Where are the updates?

Hi all,

It’s been a while (five months to be exact) with no updates and no news about updates, so let me review where we’re at with PacketCalc.

After Apple released the betas of iOS and iPadOS 14, Xcode 12, SwiftUI 2.0, and Swift 5.3, I got a sense of the changes that we would be able to incorporate into PacketCalc. I’ve since been working to update the internals to use the new @main and remove the old UIKit-based SceneDelegate and AppDelegate. This is now compiling and running on iOS/iPadOS 14.

I’m faced with a choice though.

1. Split PacketCalc into a new version, that works only with iOS 14, and an older version that works with iOS 13. This would require that I charge existing users again for the new version due to the way the App Store works.

2. Remove support for iOS 13. This would mean that nobody will see updates until they’ve upgraded to iOS 14.

I really really do not want to charge existing users again. And, I have a feeling that existing users will probably upgrade to iOS 14 very soon after it is released. So, I’m going with option 2.

Given all that has changed in SwiftUI 2.0, it’s going to be a couple months before I get something out the door. Some things that I’m planning for the next release include:

1. Revert the custom keypads back to using Apple’s Picker() control. While the custom keypads allow for coloring, and font size adjustments, I’ve had feedback that they are, ahem, ugly. And I can’t argue with that :-)

2. Replace the custom disclosure controls (which reveal sliders) with Apple’s new DisclosureGroup(), introduced in SwiftUI 2.0.

3. Possibly remove the tabbed interface and replace it with a single view with a ToolBar (iOS) and SideBar (iPadOS). Or, create an HStack that contains each of the keypads for Headers, Sizes, Speeds, and the user can swipe left/right to access these different keypads.

Anyway, I just wanted to let folks know that I’ve not abandoned PacketCalc! Expect more news as I dig deeper into the documentation.

Thanks,

Allen