Apple macOS

OS X (originally Mac OS X) is a series of Unix-based graphical interface operating systems (OS) developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is designed to run on Macintosh computers, having been pre-installed on all Macs since 2002.

Betting your company on Metaverse AR/VR Craze

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple watchOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

First Story that I want to share today is from my experience

In 2009 I worked as an Animator and E-Learning Courseware Creator and Designer. And I was planning to switch the design domain to HCI/UX, i.e. Human-Computer Interaction/User Experience Design.

And software like Apple Shake and Adobe After Effects was standard competitive tool used in both domains.

I was using an iMac at that time. Adobe After Effects was bundled in Creative Suite, costing around INR 45,000/- in India. Apple Shake was way cheaper as it was a standalone offering from Apple.

It was the day of 30th July 2009 that I was going to start to learn the Apple Shake as Apple offered all tutorials on their website for free. And it was the same day that Apple discontinued Apple Shake. When I woke early to learn, I saw the news on their portal. I was devastated by the news. But I was relieved as I saved my time as if I started learning it two months ago, and then they discontinued it, which was a waste of time and energy. The software skill you acquired doesn’t exist in the world, or there is no demand for your talent in your industry, is a total waste of time.

There is another story that I can share with you today.

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Recover accidentally deleted Apple Address Book Contacts, Calendars and Safari Bookmarks from Apple iCloud

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iCloud, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple watchOS, Tutorials Leave a comment

Apple’s iCloud is for iPhone, iPad and Mac cloud data syncing platforms activated by default for every Apple ID on any Apple device. Apple introduced Apple iCloud after the failure of MobileMe cloud offerings for Apple iPhone, iPad and Mac.

In day-to-day life, it may happen that you may accidentally delete or lose your Apple Address Book contacts or Safari Bookmarks or Calender data. But there is a way to restore in the case of loss. You can go to iCloud.com to restore your missing data from an earlier version.

Once you restore old data with current data, the existing data will get replaced. The restoration process can be undone in case of any glitches.

Restore your contacts, bookmarks or calendars from an earlier version

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Web/Mobile App Monetisation & Revenue Generation Strategies

Mandar Apte Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Animation Film Design, Apple, Apple macOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Graphic Design, Personal Experience, Print Design, Reviews, Typography, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

All business survives on net profit.

In accounting terms, here is how you calculate Net Profit. i.e. (Total Business Revenue) – (Total Business Expenditure) = Net Profit

In the business world, there are two types of industries Service and Product.

So if you are in the service industry, you survive on a paycheck by paycheck or hourly charges to the client. You have to work every hour of every day to make ends meet.

But if you are a product company, you create a product based on your market and user research. You find consumer problems/requirements/gaps in the market and then try to solve them by creating your product in that category. So building a product is based on solving problems that your users are having.

In my case, I was a designer by profession. I graduated with a BFA (Bachelor of Applied Arts) in Advertising. After my first two jobs, I tried freelancing in the web, UX, print, branding and animation film industries. I was the lone proprietor of my business. I was doing everything talking to clients, executing a project, delivering it and then waiting for the final payment to be released. It was too much for me at that time.

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Choosing your correct online Music distribution and streaming service provider

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple iTunes, Apple macOS, Apple Music, Apps, Reviews Leave a comment

In the old golden day, music came on cassettes and compact disks (CDs).

With the evolution of better, faster, stable internet with Gigahertz processing power for computers, better/stable computer applications came along. With the invention of gesture-based high-tech mobile devices like the iPhone, modern, always accessible pocket-friendly apps emerged.

With faster 4G and 5G internet mobile data, internet-ready cloud-enabled apps came with better interactions. Moreover, even if mobile devices got more than 64/128/256/500 GB and 1 TB of internal storage, people will never have to come to desktop/laptop computers to back up and free up storage.

Apple first introduced Apple iTunes with a CD Ripping facility to convert already bought music cd collections to mp3 for easy listening on Mac computers and then a range of iPods. iPods didn’t have to have internet in the early days then. They were internet ready after a few years, the video on iPods and then an iPhone introduction.

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My side of the story of selling Apple iPhone apps on the Apple App Store while doing a day job…!!!

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple Xcode, Personal Experience 3 Comments

I am selling apps on Apple App Store since 2012, Tried free apps with excellent sales but no revenue or no Apple iAd revenue or very little. I kept doing that for two to four years. Then I removed all of my apps from the sale and kept my account inactive with no apps on ready for sale for almost one or two years.

Then Swift language was introduced with support for Unicode while watching Apple’s Keynote presentation, I got the idea of Learning Devanagari Script apps with support for Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Languages.

It got almost 3 months of the year 2016 for me to record 500 audio samples and videos with proper code to get to the level of MVP i.e. Minimum Viable Product.

Next three years I finished recording audio and designing videos and vector illustrations. So it was a total of 700 Audio Recordings with statements and alphabets (Vowels, Consonants and Barakhadi), and 422 animated videos for stroke by stroke guide. Then almost 500 vector and raster illustrations.

With Covid and Corona Epidemic and forced leave from March to November I finished and upscaled all of my apps with visual and performance quality for my Mudrakshar, Swarakshar and Chitrakshar apps.

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My experience in converting my paid educational apps to a subscription business revenue model.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple Xcode, Apps, Reviews Leave a comment

After experimenting with various apps, I ventured into an educational language-earning app in 2013/14. I developed three apps Mudrakshar for tracing Alphabets, Swarakshar for Pronouncing Alphabets and Chitrakshar for Alphabet Charts with Illustrations and audio pronunciation. All three apps were dedicated to Devanagari Script—mainly Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Language. For Chitrakshar, I added the English Language with Latin script.

I am developing my apps for Apple iOS, iPadOS and macOS platforms. Here is my Apple Developer Profile if you want to check it out.

I think the In-App purchase / StoreKit framework was not introduced back then. That’s what I remember. So I used paid app business model to support my app development and time invested.

Maybe because I started sailing my apps with an upfront paid pricing model, I was forcing my users to purchase them without allowing them to try them before they bought. As a result, I had significantly fewer downloads or sales. But over the years, I sold almost 1,000 units of apps or more. I also utilised App Store Connects’s App Bundles feature at that time. App Bundles undoubtedly helped me to sell more apps with discounts.

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With the release of macOS Big Sur & macOS Monterey, the user cannot format External Hard Disk to ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)’ format as there is no option to do the same.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple macOS, Apps, Company, Hardware, Reviews, Tutorials 1 Comment

With the release of the macOS Big Sur Mac Operating System, Apple has removed the option under Disk Utility to allow users to format External Hard Drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format.

There is only one option for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but no choice with encryption. It only allows users to format Hard Disk with Apple File System APFS without encryption, with encryption & with case sensitivity.

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Here is how to apply UIVisualEffectView & UIBlurEffect to UITableView, UITableViewCell, UICollectionView, UICollectionViewCell, UIView / View in your Apple iOS / iPadOS or macOS Catalyst App.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Tutorials Leave a comment

As Apple describes UIVisualEffectView & UIBlurView in its support document as follows:

Depending on the desired effect, the effect may affect content layered behind the view or content added to the visual effect view’s contentView. Apply a visual effect view to an existing view and then apply a UIBlurEffect or UIVibrancyEffect object to apply a blur or vibrancy effect to the existing view. After you add the visual effect view to the view hierarchy, add any subviews to the contentView property of the visual effect view. Do not add subviews directly to the visual effect view itself.

So in simple words, you don’t have to use Adobe Photoshop to get a blur effect and fake superimpose on your UIView instead, you can get the same effect programmatically for every situation without any hassle.

Note: If you are using UIVisualEffectsView in your app I would strongly suggest you use a system setting called ‘Reduced Transparency’ to condition code it. If the user doesn’t want transparency or Blur or Vibrancy effect for all of the apps in his iPhone or iPad or Mac he can just do it with a single switch in the settings app. Another note view that you are applying effect should preferably be the Popover View Controller. Another thing is to remember to replace the below blue color with the UIColor of your choice with alpha channel transparency.

For UITableView and UITableViewCell, use the following code in your UITableViewController’s viewWillAppear function:

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Programmatically get iOS, iPadOS, macOS Catalyst Operating System Name and Version and a model identifier of iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple Xcode, Tutorials Leave a comment

Programmatically get iOS, iPadOS, macOS Catalyst Operating System Name and Version and a model identifier of iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices.

Here is a simple way to programmatically get the operating system name and version of your iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

The below code will also return the value of the iPhone, iPad and Mac Model identifiers to help you know if it’s MacBook or iMac in a Mac case or iPhone 11 Pro or iPhone 13 Pro etc.

Step 01: First import IOKit, It is only required for macOS Catalyst app-specific code.

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