We’ve just released Leech 3.1, which includes a few nice new features:
The change log details a few other fixes and improvements, too.
As usual, direct customers can get the update via in-app updating, or by downloading a fresh copy of the app. App Store buyers should see the update in the App Store app—if not now, then very shortly.
Usher has reached version 1.1.14. The biggest news in this version is that the App Store and indie versions are back in sync.
Beyond that, the Help files have much more content, and Usher is now using our improved help system with much better navigation and search—plus all screenshots have (finally) been retinaized. You can read the release notes for the nitty-gritty on 1.1.14, if you prefer the trees to the forest.
Direct users can update via the in-app updater, or by downloading a full version from our web site. App Store users should see the update now (or shortly, if not now) in the App Store app.
Ever since Peter and I relaunched Many Tricks in 2010, we’ve never had an official software license agreement. The closest thing we’ve had is this blog post, which explains limits on the use of our apps across multiple Macs (tl;dr: Use them on as many Macs as you personally use). However, we’ve never had an actual end user license agreement (EULA) that spells out the legal license you agree to when you purchase one of our apps.
Well, we have one now—it’s also permanently linked in the sidebar here, and will be accessible from within our apps. And a really big thanks to Rich Siegel at Bare Bones Software, who generously agreed to let us use his document as a starting point. I found the Bare Bones EULA to be well written, brief, and easily understood; hopefully our version, which has only minor changes, is still all of those things.
After six years, why did we suddenly need an EULA? The truth is we probably should have had one from day one, but never really felt the need. Recently, however, we’ve received inquiries from government agencies and larger companies interested in buying our apps … and many of these customers aren’t allowed to purchase our apps unless we have an actual legal license agreement. So now we do.
Note that this doesn’t change anything relative to the usage of our apps; we still allow you to use one license to install our apps on as many Macs as you personally use. We just needed to have a formal legal software license for larger customers and government agencies.
Say hello to Leech 3, a major update to our easy-to-use download manager. You can download a free trial to take it for a test drive right now.
We took what was good in Leech—simple UI, powerful rules, long-term history, etc.—and added lots of good stuff that our users have requested:
Head on over to the Leech product page to read all about this goodness, and more (like auto-sorting downloads into dated folders, for example).
Leech 3 is available now for $6 … oh, right, nearly forgot this tidbit: it’s available directly from us, of course, or for the first time ever, in the Mac App Store. The two versions are functionally identical, though the App Store version is (as required) sandboxed.
Note that anyone who purchased Leech 2 after November 1st, 2015 already has a Leech 3 license; check for upgrades within the app, and you’ll be up and running with a fully licensed copy of Leech 3.
Leech 2 owners: Typically, you’d expect to be eligible for upgrade pricing as an existing owner. In this case, given the app’s very low price, we decided against offering Leech 3 upgrade pricing. This is not a general change in our business practices, just the realities of offering a fully-featured app at a low price point.
Final update: Moom 3.2.5 has been released on the App Store; this fixes the drag-to-display bug and all App Store users should now update.
Update: If you have the App Store version of Moom, and if you use multiple displays, then please don’t update to Moom 3.2.4—we just found and fixed an issue with moving windows to other displays. The Moom version on our site has been updated to 3.2.5, and we’re in the middle of submitting an App Store update.
As mentioned in the release notes, I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience. This was entirely my fault. —Peter
Hot on the heels of our recent Time Sink and Keymo updates come two larger updates: Moom 3.2.4 and Name Mangler 3.3.6.
These releases re-sync the versions numbers between the App Store and direct versions, and both feature some bug fixes and general improvements. You can read the details in the release notes for Moom and Name Mangler, respectively.
The big news in both versions (and coming soon to all our other apps) is our totally rewritten help system. You can read all about the new help system in the linked blog post, but the key bits are that search and navigation are now much nicer, and the window is a real (non-floating!) OS X window that’s visible to apps like Witch.
Direct customers can get the Moom and Name Mangler updates via the in-app updater, or by downloading the full versions from our site. App Store customers should see the updates in their App Store app—if not now, then shortly.
Starting with our recent update to Keymo, we rolled out a new help system. We developed this new system to solve some aggravations we were having with Apple’s built-in help system, and to provide our users with a better help experience. This new help system will be rolling out to all our apps in the very near future.
Here’s a quick peek at the first screen of Moom’s new help:
There are many aspects to our new help system that should make in-app help work much better for our users—some new features, some existing features working better, and a revamped look and feel.
Today we released updates to Keymo (1.2.4, both direct and App Store) and Time Sink (1.2.5, for the App Store only).
The Keymo update features our brand-new help system with greatly improved navigation and a much more functional search. (This help system will be rolling out to all our apps in the near future.) With this update, both the App Store and direct versions of Keymo are in sync at 1.2.4.
The Time Sink update brings the App Store version into sync with the direct version at 1.2.5; there are no substantive changes in the Time Sink update.
As always, direct customers can use the in-app updater or download the full version from our site, and App Store customers should see the updates in the App Store app—if not now, then in the very near future.
Many users, myself included, own more than one Mac. For people like us, the concept of syncing an apps’ settings across those Macs, so they’re always the same and always up to date, is enticing. But unless the app has been specifically written to support such syncing (i.e. TextExpander, or the snippets/presets portion of our own Name Mangler), this is generally a Very Bad Idea.
In the last couple weeks, I’ve received emails from a few users, complaining of lost settings in a couple of our apps. After some back-and-forth, the common thread among these users was the use of an open source tool called Mackup.
Mackup claims that it will:
- Back up your application settings in a safe directory (e.g. Dropbox)
- Sync your application settings among all your workstations
- Restore your configuration on any fresh install in one command line
If you browse the Mackup page, you’ll find a number of our apps—Moom, Name Mangler, and Witch—listed in the Supported section. This may make you think that we’ve been consulted, and that those apps have our blessing to be used with Mackup. This is not the case at all.
Supported apps are just apps that Mackup itself supports in its configuration; there’s not necessarily any involvement with—or approval from—the app’s original developer. That’s certainly the case with us, as we were never contacted about including our apps on Mackup’s supported list. At present, we do not support preference files synced across multiple Macs for our apps. (We have asked to have our apps removed from Mackup, but so far, there’s been no response from the Mackup developer.)
We do not recommend the use of Mackup, or any other such tool that syncs our apps’ prefs files across multiple Macs. You may lose all your settings, or introduce some sort of command conflict that could cause problems using our apps. Please revert to locally-stored non-synced prefs.
In “OS X El Capitan and tvOS still a bag of hurt for people with motion sickness and other vestibular disorders”, Craig Grannell mentions an odd bug he discovered that affects Moom and other window management apps:
I also recently discovered an issue with window manager Moom, where windows wouldn’t snap, but would instead skid around the display, triggering motion sickness. It turns out other window managers are affected, and the trigger is activating text-to-speech.
Basically, if you use text-to-speech and then use Moom within the same app, you’ll find that Moom behaves in strange and ugly ways: windows slowly wander to their new positions, and you can’t resize and move (i.e. use the grid), as only one of the two operations will complete.
The issue, unfortunately, lies in OS X not Moom, so it’s not something we can fix. There are two workarounds, though:
To make this easier to do, you can assign global keyboard shortcuts for Start Speaking and Stop Speaking in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts:
The defined keys should work in any app that supports text-to-speech.
We’ve reported this bug to Apple, so hopefully it’ll be fixed in a future OS X update. Until then, though, if you use Moom (or another window manager) and text-to-speech, you’ll have to rely on one of these workarounds.
Yes, that’s right, we’ve updated the updater in our direct apps. Our direct apps rely on Sparkle to inform you when there are new versions available. Over the weekend, we were made aware of a potential vulnerability in how we implemented Sparkle. Basically, if your network is already compromised by what’s called a Man in the Middle attack, then it’s possible an attacker could use the Sparkle update mechanism in our apps to remotely execute code on your Mac. That’s bad.
Although this is a relatively small exposure (as you must already be on a compromised network), we felt it was important to act on it right away, so we’ve updated all of our apps to use Sparkle over secure HTTP (HTTPS). Please update any directly-purchased Many Tricks apps immediately.
Important: There’s a bit of a Catch-22 here … in order to get you this update, it must come over insecure HTTP, because that’s how Sparkle in the app you’re using is configured. If you are concerned that you might be on a compromised network, please do not update using the in-app updater. Instead, just download the relevant app(s) directly from our site, which uses HTTPS.
If you have any questions on this update, please leave a comment or email us directly, and we’ll do our best to address your questions.
Note: Although our App Store apps don’t use Sparkle, we know they’re out of date with some of the other minor bug fixes that came with these releases. We’ll be submitting updates to the App Store next week to get App Store users current.
Many Tricks