New apps for Mac OS X Lion

I'm writing small Mac apps so my mom's 2010 MacBook Air can do everyday things again, like posting to my blog, playing Spotify around the house and staying on our Wi-Fi. They run on Lion and use the same secure connections modern browsers do. I also want them to feel like they came out in 2011, so every window is drawn in Lion's style. 🦁

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The apps need Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 on an Intel Mac. I'll post downloads here once the first beta is ready.

The apps

Every app here is a regular Cocoa app with proper menus, keyboard shortcuts and Keychain support.

Planchette icon: a wooden planchette resting on a leather notebook

Planchette BETA 0.3

Planchette is the app I use to write for my blog on the Air, and it works with any blog that runs on Ghost. I write in Markdown on the left, and the preview on the right scrolls along with me. The sidebar sorts my posts into drafts, scheduled and published, and edits sync in both directions, so a change I make in Ghost's web editor shows up in the app too. If a post was changed on the web after I opened it, Planchette asks me before it overwrites anything.

  • The preview shows images as well, including WebP files that Lion can't open by itself.
  • An inspector panel holds the slug, excerpt, tags and feature image.
  • I can save a draft, publish, update or unpublish a post without opening a browser.

It's named after the pointer on a spirit board, which people used to fit with a pencil for "spirit writing". 👻

Kassett icon: a green play button

Kassett BETA 0.2

Kassett controls Spotify on your phone, speakers or TV from the Mac. A menu like the AirPlay menu in iTunes lets you move the music to another device. The next version turns the window into the cassette deck below and adds a library browser for playlists, albums, artists and search.

  • You can play, pause, skip and change the volume on any Spotify Connect device.
  • Playback control needs a Spotify Premium account.

The name is Swedish for cassette, because Spotify started in Stockholm. 📼

Kassett
A
The Lion's Roar
First Aid Kit — The Lion's Roar (2012)
C60
NR ☐
THE LION'S ROAR
FIRST AID KIT
TAPE COUNTER
0 1 : 4 3
−2:22 remaining
1:43
4:05
VOLUME 64
Playing on Living Room · Spotify Premium

This is the cassette deck planned for Kassett 0.3. Press PLAY or PAUSE to start and stop the reels.

Wi-Fi Fix WORKS

Most home routers now offer WPA2 and WPA3 on the same network. Lion doesn't recognize the WPA3 part, so it lists the network as "WPA2 Enterprise" and won't join it. Wi-Fi Fix removes the part Lion can't read and joins with plain WPA2, which the router still accepts.

  • It checks every 30 seconds and rejoins if the connection drops.
  • Right now it's a script, and I'm turning it into a small menu bar app.

What I'm working on next

These are the next apps on my list.

MurmurA Mastodon and Bluesky client in the style of Tweetie, with both accounts in one column.
Weather widgetA Dashboard widget that looks like Apple's weather widget and gets its forecast over a modern secure connection.
A reading appAn RSS reader inspired by Reeder.

Getting started

Setting things up takes about five minutes.

Get a modern browser

Safari on Lion only supports TLS 1.0, and almost every website needs something newer, including this one. Momiji is a Firefox-based browser that still supports Lion, so install it first.

Download an app

Each app comes as a single download that already contains the networking code it needs. Drag it into your Applications folder.

Open it with a right-click the first time

The apps aren't signed by Apple, so Gatekeeper stops them the first time you open them. Control-click the app, choose Open, and then click Open again. After that it opens normally.

How it works

Lion comes with Python 2.7 and PyObjC, which is enough to build full Cocoa apps without Xcode. What it can't do is talk to most of today's web, because its networking stops at TLS 1.0. LionKit fixes that by bundling curl 8 and OpenSSL 3 from MacPorts' builds for Lion, and each package is checked against MacPorts' signing key before it's installed.

Passwords and API keys go into your login keychain and never into plain files. I test every screen on the same Late 2010 MacBook Air with 2 GB of RAM that started this project.

Why I started this

It started with my mom's 2010 MacBook Air. Apple supports it up to High Sierra, but I went back to Lion because I like it more, especially the animations. After that I started fixing the things the modern internet broke, one at a time.

Read the whole story on my blog ›