I remember the fantasy that more and more people would be able to develop simple basic apps for their own very personal customized needs. It was a vision of a more accessible and democratic compute infrastructure, where we'd all be 'makers' creating the compute environment we lived in. Things like hypercard were part of this vision.
Those days are gone. The article doesn't explicitly mention the fact we all know: Very few people have the capacity to create a 'home-cooked meal' like the OP, for their own use.
In fact much fewer than could create a little hypercard app. It's a world where there are pretty large barriers to most people being software 'makers', and instead we are just consumers who can choose from what is offered to us by various companies trying to figure out how to monetize our needs and desires.
Part of it is the increased complexity of app development. Part of it is the walled gardens of our suppliers.
> I distributed the app to my family using TestFlight, and in TestFlight it shall remain forever: a cozy, eternal beta.
Indeed. Because the very infrastruture ignores the needs of one-off "home cooked meal" apps, it assumes they don't exist, you have to pretend it is some kind of "beta" of a mass market commodified product instead (and be glad our suppliers still let you do that for 'free'). Our computers (increasingly the phone/device is people's primary computer) are no longer ours to do with as we will.
It is sad. If those who created the computing revolution 30 years ago (including prior versions of us) could see where it wound up.... the level of technological sophisitication of our pocket audio-video-geolocated-self-surveilling-communicating devices is astounding; the lack of 'empowerment' or control we have over them is utterly depressing.
Those days are gone. The article doesn't explicitly mention the fact we all know: Very few people have the capacity to create a 'home-cooked meal' like the OP, for their own use.
In fact much fewer than could create a little hypercard app. It's a world where there are pretty large barriers to most people being software 'makers', and instead we are just consumers who can choose from what is offered to us by various companies trying to figure out how to monetize our needs and desires.
Part of it is the increased complexity of app development. Part of it is the walled gardens of our suppliers.
> I distributed the app to my family using TestFlight, and in TestFlight it shall remain forever: a cozy, eternal beta.
Indeed. Because the very infrastruture ignores the needs of one-off "home cooked meal" apps, it assumes they don't exist, you have to pretend it is some kind of "beta" of a mass market commodified product instead (and be glad our suppliers still let you do that for 'free'). Our computers (increasingly the phone/device is people's primary computer) are no longer ours to do with as we will.
It is sad. If those who created the computing revolution 30 years ago (including prior versions of us) could see where it wound up.... the level of technological sophisitication of our pocket audio-video-geolocated-self-surveilling-communicating devices is astounding; the lack of 'empowerment' or control we have over them is utterly depressing.