Witch 3.6.1 slides onto the scene

February 17th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

This latest Witch update—for both the Mac App Store and web site versions of Witch—includes two requested features and a number of minor bug fixes. (Note for App Store users: it may be anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of hours until you see the update in the App Store.) The two new features are:

  • Witch can now “see” many more windows without titles than it previously could. In particular, if you save Mail drafts without Subject lines, Witch should now show those as (Untitled) windows.

    Of course, because they have no title, you’ll want to use the pop-up preview feature to see what’s actually in those untitled windows. Witch should also display untitled windows in Elgato’s applications, and Sparrow, the minimalist Gmail client.

  • There’s a new slider in the Behavior tab of Witch’s settings that controls how long Witch will wait to hear from an application before giving up on it.

    Witch works by polling all applications, asking for information about their windows. If an application is slow to respond, we’re forced to make a choice: wait to display the switcher panel, or display the switcher panel in a reasonable amount of time, but leave out the slow-responding application (because we can’t determine its window states).

    Witch is set to wait 0.2 seconds, which is typically more than enough time. Certain troublesome apps, though, may work better with a longer timeout. You can use this new slider—which will let you set a timeout of up to two seconds—to find a balancing point that you’re happy with. Note: Unless you’re having trouble with missing windows, we suggest leaving this slider where it is.

  • If you use Matrox products to use extra displays on your laptop Mac, Witch now has some hidden settings that greatly improve the appearance of the switcher panel on those machines. If you’re one of those users, write to me and I’ll provide the usage instructions.

Mac App Store users can update via the App Store application; users of the web site version of Witch should be notified of the available update. (Check the Update tab in settings to make sure you’re set up for automatic notification of new updates.)

Posted in Mac App Store, Products, Witch | 2 Comments »

How-to: Launch and hide Desktop Curtain at login

February 7th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths
Over the weekend, I was asked why Desktop Curtain can’t be launched and hidden at login—when set to run at login, Desktop Curtain appears (as would any other app set to run at login). While you can’t set this preference within Desktop Curtain, it’s relatively easy to do with some help from Mac OS X.

First, make sure the ‘Launch automatically at login’ box is checked on the Advanced tab of Desktop Curtain’s settings window.

Second, go to the Accounts System Preferences panel, select your account in the left-hand column, and then click the Login Items tab on the right. Find Desktop Curtain in the list, and check the leftmost box, in the Hide column:

That’s it—Desktop Curtain will now launch at login, and hide. To get the most out of this tip, you should also set a global hot key (on the Advanced tab of Desktop Curtain’s settings window), so you can then make Desktop Curtain visible whenever you need to hide your clutter.

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Rethinking Time Sink

January 31st, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

What follows is a bit of backstory on Time Sink, our utility that tracks how you spend your time using your Mac. If you’d rather skip the backstory, here’s the executive summary version: effective immediately, we’re cutting the price of Time Sink to just $5 ($4.99 on the App Store).

Why are we doing this? In short, because we think Time Sink is a very cool little utility, and we’d love to see more people using it. For the longer version, read the details that follow.

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Posted in Mac App Store, Products, Time Sink | 20 Comments »

Conversations with the App Store

January 29th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths

We’re now roughly three weeks into the Mac App Store’s existence, and both Peter and I have been thrilled with how it’s gone. We’ve found it generally pleasant working with Apple (they’ve yet to reject one of our apps or updates), and the users we’ve chatted with have found the store to be a pleasant place to browse and shop.

With that said, there’s one feature missing from the store that impacts our ability to interact with customers and prospects: there’s no mechanism for developers to respond to questions or comments in users’ reviews. (We could modify our program’s descriptions, but using that space to answer questions seems like using a hammer to crack an egg.)

So we’ve decided to start an occasional series here on our blog, of which you’re reading the first installment: Conversations with the App Store. Each installment will address some of the questions and comments raised in reviews on the global (those we can read, at any rate!) Mac App Stores.

While this isn’t an ideal feedback mechanism—Apple should really allow developers to post responses directly—we hope it provides useful information to those who may have similar comments or questions about our programs. So without further ado, here’s the first edition of Conversations with the App Store.

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Posted in Company News, Desktop Curtain, Mac App Store, Name Mangler, Witch | 5 Comments »

Witch, $9.99 pricing, and the future

January 28th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

As we’ve now reached the point where the Witch $9.99 sale is scheduled to end, we thought we’d take some time to talk about how the two-day sale has gone, and what that means regarding Witch’s future price.

Before the sale began, Witch was doing a decent volume in the App Store, and fluctuating between the 20s and 60s on the Top Paid and Top Grossing charts for the Utilities category. So what impact did the sale have?

Unit volume increased twenty-fold, and Witch moved to (as of this writing) number two in Top Paid and number three in Top Grossing in the Utilities category—and it’s hovering around the top 20 in those charts for All Categories as well. Simply put, we’ve been floored…and obviously, the volume numbers got us thinking about pricing over the last two days.

It’s clear from these results that many people felt Witch was a utility they wanted, but one that was simply too expensive at $16.99 (the App Store’s no-preview-images price) and $19 (for the fully-featured version on our site). So we’ve decided to do two things:

  • The current $9.99 sale has been extended through the weekend; it will now end at 11:59pm (PST) on Sunday, January 30th.
  • The new standard price of Witch will be $14 ($13.99 App Store), a reduction of over 25% from the previous level. After talking with some users, and seeing what other utilities are priced at, we feel this is a fair and affordable price for an excellent window-switching tool.

It’s our objective to get our programs into as many users’ hands as possible, and yet do so at a level that will allow us to sustain the company and add support and development resources in the future.

We think Witch’s new pricing strikes the perfect balance between those two objectives—it’s more affordable for everyone now, and yet not so inexpensive that we’re mortgaging the company’s future to achieve unit growth today. After all, what good is the best window switching utility out there if there’s nobody around to support it any more?

Posted in Company News, Products, Witch | 7 Comments »

Witch + window previews + App Store = Save!

January 26th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Pardon the mathematically-influenced headline, but Witch 3.6 is now available in the App Store. The big news here is that it now includes the pop-up window previews that are present in the standalone version of Witch. This puts the App Store version of Witch at feature parity (excluding software updates) with the independent version.

To be honest, we weren’t sure the image previews would be approved…and now that they have been, we feel like celebrating.

So for the next 48 hours (until 7:00am Pacific Time on Friday, January 28th), Witch is on sale for only $9.99…regardless of whether you buy it from the App Store or from our site.

If you’ve been considering Witch, now’s the time to act. Once the sale ends, both versions of Witch will return to their standard ($19 direct, $18.99 App Store) prices.

Posted in Products, Witch | 6 Comments »

Two new versions of Desktop Curtain now available

January 24th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

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

Name Mangler gains Title Case powers

January 20th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

Name Mangler 2.4.1 is now available, which is quite a vault from its prior 2.3.3 version number. As such, you may be wondering where 2.4 went, as it wasn’t ever announced here.

The short answer to that question is that the App Store ate version 2.4. That is, we had been holding 2.4 here, waiting for approval of the same version in the App Store. When it became apparent that it was going to be a while before 2.4 was approved, we went ahead and committed a few fixes we’d been working on, which led us to 2.4.1.

We’ve submitted that version to the App Store (but it’s not yet approved; we’ll post when it is), and we’re releasing it here now so all you direct customers and prospects can get your hands on it.

So what’s new? The main new feature is a Title Case option in the Change Case renaming mode. Title Case works like the existing Capitalize option, except that it allows you to specify a minimum word length before applying capitalization. So you can now easily choose between Titles With All Caps (Capitalize) and Titles not With all Caps (Title Case, with words over three characters in length).

There are also a couple new features in Advanced mode, and a renaming of the Filter label to Show, which more accurately reflects what those checkboxes do. You can read the release notes page for the full scoop.

As always, update via the in-app udpater, or by downloading a new version of the app from our site.

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Time Sink and Usher tied at 1.1.2!

January 20th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

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.)

Posted in Products, Time Sink, Usher | Comments Off on Time Sink and Usher tied at 1.1.2!

Witch now available in the Mac App Store

January 11th, 2011 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

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 »

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