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Two new versions of Desktop Curtain now available

Monday, January 24th, 2011

Today we shipped not one but two versions of Desktop Curtain, our ‘cover-your-mess’ utility. Desktop Curtain is ideal for those who dislike their clutter, or who need to take ‘clean background’ screenshots. The two new versions are:

  • Desktop Curtain Classic (version 1.5), free: This is an updated version of our free Desktop Curtain baublery, featuring a much-cleaner interface with the same basic feature set as it’s always had. As before, it’s free, and available directly from our site.
  • Desktop Curtain 2.0, $1.99 App Store only: This version features the ability to pick background images using the standard Open dialog, choose from up to 10 previously-used images, and it runs as a normal application, menu bar application, or faceless background application.

The Desktop Curtain web page has an easy-to-understand chart that shows all the differences between the free and App Store-only versions, so you can pick the one that you prefer. You’ll also find a link to download the free version, and a link that takes you to Dektop Curtain’s page in the App Store.

As for those of you curious about why there’s an App Store-only version of Desktop Curtain, given our prior writing on the subject, keep reading.

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Posted in Company News, Desktop Curtain | Comments Off on Two new versions of Desktop Curtain now available

Witch now available in the Mac App Store

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

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!)

Posted in Company News, Name Mangler, Time Sink, Usher, Witch | 4 Comments »

Many Tricks enters the Mac App Store

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Unless you’ve been vacationing in Bora Bora for the last three months, you were probably aware that Apple’s new Mac App Store launched today. We were thrilled to have three of our products front and center on launch day: Name Mangler, Time Sink, and Usher were all available when the store opened this morning. (We actually have one more in process right now; a special non-preference-pane version of Witch has been sitting in the review queue for two weeks now.)

So far, it’s been an interesting day, just watching the sales charts trying to figure out what they mean (we don’t get real-time data, so we don’t really know what’s happening with total sales). We did a fair bit of of work to get our apps ready for the store, though, so it’s very gratifying to finally see them there on launch day.

For those who prefer “traditional” software distribution, don’t worry—we’re not going away from that, just taking advantage of a new sales channel. We have apps (Butler and Leech, at least) that can’t be sold on the app store, and we have others (Witch) that have slightly different functionality. So our direct sales model isn’t going away because of the Mac App Store.

Also, we’ll always keep our apps “in sync” to the extent that the App Store rules allow us to do so. That is, if we update Time Sink on our web site, the App Store version will get that same update, and vice-versa1. Due to Apple’s review process, it may occasionally take a bit more time for the changes to reach the App Store, but rest assured, they’ll get there (assuming Apple’s approval, of course).

Our objective with both our App Store apps and our “traditional” apps is simple: to deliver compelling Mac programs that are a delight to use, and to do what it takes to keep our customers satisfied. So whether you want to purchase through the Mac App Store, or via the web, or via our in-app purchasing module, we’ll be there for you.

(1) The two sales channels are distinct, and require different builds of our software. So you can’t update your Mac App Store version of Name Mangler with a download from our site, and vice-versa. If you purchase from our web site, your app has a built-in updater that reminds you when it needs an update. If you purchase from the Mac App Store, the Mac App Store itself will tell you when there are updates to install, and you’ll do the updating via the Mac App Store app.

Posted in Company News, Name Mangler, Products, Time Sink, Usher | 12 Comments »

Where does the time go? Time Sink knows!

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Usher iconHave you ever found yourself sitting at your Mac at the end of the day, looking at the clock and saying “Geez, where did the day go?” I know I have—especially back when I was running macosxhints.com and holding a full-time day job at the same time.

It was during this period that I mentioned to Peter, almost in passing, “Gee, it’d be cool if there were an app that sort of kept track of what I was doing on my Mac.”

The next day, in typical Peter fashion, my inbox contained a rough-but-functional program that did just that: tracked my open applications. I don’t even remember what it was called, and I have only the most basic recollection of what it looked like…but it worked. At that time, Peter was working by himself, and decided he didn’t have the time or inclination to do much more with the app, so there it sat.

Fast forward many years, and as we were looking for a product to help broaden the Many Tricks product line, Peter mentioned the old usage tracking program. After some back-and-forth, we both felt it was a natural addition to our suite of utilities. The rough code was smoothed out, features were added, beta testers provided feedback, and out of all that, we’re thrilled to announce Time Sink, Many Tricks’ newest application.

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Posted in Company News, Products, Time Sink | 2 Comments »

Time for another Touch-up Tuesday

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

That’s right, another Touch-up Tuesday, featuring some minor updates to a few of the apps on our menu. This week’s updated delicacies include the following entrees…

  • Leech 2.0.7: We’ve updated the version of SIMBL we bundle, so setting up browser integration works again on Mac OS X 10.5.x machines. There was one other small fix (a localization issue). [Release notes]
  • Name Mangler 2.2.4: After investigating a couple reports of Name Mangler not working, we figured out that users were unchecking all filters. This would essentially disable Name Mangler. So as of 2.2.4, you can’t do that any more. Also fixed a bug that caused the Change Case mode to fail when renaming files containing accented or any other decomposable characters. [Release notes]
  • Usher 1.0.3: Usher received the most attention this week; make sure you check out the release notes page for the full scoop. The highlights include a new Add to Library menu item (to make it simpler to add things to your library), the addition of Date Created to List view mode, and a new entry in the contextual menu that lets you quickly mark a movie—or group of movies—as watched (or unwatched) without having to first open them.

As always, updates are available via in-app updating, or you can download the full programs from their respective web pages.

If you think these minor changes are exciting, make sure you come back Thursday, when we’ll be adding a brand new item to the Many Tricks’ menu! We’ve been sampling it ourselves for a few months now, and we think it’s a delicious addition to our existing menu…er…product line—we can’t wait to see what you all think of it, too!

Posted in Company News, Leech, Name Mangler, Products, Usher | Comments Off on Time for another Touch-up Tuesday

The cat lion is out of the bag!

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

In case you missed the news yesterday, Apple held a special event, focused on the Mac.

Aside from introducing a Mac I’ve been waiting for for seemingly forever—the 11.6″ MacBook Air—Apple also gave a very brief sneak peek at Mac OS X Lion, coming to a Mac near you in the summer of 2011.

For Peter and I, this was an interesting day. Neither of us were expecting the next major Mac OS X release to come so soon. And certainly neither of us were expecting it to include an app store…

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Posted in Butler, Company News, Products | 34 Comments »

A Butler named Alfred

Friday, September 24th, 2010

Preface: The following is not strictly company or product news. So if you’re the kind of visitor who feels his time is wasted whenever we show up in your RSS reader without providing cold, hard info, please feel free to skip this rather lengthy blog entry.

There’s a new kid in town, as the Eagles once put it so aptly. A new Mac {hot key/web search/iTunes control/what have you} utility that attempts to make a Mac user’s life easier and more productive. The name is Alfred, and from what I see on its product page, it seems to be a well-designed application.

And in a lot of ways, it’s, shall we say, a tribute to Butler—even more so than You Control, for instance, ever was. Now, I’m not complaining about that. On the contrary, I feel honored, and I can see why a Butler-related theme is a somewhat obvious choice for that kind of application. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the lack of significant Butler updates over the last few years were part of the motivation that brought the aforementioned new kid to fruition, much like a temporary lack of updates for Riccardo Ettore’s otherwise excellent TypeIt4Me was one of the key reasons for me to create Textpander (which, of course, is known as Smile Software’s TextExpander these days).

So despite what people might think, I have no issue whatsoever with their decision to create an application that shares a lot of its functionality with Butler, and outfit that with a name and an icon that remind me of Butler as well. If anything, I consider this new competitor a wake-up call. Yes, it’s high time for Butler to evolve. And trust me, we love the honorable sportsmanship that’s customary in the Mac software world.

But there’s one thing that got to me, and that’s the one thing they couldn’t possibly have been aware of.

The name.

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Posted in Behind the Scenes, Butler, Products | 17 Comments »

MUM’s the word…

Monday, August 16th, 2010

…well, it’s actually an acronym, not a word—it’s Minor Update Monday, and here’s what’s on the plate for today’s minor updates. (As usual, you can get the updated version directly from the app, or by downloading the new version from the product page.)

  • Witch 3.5.3 fixes an issue with displaying triggers that had been assigned in the Additional Actions section of the Triggers tab. In prior versions of Witch, the keys were set, but Witch wouldn’t properly show those values on the Triggers tab. Now it does. Also, for those who use Witch with the ‘Releasing all modifier keys activates the selected window’ option unchecked, Witch now properly respects the delay setting, and won’t show its window if you release the activation keys before the delay time is reached.
  • Leech 2.0.5 adds one new feature, a timestamp indicating at what time a file finished downloading.
  • Name Mangler 2.2.2 now allows renaming of aliases, fixes a bug relating to non-ASCII characters in regular expressions and Advanced Mode, allows you to copy-and-paste files, URLs, and paths to the file list area, and allows dragging-and-dropping of URLs and paths to the file list area (file drag-and-drop was already supported).
  • We’ve got some news about Key Codes, our free tool for Mac developers that displays the key code, Unicode value, and modifier key state for any combination of keys that you press. The news? Key Codes is now open source, so you can download the source to see how it works. We haven’t published this under any official open source license, but feel free to use it in any project you wish as you see fit. It’d be nice if we received an acknowledgment, but it’s neither required nor expected. (Key Codes also received a very minor update to version 1.0.4.)
  • Finally, not related to any of our programs, but if you’re reading this entry on our blog (instead of via RSS), you may notice we have a new handwritten blog header, complete with a bird-like interpretation of our company logo. Peter did the work, and I think the end result is terrific—it adds some color and personalizes the blog section of our site just a bit. But why a running bird? As Peter noted in a comment to another post here, “The Running Bird is really just one of the less obvious motifs I saw in our new logo once we were finished with it. That’s one of the things I like about that logo, by the way: With a little bit of imagination, it can be a lot of things—it’s a Many Tricks logo, as it were.”

In bigger-project news, Usher is approaching a public beta release, and Peter and I are starting to work on an entirely new application, one that I think will be useful to anyone who uses more than one Mac at home or work…but more on that project once we have something worth talking about!

Posted in Company News, Developer, Key Codes, Leech, Name Mangler, Products, Witch | 5 Comments »

Behind the scenes at Many Tricks, Part 2

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Welcome back to the second part of our behind-the-scenes look at the tools of Many Tricks’ trade. In the first part, we discussed how we create our applications and manage our online activities. In this part, we’ll discuss how we keep the business running and some general Mac applications we use every day.
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Posted in Behind the Scenes, Company News, Developer, General | 6 Comments »

Behind the scenes at Many Tricks, Part 1

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

By most any measure, Many Tricks is not a big company—there are only two of us, and we’ve only got a handful of products. Complicating this relatively-simple small business, though, is the fact that we are separated by 5,327 miles (according to Google Earth), and nine clock hours.

Given our small size and geographic separation, we need to work efficiently individually, and doubly so during those few hours each day when our schedules overlap (typically from about 5:00am to 12:00pm, west coast USA time). So what tools do we use to keep in touch, to manage our web site, and to run the business? Keep reading for a behind-the-scenes look at the apps that keep Many Tricks humming.

As this post turned out much longer than either of us expected, we’ve broken it into two parts. This first part covers the tools we use to create our apps and handle our online activities; the second part will discuss running the business side of the company and general Mac tools that aren’t directly related to any of the prior categories.
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Posted in Behind the Scenes, Company News, Developer, General | 3 Comments »

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