ui VS Lowtech

My most ambitious web project was https://noiseblend.com which is a web app for discovering music on Spotify.

It’s a next.js + React slow and memory hungry mess [1] which could have been static HTML with some JS for the dynamic bits.

Experience taught me to keep it simple nowadays, but I had to go through the Noiseblend mistakes first.

The stack is Python with Sanic for the backend, Postgres for db and Redis for cache.

That’s what remained after removing all the unnecessary services I implemented because I thought they were paramount: high availability, data locality, time series databases, performance monitoring, alerts etc. Forget about those until you start making money on the product.

The biggest disadvantage a web service has over a desktop app is that you have to keep it up. No matter what, you have a server to manage and make sure it keeps responding. That worry doesn’t exist on offline desktop apps.

The other is finding the market for it. Noiseblend didn’t have a market, and it being dependent on Spotify didn’t allow me to ask for money unless I did something more. That’s another problem, avoid creating functionality that depends heavily on big companies.

I thought about “pivoting” and turning it into a playlist building tool for DJs. I added filtering songs by key and mode (e.g. A minor) and asked a few people if they would use such a thing. Turns out that they use a semi-offline desktop app [2] that already does that and is much faster and powerful.

Oh well, at least now I have a way to find songs to improvise on with my Kaval and guitar.

From my observations, people are reluctant on paying for websites. I guess they don’t feel as “owned” as a desktop app.

[1] https://github.com/Noiseblend/ui/blob/master/pages/artists.c...

[2] https://mixedinkey.com/camelot-wheel/

This is how we do it for the brightness HUD in Lunar and for the app switcher in rcmd: OSDWindow.swift

For non-AppStore apps like Lunar, I use the macOS SDK from Paddle.com. It provides trials, license activation UI, payments and checkout UI, both in-app and on web. Here's how I use it: https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/Lowtech/blob/main/Sources/Lowt...

For App Store apps I have my own custom solution which uses https://github.com/IdeasOnCanvas/AppReceiptValidator to see if the app has been bought, and if it isn't, I have a time and usage based expiry logic. When the timer expires, I block key functionalities of the app and show this screen: https://shots.panaitiu.com/o6qnP8

I started doing the same but with macOS apps: https://lowtechguys.com

Reading about the author's projects in the past is actually what inspired me to do it.

I used Windows for a long time before as a power user (living my life in FarManager and WinAPI), then switched to Ubuntu with i3.

After finally switching to the Mac, I loved its simplicity and how it freed my mind from micro-managing the system, but I also noticed its shortcomings and how some things were better on Windows/Linux.

Nowadays I'm making small apps to overcome those macOS shortcomings, and help others find their carefree macOS setup where the system doesn't get in the way of real work.

And it's going pretty well! I've also shared the source of the framework [1] I'm using for these apps, so that I don't have to constantly reimplement payments, licensing [2], SwiftUI styles/components and utility functions on each new project.

[1] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/Lowtech