Considering I had spent the last two months working on it and had already wrapped up the work on Together and Feeder on Oct 28, you might think I’d be pretty peeved, but I’m not, because sandboxing sucks.

I won’t be releasing sandboxed versions of Together or Feeder on the Mac App Store until it’s a requirement, because the apps will lose certain capabilities that I know people appreciate and to some extent define the usability of the app. Things you really take for granted, like the ability to store your files wherever you please. Poster isn’t too badly affected by sandboxing, mostly because it’s a fairly straightforward app, and I have already been forced to change certain things so it behaves as though it is sandboxed.

If you know how sandboxing works, it won’t take you long to work out that, in its current form, it is incompatible with some of Apple’s own apps on the Mac App Store, such as Final Cut Pro. Quite how Apple is going to resolve the situation is unknown.

For now, be aware that if you purchase apps from the Mac App Store — any app, not just my own — it is possible Apple can dream up new rules that could hobble the functionality of those apps in the name of security or anything else at any time, whether or not they ultimately choose to go ahead with sandboxing.

It’s my personal opinion that, while some of the ideas of sandboxing are good, others are just not worth the compromises, even sacrifices, that must be made, and the concept was not well thought through. I know I’m not alone in this view, so let’s hope Apple can take a more moderate approach that will work well for everyone.

Twitter

Here are the Twitter accounts for each of the apps:

@feederapp
@togetherapp
@posterapp

Following these can be especially useful if you’ve purchased any of the apps through the Mac App Store, as a tweet will go out once new versions are approved. This is the only place on the web where that happens.

All of these have a pretty low volume of tweets, mostly about updates and the odd vaguely relevant retweet.

Facebook

Reinvented Software also has its own page on Facebook, which you can “like” to see updates much the same as the ones posted on the News page here. The frequency of updates is pretty low.

Reinvented Software on Facebook

Feeder and Poster are also Facebook apps and have their own pages as a result, but there are no updates on there at the moment, so you can “Like” them, just to show that you, er, like them.

Feeder on Facebook
Poster on Facebook

Together

Together 2.5 has been built for Lion and is available for direct customers, but is still being reviewed by Apple for the Mac App Store. The current Mac App Store version, Together 2.4.5, runs on Lion, but there are some issues with automatically imported files, some performance issues and other minor glitches that will be fixed by version 2.5.

Feeder

All recent versions of Feeder will work on Lion and will automatically get overlay scrollers, but version 2.2.1 also supports Lion’s full-screen mode and that’s been available on this site for about a week and the Mac App Store since Tuesday. However, there is an issue with publishing to MobileMe and WebDAV servers that seems to be a problem with Lion that I have reported to Apple. The current workaround is to have Feeder publish to the iDisk or WebDAV disk on your Desktop instead.

Poster

All versions of Poster will work perfectly well on Mac OS X Lion. Version 1.1.3 includes support for full-screen mode and overlay scrollbars and is available both direct from this site since Tuesday and through the Mac App Store today.

Announcements

You can now edit manually posted announcements to Twitter and Facebook. For Twitter, Feeder will shorten the links with bit.ly if you have chosen to do so in Announcement settings. Manually posting to Facebook works similarly, and you can specify the message, link, and choose a specific thumbnail (or none at all).

iTunes Podcasting

Two tags previously only used by iTunesU feeds are now available for general iTunes podcasting feeds, these are itunes:order and itunes:isCloseCaptioned.

The itunes:order tag allows you to specify the order of the episodes as they will appear in iTunes, which will otherwise sort by publication date. In Feeder, this tag will be added automatically based on the ordering of the items in your feed when sorted by Item Number, which can be rearranged as required.

The itunes:complete tag appears in the iTunes Podcasting Info section in Feeder as “Is Complete”. Setting this to Yes will indicate that no more episodes will be added to the podcast, and in the case of iTunes U podcasts will allow all episodes to be downloaded at once.

Publishing

Along with FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, MobileMe and Amazon S3, Feeder can now publish with FTP-SSL. SFTP uploads are now faster and it’s now possible to skip publishing scheduled feeds at startup by holding on Command-Option.

Intel Only

As announced previously, Feeder is now an Intel only application, but still runs on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. If you are using a PowerPC Mac, do not upgrade to this version. Version 2.1.10 will always be available on the Feeder downloads page.

And More!

There are many more small changes in Feeder 2.2 covering most parts of the application, see the release notes for more details.

Feeder 2.2 costs $39.95 and is a free upgrade for all registered Feeder 2.x users. Upgrades from version 1.x cost $14.95.

The reason, quite simply, is that Apple is transitioning their developer tools and has dropped PowerPC support from the new versions, which will make it impossible to both build apps for PowerPC and take advantage of the new features in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, out later this year.

Personally, while I can understand why Apple is doing this, I think the move is a tad premature. I would rather wait until such a time that I choose to drop support for Mac OS X 10.5, the last version of Mac OS X to run on PowerPC.

The final versions of the apps to run on PowerPC will always be available to download from this site.

Poster

Poster is now $9.99. The version on the Mac App Store is identical in its functionality, however it will not offer to install export plug-ins for Aperture or iPhoto, as installing additional software is prohibited. Versions of the plug-ins are available for download from my site. These new versions of the plug-ins will check for updated versions as those cannot be delivered through the main app. On the price drop, existing customers will be refunded the difference.

Feeder

Feeder is on the Mac App Store with its price unchanged. This version is almost identical to the regular version with the exception that it will not offer to wake your Mac from sleep for scheduled publishing, because that requires admin privileges, which is also prohibited by the Mac App Store. A workaround is to schedule wake from sleep manually in System Preferences.

Finally, a note about version numbers, which aren’t quite in line. Poster 1.0 in the App Store has all the relevant fixes from Poster 1.0.1. Feeder 2.1.6 is on my site today to bring it in line with the App Store version, but doesn’t add anything significant for existing users so it won’t appear in Feeder’s automatic software update.

Authorization

You will need to authorize Feeder to post to Facebook again for two reasons: Facebook has changed their authorization scheme and Feeder needs to be granted new permissions to work with your groups on Facebook. If you don’t reauthorize Facebook, your posts won’t be sent to Facebook when publishing.

To reauthorize Feeder:

• Show the Info view by choosing View > Show Feed Info from the menu.
• Click Settings and then choose Announcements
• Click the Change button next to your Facebook account name
• Log in to Facebook and follow the prompts

Posting to a Group or Page

Once authorized, there’s new a pop-up menu in Feeder’s Announcements view for choosing where to post, which will list any Facebook pages you administer and all the groups to which you belong (it’s not possible for Feeder to determine which groups you administer).

The list is only retrieved when you first authorize Feeder, so if you create a new group or page, choose Refresh from the pop-up menu to update the list. If you only want to post to your wall as before, you can just leave this as “Profile Wall”.

When posting to a group, the post will appear to come from you. When posting to a page, the post will use the page name instead.

Better Thumbnails

Another improvement is that Feeder will now try to use a thumbnail from the item you’re announcing. If you’re using the Media RSS extension, Feeder will send the Thumbnail URL. If not, it’ll use the first image it finds in your post, if any. If it can’t find an image, Facebook will do its regular thing of choosing one from the corresponding web page.

Publishing and Announcements

Feeder can now publish feeds using WebDAV, which could previously only be accomplished by connecting to the server as a disk in the Finder and publishing using File Export. The same system is being used to publish to iDisks now too.

Feeder 2.1 also dramatically improves the experience of authorizing Twitter accounts, thanks entirely to Twitter implementing xAuth, an alternative to OAuth for desktop and mobile apps that removes the need to use a web browser to authenticate and authorize applications. This not only makes it much easier to authenticate with Twitter, but also to use different accounts for different feeds, as you no longer need to log out of one Twitter account on the web to authorize another.

64-bit and Snow Leopard

Feeder now runs as a 64-bit application on Snow Leopard. While this is not something you should notice, it will become more important once all your applications make the transition to 64-bit, as the Mac OS X will no longer need to load its 32-bit versions of everything, improving performance and saving memory. Feeder will also use QuickTime X on Snow Leopard when working with audio and video files.

Podcasting

Feeder’s iTunes preview has now been updated to match the recent changes at the iTunes Store and adds customizable colors for iTunes U feeds. Feeder is now also using a completely different third-party framework for tagging MP3 files, which should improve both the reliability of Feeder and compatibility of the audio files.

More

In addition to the above, there are many more tweaks and changes in this release, including drag and drop Sparkle appcasts (drag an application to create a zip file and fill out the version numbers, etc), gestures to zoom the preview, navigate the list and switch editing modes and more.

To see full list of changes and download the latest version, see the Feeder Release Notes page.

Feeder 2.1 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later, costs $39.95 and is a free upgrade for all registered Feeder 2.0 users. Feeder 1.x users can upgrade for $14.95.

At the time of writing, it includes the wares of over 80 independent software developers, including Reinvented Software, but more are being added all the time. So, to get 20% off the full price of Together, Feeder or anything else you’ve been fancying on the list, then go to the One Finger Discount page to find out how.

You may notice that the Services menu has been cleaned up in Snow Leopard and this affects Together users. You can now choose which items to show and set shortcut keystrokes for the Services menu in System Preferences. Unlike the mess of before, Snow Leopard only shows the services that are relevant to the current selection.

An additional enhancement is that items in the Services menu now appear in contextual menus. This is intended to replace contextual menu plugins across the system, as those will not work with 64-bit applications.

Speaking of which, I plan to make both Feeder and Together 64-bit applications on their next major release (Feeder 2.1 and Together 2.3). Together will be released first and Feeder will follow. Feeder is much more reliant on a number of third-party components than Together, so that transition will take longer.

I plan to take advantage of more Snow Leopard technology in my apps in due course, while retaining Leopard compatibility for a while.

I’ve been using Snow Leopard for a while now and my favorite enhancement has got to be the improved Exposé, especially the way an app is put under the spotlight when dragging to its Dock icon. I think Snow Leopard is my favorite release of Mac OS X since 10.3 Panther. Big headline features are great, but a focus on thoughtful enhancements and improved performance always seems to make me smile.

So, if you’re installing it today, I’d like to wish you a happy Snow Leopard day!