Monthly Archives: September 2017

I finally got around to filing a Radar against the Mono Audio iOS Accessibility setting. It just sums the left and right channels, but doesn’t scale by 6dB, so you can clip the output: rdar://34616660

Farewell, 32-bit Apps

iOS 11 is the 32-bit Appocalypse. Before pulling the trigger on the update, I took a look at the apps on my phone that won’t survive the transition1:

  • Star Wars: Tiny Death Star: This was a really fun game; a Star Wars-themed re-skin of Tiny Tower. It was only supported for a year, and received its last update back in 2014. I’ll miss it, but Tiny Tower is still going strong if I want a fix.
  • Chesspuzzles: According to my iTunes Purchase History, I downloaded this on November 1, 2008. It was made by Eric Peng, but I can’t find any information about it now. It was never updated for Retina or 4” screens, let alone iOS 7. The Chess.com app is filling this need for me these days.
  • Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition: I think this was the only version of Monopoly available on iOS when I bought it back in February of 2009. Macworld gave it four mice. Someone thought to preserve the gameplay for posterity. The next time I have a Monopoly craving, I’ll spring for this version instead.
  • Super MAMC: This is still up on the store, as of this writing, but the last update it received was back in 2012. I think I first heard of this game from Brett Terpstra on his Systematic Podcast, before he jumped from 5by5. I’m glad the Apple Watch didn’t exist the last time I played this; I’d be terrified to see what it did to my heart rate. You can see the gameplay here.
  • Words HD Free: Letterpress filled the void Words With Friends left for me years ago. Good riddance.
  • UE SPL: This was a basic SPL meter. I haven’t needed a replacement yet, and I never even bothered to verify the accuracy of this one.
  • MusicConv: This was a basic Frequency to Note Name to Midi Number calculator. It was really useful for some projects years ago, but it doesn’t even seem to launch on iOS 10.
  • Canopener: This is a great standalone music player, with some simple spatialization algorithms. GoodHertz still sells an AU and AAX plugin with the same spatial processing.
  • Nord Beat 2: A MIDI step sequencer, last updated in 2014. I was mostly using it for drums, and apps like Elastic Drums had replaced it for me.
  • CanIStream.it: This service used to be the best way to see what shows and movies were on each streaming service, but JustWatch is now providing this service for me.
  • TaskPaper for iOS: Jesse Grosjean stopped supporting this app four years ago. Now I use Editorial for most of my iOS TaskPaper needs.

Thank you for your service. I’m sorry I can’t take you into the future with me; you’ll be missed.


  1. You can see this for yourself by heading to Settings ➡️ General ➡️ About ➡️ Applications. 

With the native Twitter API dead in iOS 11, I’m switch my microblog posting Workflow.app workflow to use the Tweetbot Tweet Action… this is the first test.

It’s very welcome news to see that the iPhone pre-order this year includes the unlocked phone - in prior years this wasn’t available until a month after launch!