Kinopio mac app experiment

Wow! Thanks @ethan :slight_smile:

I never heard Unite either. I’m going to check it out.

Your line “Love having it as dedicated space,” is what I think this is all about. The biggest benefit I see to a dedicated Mac OS kinopio app is that it’s not inside a container that lets me surf the web lol.

The online distraction machine is very powerful right now. Something about having the ability to use kinopio without even having a web browser open on my computer is very appealing.

Thanks for sharing @ethan. This looks intriguing – checking it out. Welcome to the forum :wink:

Aw thanks for the warm welcome @pirijan @kevando @bentsai :blush: Glad to be here.

So true about the distraction machine. This week I wrote a note wondering if I could live without a browser for a while, by making little Mac apps for my main tools. Not sure yet…

Have a journal on Futureland where I’m documenting some other tangential ideas about digital tools and systems, this is the post where I wrote a bit about making these apps, might recognize one of them at least! ~ https://futureland.tv/ethan/systems/25075

2 Likes

So I’ve narrowed down 3 options for native apps in https://kinopio.club/kinopio-desktop-apps-options-ttNQzyIIYedCuiMDmQOQe

Basically, it’s between Unite’s business service that’ll cost a one time fee of $400 (mac only, uses webkit, 3mb download), or using webcatalog for free (electron, all platforms, 150mb download). I’ve been using Kinopio on webcatalog for a while now, it works great irl despite being electron.

The downside to webcatalog is that users have to first download webcatalog and then download kinopio through it.

Do you think this extra step would be a turn-off to people? Or that it would make desktop appear inferior in some way?

hows this looking?

is it more compelling with a too-small-too-see screenshot?

IMO, the screenshot is superfluous (barely looks different than a web page) and thus adds to the noise.

shipped,

Screen Shot 2020-12-22 at 3.48.50 PM

I made some comments on kinopio desktop apps options – Kinopio which I will put here as well:)

At first blush, since I don’t know webcatalog, I would hesitate to download it. What if it’s a trojan horse? And it has Plus and Pro versions – I don’t want to get upsold or pestered by any kind of marketing (not saying they do or would, but hard to tell initially). As a point of comparison, I’d be far more comfortable installing Microsoft Edge for the same experience (but I understand this might be as much as a barrier as installing webcatalog. It’s hard to see this as a greater barrier, though.)

Benefits to “building yourself” option. If you can get a version in the Mac App Store, that would further legitimize it and make it sticky for folks. I was able to use https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier and easily wrap Kinopio, so maybe productizing/solidifying that process wouldn’t be so bad in terms of time?

1 Like

I forgot about nativifier so I’ll try that tomorrow,

I don’t think I could get it in the Mac App Store though because I don’t use apple’s payment system and there’s rules against thinly wrapped web apps.

I have a nativefier mac build that I zipped up , can you verify whether this works on your system?

https://pirijan.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/temp/Kinopio.zip

I can’t see a way to sign/notarize the mac build, so it’ll probably complain about being untrusted?

1 Like

I had to go to Security & Privacy to explicitly allow the app to open. But it works as expected aside from that :slight_smile:

1 Like

so I learned a lot of new things today and have a solution

what I learned:

  • actually building OS binaries (using nativefier or similar) is the easy part
  • I knew that to notarize on mac to bypass the security warnings I would have to pay Apple $100/yr, but I didn’t realize that bypassing windows’ security warnings would require another kind of cert that costs at least $400/yr. small wonder that anyone writes windows apps anymore.
  • Using webkit (through Unite which was the best wrapper I found) is indeed way faster and smaller than electron but the implementation still has enough bugs and rough edges that it would likely be a source of support to go that way. Despite the slowness, overall electron gives a better experience.

what I did:

  • With this knowledge, the $700/yr~ for toDesktop starts to make a lot more sense. I negotiated a 20% off discount (shoutouts to Dave) and I just shipped an update to use toDesktop going forward. That means each platform gets it’s own installer and no security warnings - like … an app.

Here’s hoping you really do have to spend money to make money :slight_smile:

Screen Shot 2020-12-23 at 9.57.16 PM

2 Likes

Hi,
Not sure if this comes across as a silly question, but I’m a windows user who just got an iPad. Is there a way to use kinopio as a standalone app on my iPad or am I going to need to access it only from the web browser for now?

1 Like

hey Naveen,

It’s a bit of a hack but you can use kinopio on your iPad with a standalone app shortcut. It’s how I use it on my iPhone

Thanks Pirijan. I’ll try that out.

1 Like

I just tried downloading the app from the current link. I double-clicked the installer and dragged it into /Applications. Then, ran the app and I got this dialog:

image

This is better than other packages because I don’t have to go to Security & Privacy, authenticate, and say “Open Anyway”. But it’s still a gate. Perhaps it’s expected, and that’s fine. Just FYI :wave:t2:

One limitation I’ve noticed off the bat is, I can’t do a text search on the page. Pressing ⌘-F doesn’t work, and there is no menu option for “Find in Page…”.

Thanks,
Ben

1 Like

so that dialog is unfortunately pretty normal. All apps on macOS have to display it if they are downloaded outside of the app store.

re: cmd-f, I’ll contact toDesktop (the app provider) about that asap
thx

1 Like

re: cmd-f, I’ll contact toDesktop (the app provider) about that asap

update: they hadn’t considered it before, will bring it up at their next planning meeting. Long term, a kinopio built-in search will replicate some of this functionality

I just updated my WebCatalog version of Kinopio, and it supports find :slight_smile:

1 Like