Moom 3.2.11 speeds into existence

May 14th, 2018 by Rob Griffiths

We’ve just released Moom 3.2.11, where the big news is much faster drawing of the full-screen grid when you’re moving and resizing the grid cells. There are a few other changes, including our new in-app log viewer (direct version only), and we squashed a bug related to moving a window to another display then resizing it.

App Store viewers can get the update from the App Store (if not now, then very soon), and direct buyers can update via the in-app updater, or by downloading a new copy from Moom‘s web page.

Posted in Moom, Products | 16 Comments »

Witch 4.2 released

April 11th, 2018 by Rob Griffiths

Witch 4.2 is now in the wild, and it contains a lot of goodies for a little “dot one” release. The release notes page has a summary of everything, including some nice new features. Here’s a brief summary on how to use a couple of the new features—the help file has more detail, including screenshots.

See active app’s icon in the menu bar: If you’re using the “Show in menu bar” checkbox to see Witch’s actions in the menu bar, you can now have the icon reflect the frontmost app, in place of the standard Witch icon. Hold down the Option key when selecting the Witch menu item, and the Preferences entry will change to Reflect Frontmost App. Select that to see the frontmost app’s icon in the menu bar (and a checkbox next to the frontmost app in the list).

Control frontmost window’s tab handling: Hold down the Option key while clicking the Mode pop-up in the “List tabs” section of an action, and the pop-up menu changes to indicate that the selection will only affect the frontmost window.

For example, if you want the frontmost window to always treat tabs as windows (i.e. list them separately in the switcher), hold down the Option key, click the Mode pop-up button, then select Frontmost Window: Treat Tabs as Windows from the pop-up menu. You can then select a different behavior (by not holding the Option key) for non-frontmost windows.

On the bug fix front, Witch 4.2 should resolve the occasional crash issue that a small number of users were seeing, gets rid of the annoying phantom Login item some of you were seeing, and greatly—and I do mean greatly—improves the quality of the mini window previews, if you use that feature. There’s lots more goodness in this release, so check for updates and install Witch 4.2 today.

Posted in Company News, Products, Witch | Comments Off on Witch 4.2 released

Name Mangler 3.4.1 released

April 9th, 2018 by Rob Griffiths

Name Mangler 3.4.1 has been released, and should be showing in the in-app updater (for direct customers), or in the App Store app (for App Store customers). Direct customers can also download a full copy of the app from our site.

While only a tiny bump in release number, there’s actually a lot of goodness in this update, including…

  • Hold down the Shift key then click to select Files, Folders, and Folder Contents from the “what to rename” pop-up menu—in one click. The clicks you save will help extend the life of your clicking device!
  • Free spacing mode—for regular expression users—can now be toggled off or on in the preferences.
  • You can change Name Mangler’s default action, even setting it up with a series of Actions if you prefer. Set up the Action(s) you’d like to use, then hold down the Option key and select File > Save Default Configuration.
  • Name Mangler’s “traffic light” indicators, which let you know whether a given file was going to be cleanly renamed (green), renamed but with a note (yellow), or not renamed (red) are now distinct in both color and shape.
  • If Name Mangler is scanning a massive (hundreds of thousands of files) folder and you want it to stop, click the Rename button while the scan is in progress, and it will stop.

There are a few other goodies in this release, so check out the release notes for all the details.

Posted in Company News, Name Mangler, Products | 2 Comments »

Moom 3.2.10 released

October 19th, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 3.2.10 is out—now for direct customers, and should be very soon (if not already) for App Store customers. What’s new in 3.2.10? Not all that much; the main item is a fix for some users’ crash on launch in High Sierra.

If you’re experiencing this crash, and you use the direct version, you’ll need to download a new copy of the app from the Moom web page—don’t worry, you won’t lose any of your settings. Just copy the new version to /Applications and replace the existing copy of Moom. (Make sure Moom’s not running.)

Beyond that, there were a couple fixes for issues with uBar 4 and Transmit.

Posted in Moom, Products | Comments Off on Moom 3.2.10 released

Moom 3.2.9 released

August 1st, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 3.2.9 has been released, and it includes one major change (in addition to some other minor changes) from the prior release: A new full-screen grid option is the default for grid-based resizing; hexagons are still in place, but they’re the non-default choice.

Moom now uses the entire display as the grid. You can still specify your grid dimensions, but you’ll be selecting regions of the entire display, instead of on a slanted hexagonal window. One advantage of this approach—besides not dealing with hexagons—is that you can drag a grid on any connected display, not just the display where the window currently resides.

App Store users should see the update in the App Store very soon now, and direct users can update via the in-app updater, or by downloading a new copy from our site.

Posted in Moom, Products | 17 Comments »

Witch 4.1 released

June 7th, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Witch 4.1 is out, and the big news here is badges: You can now see Mail’s unread message count on Mail icons in the Witch switcher panel. Witch also has a soon-to-be-public API that other developers can use to make it simple to send badge data to other apps, including Witch—hopefully we’ll see more badges coming to Witch in the future.

In addition to the badges, we did a ton of work to improve Witch’s speed when working with slow-to-respond (to Witch’s queries) apps. We’ve also improved cross-Space window switching, and we found and fixed a memory leak that could make Witch’s RAM usage balloon if you used a lot of window previews.

You can find other goodness in the Witch release notes, and you can update to Witch 4.1 either via the in-app updater, or by downloading a fresh copy from the Witch page (you won’t lose your settings).

Posted in Products, Witch | Comments Off on Witch 4.1 released

Moom 3.2.8 released

May 16th, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Late yesterday, we released Moom 3.2.8, which has only one change from Moom 3.2.7, released the day before. The update is available directly from us (via in-app updater, or by downloading it from our site), and it should be available in the Mac App Store app shortly, if not already.

The one change was to the grid, which switched from rectangular (with the circles of 3.2.7) to the new hexagonal layout, as seen at right.

Why did we change the design? Late last week, we learned there’s a US patent that covers resizing windows using a rectangular grid in a miniature preview image. We learned this when the patent’s owner told us they believed Moom’s grid was infringing on their patent. For now, we have redesigned the grid in such a way that no infringement claim can be made, and we’re working on further improvements.

Note: Comments are closed on this post, as we wish to inform you as to what happened, not to start a debate on software patents in general, or this patent in particular.

Posted in Company News, Moom, Products | Comments Off on Moom 3.2.8 released

Witch 4 switches out of beta

March 30th, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

As of today, the public beta is over, and Witch 4 is officially released. Witch 4 has been on pre-sale for $10 ($6 for Witch 3 upgraders) since the beta started, and those sale prices will continue through Sunday, April 9th, 2017. After the sale, Witch will be $14 (and $8 for upgraders).

So what’s new in Witch 4? A whole bunch of stuff, but here are the highlights:

There’s a ton of other good stuff in there, but rather than list it all out in boring text form, why not download the demo and give it a try yourself?

Buying Witch 4

Buying Witch 4 is easy, though there are slightly different paths depending on whether you own Witch 3 or not, and where you bought it.

Recent Witch 3 purchaser: If you purchased Witch 3 directly from Many Tricks after October 1st of 2016, you already have a valid license for Witch 4—you can start using it as a fully licensed user with your existing license.

If you bought Witch 3 from the App Store after that date, you too have a direct license waiting: You just need to permanently crossgrade to the direct version.

Less-recent Witch 3 direct customer: Buy a Witch 4 upgrade for $6 ($8 after April 9th).

Less-recent Witch 3 App Store customer: First, permanently crossgrade your App Store license to a direct license. After that, you too can buy a Witch 4 upgrade for $6 ($8 after April 9th).

New Witch customer: Buy the full version for $10 ($14 after April 9th).

If you have any questions on the buying process, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email, or using our ticket system.

Posted in Products, Witch | 5 Comments »

Usher 1.1.16 released

March 14th, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Although Usher is retired, that doesn’t mean it’s being ignored. Today’s update adds two new features (really!), and fixes a couple of bugs.

The new features are an option to auto-size thumbnails, and (mainly for those looking to migrate to another app), a CSV export option. For more details on the export, open Usher’s help, and you’ll find some instructions at the top of the first page. If you’re really bored, you can read the full release notes.

Because Usher is no longer available in the App Store, this update is only available to users of the direct version. Usher App Store users, please crossgrade (it’s free) to the direct version in order to get this update.

Posted in Products, Usher | 1 Comment »

How Apple’s security system broke some Mac apps

February 23rd, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Feb 28 2017 update

Apple has responded quickly to address this issue. Their Developer ID page, which I believe is brand new, specifically addresses provisioning profiles and their relationship to the Developer ID certificate. Here’s what they say (emphasis added):

For apps that utilize advanced capabilities with a Developer ID provisioning profile
Gatekeeper will evaluate the validity of your Developer ID certificate when your application is installed and will evaluate the validity of your Developer ID provisioning profile at every app launch. As long as your Developer ID certificate was valid when you compiled your app, then users can download and run your app, even after the expiration date of the certificate. However, if your Developer ID provisioning profile expires, the app will no longer launch.

That section addresses the crashes seen in PDFpenPro and 1Password: It is now documented that an expired provisioning profile will prevent your app from launching. That’s not necessarily good news…but the good news is that this will, going forward, be a much rarer event:

To simplify the management of your Developer ID apps and to ensure an uninterrupted experience for your users, Developer ID provisioning profiles generated after February 22, 2017 are valid for 18 years from the creation date, regardless of the expiration date of your Developer ID certificate.

So any app that uses a provisioning profile created after February 22nd of this year will not crash due to an expired provisioning profile—even if the developer does nothing and lets their Developer ID certificate expire—until February 22, 2035. That’s effectively forever in the world of a macOS app (it’s longer than macOS/OS X itself has existed, in fact.)

Thanks, Apple, for the quick response! We’re leaving the original article posted as a non-techie overview of the Developer ID system; keep reading if that’s of interest to you.

Recently, some well-known Mac apps, including 1Password, PDFpenPro, and Soulver, had a big problem: They all failed to launch. Nothing had changed with these apps (i.e. no updates had been released), and yet they simply stopped working.

So what happened? All three of these apps (and probably some others we haven’t heard from yet) contained an expired code signing certificate. That expired certificate prevented the apps from launching, though no developer would have expected that, based on Apple’s own documentation. And an expired code signing certificate can’t just be renewed to extend its expiration date (like you would a driver’s license); it needs to be replaced with a new non-expired certificate, which requires distributing an update to the app.

Follow me now, if you wish, for a somewhat deep dive into the world of code signing, as I attempt to explain—from a consumer’s perspective yet with a developer’s hat on—what is code signing, why these apps broke, why the breakage wasn’t expected, and other related questions and answers.

Update: AgileBits has a very detailed blog post that covers this issue in even more depth—well worth the reading time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Behind the Scenes, Developer | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »