Many Tricks
One of the most-requested features in Witch 3.1 is a small (0.2 seconds) delay before the Witch switching panel appears. We added this to mimic the way the Command-Tab app switcher works—if you use it to quickly flip between two programs, you never see the actual switcher appear. Witch now functions in exactly the same way when flipping between windows.
As with most any change to functionality, however, it seems that some (not many, but more than zero) people don’t like the new delay. For those people, here’s the fix…
Open Terminal, copy and paste this command, and press Return. (Please note this is one long line; copy and paste works best, but if you type it, don’t press Return until after true.)
defaults write ~/Library/Application\ Support/Witch/Settings "Always Show Panel" -bool trueNow open the Witch System Preferences panel and toggle Witch off then on (click Enable Witch twice). Witch will now show its switching panel instantly, without the delay. If, after testing this, you decide you want the delay back, just repeat the above, but change true to false (and then toggle Witch again).
This is such a great program, making OS X workflow so much more efficient. The removal of the delay makes it even better: thank you.
Thank you for posting this — this was my #1 complaint about Witch 3.1.
p.s. It would be even better if the “activation delay” was a preference within Witch that we could turn on or off.
Stay tuned :).
-rob.
Count me in with the people being rather annoyed by this new feature. I’ve tried to live with it for a few days now, but every time I start switching I wonder if my Mac is hung or what …
I’m glad I found the “solution” to my problem so quickly on your website, though. Great support!
Still, I think having this a preference (off by default) would be great.
A.
Stay tuned :) (hey, I already said that!).
-rob.
And while I’m at it … what about that: having a different shortcut (like: Option-Tab) for quickly switching between the two most recently used programs (without showing the panel). That would be quite nice to have.
A.
BTW: Where did my avatar come from? I’m puzzled!
> BTW: Where did my avatar come from? I’m puzzled!
Ah, must be from gravatar.com – totally forgot about that …
I downloaded Witch about 2 hours ago.
Found it intriguing. Played with various ways I might be able to use it in my workflow. Changed some QuicKeys shortcuts to see what would work. Changed some Witch setting.
And suddenly there’s a big bold red Buy Me Now Dammit overlay stopping me from reading the window names.
I don’t begrudge software writers the ability to earn money from their living. But I just want to be able to evaluate the software for more than 2 damn hours before it cuts off the test drive. Cheers, but that’s one sale you won’t make.
We set the activation delay at 250 uses — that struck us as a more-than-fair limit to evaluate Witch. We based that on counting our actual uses of the app over time, and figured it provided anywhere from a full day to a full week of usage, depending on how often you switch windows and how many apps you run.
We’re very open to changing this; we want everyone to have a fair chance to evaluate the software, and quite honestly, yours is the first complaint we’ve received.
-rob.
I have no idea what your correct solution is. Perhaps a two or four week trial period like everyone else uses. That seems sane, no? If the product is good, let folks get used to it, and they’ll end up buying.
For something that is potentially part of my core workflow, I want to put it through its paces in my usage scenarios before tossing out my credit card. I put QuicKeys through its paces before buying. I put LaunchBar through its paces before buying, (and then went back to Quicksilver anyway later on.) I put Hyperspaces through its paces before buying. I could see that each one of them improved my workflow, and thus were worth my money. But Witch? I can’t tell if it’ll work for me.
If you’re putting Witch through its paces, you get to 250 invocations really quick, it turns out. Again, in under 2 hours in my case, which seems clearly to be a clearly insane trial period policy.
(So many options in how one could use Witch. Good! But really testing out if any of the various options will be useful to me in my daily usage burns through multiple invocations per minute. You can do the math on how quick that reaches 250.)
Perhaps I’m the first complaint you’ve received because the normal user doesn’t bother to find the developers blog and compose a coherent note to complain. Instead they just trash the prefpane and move along. I’m a fan of some of Peter’s previous work, and was a fan of your OS X blog, so I took the time out to let you know how it ends up for the initially intrigued end user…
Here’s why we chose activations, and not time: for someone *not* like you, that doesn’t use it so intensely, a time-based trial gives them *less* actual usage of the product. If they install it, use a it a few times, plan on testing it, and never get around to it, it expires without their ever getting a chance to really use it. We felt activations was a fairer measure.
Based on your feedback, we’ll see if we can’t come up with a fairer method that lets both types of users get a fair trial.
We’ll also make it easier to send feedback on future versions of all of our apps, so people don’t have to go looking for our blog (not that it, or our contact info, is hard to find).
Finally, I don’t understand the vehement tone of your posts: it seems you feel we did this on purpose to anger you, when nothing could be further from the truth. We picked a limit we felt was fair, sent the app to our 30 beta testers and watched how long it took them to hit the limit, and felt the 250 level was fair based on our experience and theirs. But obviously, for some users such as you, it’s not correct.
I’ve said we’ll try to come up with a better system, so hopefully others won’t run into this problem.
-rob.
“Finally, I don’t understand the vehement tone of your posts: it seems you feel we did this on purpose to anger you, when nothing could be further from the truth.”
Well, some of that is just the normal vehement style of give and take in the blogosphere.
I don’t feel you did this on purpose to anger me. If I had, I would not have bothered to give you (what I think to be helpful) feedback in the first place.
But on the other hand, I was somewhat annoyed that I’d wasted two hours testing something out only to be senselessly sandbagged before I could figure out if it worked. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most other developers don’t use a trial scheme like yours. It really is likely to annoy potential customers. If I had not had already existing warm feelings for Peter and you, I would have simply concluded that Manytricks didn’t value my time and moved along without a word, vehement or not.
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“Here’s why we chose activations, and not time: for someone *not* like you, that doesn’t use it so intensely, a time-based trial gives them *less* actual usage of the product. If they install it, use a it a few times, plan on testing it, and never get around to it, it expires without their ever getting a chance to really use it. We felt activations was a fairer measure.”
Sure, but I think that misses a couple of key points:
1) The folks who are in the market for software like Witch are mostly folks like me – enthusiast customizers who are going to want to try it intensively to customize their usage patterns. I think my evaluation pattern falls squarely in the middle of your target demographic, rather than being an edge case.
2) I understand not wanting to trap someone who tries it once and then doesn’t try it again for two months, But then a trial period that ends only when both BOTH 250 activations AND four weeks have passed would make more sense.
3) Lastly, it’s useful to once again remember that if you have software that you think people will find useful, it’s in your own interests to have a generous trial period. Get them hooked, and they will buy. I kept twiddling with LaunchBar during its sensibly lenient trial period for quite a while before purchasing. (After a certain period of time expires, you can just quit it and relaunch it to keep using it.) Eventually, I realized that it was worth the price to me, purchased it, and recommended it to others. I would not have done that had it permanently obscured its results window with Big Red Type after two hours.
“Well, some of that is just the normal vehement style of give and take in the blogosphere.”
That is exactly what’s wrong with “the blogosphere,” and quite frankly, it’s something we go out of our way to avoid here. You’ll find our replies to (hopefully) always be polite, honest, and accurate, even when it’s about something we may not agree with.
In this case, though, I actually agree with you: the trial system is unfair to a certain class of users. We will be changing it in a future release, though perhaps not the one that’s due out very shortly (we’ll see, though).
Thanks for the feedback, and hopefully you find the new system more accommodating of your trial needs.
-rob.
Love the new Witch – great work guys and keep up the great work.