Archive for November, 2008

Default Folder X 4.1 is now available!

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

I’m excited to get version 4.1 of Default Folder X finished and out into everyone’s hands!  Pushing the AppleEvent queries for the Finder into a separate process allowed me to speed DFX up significantly – there’s now virtually no delay between an Open or Save As dialog appearing on screen and DFX’s controls coming up.  As one of the testers said, “it feels really snappy now!”

This release also provides audio previews in the preview window, support for Open Office 3, fixes for issues with Spaces in Leopard, and a handful of other corrections and improvements.  It’s free for all of you folks who already have a license for version 4, so grab your copy now.

If you don’t already own a copy of Default Folder X, download it and give it a try!  It’ll run for 30 days with no restrictions, giving you plenty of time to get hooked 🙂  You can also find more information on the Default Folder X pages.

Audio controller in the Default Folder X preview window

Audio controller in the Default Folder X preview window

iPhone app pricing

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

Andy Finnell makes a lot of sense in How to Price Your iPhone App out of Existence.
Since the opening of the app store I’ve felt that the $0.99 (or thereabouts) pricing model isn’t sustainable – Andy lays that out in thorough detail.

He does make one point I’d argue with, however.  His assertion that developers should charge a price that’s high enough to keep them in business is backwards, in my opinion.  Developers should charge a price commensurate with the value of their software to users.  If I write an app that only appeals to 5 people and I need $50,000 a year to live, it’d be ridiculous to ask those 5 people to pay $10,000 / copy. If it’s worth $50 to them based on what it can do, then that’s what it’s worth.  If that’s not enough to pay the bills, then I shouldn’t be writing that application, or should look at changing something (the feature set, advertising, or marketing) to make it more viable.  Of course, we often don’t know the correct formula at the outset, but in the case of iPhone apps, it seems clear that charging $0.99 is not going to enable you to really support or update it long-term (where “long-term” is more than a few months).

HistoryHound 1.9.6 is out!

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

We just released an update to HistoryHound!  If you’re already hooked on it, just go download the new version – it will automatically recognize your existing registration number.  If you haven’t tried it yet, this is a great time to take a test drive – let HistoryHound compile its index of all the pages in your browser history and bookmarks, and then you can do an instantaneous search for any word that appears anywhere on one of those pages.

The includes the ability to index web archive files – something that’s incredibly helpful for users that save web archives of pages for archival or offline viewing.  The cool thing about it is that when one of those pages comes up in your HistoryHound search results, clicking on it loads the page from the web archive into HistoryHound’s built-in browser, so you don’t even need an internet connection to search and browse the contents of your web archives.

This release also fixes a bug that could cause HistoryHound to mysteriously crash while indexing in the background on some users’ Macs.  So download it and let HistoryHound simplify that tangled web you’ve downloaded!