From Mac Tinkering to Building Four Apps for Golf, Padel and Cars

My move from tinkering with Macs to building apps began with the same instinct that has shaped my work with technology for years: when something is awkward, I start looking for a better way. That curiosity has now produced four projects spanning golf, coaching, padel and cars, each born from a problem I wanted to solve for myself.

None began with a business plan. They started with a practical need, then grew as I discovered what else the software could do. Turning an idea into a reliable, useful app has proved to be a much bigger job than having the idea in the first place. It means working through design, data, compatibility and all the small details that determine whether a tool fits into daily life.

Building a better golf journal

ForeThought was the project that first expanded beyond its original brief. I play golf and want to improve, so I’d tried apps for scores, distances and performance tracking. What I wanted was a place to review a round afterwards, see what had happened and decide what to practise next—not another screen to manage while walking the course.

A Mac app seemed the right fit. I wanted the room to show a dashboard, charts and round details in an interface that felt at home on a desktop. The first version was meant to cover the essentials: enter a round, add some statistics, look over the results and keep practice notes.

Then the list of useful additions kept growing. Competition results, handicap tracking, lessons, practice sessions and fitness information joined the plan, followed by golf bag records, club specifications, distance gapping, wedge matrices and PDF reports. The result has become much closer to a golf management tool than the straightforward journal I first imagined.

The most satisfying part has been using ForeThought myself. It’s become part of how I record rounds and spot areas of my game that need work. That shift—from experimenting with an idea to relying on the thing I’d made—gave me a reason to keep developing it.

A companion for lessons and practice

A desktop app has an obvious limitation when you’re at a driving range or taking a lesson: carrying a MacBook around isn’t practical. I needed a lightweight way to capture information away from my desk and bring it into ForeThought later. That need led to Lesson Logger, first conceived as a digital notebook for golf coaching.

Lessons can leave you with several things to remember: what your coach explained, what to practise and which movements or sensations to look for. It’s easy for those details to blur by the next session. Lesson Logger gives me a place to record them and return to them when I’m practising.

Its scope widened too. Practice planning, guided programmes, fitness activities, yardages, coaching assessments and reports have all become part of the project. Connecting it with ForeThought has brought a different kind of work: handling files and JSON data, using cloud storage, arranging automatic imports and making sure the two apps can pass information between them.

There’s also an Android version to consider. Keeping an experience consistent across operating systems adds another layer of decisions, especially when the apps are meant to work as parts of one system. What began as a small iPhone companion now plays a larger role in tracking and reviewing golf practice.

Making padel scoring easier

Golf wasn’t enough to fill my spare time. During winter, when short days and poor weather make golf harder to fit in, I started playing more padel. I enjoyed the game, but soon found myself thinking about an app that could make scoring easier without pulling attention away from play. That became Courta.

The basic idea was simple: let two teams keep track of points, games and sets with controls that are clear and quick to use. But padel scoring has variations, including tiebreaks and Golden Point rules, so the scoring logic needed careful thought before the app could handle a match properly.

From there, Courta grew to support connected matches. Players can follow the same scoreboard using a shared six-digit code, which brings in a server API and the challenge of keeping scores in sync across iOS and Android devices. Apple Watch support adds its own design problem: controls must be large and dependable enough to use on a small display during a match.

Spoken announcements have needed attention as well. Courta has to call game point, mark completed games and report the outcome of a set at the right moment. Those details may seem small, but they shape whether the app is helpful or distracting when people are actually playing.

Real-world use has been especially valuable here. An interface that looks clear in Xcode can feel clumsy when you’re on court and trying to award a point between rallies. Testing the design in that setting has shown me that appearance is only one part of making software work.

Keeping track of more than one car

Parked comes from another interest: cars, particularly older German models and Volkswagens. When you use more than one vehicle, remembering where each one is can become a nuisance. Apple Maps and Google Maps can remember a parking location, but their automatic features are generally centred on the car you parked most recently. That can leave you without the location you need if you’ve moved between vehicles.

Parked is my attempt to make that easier by giving each vehicle its own saved parking location. The app is also intended to cover everyday needs such as parking timers and reminders, so it could be useful for someone with several classic cars or anyone who wants to find a car again in an unfamiliar town.

I’m still testing the iOS app, with particular attention to what happens when switching between vehicles. Android development and sharing parking locations are also on the plan. Location services bring their own reliability questions, and the challenge is making the whole process feel simple enough that saving a spot doesn’t become another task to manage.

A different view of the software we use

Building apps has changed how I look at the software I use every day. I’ve spent years interested in Apple hardware, operating systems and the wider ecosystem. Now I think more about what sits behind an interface: file permissions, syncing, databases, background work and whether an app behaves as expected across devices. People using an app shouldn’t have to wrestle with those details, but getting them right can determine whether the app feels useful or frustrating.

Development has also taught me how much of the work comes down to patience. Some days, a feature comes together quickly. On others, a small change causes a problem somewhere unexpected. Something may work on one device and behave differently on another, and the explanation can turn out to be much simpler than the hours spent searching for it.

That friction comes with a satisfying payoff: opening an app on my Mac, phone or watch and knowing I made it to address a problem I’d run into. ForeThought helps me review golf, Lesson Logger keeps coaching notes and practice in view, Courta handles a padel scoreboard, and Parked is being built to keep car locations straight. These aren’t grand ideas, but they’re useful to me.

What comes next for The Apple Geek

The Apple Geek has long been a place to write about what I’ve learned and tried, from repairing and upgrading older Macs to exploring Linux and finding useful software. Sharing the development of my own apps feels like a natural next step. I can write about the decisions, obstacles, successes and mistakes that come with making them.

The four projects are at different stages, and I have more ideas for each. I plan to look at them individually: how they started, what I’ve built and what I’ve learned along the way. A small inconvenience and some curiosity can be enough to start creating; the hard part is continuing until the result is something you actually want to use.

I don’t know how much spare time these projects will take as new ideas keep appearing. For now, I’m enjoying the learning and the work of making practical tools. That’s still what interests me most about technology: finding ways to make the devices we already own do something worthwhile.