Archive for the ‘Random Ramblings’ Category

Default Folder X 6 development update

Friday, September 10th, 2021

While it’s been slow going, I’ve gotten a few new features put together in the ongoing development of version 6 of Default Folder X. I’m sharing two here because I’m very happy to have gotten them up and running, as I personally find them really useful.

Expanded Filename Editing Field

It seems like such a minor thing, but when you’re saving something like a web page that has a long name, it’s maddening that Save As dialogs have such a tiny edit box for the filename. The long name runs past the end of the edit field and you have to click and drag or use the arrow keys to get to the rest of it if you want to make any changes.

While it required way more juggling than I expected, Default Folder X 6 expands the filename field to a usable size.

Keyboard-based Access to Recent and Favorite Items

I’m personally a very keyboard-biased user. I’d rather use shortcuts and type than take my hand off the keyboard to click around with the mouse. As a result, Default Folder X has always had the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to Favorites and to access recently used items. Up until now, however, that didn’t include just typing to select exactly what you wanted. In version 6, that’ll be an option:

I’ve used a “Sublime Text-style” selection method, where fuzzy matching gives you results that include file, folder and application names that contain the letters you’ve typed, even if there are some missing in between. It also favors capital letters and the first letters of words.

You’ll see that the top match in the image above when typing “roc” is “ReactiveObjC” because of the capitalized R, O and C in the correct order, with “ProcessController.m” further down the list even though it contains “roc” in lowercase. I’m still tweaking this, but I find the results pretty quick and intuitive when looking for something (though granted, the results lower down in the list tend to appear almost random until you look hard at them).

As a developer, the danger I see with this feature is that people will want me to reproduce all kinds of options from similar keyboard-based utilities like LaunchBar and Alfred and I’m not sure how far to go with that. This isn’t meant to replace those (I’m a long-time LaunchBar user myself), but some additional tweaks could be nice…

If you want to help test…

While these (and other) features are still in development and thus a bit rough around the edges, I’d welcome input if you’ve got some time to try them out and provide thoughtful feedback. Email DefaultFolderX@stclairsoft.com if you’re interested.

AppleScript and Apple events

Friday, April 26th, 2019

Brent Simmons has a great post over at inessential.com on the genius of Apple events. As one of the people behind the ground-breaking Userland Frontier, Brent is uniquely qualified to espouse on the significance and power of Apple events. Frontier, and later AppleScript, leveraged Apple events to let Mac users tie together applications to make workflows that got real things done, even when no single application existed that would do what they needed. I used Frontier for years to automate the back-end of my software business – it was invaluable.

As Brent says:

Picture Jane in her office. She gets an email from Bob every month with the latest WidgetX numbers. With that email in front of her, she double-clicks a script (or chooses one from a scripts menu)… [which] updates and saves (on a shared folder) a Keynote presentation with the new numbers.

This used to take hours, and it was prone to errors. Now it takes a minute or less — and it’s error-free

With Marzipan reportedly coming in macOS 10.15 this year, Apple is further de-emphasizing the cooperative nature of macOS apps, and will most likely not support Apple events in the “iPad apps adapted to run on the Mac” context of Marzipan. Again, from Brent:

What happens to Jane if Mail is a Marzipan app that doesn’t respond to Apple events?

Indeed.

And as Brent says (and as I detailed in an earlier post), many Mac apps use Apple events to directly integrate with other applications. They tie everything together for you, taking your Mac experience from ‘good’ to ‘great’. Just in my own apps, Default Folder X communicates this way with the Finder, Path Finder, ForkLift, Terminal and iTerm2 to give you seamless access to folders no matter where you need them. App Tamer uses Apple events to make sure it doesn’t interrupt iTunes and Spotify when they’re streaming music for you. And there are numerous other examples throughout the Mac ecosystem (and probably on your Mac right now).

Losing Apple event support in Mac applications would be a bigger loss than a lot of people realize – and one I’m not sure Apple is completely cognizant of. My hope is that there’s someone back there minding the proverbial store, but my feeling is that Apple is rushing headlong to open up macOS to UIKit applications to get more apps on the Mac, without regard for some important underpinnings.

A quick plug for the Mac Geek Gab podcast

Wednesday, June 27th, 2018

I’m not a huge podcast junkie – my listening tends to ebb and flow as demands on my time change. However, Mac Geek Gab is one that always entertains, has great tips and information for getting the most out of your Mac, and helps with the weird little issues that inevitably crop up. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they’re big fans of St. Clair Software’s products, too – it’s nice to hear my name in lights every once in a while 🙂

So, as I was reminded by Dave’s mention of Jettison in their 13th Anniversary episode a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been tuning in for years now and think some of St. Clair Software’s customers might really enjoy and benefit from the podcast. So there you are – go give them a listen, support their sponsors, and learn some new tips and tricks!

I guess I’ve been at this a while… :-)

Saturday, September 9th, 2017

Michael Tsai and Jason Snell brought it to my attention that Default Folder is almost 30 years old. I guess that makes me a stubborn old man at this point…

https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/09/built-to-last/

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

Sal Soghoian’s position eliminated at Apple

Thursday, November 17th, 2016

Wait. Who? Sal Soghoian is Product Manager of Automation Technologies at Apple. That basically means he has been the motivating force behind AppleScript, Automator, application scriptability and the technologies that underly them. He’s been doing it for the last 20 years, and I don’t think most Mac users understand how important his influence has been to the platform we use and love. He’ll be leaving Apple on December 1, as his position has been “eliminated for business reasons.”

While I’ve met Sal several times, I don’t know him on a personal level. I’ve seen him speak numerous times, and like many long-time Mac developers, have benefited from his passion and consistent evangelism of system-level scriptability.

Why do I care? Indeed – why do we care about this? Well, let’s rewind a bit and set some groundwork for why Sal’s contributions matter so much.

Interoperability – from Copy/Paste to AppleScript. We all take copy and paste for granted – of course I can copy an image out of Photoshop and paste it into Mail, right? Well, it didn’t always work so easily – the Mac was the first major platform that standardized that by providing system-level support for standard image types and an extensible way to move them between applications. The key was that it was natively supported by the system, so developers could add it to their apps and it worked the same way, with the same basic data formats, in all applications. You could copy and paste between any applications.

Like copy and paste, in 1993 Apple added system-level support for scripting. Instead of every developer inventing their own custom scripting language that only worked in their application, Apple created AppleScript – and more crucially, AppleEvents beneath it that provided a rich way to send commands and data from one application to another. Many applications have scripting dictionaries built into them, letting you, or any application, send commands to do useful stuff.

Anyone can create simple or hugely complicated AppleScripts to do all sorts of things – from changing the format of all image files in a folder to automating email handling to batch-processing audio and video clips for movies. You can use all the best-of-breed tools on the Mac and string them into workflows that meet your specific needs. That’s always been one of the Mac’s big advantages – you can combine applications to accomplish more than any of the individual apps can do themselves. Apple’s Automator application even tried to make this accessible to everyone – with varying levels of success, depending on who you talk to.

But I don’t use AppleScript. So I don’t care, right? You may not directly use AppleScript, but many applications use AppleScript or AppleEvents in lots of little ways. iTunes, for example, lets you pause, play, go forward and backward a track, change playlists, add properties to songs, and a zillion other things. Those little iTunes controller apps that live in your menubar or dock? They use AppleScript to talk to iTunes. The ones that add lyrics to the currently playing song at the push of a button? Yup, AppleScript. Applications that grab the current page from your browser? AppleScript. The “contact us” button in an app that automatically creates an email in Mail with a subject and the To: address filled in? AppleScript. There’s probably something on your Mac that uses AppleScript or AppleEvents, even though you’re not aware of it.

So where does Sal come in? Sal is the guy at Apple who has kept this whole vision alive. He prodded developers to add AppleScript capabilities to their applications. He kept system-level scripting a priority – or at least on the radar – at Apple. He spoke at WWDC and numerous other conferences, showing how powerful the technology was. He explained to developers how a little work on their end could yield huge benefits for scripting-aware users.

My fear is that with Sal’s departure, Apple’s waning interest in scripting, and application interoperability in general, will be gone for good.

Losing interoperability. So if system-level scriptability disappears, what do we lose? For starters, it makes it harder for one application to talk to another or to use another application’s capabilities. Those iTunes controllers wouldn’t be able to talk to iTunes. My own product, Default Folder X, tracks your recently-used folders and then lets you go back to one of them in the Finder, Path Finder or Terminal. The latter two wouldn’t be possible (or would be much harder) without AppleScript. And when someone tweeted me that they wanted to use iTerm2 instead of Terminal, I could add that in 10 minutes because iTerm2 supports AppleScript.

Yes, those are little things, but sometimes they’re the little things that separate an acceptable application from an awesome one. I’ve always felt that the interoperability between Mac applications was one of the things that distinguished the Mac from other platforms like Windows. Even when you can get the same applications on both OS’s, everything is just tied together better on the Mac. I hope that doesn’t change.

Oh, and if you do use AppleScript? Yeah, this sucks even more.

Dash gone from the App Store – what the heck, Apple?

Thursday, October 6th, 2016

Just a random PSA for developers: This just happened:

https://blog.kapeli.com/apple-removed-dash-from-the-app-store#what-happened

Summary: Bogdan Popescu, the developer of Dash (one of the most awesome programmer’s reference tools ever), contacted Apple to convert his personal developer account into a company account. Apple started the process, then disabled his personal account and revoked his permission to sell apps on the App Store. It looks like another capricious and supremely unhelpful App Store move from Apple. Thanks guys – you make it so much fun to develop for your platforms.

Hey folks, I’m not out to get you!

Thursday, January 21st, 2016

I probably shouldn’t be writing this – I’ve certainly got better things to do with my time – but heck, this really gets to me. I’ve gotten several emails over the past week that are similar to this one:

I am fairly sure you sneakily intended to try to get me to have to BUY a new key for DF 5. Please note I used the word SNEAKILY. 

Sorry, it won’t work, I won’t be using it.  Maybe that is what you intended…

His email was in response to a mailing announcing Default Folder X 5, which said:

… And because you purchased an earlier version, you can upgrade to Default Folder X 5 for only $14.95 USD.

and gave the recipient a link to a web page that says:

If you bought a license before June 1, 2015, there is a $14.95 upgrade fee for version 5.

and which has a download button that shows you a page that says:

Before you install version 5, we’d like to make sure you know that you’ll be asked to pay a $14.95 upgrade fee if you purchased Default Folder X before June 1, 2015. We don’t want anyone to feel that they weren’t told about this before trying the new version.

So now – “SNEAKILY”? Really? I’ve tried to be as up-front about this as possible. Yes, I am asking you to buy a new key for Default Folder X 5. No doubt about that. It’s written everywhere. And based on the feedback I’ve gotten from the vast majority of folks out there, that’s entirely reasonable. I certainly think it is. The last time I charged for a Default Folder X upgrade was 8 years ago. Long enough that people had started sending me money out of the blue because they thought I should have charged them something by now for reliably supporting and upgrading the product for that long.

So listen folks. I’M NOT OUT TO GET YOU! Yes, I’m asking you to pay for software that saves you time and frustration on a daily basis. I’m not trying to sneak that by you. I’m not trying to dupe you. I’m not playing you for a fool. I’M RUNNING A BUSINESS. And yes, if you don’t think Default Folder X is worth as much as a meal at Denny’s, you certainly don’t have to buy the upgrade. It’s your choice – you can vote with your wallet.

Now to everyone else who’s sent me notes of congratulations, thanks, appreciation, and generally just been awesome – THANK YOU SO MUCH! You’re one of the big reasons that owning and running a small software company is so rewarding. I really appreciate your input and feedback.

Glad I got that off my chest 🙂

– Jon

Jettison 1.2.4 available on the Mac App Store – Finally

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

So after 4.5 weeks and a few prodding email exchanges back and forth with Apple, they finally got around to reviewing and approving the update for Jettison that adds support for Mountain Lion. Customers that purchased Jettison via the Mac App Store will now be notified that there’s an update and will be given the option to download it. If you’ve already visited our site and downloaded version 1.2.4, you’re up to date and don’t need to do anything more.

For more information on Jettison, or to download a demo or purchase a copy, take a look here: http://www.stclairsoft.com/Jettison/ If you prefer to find it on the Mac App Store and buy it there, by all means do so, but please be aware that you may get updates and bug fixes a month or more later if you buy it from Apple instead of through us.

Jettison 1.2.4 – Enough is Enough

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

So, I released Jettison 1.2.3 three weeks ago. It fixed some problems that Jettison was having with Mac OS 10.8.

I simultaneously submitted version 1.2.3 to the Mac App Store, since we sell it both directly from our website and through the App Store. Then I waited for it to be reviewed and approved. And waited. And waited. Customers who purchased Jettison through the Mac App Store sent emails, asking when the update would be available for them. The version available from the web site didn’t know that they’d purchased Jettison from Apple because we’re required to use a different licensing scheme for the Mac App Store vs. our direct-sale version.  “I don’t know,” I replied, “I’m waiting for Apple to review it and approve it for sale.” These customers were understandably annoyed, since the version they have doesn’t work well on Mountain Lion.

Yes, notice the present tense in that last sentence. “The version they HAVE…”  Folks who bought Jettison through the Mac App Store still don’t have an update, three weeks after it was finished and submitted for review.

So I’m sick of waiting and telling our customers to wait for the update to be available via the Mac App Store.  Here’s Jettison 1.2.4 – it fixes a sound problem when you’ve got your speakers muted, but more importantly, it recognizes the receipt embedded in versions of Jettison purchased through the Mac App Store. That means that people who purchased Jettison via the Mac App Store can now upgrade to this version by simply downloading a copy and running it once from the disk image before copying it to their Applications folder to replace their old copy.

I have no idea why Jettison 1.2.3’s status in iTunesConnect is still “waiting for review.” When I asked, Apple sent a non-committal email saying “Please be assured that your app has not been forgotten. Unfortunately we cannot provide an estimate of when a review will start or how long it will take to complete due to the variety of factors that contribute to the review process.” Thanks guys.

If you want real customer service and timely updates, buy software directly from the developers. We want to support our products and give you timely updates. The Mac App Store makes it harder to do that.