An Interview with Guilherme Rambo 
This week Federico and John are joined by Guilherme Rambo for the first interview of the MacStories Summer OS Preview Series to talk about Mac Catalyst, SwiftUI, Apple Silicon, the App Store and more.
Sponsored by: Concepts – Sketch, Note, Draw
This week on MacStories Unwind:
Outlinely: A Flawed Outliner with Potential As I wrote earlier this week in the Monthly Log, I decided to plan this year’s macOS review in an outliner instead of a mind map. Outlines fit well with the way I organize my thoughts, and as I looked around for one to use for the review, I revisited Outlinely, an app I hadn’t...
In Search of a Modern Outliner Not long ago, John Gruber wondered aloud on Twitter why there are no good, simple outlining apps that sync across iOS and the Mac. It’s a great question that I’ve thought about a lot myself. Outlines were the bedrock of my study system as a law student, and it’s how I think about and...
Apple has just published its financial results for Q3 2020. The company posted revenue of $59.7 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook said:
“Apple’s record June quarter was driven by double-digit growth in both Products and Services and growth in each of our geographic segments,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “In uncertain times, this performance is a testament to the important role our products play in our customers’ lives and to Apple’s relentless innovation. This is a challenging moment for our communities, and, from Apple’s new $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative to a new commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030, we’re living the principle that what we make and do should create opportunity and leave the world better than we found it.”
Due to the uncertainty caused by the global pandemic, Apple did not provide financial guidance for Q3 2020 during its last earnings call.
Going into today’s call, Yahoo Finance said that:
Much of the earnings focus, however, will be on whether Cook and company will provide guidance for fiscal Q4, which could offer a hint about any potential delays to the launch of the firm’s upcoming iPhone 12.
Despite the lack of guidance, Yahoo Finance says that Bloomberg’s research shows that analysts expect the following results:
Revenue: $52.2 billion expected versus $53.8 billion in Q3 2019.
Earnings per share: $2.06 expected versus $2.18 in Q3 2019.
After the break, we’ve compiled a graphical visualization of Apple’s Q3 2020 financial results.
WWDC 2020 brought Mac Catalyst into sharper focus than ever before. Introduced as an unnamed ‘sneak peek’ in 2018, Mac Catalyst offered the promise of a simple and efficient way for iPad developers to bring their apps to 100 million Mac users. The reality was that it can be hard to transition an app from an iPad to a Mac, and the results weren’t always great.
The trouble was the result of a confluence of multiple factors, including:
WWDC 2020 was different. Apple introduced what was effectively Mac Catalyst 2.0 with its Optimized for Mac initiative, a separate Mac Catalyst path that follows Mac conventions more closely but requires more work. The company also built Messages and Maps, two of its flagship apps, using Mac Catalyst, demonstrating a deeper commitment to the technology than ever before. The result is a brighter future for Mac Catalyst that clearly has a role to play alongside SwiftUI and Apple’s other frameworks.
To understand where Mac Catalyst is heading, though, we first need to understand where it has been over the past two years.
A full-fledged task manager is terrific for many projects, but if you dump your entire life into one, it can quickly become a cluttered mess. At the same time, if you’re focused on a big project, it’s easy to let everything that’s not in your task manager slip through the cracks. One strategy for attacking the problem that has worked well for me is using a separate, lightweight app for tasks like remembering to take out the garbage, pick up medicine at the pharmacy, or publish an article when an embargo lifts.
In the past, I’ve used Due on the iPhone and iPad for these sorts of tasks. There has been a Mac version of Due for years too, but it hadn’t been updated in about two years and was showing its age. However, with today’s update, Due for Mac joins the iOS version with a fully-modern design and slate of new features, putting it on par with the outstanding iOS version, which I’ve covered in the past.
What is Great App Design? 
Federico
