Feeder 2.4 is now available on the web and in the Mac App Store, and includes improvements to editing, publishing and Sparkle appcasting.

However, most of the work in this release isn’t visible, which is to get Feeder working with OS X’s App Sandbox, which is a requirement for apps sold through the Mac App Store.

The App Sandbox is a security technology built into OS X that limits the way apps can access files, interact with other processes and the network.

I originally started this work back in 2011, when Apple first announced this would be a requirement for all apps distributed through the Mac App Store following the release of OS X 10.7 Lion. Unfortunately, that original implementation of sandboxing was too restrictive, and prevented many existing apps from functioning properly, so Apple postponed the requirement until improving sandboxing with OS X 10.7.3 in early 2012, and allowed existing apps to delay making the transition until a release that adds new features, so that bug fixes could be released and enhancements to OS X accommodated.

Consequently, Feeder 2.4 now requires OS X 10.7 and later, and 10.7.3 for the Mac App Store version.

Now that early problems with sandboxing have largely been ironed out, the transition should not be noticeable at all for new Feeder users, and there are no restrictions on what the app can do over the direct version beyond those imposed by the Mac App Store guidelines.

For existing users, Feeder may need to ask for permission to access files such as images, enclosure files and any linked feeds, amongst other things. This will happen automatically when you first run the Mac App Store version of Feeder, and as necessary to cover some other, more obscure cases such as SSH private and public keys for publishing with password-less SFTP.

Hopefully, this will be a seamless transition, but if you do use the Mac App Store version of Feeder and notice any strange behaviour, please get in touch using the email address shown on the Feeder support page.

Feeder is available both direct from Reinvented Software and from the Mac App Store for $39.99. An upgrade from version 1.x is $19.99, and education discounts are also available directly from Reinvented Software. To see a list of all the changes or download a 15-day demo, go to the Feeder downloads page.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013 at 2:06 pm by Steve Harris and is filed under Feeder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.