| Cult of Mac

Indie dev Casey Liss on how he came to love SwiftUI [Planet of the Apps]

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Casey Liss and Callsheet
Casey Liss, developer of a new app, Callsheet, that makes looking up movie and show trivia trivially easy.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Pro tip bug Planet of the Apps is a series of interviews with app developers about making, marketing and maintaining apps in the App Store.

Indie developer and podcaster Casey Liss used to hate SwiftUI, Apple’s controversial UI toolkit for crafting apps. A lot of developers have a deep and abiding animus for SwiftUI, including Liss himself. But after using SwiftUI to create his latest app Callsheet, a movie and TV database app, he’s now a huge fan.

“So much of SwiftUI, I love,” he said in a wide-ranging and surprisingly-interesting interview. “I went from nothing to a fully functional app … in the span of a couple of weeks… It was stunningly fast.”

How an indie dev used ChatGPT to build an iPhone app from scratch [Planet of the Apps]

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AI-generated image of a silver robot sitting at a desk with a MacBook Pro and iPhone
No artists were put out of a job in generating this image.
Image: DiffusionBee/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Planet of the Apps bug Planet of the Apps is a series of interviews with app developers about making, marketing and maintaining apps in the App Store.

Swiss developer Morten Just has built a whole slew of useful Mac apps under the name Otato. But his latest app wasn’t made by him at all: He asked ChatGPT to build it for him.

While Just earned his stripes as a professional programmer, he didn’t write a single line of code to create 5 Movies. It’s an iPhone app that gives you five daily movie recommendations, shows you the trailers on YouTube and tells you where you can stream the films. (It’s currently pending App Store approval.)

These days, artificial intelligence is making headlines for giving users powerful tools that can write essays, recreate impressive art and give technology journalists the heebie-jeebies. 5 Movies is proof that, with a big assist from AI, it only takes a few prompts and a basic understanding of Xcode to create an iPhone app without any coding yourself.

When I interviewed Morten earlier this week for Cult of Mac, I asked him how he got ChatGPT to build his app, what the generated code looked like, and how AI-coded apps will impact ordinary people as well as software developers.

Planet of the Apps star trashes Apple’s marketing of show

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Planet of the Apps
Gary Vaynerchuk was one of the judges on the Apple reality show.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s reality TV show Planet of the Apps was disappointing, but one of its stars, Gary Vaynerchuk, blames the show’s failure on something other than its misjudged content.

In a new episode of his podcast, entrepreneur and internet personality Vaynerchuk says that Apple failed to properly market the show.

Apple Music gets an anthem in funky new ad

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Streaming services like Apple Music dominate the US music market
Streaming services like Apple Music dominate the US music market
Photo: Apple

Album covers take center stage in the latest ad for Apple Music. The funky new video that was pushed to Apple’s YouTube channel this morning features an eclectic collection of quick art shots inspired by the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Sia, Eminem, Drake, FKA Twigs and many more.

Check it out:

Apple taps Steven Spielberg for original sci-fi show

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Steven Spielberg takes the stage at Comic-Con International in 2017.
Apple is reportedly ready to whip up some new amazing stories with Steven Spielberg.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC

Apple is set to make its biggest push into original content yet by inking a deal with one of the biggest directors in Hollywood history.

Steven Spielberg and Apple reportedly will create new episodes of Amazing Stories. The science fiction anthology series originally ran in the 1980s on NBC, but will be relaunched with all-new episodes.

Hollywood lines up to help Apple make its own Game of Thrones

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Planet of the Apps
Apple's next TV shows should be a lot better than Planet of the Apps.
Photo: Apple

Hollywood is racing to do business with Apple in hopes to help the iPhone-maker create its first breakout TV series and movies.

Apple’s LA-based TV execs, Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, have been lining up meetings with some of the top names in town, according to a new report that sheds some light on the company’s TV strategy. Everyone from Jennifer Aniston to Steven Spielberg has pitched the duo. But in true Apple fashion, they’re being very picky about what they say yes to.

Apple hires former WGN America chief to bolster video team

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Matt Cherniss
Matt Cherniss will oversee Apple's new worldwide video unit.
Photo: WGN America

Apple has hired former WGN America and Tribune Studios chief Matt Cherniss as it looks to bolster its original video efforts.

Cherniss will reportedly oversee the company’s new worldwide video unit, serving under Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, the former presidents of Sony Pictures Television, who joined Apple back in June.

Should Apple abandon original video? [Friday Night Fight]

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Will Carpool Karaoke: The Series be Apple's first hit?
Will Carpool Karaoke: The Series be Apple's first hit?
Photo: Apple

This coming Tuesday Apple is set to debut its newest original TV show Carpool Karaoke: The Series, but with Planet of the Apps being such a dud, some of us at Cult of Mac are questioning whether Apple has anything to gain by making mediocre TV shows.

During Apple’s Q3 earnings call this week, Tim Cook said Apple will continue to explore original content for Apple Music. Can Apple actually make great TV shows, or is it losing focus on what’s more important?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we discuss Apple’s media ambitions:

Apple yanks controversial Planet of the Apps ad from Twitter

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Planet of the Apps
Not a high point for Apple.
Photo: Apple

The debut of Apple’s first original TV series, Planet of the Apps is getting off to a rocky start. Early reviews have been profoundly negative and the show’s ad campaign certainly isn’t winning over any new fans.

Apple’s Twitter account for Planet of the Apps sent out a new ad today that caused an uproar among fans who slammed it for being anti-family and promoting workaholism. The ad features one of the show’s app developers bragging about how he rarely sees his kids. It was quickly pulled but not before someone snapped a screenshot.

Take a look at the tone-deaf ad:

With Planet of the Apps, Apple fails to crack the code for good TV [Review]

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Screen Shot 2017-06-07 at 11.45.49
When it comes to original programming, this isn't exactly Netflix's House of Cards.
Photo: Apple

With its new reality show Planet of the Apps, Apple didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It slapped a new body on a well-worn vehicle — wannabe entrepreneurs pitching their precious ideas to a panel of questionable celebrity experts — and drove straight to “Meh-ville.”