We’ve been quiet here lately, but that’s not because we haven’t been busy. Far from it; we’ve been testing our apps with Mavericks, and making changes where necessary (mostly cosmetic in nature). We’ve also addressed a number of minor bugs that have been reported (thanks!) since our last updates. So be prepared, we’re updating nearly the entire lineup today—everything here is Mavericks-ready, for whenever Apple ships the system.
As always, direct purchasers can update within the app, or by downloading a new version from our servers. App Store buyers should see the updates (soon, if not already) in the Updates tab of the App Store application.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The following updates will bump the minimum system requirement to 10.7 or newer; if you’re still running 10.6, DO NOT INSTALL THESE UPDATES.
Why 10.7 or newer? Apple recently declared an old security-related API dead (i.e. deprecated), and recommended that all developers switch to the newer API, which we did. But that new API requires 10.7 or newer.
So what’s new and improved today? It’s quite a list…
If you’re scoring at home, that’s five apps updated; the missing suspects (Desktop Curtain, Keymo, Time Sink, and Usher) all have updates in the works, and we hope to have those out shortly as well. Even without updates, those apps will work fine on Mavericks—so if you’re upgrading your OS, you should be in good shape with all of our apps, assuming you apply the updates we have released.
In the past, we’ve donated proceeds from our software sales to worthy causes, such as the National Pancreatic Cancer Foundation and Charity:Water. This year, we thought we’d try something different…
On Thursday, December 20*, all of our apps
will be priced at $1 ($0.99 on the App Store).
The catch: We want you to donate the money you saved
(compared to list prices) to the charity of your choice.
For example, if you want to own Moom ($10) and Time Sink ($5), we’ll expect you to donate $13 to your favorite charity. Usher ($35) and Desktop Curtain ($5) would mean a $38 donation. Buy everything in our portfolio for $9, and donate $109 to charity. It’s pretty simple math, regardless of which apps you’re interested in buying. (These donations should be tax deductible, too, but please don’t take our word for that!)
You may wonder how we’re enforcing this donation requirement. The short answer is we’re not. We both firmly believe in the goodness of people, and we’re confident that those who purchase on Thursday will do the right thing. Will everyone? Absolutely not. But we believe that many will, which will hopefully lead to some nice contributions to a wide range of charities.
Sure, we could have kept prices at their normal level, and donated proceeds to a charity or two of our choosing. But we feel strongly that you should be able to pick your own charity, and we hope that by dropping the apps’ prices to $1 for the day, we’ll get more participation than we would by simply donating our proceeds.
So if you’ve been waiting for a good excuse to purchase one or more of our apps, Thursday’s the day. You get the apps you want at an amazing price, you get to choose who gets the money you saved on our apps, and you get to feel good about supporting a charity.
All we ask (ask, not require) is that you let us what you did with the savings. You can either send us an email with the details, or just tweet about it, and copy @manytricks on your tweet. We’d love to know how much money was donated, and to which charities, if you feel like sharing that information.
Happy Holidays!—Peter and Rob.
Because the world insists on having multiple timezones, our Donation Day pricing will roll out differently for the App Store and for our web site. App Store buyers will see Donation Day pricing starting at 12:01am on December 20th in their local timezones, and it will end 24 hours later.
On our web site, Donation Day pricing will begin at 7am Pacific USA time on December 20th, and end at 7am Pacific USA time on December 21st. This will give buyers, regardless of their local timezone, 24 hours to purchase directly from us, if that’s their preference.
We’ve just released Usher 1.1.6 (direct version only; see this post for details on why you should migrate, for free, from the App Store version). This version includes a couple important changes to Usher’s support for media in iPhoto, iTunes, and Aperture, and restores YouTube downloads, which were broken by a recent YouTube update.
All Usher users should upgrade to 1.1.6, either via in-app updating or from the Usher web page; the changes we’ve made to the external media section of Usher will prevent you from accidentally removing media from those external sources. App Store buyers will have to migrate to the direct version, as explained in the linked post, in order to get 1.1.6.
Now that Mountain Lion (aka OS X 10.8) is officially out, we can officially update the status of our apps.
The short version: They all work.
The slightly longer version: To the extent that we were able to test all features in all apps, they all work in Mountain Lion. But there are just two of us, and thousands of features to test. So please, let us know if you find any issues. You can do so by going to the support page for any app (i.e. Moom’s support page), which list a few ways to report issues.
We also have three app updates today that fix minor issues in Mountain Lion—and resolve some other bugs and add some new features.
Get Leech 2.1.1 (release notes), Usher 1.1.5 (release notes) and Butler 4.1.13 (release notes) via in-app updating.
Note: If you’re an App Store purchaser of Usher, you should migrate (for free) to the direct sales version. Here’s how and why.
Usher is our powerful movie management tool; its mission in life is to bring order to the chaos that can be one’s collection of videos. To help you get the most out of Usher, this how-to covers setting up Usher’s main Library folder, adding more storage space, and moving movie files to a new hard drive (replacing an existing smaller drive).
Our recommended setup for Usher is to create your main Library folder on your machine’s boot disk, regardless of whether you intend to keep any movies there or not. By having the main Library folder on your boot drive, you’ll be able to see all your movies, even if they’re stored on a not-currently-connected external drive; you can even edit those movies’ metadata without them being physically present.
(If you’ve got a machine with more than one hard drive, and the extra drive (or drives) is always connected, feel free to place your Library folder on that drive. It’s only drives that are transient in nature that can be problematic as Library folder locations.)
If you simply install Usher and run it, this is the setup you will get—the main Library folder is created in your user’s Movies folder, within an Usher folder we create there. While you don’t have to use this arrangement, we strongly recommend that the main Library folder reside somewhere on your boot drive, or other always-there drive. (You can choose a new location for the Library folder on the Library tab of Usher’s preferences panel.)
After you’ve used Usher for a while, assuming you’re actively growing your movie collection, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself running short on drive space. Thankfully, Usher makes it really easy to add additional storage space to your collection.
We’ve released Usher 1.1.4, but only for those who purchased it directly from us.
Why not update the Mac App Store version of Usher, too? We’d love to, but when we submitted the update, Apple raised some issues with some of Usher’s functionality (not new functionality; just newly-raised issues).
While we hope we’ll be able to update MAS Usher in the near future, we can’t set a timeline for such an update, nor can we say for certain what features may or may not be in that update. Sorry to be vague about this, but the situation is still in flux. Once we know the final outcome, we’ll post a follow-up explaining exactly what will happen with MAS Usher going forward.
So what’s new in 1.1.4? Mainly a number of small bug fixes and usability improvements. About the most-visible change is the addition of a Batch Rename entry in the Usher menu, to prevent accidental batch renaming when selecting more than one movie. For the rest of the fixes, see Usher’s release notes page.
As always (for direct customers only, again), you can get the update via in-app updating, or through Usher’s web page.
Well, it’s not really a race, but minor updates to both Time Sink and Usher today have them both sitting at version 1.1.2.
Time Sink’s update resolves an issue where certain apps with non-standard (internal, not public) naming conventions weren’t picked up by Time Sink (release notes). Usher’s update solves two issues, one with lost Notes fields when working with multiple movies at once, and the other with when changes to the Tags field are saved (release notes).
As usual, you can get updates from the in-app updater, or by downloading new copies of the app from our web site. (App Store customers, these updates have been submitted for approval, but have not yet been approved. We’ll post a message when they’re available.)
After waiting and wondering for over two weeks, we were quite happily surprised when the App Store version of Witch was approved this evening and made available for sale at $16.99
If you’re good at math, you’ll quickly realize that’s “over $2 less!” than Witch costs when purchased directly from our site. So why is it cheaper on the Mac App Store than directly from us? One simple reason: the App Store version of Witch lacks the pop-up window previews available in the version for sale on our site. Why not? As of now, we’re not certain that the method we use to show those previews will pass muster with the App Store reviewers, so we chose to leave them out of this initial release.
Everything else, though—including the ability to assign Command-Tab as the Witch trigger—is there. (OK, one other thing you won’t find is in-app updates, as the App Store app itself handles those updates for you.)
None of our other App Store apps are missing a key feature, so this was new ground for us. After talking it over, we decided that the lack of previews was worth a couple dollar reduction in sales price, at least until we know for sure if we can get them in or not.
So that’s why Witch is cheaper on the App Store than here on our site. If you like the image previews, and want them now, then you should buy Witch on our site. If you don’t think you’ll need image previews, you can save yourself a couple bucks by purchasing the App Store version instead.
We’re thrilled to have our fourth app (joining Name Mangler, Time Sink, and Usher on the App Store. And here’s a little secret…we’ve submitted a fifth app, and it’s now in the review queue for approval. Which app? Well, that piece of information will have to remain undisclosed for just a bit longer…stay tuned! (Note to Butler fans: no, it’s not Butler 5, sorry!)
Many Tricks