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Rune, a lightweight native macOS client for Kubernetes

I’m the developer of Rune. I work with Kubernetes every day and built Rune because there were a few workflows where I wanted something fast, smooth, stable, and native on macOS (and soon iOS).

https://preview.redd.it/zl0xux1zrjzg1.png?width=3680&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ad237f12c622c56f287d7ac58652bc7e48c5e9d

https://preview.redd.it/ie3eqz1zrjzg1.png?width=3680&format=png&auto=webp&s=a054a3151f5b034f5d9bc882155c0257d8db9efb

https://preview.redd.it/7a0g0ad5sjzg1.png?width=3680&format=png&auto=webp&s=0eb0d3b3185fbf4b70d6654c857986757768dfed

I still use `kubectl` and k9s a lot, but for some daily work I wanted a GUI that stays keyboard-friendly and keeps the important debugging context close together: contexts, namespaces, pods, controllers, services, YAML, events, logs, exec, and port-forwarding.

Rune is focused on day-to-day Kubernetes operations:

\- Fast context and namespace switching, including namespace favorites and manual namespace entry when RBAC blocks namespace listing.

\- Cluster overview with workloads, networking, storage, config, RBAC, events, Helm releases, and terminal workflows.

\- Resource views for Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, CronJobs, ReplicaSets, HPAs, Services, Ingresses, NetworkPolicies, ConfigMaps, Secrets, Nodes, PVCs, PVs, StorageClasses, Roles, RoleBindings, ClusterRoles, and ClusterRoleBindings.

\- Pod logs and unified logs across related workloads.

\- Log search, time presets, previous logs, tail mode, container selection, copy selected lines, copy all logs, `.log` export, and ZIP export for full pod or multi-pod logs.

\- YAML viewing and editing with syntax highlighting, validation feedback, server dry-run, diff preview, and a copyable `kubectl` command before apply.

\- Port-forwarding for pods and services from the resource you are already inspecting.

\- Exec and pod shell workflows with terminal tabs.

\- Pod and node metrics when the cluster exposes metrics.

\- Command palette with k9s-style jumps like `:po`, `:deploy`, `:svc`, `:ns`, `:ctx`, `:helm`, and more.

\- Auth Doctor for kubeconfig, context, namespace, API transport, pod/log/exec/port-forward permission checks.

\- Read-only mode, production-like context warnings, and local write audit entries.

\- No analytics, tracking, advertising, telemetry, or Rune backend.

k9s is excellent for terminal-first workflows. Lens, Aptakube, and Headlamp are powerful desktop clients. Rune aims to sit somewhere in between: a native Mac app with fast navigation, focused Kubernetes operations, strong log workflows, YAML editing, port-forwarding, exec, Helm, metrics, and little to none bloat.

It is not meant to replace every enterprise platform console. The goal is a fast native Mac app for the Kubernetes workflows I use every day.

Price: $3.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store. No subscription.

The source is public for personal and non-commercial use. Business use is included with the App Store purchase.

iOS version coming and bundled with desktop app in app store.

App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/runeapp/id6762515322?mt=12

GitHub:

https://github.com/compilererrors/Rune

Feedback is very welcome, especially from people who use `kubectl`, k9s, Lens, Aptakube, or Headlamp daily.

https://redd.it/1t5ir49
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Corel Painter Is Still Alive and Still Ridiculously Good

Corel Painter 2023

# Corel’s Spot on Memory Lane

I hadn’t thought about Corel graphics apps in a long time until I saw their flagship app on sale recently. I got my first tech-related job in 1994, when my ability to figure things out in Windows 3.1 earned me a promotion from the manufacturing floor to the quality department at the Westinghouse factory where I worked after getting out of the Army.

The tools I worked with felt absurdly expensive at the time: a Pentium PC, a Kodak digital camera, and the first color laser printer I’d ever seen. And then there was Corel; a professional suite of graphics tools I used to produce hundreds of technical work instructions for the people on the shop floor.

Corel still occupies a narrow but devoted niche in the graphics world. It’s loved by a small community of artists and designers and mostly ignored by everyone else in favor of mass-market tools from Adobe, Affinity, and a handful of others. The current version is Painter 2023. I took it for a spin and it’s more capable than anything else I’ve seen in its niche, but the real question is whether those capabilities matter to you.

# But What Is It?

Painter isn’t a drawing app or an image editor in the conventional sense. It’s a digital canvas simulator built for artists who want the feel of oil paint, watercolor, ink, and charcoal without the mess. The brush engine is the entire product. Everything else exists to support it.

The target user is a professional illustrator, concept artist, or fine artist working with a Wacom or another pressure-sensitive tablet. If that’s not you, Painter probably isn’t for you, and Corel doesn’t pretend otherwise.

# The Brush Engine

The reality is that no software on any platform simulates natural media the way Painter does. Photoshop’s brushes are powerful but fundamentally digital. Procreate feels great on an iPad but remains a raster drawing tool. Clip Studio Paint has excellent line tools but doesn’t attempt to simulate paint physics at this level.

Painter 2023 ships with hundreds of brushes organized across dozens of categories: Oils, Acrylics, Watercolor, Gouache, Pastels, Chalk, Charcoal, Inks, and more. Each category behaves differently at the physics level. Watercolor bleeds and beads. Thick paint builds up and catches light. Impasto brushes create actual texture relief on the virtual canvas.

The Fluid Brushes iappear to be a real game changer. They’re built around layer transparency and allow subtle glazing and blending effects that previously required awkward workarounds. Corel claims they run up to 50 times faster by leveraging both CPU and GPU acceleration. On Apple Silicon hardware (my M4 Mac Mini), the effect is genuinely impressive.

# The Feature Set

900+ brushes covering nearly every traditional medium
Fluid Paint with build, sculpt, and blend brushes plus precision opacity control
Thick Paint with three-dimensional impasto simulation
Particle Brushes that flow, fork, and react dynamically
Color Selection Brushes that combine selection and painting workflows
AI Photo Painting tools powered by Core ML
Clone Painting for painting directly from reference photos
Photoshop compatibility with layered PSD read/write support
Tablet support for Wacom, Xencelabs, and Huion devices with pressure, tilt, rotation, and bearing support
Customizable workspace with movable palettes, panels, and brush libraries

# The Catch

This is not an easy app to learn, even for experienced users. Nobody is going to master Painter in an afternoon. Corel provides tutorials, webinars, and learning materials through its Painter portal, and if you decide to invest time in the app, you’ll probably need them.

The UI looks exactly like what it is: decades of accumulated decisions packed into a single workspace. Tool panels feel
cramped even on a large laptop display. Honestly, two monitors feels less like a luxury and more like a requirement.

The current version is still Painter 2023. It runs fine on the last several macOS releases, including Apple Silicon Macs, but there was no 2024 or 2025 release, and it’s unclear whether there will be a 2026 version. I understand that it’s a mature product serving a mature niche, but some transparency about the development cycle would help inspire confidence.

Under normal circumstances, I couldn’t recommend that an individual pay the full perpetual-license price of $429. That’s the kind of software purchase employers are supposed to absorb. Especially when Procreate costs $12.99 and Clip Studio Paint EX runs about $50 a year.

But don’t stop reading yet.

# The Justification

Right now, you can get a perpetual license for the full version of Painter 2023 for $49 from BundleHunt. That’s still real money, but it changes the math a bit.

If you’re genuinely curious, already own a pressure-sensitive tablet, and have the artistic skills to take advantage of what Painter offers, this becomes much easier to justify. At that price, it’s less a reckless software purchase and more an opportunity to experiment with what is probably the most sophisticated paint-physics engine ever shipped on a desktop computer.

Painter 2023 for Mac
Developer: Corel Corporation
Price: Regularly $429 | BundleHunt Price $49
macOS: Sequoia, Sonoma, Ventura
Apple Silicon: Native (M1 and later, optimized)
Website: painterartist.com

https://redd.it/1t5n5yv
@macappsbackup
MenuBar Pets – Animated characters that live in your menubar, not on your desktop Lifetime

https://reddit.com/link/1t5pu0c/video/g699d7lc0lzg1/player

Problem: Every desktop pet app drops characters onto your wallpaper where they vanish behind windows. MenuBar Pets puts them in the menubar — always visible, never in the way.

Comparison: Unlike Desktop Pets or Wunderbucket, these characters use lightweight WebP animations that are easy on your CPU. You can also make them clickable — link any pet to an app, URL, or Shortcut. Custom hanging characters are supported too.

Pricing: Free · $4.99 one-time IAP for extra characters & features

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/menubar-pets/id6766222004?mt=12

https://redd.it/1t5pu0c
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[OS] Loop: A free, open-source radial window manager that actually feels native

I spend a lot of time on this sub finding niche utilities, and I’ve been testing **Loop** for my explorer’s log, **Silicon Thread**. It’s built by MrKai77 and operates on a highly visual radial menu system instead of just hotkeys.

**Problem:** Standard window management usually involves memorizing complex keyboard shortcuts or relying on clunky screen-edge snapping that breaks your flow.

**The Solution (How it works):**

* **The Radial Workflow:** Hold a trigger key (I use fn), and a circular menu pops up directly under your cursor. Flick your mouse in a direction, release, and the window snaps perfectly.
* **Performance:** It’s a native Swift app, so it’s incredibly lightweight and fast on Apple Silicon.

**Comparison:** It's a free, open-source alternative to paid or subscription-based tools like Magnet or Swish, but with a much more "cursor-centric" approach.

**Pricing:** Completely Free & Open Source ($0).

**Links:**

* **My Technical Review:** [https://siliconthread.civicease.systems/](https://siliconthread.civicease.systems/)

**Transparency:** I’m an independent explorer sharing my personal experience with the app. I have no financial affiliation with the developer; I just appreciate well-built indie software.

If you know a macos app that is worth trying, let me know in comments. Will try that : )
And if you are interested please leave a like and comment on LinkedIn it help a lot as a starting blog page creator with personal reviews.

Edited (latest) had forgotten to add repo link instead added it to the website 😅

Here's Loop's GitHub link as well: [https://github.com/MrKai77/Loop](https://github.com/MrKai77/Loop)
Or if you simply want to download the latest release, download Loop.zip here: [https://github.com/MrKai77/Loop/releases/latest](https://github.com/MrKai77/Loop/releases/latest)

https://redd.it/1t5z30h
@macappsbackup
PSA Cosmiq Store is not an authorized reseller of Mac apps

I was just notified by a user who bought a license for my Lunar app at a discount on Cosmiq Store.

Whoever is behind that website is doing something illegal, they don't have a contract with me, and I'm pretty sure that is the same for every other app on their website.

They don't state who is behind the website, the Terms of use is a generic text sounding like this:

>Compliance and Legality

>
>Cosmiq aims to provide licenses sourced through legitimate channels, but software licensing rules can vary by product, region, and intended use.

>
>You are responsible for reviewing the official product terms and ensuring your purchase and use comply with applicable laws and license restrictions in your jurisdiction.

That is not how this works, the terms need to state the legal entity and actual country jurisdiction.


I'm not entirely sure how they do the discount. They might simply be buying licenses on their own, and reselling seats one by one, or they might be buying with a student discount. In any case, that's prohibited by most dev's terms of use.

Did other devs stumble upon this?

https://redd.it/1t66qvo
@macappsbackup
iCloud Custom Email - Opinions?

I've used Google Workspace since it as Google Apps in 2004, but I'd like to use the Apple Mail app and it is notoriously awful with Gmail. Not its fault, as Gmail is not true IMAP and I understand why Apple Mail has issues. Push notifications are not possible with Gmail, and waiting 15 minutes for updates is untenable for my use case.

If I switch from Google Workspace to Apple Custom Domain Email, how disappointed am I going to be? I can deal with the little things, like it goes to the same inbox as my iCloud.com email, but that's not a problem as I never use it and haven't gotten two emails there in the past two years. But how much worse is spam filtering if I'm using iCloud Custom Email. I know it won't be a good at filtering as Gmail, but is it at least tolerable? Thanks!

https://redd.it/1t6gnb0
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This community really really helped shaping AskMeety from day one. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who was part of this journey 🥹

https://redd.it/1t6gm34
@macappsbackup
Workspace/Project Manager Suggestions

Hello! I recently started developing my own personal projects and have run into a frustrating issue: constantly reopening windows, navigating to folders in terminals, and repeating the same setup steps every time I switch between projects. I've been managing everything in a ProjectReadMe file, but I've quickly outgrown that approach. Does anyone have suggestions for a better solution? I know there are a few apps out there, but I'd love to hear what you're actually using and recommend.

https://redd.it/1t6sgz4
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