The latest update to my ShutterCount app is now available on the App Store for Mac, iPhone and iPad. This update brings a few under-the-hood changes.
The computer technology world is loud with privacy-related issues these days, and we highly value Apple’s efforts at the conceptual level. Unfortunately, their implementation is a hot mess, being a constant source of headache for me in the last couple of years.
Case in point: iOS 14 requests the user’s permission to allow an app to access the local network, which for example ShutterCount requires for Wi-Fi and Ethernet camera pairing and connections. For several users, this is just one more annoying popup, and choose “Don’t Allow” just to be safe. And then they try to pair a network camera, which will fail. In better case they contact our support, but leaving a bad review tends to be the norm.
Wouldn’t it be nice to ask iOS about the state of this permission before pairing so that we can inform the user that he/she denied access? Absolutely, but iOS doesn’t provide that functionality for developers… Half-baked mess…
Fortunately we were able to develop a clever workaround and the app warns users about the missing permission right on the spot.
Well, people who ignore every and all error messages will still be a problem, but that’s a topic for another day.
The next change is that ShutterCount on iOS 14 no longer needs full Photos access to read a Nikon or Pentax shutter counter from a photo.
Just choose the image from your photo library, and that’s all. On the flip side, if that image happens to be in iCloud, we can’t show you a download progress indicator, because Apple forgot to provide download progress information. Half-baked mess again…
Now something we’re very proud of:
We are in the business of making and selling software to you, and not selling your private life to some sneaky data brokers. This is one reason why the prices of our apps are what they are.
Lastly, we’ve updated error messages on the Mac to cover the situation where the connection can’t be made because of a corrupted memory card.
The update is free for existing users. New users can download ShutterCount from the respective App Store.
