Archive for March, 2017

Default Folder X 5.1.4 – lots of little improvements

Friday, March 24th, 2017

Version 5.1.4 of Default Folder X is out, and although this update doesn’t bring any big feature additions, it offers a bunch of internal improvements that make things more reliable. If you’re already using Default Folder X, just select “Check for Updates” from the Default Folder X menu in your menubar to get the new version.

And if you’ve experienced a crash in Default Folder X and submitted a crash log after it happened, thank you for taking the time to do so. That data really does help track down problems and get them fixed! If you’re having a problem that doesn’t result in a crash, contact us using the Tech Support page and we’ll do our best to get the issue resolved, whatever it happens to be.

Use Default Folder X – take off the mittens!

Friday, March 17th, 2017

Default Folder X was mentioned on Dave Hamilton’s excellent Mac Geek Gab podcast. It made me laugh so I have to share it. At the end of the segment Dave says “Using a Mac without Default Folder feels like using a Mac with mittens.” I think that’s one of the best endorsements I’ve heard in a while 🙂

Anyway – check it out – along with lots of other great information and commentary – at the 1:20 mark of Mac Geek Gab 647. I think I learn something new in every episode.

Goodbye Mac App Store

Thursday, March 2nd, 2017

While Jettison and HistoryHound are still supported and sold on the St. Clair Software website, I’ve pulled them from the Mac App Store. The versions that were in the Mac App Store were older revisions, and it just didn’t make business sense to rearchitect the apps to meet Apple’s current requirements for approval so they could be kept up-to-date.

For both applications, complying with Apple’s sandboxing and feature constraints to get them approved for sale would have required significant rewrites. And in Jettison’s case, it would also require that buyers download a separate helper app to enable its full functionality. I realize that some people will be put off or inconvenienced by the fact that these apps are no longer in the Mac App Store – my apologies if you’re one of those folks, but it just doesn’t make sense for Jettison and HistoryHound.

Without going into a full-on rant about the Mac App Store (I could ramble on for days), let’s just say that while the Mac App Store is convenient for consumers, it doesn’t really serve the needs of some developers. Much has been written about it already (here, here, herehere and here, for example) so I won’t rehash it all – and despite years of “constructive criticism” from developers, Apple hasn’t fixed some major problems.

I hope you’ll continue to purchase our applications, as well as those from other independent developers selling outside the Mac App Store. While it’s a little less convenient than the Mac App Store, it allows us to bring you the best software we can, and also gives us the opportunity to foster a two-way relationship with you – both of which really matter to us.

– Jon

App Tamer 2.3.1 improves Spotify support and fixes bugs

Wednesday, March 1st, 2017

Version 2.3.1 of App Tamer fixes several bugs in our CPU- and battery-saving application, as well as more smoothly supporting Spotify. If you’ve got App Tamer set up to manage Spotify’s CPU usage, it will not slow it down or stop it while Spotify is playing music. This prevents your music from stuttering or going completely silent – generally a good thing 🙂

You can find more details and download links on the App Tamer Release page. We recommend that all App Tamer users update even if you don’t use Spotify because the bug fixes are important.

And on the topic of App Tamer, I was remiss in my duties – I didn’t blog about the release of version 2.3, even though it delivered a couple of very significant changes. The most obvious one is a user interface overhaul that brings App Tamer up to snuff with the flat, white look that’s all the rage (check it out over on the right there). The preferences have also been split among multiple tabs to better organize them, and hopefully make all the settings a little less intimidating.

A more interesting, though much less visible addition is App Tamer’s new “CPU hog detection” feature. In the “Detection” tab of the preferences, you can set a limit to how much CPU any application should use. If any app uses that much CPU for longer than a time you specify, App Tamer will pop up a warning to let you know that something’s amiss, and will give you several options. If you’re on a laptop, this is great because it lets you know before the CPU hogging app drains your battery down to nothing and you realize that you left your power adapter under the couch at home.

And of course there are a whole bunch of little fixes and improvements rolled into versions 2.3 and 2.3.1 as well. It’s worth the trouble to download, especially if you’ve already bought a license for App Tamer 2 because these updates are free.