I finally plugged GPT-3 into @pastelapp to generate color palettes from text prompts, and it just does exactly what I hoped it might do.
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Slowly iterating on the design language for Pastel and fixing all the weird little bugs the new SDK introduced. Only now is it functional again
Not making a whole lot of forward progress with my apps right now, so I'm gonna get some lateral progress done. Pastel still has about 5,500 lines of Objective-C code remaining that is all ripe for translating to Swift via Xcode's new ChatGPT feature. It'll give me a chance to sanity-check some of my legacy code in the process
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Not making a whole lot of forward progress with my apps right now, so I'm gonna get some lateral progress done. Pastel still has about 5,500 lines of Objective-C code remaining that is all ripe for translating to Swift via Xcode's new ChatGPT feature. It'll give me a chance to sanity-check some of my legacy code in the process
Slightly reorganizing my copy menu while I'm at it, and scratching my chin at the menu glass effect
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Slightly reorganizing my copy menu while I'm at it, and scratching my chin at the menu glass effect
Still a long way to go, but here's a before/after on Pastel on macOS 26 as of the current build.
During development, you spend so much time looking at the new design that you kinda forget how it used to look
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Still a long way to go, but here's a before/after on Pastel on macOS 26 as of the current build.
During development, you spend so much time looking at the new design that you kinda forget how it used to look
Pastel on iPad is going to look effectively indistinguishable from the Mac version by the time I'm finished updating it for Liquid Glass
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Pastel on iPad is going to look effectively indistinguishable from the Mac version by the time I'm finished updating it for Liquid Glass
With today's work out of the way, I think Pastel's iOS 26 update is done for Mac and for iPhone. The iPad build is blocked by my earlier radar, and I haven't figured out a mitigation strategy yet, but we're nearly there
Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image FB19905057 — Unrelated child UINavigationController overrides root split view controller's sidebar heirarchy and navigation bar on resize from regular to compact This one will prevent me from shipping Pastel on iOS 26 until I find a solution 🤷♂️ #radars
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
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With today's work out of the way, I think Pastel's iOS 26 update is done for Mac and for iPhone. The iPad build is blocked by my earlier radar, and I haven't figured out a mitigation strategy yet, but we're nearly there
Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image FB19905057 — Unrelated child UINavigationController overrides root split view controller's sidebar heirarchy and navigation bar on resize from regular to compact This one will prevent me from shipping Pastel on iOS 26 until I find a solution 🤷♂️ #radars
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
I've started the TestFlight process for Pastel for iOS and macOS 26. There are some known issues on iOS, including a severe hang, but most things are in place now, and there are still slots available
TestFlight - Apple
Using TestFlight is a great way to help developers test beta versions of their apps.
(testflight.apple.com)
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I've started the TestFlight process for Pastel for iOS and macOS 26. There are some known issues on iOS, including a severe hang, but most things are in place now, and there are still slots available
TestFlight - Apple
Using TestFlight is a great way to help developers test beta versions of their apps.
(testflight.apple.com)
This *is* a nice API!
Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Nobody ever told me UIContentUnavailableConfiguration was so cute! I should use it more
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
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This *is* a nice API!
Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Nobody ever told me UIContentUnavailableConfiguration was so cute! I should use it more
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
Today's build of @pastelapp fixes the last of my major issues, and achieves all the goals I set out for this iOS 26 update
All in all, the update touched about 6000 lines of code, with zero new features, just to adopt the new UI -
Today's build of @pastelapp fixes the last of my major issues, and achieves all the goals I set out for this iOS 26 update
All in all, the update touched about 6000 lines of code, with zero new features, just to adopt the new UII think @pastelapp for iOS and macOS 26 is now 'visually complete' ahead of the September event, which means I have to start thinking about marketing screenshots. I'm very happy with how this turned out, even if it took a while to get there
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I think @pastelapp for iOS and macOS 26 is now 'visually complete' ahead of the September event, which means I have to start thinking about marketing screenshots. I'm very happy with how this turned out, even if it took a while to get there
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how good iPadOS 26 looks on an external display. If you have an M1 iPad or higher, I implore you to give it a try
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I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how good iPadOS 26 looks on an external display. If you have an M1 iPad or higher, I implore you to give it a try
Giving Pastel a v2.4.1 today on macOS to update everything that looked blurry on a non-Retina display, as it's been a long time since I've given it a pass and some system metrics have changed lately that need round()ing. It's real hard to tell the difference from a JPEG, but here's a before/after
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Giving Pastel a v2.4.1 today on macOS to update everything that looked blurry on a non-Retina display, as it's been a long time since I've given it a pass and some system metrics have changed lately that need round()ing. It's real hard to tell the difference from a JPEG, but here's a before/after
The next minor version of @pastelapp will support exporting color palettes to Pixelmator Pro (on the Mac, at least, as they don't support that on iOS)
Update: now available!
Pastel App - App Store
Download Pastel by Steven Troughton-Smith on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Pastel.
App Store (apps.apple.com)
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The next minor version of @pastelapp will support exporting color palettes to Pixelmator Pro (on the Mac, at least, as they don't support that on iOS)
Update: now available!
Pastel App - App Store
Download Pastel by Steven Troughton-Smith on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Pastel.
App Store (apps.apple.com)
(Did I just spend the day reverse-engineering their proprietary color palette format? Yes.)
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(Did I just spend the day reverse-engineering their proprietary color palette format? Yes.)
The next version of Pastel tackles a bunch of things, including revamped undo/redo support. I recently added pinch-zoom to the image importer, too. Paying attention to lots of little corners of the app that haven't seen love in a while — time for a polish pass now that Liquid Glass is no longer taking up all of my development time
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The next version of Pastel tackles a bunch of things, including revamped undo/redo support. I recently added pinch-zoom to the image importer, too. Paying attention to lots of little corners of the app that haven't seen love in a while — time for a polish pass now that Liquid Glass is no longer taking up all of my development time
Venturing out into the Great Unknown, I have finally made the switch from single-purchase to subscriptions in @pastelapp, for new customers, after talking about it for years.
I should have done it years ago, but the risk of the floor falling out from under me scared me off. Better late than never!
I'm much better prepared to handle the initial financial shock today, and as I've migrated everything to StoreKit 2 I've been really impressed by how easy Apple has made it to implement subscriptions
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Venturing out into the Great Unknown, I have finally made the switch from single-purchase to subscriptions in @pastelapp, for new customers, after talking about it for years.
I should have done it years ago, but the risk of the floor falling out from under me scared me off. Better late than never!
I'm much better prepared to handle the initial financial shock today, and as I've migrated everything to StoreKit 2 I've been really impressed by how easy Apple has made it to implement subscriptions
Why subscriptions? A one-time purchase revenue graph, even for a moderately successful app, looks like this. Yet work required only increases in complexity — Pastel has had 40 multiplatform updates since it launched in 2020, including two system UI redesigns, and a whole new OS (visionOS).
One-time purchases just aren't sustainable, unless the product itself is also one-and-done — and that's just not possible on a moving target like Apple's OSes. Revenue can't be inversely proportional to time
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Why subscriptions? A one-time purchase revenue graph, even for a moderately successful app, looks like this. Yet work required only increases in complexity — Pastel has had 40 multiplatform updates since it launched in 2020, including two system UI redesigns, and a whole new OS (visionOS).
One-time purchases just aren't sustainable, unless the product itself is also one-and-done — and that's just not possible on a moving target like Apple's OSes. Revenue can't be inversely proportional to time
I've tried to make Pastel's subscription pricing as unobtrusive as possible. As it stands:
• Existing paid users are grandfathered in and don't have to subscribe
• New users can subscribe for $2/mo or $10/year, with two-week free trials
• If you are on an OS version that I know won't be supported going forward (though I haven't decided to drop support yet), you won't see subscription options at all, only the legacy one-time purchase (now $20)TL;DR, if you already own the app, you won't notice
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I've tried to make Pastel's subscription pricing as unobtrusive as possible. As it stands:
• Existing paid users are grandfathered in and don't have to subscribe
• New users can subscribe for $2/mo or $10/year, with two-week free trials
• If you are on an OS version that I know won't be supported going forward (though I haven't decided to drop support yet), you won't see subscription options at all, only the legacy one-time purchase (now $20)TL;DR, if you already own the app, you won't notice
All of this is subject to change in the future, but I have no plans to do so. And this model, by and large, is what I will be doing with @broadcastsapp with Broadcasts 4.
There is so much I'd like to be able to do in both apps that requires investment, and the only way I can justify it is if the revenue line is going in the right direction, otherwise that time needs to go into new products. I would like to do both things! So Pastel gets to be my test case, and we'll see how it goes
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All of this is subject to change in the future, but I have no plans to do so. And this model, by and large, is what I will be doing with @broadcastsapp with Broadcasts 4.
There is so much I'd like to be able to do in both apps that requires investment, and the only way I can justify it is if the revenue line is going in the right direction, otherwise that time needs to go into new products. I would like to do both things! So Pastel gets to be my test case, and we'll see how it goes
Taking another crack at the 'Gallery' tab in Pastel, while I have the codebase open. The idea is to provide a vehicle to offer new/refreshed curated collections of palettes without stomping on the built-in presets. Also a way to recover deleted presets. I'm reasonably happy with the idea so far (though content and UI is still temporary). Ideally they would have illustrated key art of some kind, but in lieu of that I'll have to find some other way to visualize collections
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Taking another crack at the 'Gallery' tab in Pastel, while I have the codebase open. The idea is to provide a vehicle to offer new/refreshed curated collections of palettes without stomping on the built-in presets. Also a way to recover deleted presets. I'm reasonably happy with the idea so far (though content and UI is still temporary). Ideally they would have illustrated key art of some kind, but in lieu of that I'll have to find some other way to visualize collections
53,000 devices have updated to the latest version of Pastel over the past day, and it has done 350K (unique) units over its lifetime (which is several multiples of Broadcasts). I've always been generous with the free tiers in my apps, but I think I might have massively overdone it with Pastel. If even 1% of Pastel's users paid for a subscription, that would be a salary unto itself and allow me do so much more with the app. Hard not to feel sheepish about how much I've left on the table
