Mac App Store

October 22nd, 2010 by Steve Harris

Reinvented Software’s apps will be submitted to the Mac App Store for its launch, whenever that might be.

It’s somewhat interesting as developers need to create custom versions of their applications for Apple, mostly to exclude things such as built-in software updates, to use Apple’s secuity and copy protection and any other changes required to conform to the store’s submission guidelines.

With those two versions of the apps also comes two licensing schemes. A license bought through the App Store will not be transferrable to one bought directly from Reinvented Software or vice versa and, as things stand, the App Store will lack free trials, education, bulk and upgrade discounts and refunds, while new releases may be delayed by the review process (but available immediately for those who purchased directly).

Free trials and (assuming the Mac App Store is 10.6 only) versions to run on Mac OS X 10.5 and PowerPC Macs will continue to be available through this site and the trial limitations removed by purchasing a license directly from Reinvented Software.

Even with its compromises, I’m confident the Mac App Store will benefit Mac users through its ease of use and Mac developers by providing increased exposure for their apps. It’s also good that everyone will be able to choose whether to buy through Apple or directly from a developer.

Feeder 2.1.2 Improves Facebook Announcements

June 29th, 2010 by Steve Harris

Thanks to changes by Facebook, Feeder 2.1.2 adds the ability to post to groups and pages when announcing items on the site. If you use Feeder to announce on Facebook, even if you don’t need to post to a group or page, there are a few things you need to know.

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

Facebook AnnouncementsOnce 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.

Feeder 2.1

May 4th, 2010 by Steve Harris

Feeder IconFeeder 2.1 is available today. This version adds support for WebDAV, updates the iTunes preview to match the recent changes to the iTunes Store and supports themes for previewing iTunes U feeds. This release also adds drag and drop Sparkle appcasts, improves MP3 tagging, working with Twitter accounts and will now run as a 64-bit application on Snow Leopard.

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.

About Together

March 9th, 2010 by Steve Harris

One of the common misconceptions about Together (and probably many apps of its ilk) is its purpose, which in Together’s case is to collect and find information in ways that may not be impossible otherwise, but are often awkward.

The biggest misconception is that Together is some kind of replacement for the Finder. It really isn’t and to use it that way will only lead to disappointment somewhere down the line. Nor is Together intended to be a particularly strong notetaker and its editing capabilities only exist so you can pare the gathered information down to its bare essentials.

I realize I may be to blame here for using the word “everything” in the standard blurb. When I say “Together lets you keep everything in one place”, the “everything” means “any kind of file or data that can be taken from its source”, which is almost, but not quite the same as “anything”, a term that could be misleading. It continues and clarifies: “Text, documents, images, movies, sounds, web pages and bookmarks can all be dragged to Together for safe keeping, tagged, previewed, collected together in different ways and found again instantly.”

I wanted the app for myself, funnily enough, while I was learning to become a Cocoa developer and researching app ideas. I was collecting things like code snippets, tips, bookmarks, tutorial movies and screenshots, but noticed how much of a chore it was to copy and paste, choose filenames and create folders for all these things, let alone find them again. Inspiration came from Apple’s own iApps and two other apps in the Classic Mac OS. As I explained on this blog back in 2005:

I’ve always missed the Scrapbook and Note Pad apps that came with Mac OS 9 and earlier. Fast to load, always available – perfect. At the time, they did exactly what I wanted them to do. You could drag and drop (or cut and paste) text, graphics, QuickTime movies, sounds, or anything really to the Scrapbook and it would store it away for you. The Scrapbook app was always available in the stripy Apple menu and when you needed something from it, you could just drag it back out again.

It was the same with Note Pad, which actually did look like a notepad and was so cool in the way you could turn the pages. It was just so handy for jotting down those little bits of text when you don’t want to create a new document, save it and have to find it again later. I never thought Stickies would be an adequate replacement – it’s just not the same.

Together is really my take on these apps, with a modern twist. I shy away from emphasizing terms such as “research” or “organize” because that’s not exactly what the app is about. Yes, Together can be used for research and it can be used to organize information, but it’s really all about collecting that information effortlessly and finding it again, which includes both searching and previewing the files.

Of course, you could finally search and preview most kinds of files in Leopard, but that raises another important point. When Together (then called Keep It Together, or KIT) 1.0 was first released in 2004, there was no Spotlight or Quick Look, yet the app offered as-you-type content searching, smart groups for files and you didn’t need to open most files to see previews of them.

Also, because Together has always kept the original files and folders on disk there is no fear of lock-in and it works perfectly well with all the technologies Apple has introduced since its launch, such as Spotlight, Quick Look and Time Machine.

While the ability to search and preview files has improved enormously in Mac OS X over the last few years, people still have needs that exceed the capabilities of the system. In particular, the friction in collecting information remains. This is Together’s real strength and purpose today. Drag anything (that can be dragged!) to Together, and it’s saved. You don’t need to choose a file format, name files or even specify a destination; Together creates standard-format files that can be opened directly in any number of other applications. Mac OS X has clippings, but they seem to remain a hangover from the Classic Mac OS and don’t work well with apps or the system.

And that’s it, really. Together fulfills a need to effortlessly collect and find information and should be viewed as complementary to the Finder and your apps, never as a replacement.

Evernote Importer for Together

February 17th, 2010 by Steve Harris

Many Together users migrate from other apps and a popular one lately is Evernote. While Evernote allows you to export its notes in HTML or its own XML format, it’s a little more difficult to do anything with these files once they have been exported. To address this problem for Together uses, I’ve created an Evernote Importer.

Evernote Importer screenshot

The importer allows you to import notes from all or just a selection of your Evernote notebooks. Each notebook becomes a group in the current Together library and the notes will be converted into editable Together notes. The importer also preserves the tags, creation and modification dates and source URL of the originals. A link to this importer is below and can always be found on the Together downloads page.

Download: EvernoteImporter.zip