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May 6th, 2011
You may have noticed that HistoryHound can’t see your browser history when you’re using Firefox 4. The Firefox team used a new version of the SQLite database to store the history and bookmark info in version 4, and that new version actually uses a new file format. Here’s a pre-release build of HistoryHound that’s been updated to understand the new files:
http://www.stclairsoft.com/download/HistoryHound-1.9.9fc1.dmg
This will be released officially next week (both through our store and the Mac App Store) but we’d like everyone to download and double-check to make sure we haven’t missed anything. Please give it a spin and let us know if you encounter any issues.
Thanks!
– Jon
Posted in HistoryHound | No Comments »
March 30th, 2011
Thought I’d post about this little developer experience because it was incredibly frustrating and not at all obvious. Maybe this will save someone else the headache that I’ve been through.
Background: When preparing an application for release on the Mac App Store, you code sign your application, then bundle it into an installer pkg which is also code signed (using either Xcode organizer or the productbuild command line tool). When the application is installed, it gets extracted from that .pkg file, the user runs it, and it checks for a Mac App Store receipt. If there’s no receipt, OS X checks to make sure that the application is signed correctly, then contacts the Mac App Store to get your receipt.
Problem: This would all work for me as advertised except that when the receipt check failed, OS X would complain that my application wasn’t code signed, and therefore wouldn’t contact the App Store to get the receipt. From a user’s perspective, the app would just fail to launch.
I’d followed all the instructions. I double- and triple-checked to make sure the application was signed before I built the .pkg file. I tried building the .pkg using both the Xcode organizer and productbuild – they both worked with no problems or error messages. Yet when the application came out of the .pkg file on the other end, it was always unsigned! I deleted all of my certificates, regenerated them, and redownloaded them from Apple’s developer site (several times). I checked every step along the way in my build process – they were all working. It was incredibly frustrating because the signed app went into the ‘black box’ of the .pkg file just fine, but came out on the other end without its code signature.
Solution: After tearing my hear out for a while, googling for answers, and checking the developer forums, I finally tracked down the solution. I had a single image file in my application’s resources that had its permissions set to 640 instead of 644, meaning that it was not readable by everyone. That threw the entire game off – apparently when the installer unpacked the .pkg file, it ran into this problem file and either stopped short of installing the code signature, or invalidated the signature. Either way, the application it installed was useless. Simply changing the permissions on that one tiff file fixed the problem I’d been fighting with for days.
Soooo…. If your app builds and runs fine UNTIL you package it, and then comes out unsigned on the other end, check the permissions on the resources in your application. And Apple, please emit some kind of warning when hapless developers feed productbuild a file with the wrong permissions that’s gonna screw up the whole process.
Tip: There’s a really cool developer utility called Cong, written by Stephane Sudre. It checks your application for all kinds of minor errors, from localization goofs in .strings files to incorrect Info.plist entries to missing files in your package. I’ve contacted Stephane and checking file permissions is now on his To-Do list for Cong. If you’re a developer, get a copy of Cong – a simple drag-and-drop could save you a lot of time and trouble!
Posted in Development, Random Ramblings, Tips | 2 Comments »
March 29th, 2011
There are just two days left to purchase the MacUpdate Spring Bundle and save a bundle on App Tamer, Parallels Desktop, 1Password, Hands Off, DVD Remaster Pro, Mac DVDRipper, TehcTool Pro 5, and more. You get 10 apps worth $367 for only $49.99 – it’s quite a deal if you’re interested in even two of them!
Posted in Default Folder X | No Comments »
March 14th, 2011
This App Tamer update fixes compatibility issues with Parallels Desktop and the developer release of Mac OS 10.7 “Lion”:
 In past versions, if you used App Tamer to pause Parallels Desktop, you’d get these annoying, 3-5 second pauses in mouse and keyboard input whenever Parallels stopped. This was due to the way Parallels handled the mouse and keyboard. App Tamer now only pauses the Parallels virtual machine processes and leaves the Parallels Desktop app running – that works around the issue and still cuts nearly all of the CPU use associated with Parallels. Thanks to the excellent tech support folks at Parallels who helped us find this workaround!
 In Mac OS 10.7, Safari is based on WebKit 2, which does more ‘sandboxing’ of web content. It basically puts many tasks (like Flash plugins and JavaScript scripts) in separate processes. App Tamer already handled this sort of thing adeptly, but in 10.7, downloads are also done by a separate process, and that broke App Tamer’s download checking. This new release fixes that – if Safari is downloading something, App Tamer won’t stop it in the background even if AutoStop is turned on.
And finally, there are some new features and tweaks in version 1.0.5, as well. The list of stopped processes at the top of the App Tamer window gets a new contextual menu. This lets you easily turn AutoStop off for the selected process, or quit, force quit, or relaunch that app. Also, double-clicking an app in the list will activate it, and selecting it in the list will show it in the Details drawer so you can see more information about it.
If you’re already running App Tamer, you can get the new version using its “Check for Updates” command in the App Tamer menu. Or you can hop over to http://www.stclairsoft.com/AppTamer and download it from there.
Posted in App Tamer | No Comments »
February 4th, 2011
There were two issues with version 1.0.3 that we missed in testing – both of them happen only in fairly uncommon circumstances, but are serious enough that they merit a new release to fix them.
App Tamer 1.0.4 addresses two problems:
- When running under high CPU load, App Tamer’s real-time CPU usage graphs could stop updating. This is fairly uncommon, but is bound to impact many people at some point in time.
- Version 1.0.3 wouldn’t accept certain license codes. If this impacted you, you’ve already experienced it after upgrading. To our knowledge, it happened very rarely, but the bug has now been fixed and should no longer frustrate people.
You can download a copy of App Tamer 1.0.4 using this link.
Posted in App Tamer | No Comments »
January 26th, 2011
 We’ve made a number of improvements to App Tamer – thanks to everyone that made suggestions and helped test them! It’s all now ready for public consumption as version 1.0.3.
Popular changes are the addition of an auto-hide option that hides all stopped applications, and display of the % cpu saved by each application in the “stopped applications” list. There are also a bunch of compatibility fixes and little UI improvements. Check out the App Tamer release page for all the details.
Posted in App Tamer | No Comments »
December 21st, 2010
 Apple has long had Apple Downloads, a section of Apple.com that lists third-party software. It’s been a popular place for users to browse and sample the wealth of Mac software available from both large and small developers, including St. Clair Software. We get a significant amount of web traffic from Apple Downloads.
I recently received an email from Ron Okamoto, Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple, notifying developers that Apple Downloads will be going away, replaced by the new Mac App Store. Because both Default Folder X and App Tamer do not meet the Mac App Store guidelines, this is a big cause of concern for us. We’ll lose a lot of customer visibility, and won’t be able to replace it by putting our apps in the Mac App Store.
I wrote Ron this reply:
Thanks for your notification – I can’t say that I’m surprised as Apple’s support for the Downloads section of Apple.com has been waning for quite a while. I fully expected Apple Downloads to just go away without even getting a notification, so I applaud your professionalism in actually letting us know.
As a long-time Apple developer (I’ve been doing this since 1988) I’ve become accustomed to changes in direction, forced rewrites as Apple has adopted or invented new technologies, and sometimes capricious decision making on Apple’s part. As in the past, I’ll deal with what comes my way and work to keep my business healthy, but shutting down a primary traffic source for our web site is going to make things quite a bit more difficult.
In your letter, you say “the Mac App Store will be the best destination for users to discover, purchase, and download your apps,” but that doesn’t apply to my two best-selling applications, nor to those of many other developers. The guidelines put in place for the Mac App Store disqualify Default Folder X and App Tamer from inclusion in the App Store, despite their popularity and utility. I’m left to reinvent my products and company (again) as they don’t fit Apple’s vision of what a Mac application should be. There are numerous developers in my position. We make useful – some would say essential – products that users will now have a more difficult time finding as Apple drives customers and market focus to the Mac App Store.
For small developers with applications that don’t fit the guidelines, is there some avenue that we can pursue for getting exposure on the new Mac App Store? Some kind of advertising / comarketing that we can participate in to get into an “other great apps” section where users can at least see that our products are available? If such an “Apple Downloads for the App Store” were an option, I certainly wouldn’t argue with giving Apple a percentage in return for what I anticipate will be a lot of traffic.
I’m running a business, and I understand that you’re running yours. I know that you need to have restrictions for apps in the Mac App Store in order to ensure that users have a seamless, trouble-free experience and I respect that. It’s what will ultimately make it a big success. But as a developer of applications that won’t be allowed in the store, I’d like to see alternatives that would let me focus on keeping those applications alive and vibrant.
Thanks
– Jon Gotow, President, St. Clair Software
Quick follow-up: It looks like I need to address a few questions based on the tweets I’ve been been getting:
Default Folder X and App Tamer aren’t going away – this affects how much time we spend developing vs. marketing. The more we have to work at getting users to see our products the less time we have to develop them.
Why can’t Default Folder X and App Tamer be in the App Store? In the Mac App Store guidelines, Default Folder X fails to meet item 2.15 (it installs a Scripting Addition) and may also violate item 6.5, since it creates floating windows around file dialogs that could be construed as “changing native user interface elements.” App Tamer violates 2.27 because it asks for your admin password (and needs to).
Posted in App Tamer, Default Folder X, Random Ramblings | 37 Comments »
December 20th, 2010
A couple of App Tamer’s extra preference settings aren’t actually documented in the released version. They were added during development and were described in the beta notes, but never made it into the documentation. So, until that gets resolved in the docs for version 1.0.3, here’s a quick run-down:
- App Tamer can hide applications when they are stopped rather than dimming their windows. To turn this on, quit App Tamer and then use this command in Terminal:
defaults write com.stclairsoft.AppTamer hideWhenStopped 1
To turn the feature back off, use:
defaults write com.stclairsoft.AppTamer hideWhenStopped 0
- When window dimming is turned on, the brightness of the dimmed windows can be modified with a defaults setting. Run this command in Terminal (the default value is 65% – lower percentages are darker, higher percentages are brighter):
defaults write com.stclairsoft.AppTamer dimPercentage 65
Posted in App Tamer, Tips | No Comments »
December 8th, 2010
MacUpdate is running a great bundle for the next two weeks that includes Default Folder X and 9 other great apps (plus two bonus ones if you’re in the first 10,000 buyers). It’s worth it even if you only want two of the applications – and you’re bound to find some you like with 1Password, Typinator, DEVONthink, and Interarchy among them (plus Default Folder X, of course).
Posted in Default Folder X | No Comments »
September 23rd, 2010
The reception for App Tamer has been fantastic! I’m particularly happy with Jeff Porten’s article on Macworld.com, where he aptly describes App Tamer as “giving you a faster computer and a longer-lasting battery through the magic of not-making-your-Mac-work-as-hard.”
We’ve now got a minor update that addresses a few issues, as well as making App Tamer run a little more efficiently, so it uses less of your CPU time to save you CPU time. These are fairly minor changes because there just haven’t been a lot of problems found with App Tamer 🙂
Check the App Tamer Release Page for all the details and download links.
If you haven’t tried App Tamer yet, by all means give it a look! The download is a full-featured 15 day trial, and all you do to buy it is make a purchase from our web store and enter your serial number into the demo copy.
Posted in App Tamer | No Comments »
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