy.company.com which is only available inside your company. Even the https_proxy variable is configured to hit an unsecured HTTP server.

During an earlier version of the script, I had accidentally set https_proxy to https://proxy.company.com and things were breaking.

Turns out, curl couldn’t support HTTPS proxies until late 2016, and macOS 10.12.5 hadn’t been updated to curl 7.52.0 or later to add support.

So I filed a radar…

But Wait There’s More!

Turns out, curl 7.54.0 or later closed a number of CVEs and I mentioned that in my radar.

Fast forward 2 months after I filed the radar, and Apple Product Security emails me to ask if I’d like credit.

I hesitated at first, not knowing what, if any, ramifications being publicly listed on an Apple Security listed might have.

Ultimately, being credited was just to cool not to do, so I did.

Still More to Do

While curl has been updated, unfortunately my problems persist. Appears the Generic Security Services Application Program Interface (GSSAPI) somehow occasionally selects the wrong way to present my credentials to the proxy server and I get connection errors.

I’m updating to macOS High Sierra right now hoping that something has changed to resolve this issue, but if not, I’ll be filling another radar.

Though the public Bug Reporter interface recently got a much needed overhaul, the system is still far from perfect. 

I’m truly baffled why Apple doesn’t build macOS and iOS apps that developers can use to collect the required information and file with far less work. I bet they’d get a lot more high quality bug reports. I’ve filed a radar on a radar app.

However, I’ve seen enough bugs fixed that I was the original reporter to feel my time is worth spending on filing radars.

All Hope was Not Lost...Apple Released AirPort Base Station Firmware 7.6.7 for 3+ Year Old Devices!

While at a Memorial Day gathering yesterday, the host mentioned that an update just became available for his Airport devices, the Express, Extreme, and Time Capsule. I thought he had to have been mistaken and maybe I’d missed updating his hardware on a previous visit. No update had been mentioned in the Apple press, but I knew my AirPort Utility automatic update checking was off, I’d lost hope Apple would ever send out any updates for my aging Time Capsule. Maybe Apple did send out an update…

Sure enough Apple released AirPort Base Station Firmware 7.6.7! The prior version was 7.6.4  released in August 2013. That immediately got my mind racing. Were internal 7.6.5 and 7.6.6 releases created that didn’t make it public? Could more bug fixes be bundled up into this update than just those mentioned in the support article? We’re fixes made during a development cycle for new AirPort Base Stations or to comply with the FCC and back ported to 2 generation old hardware?

I guess we’ll never know, but WWDC is right around the corner, I’m not immune to rampant speculation 😬

TL;DR Wil Shipley: Keep Calm and Swift On

I couldn’t agree more with Wil Shipley’s post on Swift and Dynamism. All the likes, stars, favs, or hearts wouldn’t be enough. 

You should read it for the entertainment value alone.

In Chris Lattner I Trust!

Is ABI compatibility missing Swift 3.0 annoying? Absolutely.

Is Swift 3.0 source compatibility going to be a time sink with chicken and egg library problems? Yep.

I’m sure dynamism is coming to Swift 3.x or 4 and I’m confident the teams and the community will improve on what Cocoa's had since 1988. Swift is the next 30+ years of Apple developer tooling and platforms. It’s almost insulting to the teams to suggest they aren’t being thoughtful.

Hapuna Matata, because in the coming on 2 years I’ve been using Swift it's saved me so much time with fewer bugs and easier to read code.

Let's Talk About What Chewie Does in Star Wars The Force Awaken

SPOILERS	Ahead for Star Wars The Force Awakens

I’ve read a lot of theories about what every character does in Star Wars The Force Awakens…except Chewbacca.
The first thing you have to admit about Chewy in The Force Awakens is that he’s awesome. The Force Awakens is the best Chewbacca movie yet. He’s physical, played in large part not by original actor Peter Mayhew, but by newcomer Joonas Suotamo and the result is a more action oriented Wookie. He’s also funny and expressive. With just a head move or grunt, Mayhew and Suotamo communicate as much information as any actor playing humans do in the movie.
That’s not what I want to talk about though. I want to know what Chewie knows. Given what we see in The Force Awakens, Chewie knows:

• Kylo Ren is Ben Solo
• Rey's lineage
• Who Supreme Leader Snoke is (not Darth Plagueis)

If you believe that Kylo Ren has completed his fall to the Dark Side by killing Han Solo...

• Why doesn’t Chewy go for the kill shot?
• Why doesn’t Chewy’s bowcaster knock Kylo off the platform?
• Why does Chewy go with Rey without comment?

However, there is another possibility. Watch this video by Movies with Mikey:

Mikey’s theory is that while Kylo and Rey fight, Kylo is not using the Dark Side, but Rey does. The theory is that Ren and Rey will flip Force sides by the end of the trilogy and Kylo Ren is in deep cover.
If you think this theory has any credence, then I’d propose that Chewy shoots Kylo Ren with a lower power, non-fatal bowcaster shot on purpose. Through The Force Awakens, we see Han and Chewy blow foes away with impunity using the bowcaster, catapulting them several feet upon impact. Yet Kylo Ren doesn’t move.
Of course Kylo’s force abilities could explain him being able to absorb the energy of the blaster bolt without moving. However, we see Kylo able to stop blaster fire in mid-air after being fired. If he was using his powers, he wouldn’t simply diminish the energy, he’d stop it.
On the other hand, if Chewie doesn’t miss a Kylo Ren kill shot on purpose, he’s responsible for allowing one of the galaxies greatest evils to escape justice just after his best friend of all time was killed.
Or Chewbacca is relieved his life debt is over, but feels he must take some kind of shot to keep up appearances that he actually liked Han Solo 😉