Learn serious code. In a seriously fun way.
Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary app for iPad and Mac that makes learning Swift interactive and fun. It requires no coding knowledge, so it’s perfect for students just starting out. Solve puzzles to master the basics using Swift — a powerful programming language created by Apple and used by the pros to build today’s most popular apps. Then take on a series of challenges and step up to more advanced playgrounds designed by Apple and other leading developers.
- Aug 25, 2017 The first three apps on this list all take a similar no-frills approach to writing. They sport clean, minimalist interfaces, keep all your writing in a single window, can swap documents between their iOS and Mac versions, and use some variation of the Markdown syntax to handle all text formatting.
- The new Mac Pro is a long-anticipated development for Apple's high end pro users, but it sure looks as if the company also created the machine for its own strategic benefit — specifically to.
- Other Mac programs you can use to build C# applications. Fiddle: There's an online compiler called.NET Fiddle that allows you to write and compile C# code. You should find a code window.
- Aug 13, 2018 10 Best Writing Apps for Mac You Can Use. Before we start talking about the writing apps for Mac, let me make it clear, no writing app can improve your writing magically, that can only be achieved with a lot of practice. Having said that, using a good writing app will assist you in writing, so that you can get the words out of your mind and onto the proverbial paper.
Robots and drones await your commands.
Now you can make robots do incredible things with code you write yourself. Learn to program connected devices like the Sphero SPRK+, LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3, and drones by Parrot, and watch them come alive right before your eyes.
Now you can make robots do incredible things with code you write yourself. Learn to program connected devices like the Sphero SPRK+, LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3, and drones by Parrot, and watch them come alive right before your eyes.
If you want to learn how to write code like this, check out these apps to help you get the skills you need (Image Credit: MianShahzadRaza) 1. Swift Playgrounds, Apple’s Answer to Learning to Code.
Real Swift code.
Real simple. Real playful.
Learning to code with Swift Playgrounds is incredibly engaging. The app comes with a complete set of Apple-designed lessons. Play your way through the basics in “Fundamentals of Swift” using real code to guide a character through a 3D world. Then move on to more advanced concepts.
What you see is what you code: Create code on the left side of your screen and instantly see the results on the right — with just a tap.
Conquer levels, puzzles, and coding concepts.
Starting with the “Fundamentals of Swift” lesson, you’ll tackle goals using the same code professional developers use every day. As you move along, more advanced concepts come into play. You’ll continually build on what you’ve learned and create even more complex code.
Fundamentals of Swift.
You’ll start out by learning the important concepts you need to understand code.
- Commands
- Functions
- Loops
- Parameters
- Conditional Code
- Variables
- Operators
- Types
- Initialization
- Bug Fixing
Master the basics,
then step up to more challenges.
In addition to the built-in library of lessons, Swift Playgrounds includes a collection of extra challenges — with new ones added over time. Go deeper on a topic you’ve already studied or try your hand at something new. You’re not just building fun creations, you’re building your skills, too.
A big world of playgrounds from a big community of developers.
Discover dozens of channels with fun new challenges created by leading developers and publishers. Subscribe to your favorites and you’ll receive their latest creations right in the app. Now there are no bounds to your playgrounds.
A new way to create code.
On the best device for learning.
Easily drag braces around code, wrap existing code in a loop, or choose from dozens of drag-and-drop snippets included in Swift Playgrounds — right from your iPad or Mac. Take full advantage of powerful Multi-Touch, multitasking, and split view capabilities on iPad. Also, enjoy the view from your Mac. The larger screen makes room for a new sidebar with a complete table of contents and quick access to other Swift files. Just tap, drag, or type text and numbers. Then interact with what you’ve created.
QuickType and coding keyboard.
Write an entire line of code with just a tap. With QuickType for code, the Shortcut Bar automatically and intelligently suggests commands as you go. When typing is the best option, iPad has an innovative keyboard designed for coding. Simply touch a key to access multiple characters, then drag to choose the one you want. Experience similar code suggestions on Mac, which comes with even more help to complete your code.
Snippets Library.
Quickly drag commonly used pieces of code from the Snippets Library to minimize typing.
Touch to edit.
Conveniently drag the boundaries of a statement around existing code.
Help is just a tap away.
If you come across a command that’s hard to understand, simply tap it and hold. A menu of options will appear. Choose the most relevant one and get the answer you need.
Jump-start your creativity with Starting Points.
Use what you’ve learned to create something brand new. With Starting Points, you can get a head start on more advanced coding, add multiple files to your playground at once, and use iPad features such as Multi-Touch interactions, accelerometer, and gyroscope. Personalize your project by adding graphics, audio, and more. Then easily share with friends, family, or the world. Students can also share code with classmates when teachers use Starting Points to create lessons.
Explore your creations in full screen.
Immerse yourself by using the vivid Retina displays of iPad or Mac. Simply tap the center divider, then drag to view your code or live project on the full screen. You can also customize built-in games like Battleship and Brick Breaker, then immerse yourself by letting them take up the whole screen.
See your code crawl, roll, or fly through the sky.
Watch your code spring to life by programming real robots, musical instruments, and drones. The Accessories channel is filled with engaging playgrounds that let you configure and control popular educational toys like LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3. And that’s just the beginning.
Sphero playgrounds let you guide this spherical robot through tricky courses, accelerate over jumps, and change colors.
Dash playgrounds challenge you to make it sing, dance and respond to sensor inputs to react to their environment.
MeeBot playgrounds guide you through coding Jimu Robot Meebot’s six robotic servo motors to make him move in lifelike ways. Or even dance.
Tello EDU playgrounds let you command multiple Tello drones to fly in a swarm, perform flips and other acrobatic movements, and push the limits of your creativity.
Explore robots, drones, and many other connected devices that support Swift Playgrounds.
Swift Playgrounds
If you turn phrases for fun and/or profit, your best option for a Mac writing app depends on what you want to write, and how.
Sure, you could stick with a word processor to pour your thoughts onto the page — but you've got better choices. If you want something a little less stuffy, cluttered, and nine-to-five, or more focused on creative writing, we've found four solid choices that take two very different approaches to helping you express yourself. All are either Essentials or Editors' Choices in the Mac App Store.
Ulysses
The first three apps on this list all take a similar no-frills approach to writing. They sport clean, minimalist interfaces, keep all your writing in a single window, can swap documents between their iOS and Mac versions, and use some variation of the Markdown syntax to handle all text formatting.
Ulysses impressed me most among this crowd for its breadth of features and ease of use. An outstanding series of introductory texts ease you into using Ulysses, one simple step at a time. Their witty writing allows you to learn the program while you're using it.
If you want to track your own productivity, or challenge yourself to meet a certain word count, it's easy to set goals from Ulysses's dashboard. Don't know Markdown XL, Ulysses's native tongue? No worries — a handy cheat sheet of syntax waits behind a button at the top of the program. (Ulysses also supports old faithful keyboard shortcuts for bold, italic, and linked text, if you don't want to type Markdown XL's extra characters.)
Ulysses keeps these two features and a handful of others, including options to export your work to text, ePub, HTML, PDF, or DOCX formats, in pop-over menus that you can tear off and keep onscreen for easy reference.
Ulysses isn't WYSIWYG; you can download themes to change up its color scheme at the Ulysses Style Exchange, but you can't view the effects of your formatting until you preview or export it. The Style Exchange also offers a host of free templates for PDF, HTML, and ePub exports, with different looks, fonts, and styles.
Ulysses comes with built-in iCloud support to hand off documents between its Mac and iOS versions. It can also publish your work directly to your Medium or WordPress site, once you enter your account info. And its subscription model means that your monthly $4.99 fee unlocks the app on both the Mac and iOS.
Ulysses offers a lot of options in a polished, user-friendly package. Unfortunately, it has a good portion of its thunder stolen by…
- $4.99/month with a 14-day free trial - Download now!
Bear
Nearly everything Ulysses does, Bear does just as well, in an arguably prettier package. Bear's fonts and color scheme, while still clean and stark, go easier on the eyes than Ulysses's utilitarian gray. Its stats panel is much easier to read, though less detailed. And Bear strikes a happy medium between full WYSIWYG formatting and Markdown simplicity by clearly labeling different header tags as you create them, and offering the option to actually show text as bold or italic when properly marked.
I liked Bear's tagging system, which makes it really easy to organize files. Just type in a hashtag anywhere in your document, and Bear will either create a category for it on the fly in its list of documents, or add that document to an existing category. I was also impressed with Bear's ability to share a note to any program you've added to your Mac's Sharing menu, including Facebook, Twitter, and Reminders.
Beyond that, Bear duplicates a lot of Ulysses's virtues, from its overall interface to its friendly help files. And the program's basic version, which packs plenty of power, is absolutely free on both Mac and iOS. However, to match Ulysses's features, you'll need to subscribe to Bear Plus, for $1.49 a month or $14.99 a year. That subscription gets you features like iCloud synching, ePub export, and customizable export themes, all of which Ulysses includes right out of the box.
- Free to download, $1.99/month or $14.99/year Bear Plus subscription - Download now!
iA Writer
iA Writer is inexpensive -- just a one-time $15 fee -- and it packs a reasonably robust feature set. iCloud sharing and synching with its iOS sibling is built in, as is WordPress and Medium support. Like Bear and Ulysses, iA Writer offers downloadable export templates, and its help files include instructions to make your own with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But for all these virtues, iA Writer still falls short.
Its stark black-and-white interface makes Ulysses look colorful. It feels brusque and utilitarian, not welcoming. On first use, the program dumps you right into its interface with no introduction. Its lean, efficient Help files explain the program well, but after Ulysses and Bear's gentler tutorials, iA Writer's lack of frills can feel jarring.
Word count and other stats are crammed into a tiny menu at the bottom of the window, and you can't set goals for any of those parameters. They're squeezed into the same small space as iA Writer's Format and Syntax menus, which can format text or quickly highlight all the nouns, adverbs, adjectives, or other parts of speech in your document — a nifty feature undercut by lackluster interface design.
Finally, a real-time preview window can show you what your text will look like when it's finished and formatted. But it feels odd to have the same text side by side; if you want to see what text looks like when formatted, why not just have a WYSIWYG editor?
iA Writer isn't bad on its own merits, but with such impressive competition, it can't help but suffer in comparison.
- $15 - Download now!
Scrivener
At the opposite end of the spectrum from its spartan rivals, Scrivener is a jumbo-sized Swiss army knife stuffed with a sometimes overwhelming array of fun and useful tools. The other programs in this roundup are undeniably more versatile, lending themselves just as well to note taking, blog posts, journalism, or technical writing as they do to writing fiction. In contrast, Scrivener's built to serve the needs of folks writing novels, short stories, screenplays, and — given its ability to store pictures, cached web pages, and other research material alongside a given text — possibly term papers. For $45, you'll definitely get your money's worth.
Scrivener's somewhat long in the tooth compared to its rivals here, with a dense but coherent interface filled with the kinds of colorful icons that seem to have fallen out of fashion among Mac apps. It arguably needs such a crowd of buttons to display even a fraction of the features stuffed into its every nook and cranny. (My favorite: A ridiculously options-laden name generator for authors in need of inspiration.) Scrivener's user manual, however engagingly written, is 546 pages long. It's not messing around.
Even after years of using Scrivener, I still sometimes find myself hunting through its menus in search of that one command I need. Consistently formatting text files in a given project to anything other than Scrivener's default settings can be a pain, and it keeps its settings for targets and statistics in separate popup windows.
But despite this complexity, Scrivener does a good job of getting out of your way. Scrivener offers an outline mode, and a corkboard mode that displays each of your scenes as virtual notecards on which you can hash out what happens when. But if you just want to start writing without worrying about its bells and whistles, you won't have a problem. Because it's so like the Finder, Scrivener's system for storing scenes in various folders makes sense immediately. And like all the programs mentioned here, Scrivener offers a fullscreen mode that blots out everything but the text you're working on, to avoid distractions.
Scrivener also offers a respectable if occasionally glitchy screenplay mode. It won't replace Final Draft, but if you want to have fun writing a cinematic masterpiece about Dominic Toretto battling Dracula, you'll end up with a decently formatted final product.
Ios Apps On Mac
Scrivener also shines when it's time to publish your work. Its voluminous list of export formats includes all the usual suspects, plus ePubs, Final Draft screenplay files, and even Kindle books. You can even select only specific chapters or files to compile and export — handy when you've got multiple drafts of a novel in a given file, but only want to create a PDF of the most recent one. However, this versatility has one glaring exception: Scrivener doesn't support iCloud, though it can share documents between its iOS and Mac versions.
- $45 - Download now!
Which app is best?
If you want a jack-of-all trades writing app with WordPress, Medium, and iCloud support built in, Ulysses is your best bet. If you're not willing to shell out $4.99 a month indefinitely, try the similar Bear first. You may not ever need its advanced features, which would give you a terrific writing app for free.
But if you're serious about creative writing, and you want a stalwart companion to help drag stories out of your brain, Scrivener's your best bet. Its learning curve is steeper, but its powerful features make that climb worthwhile.
Free Apps For Mac Computer
Apps To Write Code In On Mac Free
Got any favorite apps we haven't mentioned here? Let us know in the comments below.
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