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Name Mangler 2.2 pops up

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

We’ve just released Name Mangler 2.2, available via in-app updates or through the product page. The big news in this release is pop-up file previews—not just for images, but for any file that has a Quick Look preview.

We actually offer two different previews—a small pop-up panel (hence the title of this post), and the standard Mac OS X Quick Look window (only available in Mac OS X 10.6). You can set (in Name Mangler’s Preferences) whether you’d like the small pop-up panel to appear when hovering over a file’s icon, or only when you click the icon. (To get the Quick Look window to appear, click again when the pop-up panel is visible.)

We added a couple new variables to the Advanced section of Name Mangler (created and modified), and changed the way you can nest commands in Advanced mode. There are also the usual bug fixes and general improvements; head on over to Name Mangler’s release notes page to see all the changes.

Posted in Butler, Products | Comments Off on Name Mangler 2.2 pops up

Butler 4 update and Butler 5 pre-sale

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Today we’re releasing a minor Butler update (to version 4.1.7), which includes support for Sparkle (to automate future updates), and fixes some issues with non-standard iTunes library locations, visual glitches when dragging, and incorrectly-placed System Preferences panels.

Butler should (if you’ve enabled checking for updates) indicate that this update is available, and take you to the web page to download it. If it doesn’t, just click the Download link on the Butler web page to get it. Note that Butler now requires 10.5 or newer; if you’re still running 10.4, you’ll want to skip this update. (The older version is still downloadable from our web site, in case you accidentally upgraded).

The other news in this update is some preparation for Butler 5’s release. Butler now displays the standard Many Tricks’ software license, though it doesn’t actually do any license checking—so Butler is still unlimited shareware. There are no nag screens, nothing expires, and no features are restricted to paying customers. (And we’ll always offer a version of Butler 4 for download from our site.)

Butler 5, however, will be true shareware, much like our other major apps. Given we’re still working on features, interface, etc., we’re not sure what the restrictions will be, nor have we settled on a price for Butler 5. However, we’d like to reward those who have bought Butler 4 in the past, and those who may buy it before Butler 5 is released. To do that, we’re announcing the Butler 5 pre-sale:

If you purchase Butler 4 ($20) between now and Butler 5’s release date, you’ll receive a free upgrade to Butler 5 when it ships. In addition, as explained in this older blog post, all past donors (assuming you have proof of donation) will also receive free Butler 5 licenses. This is our way of offering some price protection against an unknown price, and rewarding both those who purchased Butler in the past and those who purchase it going forward, knowing Butler 5 is coming.

So if you’ve been holding off on contributing for Butler 4, now’s the time to do so—it’s like buying Butler 4 and an upgrade to Butler 5, but for the price of Butler 4 alone.

Posted in Butler, Products | 37 Comments »

A look at our 2010 product release timeline

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Many users have been asking me about our plans for products we haven’t yet updated, namely Witch, yFlicks, and Butler. In response, I offer this generic timeline of our plans for the rest of 2010:

Please note that this is a rough timeline, and subject to change based on our workload, customer demand, the phase of the moon, and the price of soybean futures on the daily spot market. However, it should provide a bit more detail on what our priorities are, and the approximate timeframe in which we hope to ship each of our apps. (It doesn’t show minor releases, which may include bug fixes and/or new features; those will be ongoing for each product.)

Read on for a bit more detail on each of the products in the timeline.
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Posted in Butler, Company News, Leech, Name Mangler, Paddock, Products, Witch, yFlicks | 19 Comments »

The terms of the Many Tricks software license

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

I’ve had a few questions on how Many Tricks’ programs are licensed: is it per computer, per user, per user per computer, or something else? Given the confusion, I thought I’d explain here so it’s (hopefully) clear. I’ve posted this same information to our FAQ pages. And yes, we do have a full, legalese-filled software license, which covers what’s below and adds some required legal terminology.

The objective in our licensing is to keep things simple and fair. To that end, all of our products fall under one general usage license. Here’s how the licensing works: It’s basically a “buy only one” license model, except in the case of possible simultaneous usage. These situations should help clarify that basic rule:

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Posted in Butler, Company News, Leech, Name Mangler, Products, Witch, yFlicks | Comments Off on The terms of the Many Tricks software license

The future looks all Sparkle-y

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

As I noted in the Name Mangler 2.1 announcement, all future Many Tricks products will include support for in-app updates via Sparkle.

If you’re not aware of Sparkle, the reality is you’re probably aware of Sparkle. If you’ve ever run an app that let you download and install an update directly within the app, chances are good it’s using Sparkle to do that behind-the-scenes magic.

This amazing tool is open source, and supported by donations—and we’ll be doing some stuff in the future to support the project, as we think it’s a great addition to our code base.

Because you do lose some control over your machine in Sparkle-enabled apps (when they automatically download an update you didn’t ask for), all of our apps will include a simple on/off toggle for automatic update checking. If you’d rather check manually, just turn off the automatic updates. Personally, though, I leave Sparkle enabled in all the apps I use that include it; it makes product updates incredibly simple.

I’m thrilled we’re taking this step, as it simplifies what was a too-complex task for our programs—clicking a couple of buttons beats going to your browser, downloading and expanding an archive, quitting the original program, finding the original and new versions on your disk, and replacing old with new. Instead, Sparkle does all the heavy lifting ; you just click a couple of buttons and your app is up to date.

So thanks, Sparkle, for making our users’ lives simpler!

Posted in Butler, Company News, Developer, Leech, Name Mangler, Products, Witch, yFlicks | 12 Comments »

Many Tricks’ Welcome Back sale event

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

I made brief mention in my new site launch tweet that we’d be having a “launch day promo.” And so, here it is. True, it’s no longer launch day, but we’re still in a festive mood here, so what the heck…

Starting right now—but ending on Thursday (March 25th) at 10:00pm Pacific time—you can get 25% off your total order when you buy any two or more Many Tricks products at the same time. (You can do this easily by clicking the Continue Shopping button after adding the first product to your cart.) The eligible products are Butler, Leech, Name Mangler, and Witch.

After adding at least two products to your cart, enter the super-secret discount code welcomeback in the (wait for it) Discount Code box, then click Update Cart. You’ll see the 25% discount reflected immediately.

Even better, if you buy Leech and/or Witch, you’ll get the current version of each product as well as the soon-to-be-released next versions. (Name Mangler was just updated, and a Butler update is quite a ways out, so this bundled upgrade feature doesn’t apply to those two products.) Once new versions of each app come out, we’ll post instructions on how to get your free upgrade.

“But wait, I just bought a product from you, after the site came back to life! So I miss out!?” No, actually you don’t. We’ll be sending you ‘early adopters’ a personal discount code that you can use for 25% off your your next purchase on any Many Tricks product. This is our way of saying “thank you” for purchasing so quickly after our site came back to life.

Once again, this sale ends for everyone at 10:00pm Pacific time on Thursday March 25th, so act quickly to save some yourself some cash.

Posted in Butler, Company News, Leech, Name Mangler, Products, Witch | 1 Comment »

We now support Google Checkout

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

In addition to PayPal, you can now purchase Many Tricks’ products via Google Checkout. On each product’s cart screen, you’ll see both PayPal and Google Checkout logos—just click the logo of your choice to use that method of payment.

Please let me know if you have any problems with the new service—we’ve already received one order via Google Checkout, though, so I’m confident it’s working fine.

Posted in Butler, Company News, Leech, Name Mangler, Witch | Comments Off on We now support Google Checkout

Rob Griffiths to join Many Tricks

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Portland, Oregon (February 22, 2010) — Many Tricks, a long-time creator of numerous essential Mac utilities, is pleased to announce that Rob Griffiths, founder of macosxhints.com and previously a Senior Editor at Macworld, will be joining Many Tricks as a partner, beginning March 1st. Rob Griffiths will handle all aspects of the business side of the company, including marketing, accounting, web systems, sales, and support, while Peter will focus on writing code for Many Tricks’ products. Both partners will work together on improving existing programs and on new ideas.

Peter Maurer, founder of Many Tricks, said, “I’m thrilled to have Rob on board to help run the company. For many years, I’ve wanted to do more with my applications, but I’ve had no interest in the “business” side of the software industry. Rob’s strong background in business, along with his experience in the Mac software world, will help take Many Tricks to the next level.”

“I’m incredibly excited by the opportunity to join Peter Maurer at Many Tricks,” said Griffiths. “Many Tricks’ utilities, especially Butler and Witch, have been essential tools on my Macs for many years. I’m really looking forward to working with Peter to help grow the business.”

Many Tricks will be updating its existing lineup of Mac utilities throughout 2010, and launching some entirely new programs. “We’ve got some good stuff in the pipeline, especially for the upcoming iPad,” said Rob Griffiths.

In closing, Peter stated “I’m feeling great about this partnership; it really frees up my time to focus on coding, and I’m confident that the two of us can create compelling solutions in the utilities space on the Mac, the iPhone, the iPod touch, and the iPad.”

About Many Tricks: Many Tricks, co-founded by Peter Maurer and Alexander Schön, has been producing great Mac software since 2003, and its product line currently includes Butler, Witch, yFlicks, Leech, and Name Mangler.

Posted in Butler, Company News, Leech, Name Mangler, Witch, yFlicks | 10 Comments »

The Future of the Butler (Butler 4.1.6)

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Roughly half a year ago, we started distributing Butler as what we called a transient version, which basically meant it would stop working at some point in time, namely tomorrow. We did this because back then, we weren’t sure where we would be going with Butler. Similar to Witch, Butler had been distributed as donationware for years, and we knew we couldn’t really afford keeping that up, as detailed for Witch in this blog entry.

So when we converted Witch into shareware, we also did that to test the waters for Butler 5. We wondered: How are the users going to react to this transition? Will they be willing to update, or will they just continue using the old version?

I can honestly say that I was blown away by the response to Witch 2.0 — going shareware solicited nothing but positive feedback, and I think it’s safe to say it was an economic success as well. Given that experience, we knew: Butler 5 will be shareware. As always, past donators will get free licenses once we start distributing Butler 5 licenses; but still, this decision meant we had to raise the bar some more. If we’re going to make people pay a shareware fee, the product should be worth it.

That’s why we can’t give you a Butler 5 beta today. We’re aiming high, and we’re determined to shoot high, so there’s still a lot to do in terms of user interface and underlying technology improvements. Some tasks are easy yet time-consuming (e.g., commissioning new, larger icons to replace all those old 16×16 pixels icons), and others are just hard to get right (e.g., redesigning Butler’s configuration window to make current Quicksilver users feel more at home). In fact, we even decided to stop working on Butler 5 for a while in order to complete and release another application named Leech first, just to make sure we wouldn’t run into funding problems while working on Butler 5 as long as necessary. And that worked out really well.

There’s another thing we learned from the above-mentioned Witch transition, though, and that’s trusting our loyal users. Witch’s transition was a great success even though we didn’t force anyone to update by means of a transient version or anything like that.

So let’s ditch the whole “transient” concept. Today, we’re releasing Butler 4.1.6, which features two noteworthy improvements:

  • The status window (the one that’s shown in response to your entering hot keys or requesting iTunes information, for instance) no longer captures mouse clicks. In other words, you can click right through it. If you want to move the status window via click & drag, do so while holding the command key.
  • Typinator no longer confuses Butler’s pasteboard history.

But the most important change, as alluded to above, is that this version is no longer transient or deliberately limited in any other way. And it’s still donationware. Once Butler 5 is ready, we’re quite confident you’ll want to upgrade.

Posted in Butler, Leech, Witch | Comments Off on The Future of the Butler (Butler 4.1.6)

Butler 4.1.5 Transient

Monday, December 31st, 2007

This version defers the transient Butler‘s expiration date until July 1, 2008 — please read this blog entry if you’re wondering why Butler is currently in a transient state.

Simply put, we need some more time to get a public beta version of Butler 5 out of the door; and we don’t want to force you to check for a new transient version every other week until then. That’s why we have chosen a rather distant expiry date.

Oh, and by the way: Have a happy new year’s eve!

Posted in Butler | Comments Off on Butler 4.1.5 Transient

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