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Growl 1.3 Now On The Mac App Store: $1.99, Completely Rewritten


Back in July, we reported the next version of Growl, a popular notification system for OS X, would be available exclusively on the Mac App Store as a paid app. The reason behind the choice to go Mac App Store-only at $1.99 was to provide users with an app up-to-date with Apple’s technologies and standards for software that can released on the Mac App Store. As we noted in our article, that meant the Growl team had to rewrite the app completely, and start contacting third-party developers – over the years, Growl has generated its own ecosystem of apps compatible with desktop notifications – to make sure their software would be compatible with Growl 1.3.

The new Growl is now available on the Mac App Store at $1.99. While we’ll have a detailed, in-depth review of the app later this week, it’s worth noting now that Growl has indeed made the transition to paid app, but it’s also sporting a whole new architecture, UI, notification list, and themes.

Growl 1.3 comes in a new app form that has a menubar icon to activate/pause notifications, and a new Preferences window to see notification history, supported apps, configure themes, and more. History can be customized to show only a certain amount of recent items and days, and you can even search past notifications and events. The new Growl comes with almost 20 themes pre-installed, and you can style an application’s overlay notifications (the ones that Growl will briefly display on screen) in Growl’s Preferences. You can also create and install your own themes with basic CSS/XHTML/Javascript language.

One of the biggest new features of Growl 1.3 is the Rollup window – from a first look, it appears to be Growl’s unofficial response to Apple’s Notification Center for iOS. Because Growl keeps working even while you’re away from your computer, the Rollup window will collect the notifications you’ve missed in a single place, allowing you to review them later. There’s also a new Network option that enables you to forward notifications to another Mac, or to receive them from another computer running Growl.

Other features mention in the App Store’s description:

  • Speech display for hearing your notifications.
  • Send Growl notifications from Cocoa, AppleScript, or over the network.
  • Networking so that two or more Macs can forward notifications to each other.
  • Can work with the iPhone and iPad via Prowl.

Growl 1.3 is available on the Mac App Store at $1.99. Make sure to check out the app’s new website and Screenshots page, whilst Developers can visit this links to learn more about Growl 1.3 and its technical changes. Looks for a full review of Growl 1.3 on MacStories soon.

Sprint To “Bet the Company” on $20 Billion iPhone Deal

It was previously reported the next-generation iPhone would be available on U.S. carrier Sprint, and today The Wall Street Journal adds some details to its initial report, claiming that Sprint is “betting the company” on a $20 billion iPhone deal that will see Sprint purchasing 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years.

New details, not previously reported, give a rare look at Apple’s closely guarded dealings with carriers, and reveal just how high the stakes are for Sprint.

Mr. Hesse told the board the carrier would have to agree to purchase at least 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years—a commitment of $20 billion at current rates—whether or not it could find people to buy them, according to people familiar with the matter. In order to keep the price people pay for the phone low and competitive with rivals, Sprint would be subsidizing the cost of each phone to the tune of about $500, which would take a long time to recoup even at the high monthly fees iPhone users pay.

Sprint’s board called the iPhone “project Sony” internally, and a person familiar with the matter has been quoted by the WSJ saying “We have to have it”. The deal’s hit on Sprint’s operating income is “staggering”, according to another source. In a lawsuit filed against the AT&T / T-Mobile merger in September, Sprint said the company “has had to compete without access to the iPhone for nearly five years”.

Apple is expected to introduce a new iPhone tomorrow in Cupertino at 10 AM Pacific time. Check out our roundup for a breakdown of rumors and predictions.

Apple Won’t Offer Live Video Stream of Tomorrow’s Event

Apple won’t provide a public webcast of tomorrow’s “Let’s talk iPhone” media event, according to an Apple PR representative contacted by 9to5mac. The company will make a private feed available for the European press in its Covent Garden retail store in London, but there won’t be a public live stream on Apple.com.

Apple streamed the September 2010 music event as well as “Back to the Mac” in October 2010, but didn’t provide a live stream for the iPad 2 announcement and iOS 5 preview earlier this year. The 2010 live streams were based on Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming technology and required a Mac or iOS device running Safari.

However, Apple is expected to make streaming and downloadable versions of the event available a few hours after the keynote. Apple has a dedicated webpage for media events, and Apple Keynotes can also be found on iTunes.

MacStories will offer real-time tweeting of updates tomorrow through the @MacStoriesLive Twitter account. Come back at 10 AM Pacific tomorrow for our complete coverage of Apple announcements on the site’s front page.

Adobe Bringing Six New Apps to iPad In 2012

With a series of press releases issued today, Adobe has announced new software initiatives and acquisitions, including PhoneGap and Typekit. In a separate announcement, the company has formally unveiled six new Touch Apps for tablets that will be available for Android devices this November, and on the iPad next year. An iPad announcement about the release date is expected in “early 2012”, but Adobe has already confirmed this new suite of apps will work with Creative Cloud, the company’s new web hub to ” access desktop and tablet applications, find essential creative services” and share works online. Creative Cloud will come with 20 GB of storage and allow users to view, sync and share files created with desktop Creative Suite and mobile Touch Apps.

Inspired by Adobe Creative Suite software, these stunning new apps bring professional-level creativity to millions of tablet users. The apps address multiple areas of the creative process: image editing; ideation; sketching; mood boards; website and mobile app prototyping; and presenting finished work. They are headlined by Adobe Photoshop® Touch, a groundbreaking app that brings the legendary creative and image-editing power of Photoshop to tablet devices for the first time.

Available soon as standalone apps, Adobe Touch Apps are essential components of Adobe Creative Cloud, a major new company initiative also announced today (see separate release). Adobe Creative Cloud will become a worldwide hub for creativity, where millions can access desktop and tablet applications, find essential creative services, and share their best work. Files created via Adobe Touch Apps can be shared, viewed across devices or transferred into Adobe Creative Suite software for further refinement – key features of Adobe’s vision for the Creative Cloud. With stylus capabilities expected to become a key feature on some next generation tablets, Adobe Touch Apps are designed to work with both finger and stylus input.

Adobe Photoshop Touch: Core Photoshop functionalities available in a new app for tablets, with support for gestures, layered images, and Refine Edge technology.

Adobe Collage: Combine inspirational images, drawings, text and Creative Suite files into modern, conceptual mood boards. Files can be shared with Photoshop.

Adobe Debut: Quickly open Creative Suite file formats to preview designs to clients.

Adobe Ideas: Vector-based drawing tool already available on the App Store.

Adobe Kuler: Generate color schemes and browse creations by the Kuler community.

Adobe Proto Create wireframes and prototypes for websites and mobile apps on a tablet.

Links to video demos and previews are available in Adobe’s press release. Adobe says the new Touch Apps have been built on top of Carousel, the upcoming solution for storing and syncing photos across computers and mobile devices.

“App Rentals” Coming to iOS?

According to a series of code strings found in the latest iTunes beta by The Tech Erra (via 9to5mac), Apple may soon introduce support for app rentals – allowing users to rent an app for a limited time, test it and, eventually, buy it at full price. A string in particular seems to suggest app rentals may soon be available:

Apps are automatically removed from your iTunes library at the end of the rental period.

The mention of an “iTunes library” also seems to suggest that this functionality may be related to iOS apps, which are stored in iTunes on desktop computers. The lack of trials/demos for iPhone and iPad apps has always been a popular argument against Apple’s App Store ecosystem, especially considering recent competitors like Microsoft have introduced support for trials in the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. Rentals would obviously be different from free trials, but they’d allow users to better consider a purchase before clicking the Buy button; it’s not clear if “app rentals” would simply be time-based, or also allow developers to exclude certain functionalities from the rental version. The use of “Do you want to start playing the app…” in the code reference is interesting, too.

Apple’s iCloud will allow users to instantly push new app purchases across devices, but the company has been unwilling to tackle the App Store demo/rental idea so far. If these strings are of any indication, there’s the possibility Apple will announce new app rental features at its media event tomorrow.

“Let’s Talk iPhone” Event Rumor Roundup

Tomorrow morning, Apple will hold a press conference in Cupertino, where CEO Tim Cook is widely expected to introduce the next-generation iPhone, a new iOS 5 feature called “Assistant”, and a refreshed line-up for Apple’s iPod family. However, speculation has been running wild in the past months as to whether Apple will announce not one, but two different iPhone models, or perhaps even an iPhone 4 revision to target the low-end market. With rumors of upcoming Facebook integration, voice-recognition features and cheaper iPhone 4 models, Apple’s “Let’s talk iPhone” may turn out to be bigger than expected. Or, as the name of the event suggests, perhaps the company will only focus on the iPhone, leaving other announcements for press releases and minor store updates in the next weeks.

In this post, we’ve rounded up the most recent October 4th rumors and predictions, some old rumors that haven’t been reported in a while, as well as last-minute speculation on what Apple will introduce tomorrow.

Come back tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific on MacStories for our coverage of Apple announcements.

iPhone 4S: This is the device that Apple is rumored to unveil as the “next-generation iPhone” tomorrow. Initially described as an “iPhone 5 inside an iPhone 4 case” for developers’ testing back in April, the iPhone 4S with codename N94 should pack an A5 processor, 1 GB of RAM, SGX 543MP2 GPU (same as iPad 2), GSM-CDMA dual mode, HSPA+, same 3.5-inch screen and design of the existing iPhone 4. The device will come with a new software featured called Assistant for voice-recognition, and possibly a new panoramic photo functionality, likely related to the (rumored) new 8 MP camera. The iPhone 4S name has been spotted on packaging for third-party cases, carrier websites and even Apple’s iTunes 10.5 beta. In the past months, several leaked parts and components have suggested the 4S will share the same design of the iPhone 4, only with largely improved specs.

iPhone 5: The confusion caused by the “iPhone 5” name is due to the fact that it’s been widely used to generally indicate the new iPhone (iPhone 5 comes after iPhone 4) as well as a “completely redesigned” device, as opposed to the iPhone 4S. In fact, several analysts and industry sources believe Apple will announce two new iPhones tomorrow, a 4S for the low-end, and a “real” iPhone 5 as top-line device. The iPhone 5 was rumored to feature a new design months ago, although over time some of its alleged specs have overlapped with the iPhone 4S (improved camera, A5 CPU, 8 MP camera). The distinctive rumor about the iPhone 5 is a new “teardrop” design with tapered edges and thinner form factor, possibly a bigger screen with edge-to-edge LCD and a new “elongated” Home button.

No parts or internal components of the iPhone 5 have been leaked, suggesting such device hasn’t entered production yet and won’t be announced tomorrow.

More iPhone 4S/5 rumors in our roundup.

Read more

Sandboxing and App Culture

Andy Ihnatko and Jason Snell have published two articles on Macworld over the weekend, covering the upcoming sandboxing restrictions that Apple will begin enforcing this November for Mac App Store apps (with its possible implications for Apple’s own technologies like AppleScript) and the broader subject of app culture, which in a way is related to sandboxing and might lead to an overly simplified software environment that some people imagined a year ago.

Ihnatko:

But I fret about AppleScript. I’ve come to think of it as a brilliant and infinitely-resourceful friend who’s been working for twenty years at a company that doesn’t seem to appreciate all of his or her contributions. I’m not worried about Apple killing AppleScript outright; I’m worried that the company doesn’t collectively feel like system automation is a feature that’s worth rescuing if the building ever caught on fire. Some day, Apple’s OS engineers will come up with an idea for a new system architecture that delivers a long list of benefits but which will require tons of work to prevent it from breaking AppleScript. And at that point, scripting on the Mac will finally die.

Snell:

Apple getting serious about app security is a good thing. Unfortunately, many of the apps we Mac users have come to know and love over the years require a broad amount of access to the system for a lot of their key functions. Not as much as SuperDuper, say, but still quite a lot. What I’m hearing from some Mac developers is that they may actually have to remove features from their apps, or reduce their functionality, in order to fit them inside Apple’s new sandbox.

Whilst after the Back to the Mac event in October 2010 we feared the Mac App Store’s lack of trials and license migration options for existing customers would kill the ecosystem and, ultimately, cause the Mac App Store to never take off, that hasn’t been the case. Apple is betting heavily on the Mac App Store as the future of digital distribution for desktop software, and it’s doing so by releasing Lion on the App Store, alongside several other apps (at a discounted price). Since January 6, when the Mac App Store opened for business, third-party developers have rushed to release their apps on it (most of the times with discounted prices) and Apple awarded those who did in time at last June’s WWDC. Some developers needed, obviously, to rethink how their apps would work with Apple’s Mac App Store rules.

The issue mentioned by Ihnatko and Snell isn’t a logistic problem with the infrastructure itself, it’s a real technical question that has arisen lately. How much will sandboxing entitlements affect the functionalities of existing apps? An example is the aforementioned 1Password, whose Mac App Store version won’t allow you to keep its database sync file in Dropbox if that folder is not under your User’s directory. The change wasn’t well received, but that’s just the way it works now. Starting November, it’s safe to assume other apps will need to be updated with this kind of tweaks – a restriction here, some documents can’t be accessed there, and so forth.

You can see how sandboxing, security and app culture are related in Apple’s App Store vision. The concept of “app” has evolved over time to indicate a piece of software that does one thing well, and Apple is doubling down on this new idea by enhancing security (which is a good thing) and making sure an app is limited “to just those operations that it needs to perform”. App and security have come full circle.

In the past nine months, the Mac App Store did just fine for the majority of developers without trials and demo versions. Then Apple introduced in-app purchases and delta updates. Every major change creates victims – those who couldn’t settle down in a new environment – and winners, literally. What will be interesting to observe in the upcoming months isn’t sandboxing itself of Apple’s evilness, but the trade-off third-party developers will seemingly have to come to terms with if they want to keep their apps on the Store., with the same degree of power and innovation we’ve become accustomed to in the past decades.

Scripting BBEdit - Part I

I was recently listening to an episode of the popular podcast Build and Analyze where Marco Arment was discussing his experience of leaving the comfort of TextMate to test drive BBEdit for a week. The results of his experiment were similar to many others who have attempted the same feat and after that week, according to Marco, he had returned to TextMate. I once did the same experiment. A dedicated TextMate user who switched to BBEdit for no other reason than the lack of updates and BBEdit happened to be in the Mac App Store at a greatly reduced price. I jumped on the opportunity to try the legendary text editor with its newly added fullscreen, auto-save, and resume features.

The humorous part of listening to Marco describe his time with BBEdit was knowing that we shared identical opinions on all of the quirks that differentiate TextMate and BBEdit. I don’t think one is any better than the other, I just think they solve the same problem with two different methods. What features BBEdit lacks, it generally makes up for in scripting ability. It has one of the most detailed and feature-rich AppleScript dictionary I have ever seen. So as I came across quirks that I could change with AppleScript, I wrote a script for them and that is what I would like to share in this mini-series of posts. Please note these articles are intended for people that are familiar enough with BBEdit to be able to add a new script and assign a keyboard shortcut in the preferences.

Wrapping Text

The first thing that drove me absolutely crazy with BBEdit is when hitting the quotes or parentheses key while text is selected, BBEdit doesn’t wrap the text in that punctuation but instead writes over the selection.

To alleviate this issue I wrote six AppleScripts (one for each commonly wrapped punctuation) and I assigned each one a keyboard shortcut. In this situation I think the keyboard shortcut is just as important as the script itself. It has to be easy to remember and close to the position your hand is already in when typing the punctuation key. So in five of the six shortcuts I simply added the command key and it felt as natural as typing the punctuation normally. For the single quotes script I settled with the Option + Command combo because it is on the same key as the double quotes.

  • Wrap in Asterisks: ⇧ + ⌘ + *
  • Wrap in Backticks: ⇧ + ⌘ + `
  • Wrap in Brackets: ⇧ + ⌘ + ]
  • Wrap in Parentheses: ⇧ + ⌘ + )
  • Wrap in Quotes: ⇧ + ⌘ + “
  • Wrap in Single Quotes: ⌥ + ⌘ + ’

All six scripts are variations of the same code shown below:

Download these scripts here: Wrap Text scripts

Save these scripts to the directory: ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Scripts

Commenting Entire Line

The second feature of BBEdit that bugged me was the way commenting was implemented. Most of the time when I hit the “Comment” keyboard shortcut I actually wanted to comment out the entire line; instead, BBEdit starts the comment wherever the cursor is located. I wrote a script that reads the documents source language and comments out the entire current line using the correct syntax for that language.

For the keyboard shortcut I actually changed BBEdit’s default Un/Comment Selection to ⌥ + ⌘ + / so that I could configure my script with the default combination I was already used to: ⌘ + /

The script is configured to work with but is not limited to these languages:

  • Unix Shell Script
  • Python
  • Perl
  • Ruby
  • Java
  • Javascript
  • PHP
  • Objective-C
  • ANSI C
  • C++
  • HTML

If you don’t see the language you want it is very easy to add your own – just open the script and take a look at the code.

Download the script here: Comment Entire Line

Save these scripts to the directory: ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Scripts

*Stay tuned for more posts on ways to really get the most out of BBEdit!