Tuesday, August 30, 2022

App Wrapper 4.5

Save energy with architecture independent archives

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 - Sam Rowlands

Download App Wrapper 4.5 or see version changes.

Save energy with architecture independent archives.

Some of you are like me, we care about the details of our macOS applications.

95% of my apps contents are macOS executables. With Universal Binaries, this means that half of the disk space taken up by my apps is wasted space on a customers computer. Half of the archive file doesn't need to be downloaded, which can save bandwidth and energy.

Enter "Architecture independent archives". App Wrapper 4.5 takes a single universal binary, and creates a specific archive for each architecture i.e. x86_64 and arm64, these archives are code signed and notarized.

Giving your customers the choice to either download a specific architecture, or enabling a modified update system to only download the appropriate architecture for their Mac, saves server bandwidth, saves customers bandwidth, and also space on the customers storage.

We've been testing this for several months with Sleep Aid. The download from the web page is a universal binary, but our update system will only download the current architecture for our customers Macs.

Create archives in specific locations

This new option allows App Wrapper to generate and Notarize archives in a specific location, making it easier for customers to organize archives or prepare to upload them with a web site change.

Custom version number formats

App Wrapper offers multiple ways to remap Xojo version numbers into a format that Apple accepts on their App Store, but now the converted numbers can be customized to match how you'd like 'em.