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.

The answer is I don’t know. I have spent a lot of time looking at all the things I need to do to make that happen, even done some of it, but I have come to the conclusion it’s going to take a lot longer than I’d like, because both iCloud and Together are all about files and Together does an awful lot with them.

Some of the things I need to do slot in nicely with what is there, but others require significant changes to the very heart of the app, which will take time and need a lot of testing. I cannot even hazard a guess at how long it will take, because everything is new and there are too many unknowns. I want to get it right.

Meanwhile, Apple announced at WWDC that all apps submitted to the Mac App Store need to be sandboxed from November. Application Sandboxing, introduced with Lion, restricts what apps can do in the name of security and these requirements affect both Together and Feeder quite significantly. Without that, I will not be able to deliver further updates to Mac App Store customers. I have completed a lot of work on sandboxing already, and once it is implemented for all three apps I will be able to turn my attention back to iCloud.

In the meantime, I would like to thank all my customers for your patience and understanding.

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.

Lion Changes

The focus of this version is to make Together work well on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with full screen mode, overlay scrollbars, Quick Look previews for text attachments and the new find bar for search text within documents. If you were running Lion before its release, there are also many fixes and performance improvements specific to Lion.

New Requirements

One big change is that Together is now Intel-only and requires Mac OS X 10.6 and later. Apple is taking quite an aggressive approach to moving its developer tools forward to an Intel-only world and it was not possible to have Together both work on 10.5 and take advantage of the new features in 10.7.

Improvements

In addition to Lion-specific features, Together also adds some new features for 10.6 users, including Quick Look previews for text documents that are not RTF or plain text, such as Word documents, a text size preference for Quick Notes, cleaner looking tabs and group icon. Together has also been improved so that it now remembers the last viewed page in PDF documents, search results are updated when moving and removing items.

Finally, Together’s library file has changed into a file package containing both the library database and supporting files. While something of a technical change, this may affect backups and such. The change has been made necessary by the Mac App Store guidelines and forthcoming sandboxing feature of Lion. Together will migrate library files to the new version as they are opened.

Availability

Together 2.5 is a free upgrade for all paid Together 2.x users, the price remains unchanged at $39.95 and a 15-day trial is available for download from this site.

A full list of changes in this version is available in the release notes.

Link: MacBreak Weekly 242: The World’s Largest Dongle.

While talking about Together, Leo remarks about “forking”, where there are differences between the versions on the Mac App Store and developers’ sites, that I would like to address.

In the case of Together (and just about all other examples I’ve seen of this), it’s the Mac App Store guidelines forcing the differences or limitations. If it were up to me, I would have the versions as close to identical as possible.

With Together, Apple rejected it because for the “Save PDF to Together” feature to work, Together has to put a file in your Library/PDF Services folder, which is prohibited by the guidelines. It’s a stupid limitation, because putting files in the PDF Services folders is a completely supported Mac OS X thing otherwise.

In this case, there is a workaround in the form of an installer that you can get from the Together downloads page. I hope to come up with a smarter workaround in the future.

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.

The result is that as of Together 2.4.3, the Mac App Store version now includes the encryption feature and the only difference between that and the regular version available on the Reinvented Software website is the omission of the “Save PDF to Together” feature, a workaround for which is available to download from the Together downloads page.

As this change only affects the Mac App Store version, it will not appear in the direct version’s Software Update, but an identical version of 2.4.2 with a 2.4.3 version number is on the Downloads page too.

Links:
YouTube — Together for Mac
T4 Show – Together for Mac

Probably worth noting that Flash caused the hang. Get rid of it!

OpenMeta

Together now has support for OpenMeta tags. OpenMeta is a technology that allows applications to save metadata, such as tags, to the filesystem so that these may be searched by Spotlight and used by other applications.

In Together, OpenMeta tags will be imported as Together tags when files are first imported and any tags changed in Together will be updated in OpenMeta.

On first launch for existing users, Together will ask whether you would like it export its current tags to OpenMeta. For new users, this will be on by default.

There is no syncing of tags, so existing OpenMeta tags for files in Together’s library, or tags added in other applications after the files have been imported, will not be reflected in Together. Together will not overwrite any existing tags that it doesn’t know about.

Bookmark File Import

Together can now import standard HTML Bookmarks files, such as those exported by web browsers. In the case of bookmarks exported from Delicious, Together will also import the tags and comments. For bookmarks exported from web browsers, Together will preserve the folder structure used.

Search Bookmarks

Together can now perform content searching on bookmarks. Normally, Together uses Spotlight for all its content searching, but Spotlight does not index these files.

Mac App Store

Together in the Mac App Store does not have the encryption feature. This is because for apps that use encryption, Apple requires US export licenses that I have yet to obtain. For a variety of reasons, it is possible I will drop this feature altogether in a future version of the app; there will be a migration path if that happens. A tool to decrypt files without Together is available on Together’s Downloads page.

Another change made for the Mac App Store, but which affects both versions, is that Together will now ask where to create its library on first run, regardless of which version you are using. This is because the Mac App Store restricts the creation of files outside of application-specific folders in the Library and Application Support folders. If you are an existing user, then you will not notice this change at all.

Finally, Together can no longer install its “Save PDF to Together” PDF service in the Mac App Store version. This allows you to print PDFs to Together by using the PDF button in the standard print panel. There is a small application that can be downloaded from Together’s Downloads page to install the service.

Together 2.4 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later and is a free upgrade for all registered Together 2.x users. A full license costs $39.95 and upgrades from KIT 1.x are $14.95. Education and bulk discounts are also available when purchasing through the Reinvented Software store.