Together was chosen as Leo Laporte’s pick on this week’s MacBreak Weekly, recorded at NAB, and you can hear about that towards the end of the podcast.

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.

Support in my apps for PowerPC Macs will be dropped as of Feeder 2.2 and Together 2.5, which will be released as the year progresses. Poster only runs on Mac OS X 10.6 and later and is therefore already Intel-only.

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.

After an enchanting journey through US bureaucracy that started with a question in the Mac App Store submission process and ended in the US National Security Agency’s headquarters at Ft. Meade, Together’s encryption feature is now approved for export by the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, and has been reviewed and approved by Apple for the Mac App Store.

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!

Together 2.4 is now available from this web site and the Mac App Store. Most of the changes in this release are to make Together suitable for the Mac App Store, however there are some new features mentioned below.

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.