It’s been slightly more than a year from the last post. Again I’ve been busy due to app updating. My original Android apps only took a couple days but the big one was the cross developed JyotishTools Pro. In a way it took 5 years.

Originally the app was done using Xamarin Forms supporting Windows, Android and iOS. But way back in 2020 Microsoft announced it would be replacing Xamarin with a new framework .net MAUI (Multi-platform App User Interface). I seem to recall they planned to have it ready by fall 2020.

Well we know what happened: the pandemic. And such work began remote. But the replacement was more difficult than expected. I had to wait until 2024 until the framework was actually usable.

JyotishTools Pro is more like a desktop app and much more complex than the usual mobile app. Though a migration tool was supplied in Visual Studio and was particularly useful to migrate much of my backend to MAUI the interface was another story.

My original app on Xamarin used a Carousel Page and it was deprecated and I needed to created a Carousel View. Unfortunately the Microsoft examples of the Carousel View fell short of how I needed. Fortunately a MAUI team member found it less than satisfactory and supplied a tutorial on how to create such a control.

Once I had the Carousel View implemented then I needed to solve problems with how it would fit in on all the three platforms. What I hoped to avoid was three different project one for each platform. With MAUI I was able to use Conditional tags to build to supply any differences between the platforms. Or so but I still wound up with three projects.

Finally I got the project built and release with one bad glitch for Windows users. The update seemed to overwrite or remove the user’s original SQLite database. Some of it because of a change between Xamarin and MAUI as to where it was stored.

No problem though because my users of course would have backed up their database. Of course some of them didn’t and learned the lesson the hard way. I had for years stressed the importance of backups. Some had an identical or near database on their Android or iOS phone and simply imported it in Windows.

Anyway the update cycle has completed and I can move on to other things like some new apps I planned. Plus I have begun looking at AI music creation or basically checking out the apps for that. Suno had the easiest to use interface and a cover of a song I wrote in 1980 created several interesting versions. But I also have been interested in trying other AI music apps.

As a game programmer for over 40 years I used AI to make games work like how to avoid the target being shot by the player. Simplistic AI but still the same concept. And back in 1992 I created an algorithm music model for “El Fish” an aquarium simulator created by the team who created “Tetris”.

So I am looking forward to seeing how well these new AI music apps work especially when I have a bunch of music videos on YouTube (under my stage name). The music part of those were trivial compared to authoring 3D animations. I might just let AI do that chore.

It’s been a year since I posted however I did write to articles I didn’t publish. Been busy I guess. I had a game project that got destroyed when the client died. Those involved are still sorting it out.

Last week I published an update to Google Play for an app I first published in 2017. It is a desktop app that runs on mobile including iOS and Windows. It was developed using Xamarin Forms which MS stopped supporting in May 2024. That caused some consternation in the developer community because many felt that the replacement .net MAUI was really not ready for prime time. It was okay maybe for picture gallery apps or restaurant menus but not extensive apps.

So last week I published the MAUI version, a little rushed because the August 31st and we had to update the app to Android 15 to continue publishing. There were a few unexpected quirks. Some users thought they lost their data they had saved. But it was there but they just couldn’t see it because they were running Dark Mode on their Android device.

On Xamarin by default it ignored Dark Mode and if you wanted the option for the user you needed to add a theme for it. No one ever asked for it. Fortunately there was a workaround to ignore it for MAUI. That and a few other quirks required some quick updates. At the moment all is calm.

What I want to address is the attitude of some of the MAUI developers that the mobile industry is moving fast we all have to keep up with it. Those developers never apparently worked in the field and don’t know what it’s like to update particularly a large project. And it seems there is also an attitude of change for the sake of change (I was surprised deep digging through MAUI how much Xamarin still is there).

I think the general public might be just as happy if things slowed down a bit. My is based on a Windows app I wrote in 2003. That app can still run today even on Windows 11.