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Patch 5.4 PTR: The Rise of Riposte and other tank changes
Okay, before we get into it, always remember this is datamined information from the next PTR and none of it is guaranteed to make it live. That being said, there are some interesting changes in the pipeline for tanks in patch 5.4, not the least of which is the creation of Riposte, an ability for warriors and death knights. The reason Riposte is interesting is because it seems to be a means to convert parry and dodge into critical strike, which means several things. First, you'll be less likely to stack critical strike as a tank (warriors were at least thinking about it with the change to Enrage, including Shield Slam and Devastate) and secondly, it makes those purely defensive stats work as threat generators, increased the low tank DPS of the warrior tank (and perhaps the DK tank as well, although I'd not heard any complaints about low DK tank DPS) and it must be noted, is not an ability that druid, paladin or monk tanks will be getting. I find this very interesting, especially combined with the changes to Dark Command, Reckoning, Growl and Taunt. All of these abilities will now not only force a target to attack the tank in question, but will also increase her threat by 200% for 3 seconds. This means that, even if you are tanking a boss or mob that you already have threat on, these four abilities will still increase your threat overall when used, meaning that if you hit a taunt while tanking it will still have a positive effect on your threat. It's worth noting that hunter pet Growl works exactly the same - hunter pets will also get the extra 200% threat over the three seconds. We're clearly not even remotely done with tweaks and fixes in patch 5.4, but by themselves these changes suggest that tanking is definitely going to see its fair share. The change to taunts is the biggest change to how taunting works that has ever happened, and the inclusion of Riposte goes one step further towards making avoidance also provide threat.
Twitter for Mac 2.2.1 brings Notification Center support, various bug fixes
It's certainly been a long time coming, but the latest version (2.2.1) of Twitter for Mac finally brings support for Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion. Aside from the side-pane pings for your @replies and DMs, a number of fixes have been implemented that should stabilize your experience some more. Most notably, Growl users on Lion and Mountain Lion can enjoy receiving notifications again. The update is available directly from the Mac App Store right now, so hit the source link if you're interested.
Terminally Geeky: How to tell if a script is being called from launchd
Warning: command line geekiness ahead. When writing shell scripts, I often send interactive output to the user via echo to give feedback or information. But if the shell script is called on a schedule via OS X's behind-the-scenes process launcher launchd, rather than from a Terminal session, chances are that I won't ever see that message. Fortunately, it's relatively easy to figure out if a shell script has been called from launchd or not, simply by checking the $PPID variable. (Note: this works in zsh and may work in bash as well. If it doesn't work in your shell, this is a good time to upgrade to zsh.) But how can I make sure my messages are seen if a shell script has been called via launchd? For that I use the Swiss Army Knife of notification tools, Growl. Specifically, I use the growlnotify optional package, which allows me to send Growl notifications from shell scripts. For example, imagine that I wrote a script where I wanted to tell the user that a certain process had succeeded or failed. Normally I might just use echo 'SUCCESS!' or echo 'FAILED!' But now, instead of 'echo' I use a function called msg (short for 'message'). If the script was called from launchd then msg will use growlnotify, but if the script was called from the command line, it will just use echo. Here's how that works: This method is not foolproof. For example, if you call a shell script from launchd and that shell script calls another shell script, it might not realize that it was originally executed from launchd. In practice, I have not run into that problem, but it did seem worth mentioning.
Archive your pasteboard using Flycut
I often find myself wishing that I could retrieve something that I had cut or copied earlier in the day, or maybe even longer ago than that. So I decided to make an archive of my pasteboard, and store it on Dropbox so I can easily retrieve something later. There are lots of programs out there which will offer to save your pasteboard or do all sorts of complicated things with it. I was looking for something simple, and I found just what I wanted in Flycut, a free program based on an older app called Jumpcut which hasn't been updated since January 2009. Configure Flycut Flycut is available for free from the Mac App Store and requires OS X 10.6.6 or later. After downloading it, launch it and set the preferences as shown here: You can set it to "Remember" anywhere from 10 to 99 entries, and display five to 99. Set those to whatever you like. The most important part is to make sure that you choose "After each clip" for the "save" frequency. Everything else relies on that setting being correct. Download and install a shell script flycutmonitor.sh is a shell script which automatically saves your pasteboard to a file anytime the pasteboard changes. Download it, make sure it is executable (chmod 755 flycutmonitor.sh) and move it to /usr/local/bin/flycutmonitor.sh. By default, your clipboard will be saved to ~/Dropbox/TEMP/flycutmonitor.sh/. If you want to change that, edit the DIR= line in flycutmonitor.sh. The folder will be created if needed. Also, if growlnotify is installed, the script will show the current clipboard via Growl whenever it changes. If you do not want Growl notifications, set GROWL=no in flycutmonitor.sh (look in the file, you'll see where to make the change). Last but not least: launchd Download com.tjluoma.flycutmonitor.plist and copy it to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/. Edit the line which begins with /Users/luomat/Library/ and change luomat to whatever your username is on your Mac. (If you do not do this, nothing will work.) run launchctl load com.tjluoma.flycutmonitor.plist or log out and then back in. To test it, simply cut or copy some text You should see a new file created in the folder that you specified, and a Growl notification should appear, unless Growl is not installed or disabled. One final note: I do not recommend having Flycut save its settings to Dropbox, but if you do change that, be sure to change the appropriate line in the com.tjluoma.flycutmonitor.plist file from: ~/Library/Application Support/Flycut/com.generalarcade.flycut.plist to ~/Dropbox/Preferences/com.generalarcade.flycut.plist where ~ is the full path to your home directory. (Do not use a literal ~ in this case, it will not work.)
The Twitter Client Project: Echofon
I love Echofon. It was among the first apps I bought for iOS, and remains to this day on my devices. When it hopped to OS X, I was delighted and immediately installed a copy. I'm still using it. Only one problem. Naan Studio discontinued it last October. It still works great, however, and probably will until Twitter drops support for its 1.0 API. My love for this no-longer-supported app, however, continues -- even if it's beginning to feel a little like appnecrophilia. Kelly H pulled me to the side, the other day. It was time for an intervention. Although TUAW has done individual reviews an any number of Twitter apps, she wanted me to start looking at popular clients with the angle of searching for a replacement. It was, she pointed out, long since time to move on from Echofon. She, another Echofon fan, had dropped it a few months ago after Naan said they would stop development. We quickly realized how individualized client choice is. There are things I love about Echofon that speak strongly to me, but may not be essential for other users: I love how I can click on the dock icon and my feed appears and disappears. It's just one click and one window. I love how the layout is vertical, with icons on the top, and tweets displayed using the full window width. I love the default fonts and whitespace. It may not be the prettiest client, but it's extra readable for those of us with bad eyes. I love the customizable notification controls, with highlight words and Growl support. I love the minimality of the interface, like the simple + button (versus, for example, the official Twitter client's huge "Save" button) that transforms searches into saved items. I love that it adds information I want like the time the tweet was posted -- missing in the official Twitter client. I love the conversation bubble integration with the side-drawer. Even better, the drawer has a history feature, so I can walk back. In the best of all worlds, of course, a public outcry would force Naan to bring Echofon for OS X back -- renewing support for a great client. (Hashtag hint: #bringBackEchofonForOSX) In this world, however, I have promised Kelly to start road testing Twitter clients. I'll be doing this slowly, probably one every week or two, and writing up my experiences. If you have any OS X clients you'd like to request I look at or features you want me to pay special attention to, drop a note on our feedback page. In the mean time, let's kick things off here in the comments. What OS X Twitter client do you use and why do you love it?
Finding Dropbox 'conflicted copy' files automatically
Dropbox is a great tool, but if you use it on more than one computer, you are bound to find conflicted copies eventually. A conflicted copy is created when the same file is edited on two different computers at the same time, or close enough that Dropbox cannot tell which one is the newest. The good news is that Dropbox creates these conflicted copies instead of trying to guess which file is the one that you want. The bad news is that if you don't notice that Dropbox has created a "conflicted copy, you might start using the wrong file. Unfortunately Dropbox does not alert you when a conflicted copy is created, you have to search for it yourself. Here is an example of a conflicted file: Settings (TJ Luoma's conflicted copy 2013–01–09).textexpander As you can probably guess, the original filename is Settings.textexpander and Dropbox has added the words "conflicted copy" and the date in parentheses, as well as the username. (The username can be helpful if you find a conflict in a shared folder.) Doing it is easy, remembering to do it is hard. I've known that Dropbox creates these files for years, but do I ever remember to look for them? Nope. In fact, I don't even try to remember to look for them. Instead, I have a shell script which does that for me. The shell script runs every five minutes via launchd, and if it finds any conflicts, it alerts me using Growl and growlnotify. It uses a "sticky" notification in Growl, which means that it will not go away until I click on it (but the notification also has a unique ID so only one notification will ever appear on-screen at any given time). Installation Download dropbox-launchd-conflicted-copy.sh to /usr/local/bin/ and make sure it's executable (chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/dropbox-launchd-conflicted-copy.sh). Move com.tjluoma.check-for-dropbox-conflicted-copies.plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and then either 1) run this line in Terminal: launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.check-for-dropbox-conflicted-copies.plist or 2) log out and back in. How do you find the conflicts once you know that they exist? There are two options that you can use once you are alerted that there are conflicts in your Dropbox. The first is Spotlight, the second is dropbox-launchd-conflicted-copy.sh. Option A) Use Spotlight. Create a search which looks for filenames that match "'s conflicted copy". Actually, you don't even have to make one; you can just download this one DropboxConflicted.savedSearch and move it to ~/Library/Saved Searches/. You might even want to add that to the Finder's sidebar. Note: Once the Saved Search is there, you can even use it with mdfind in Terminal: mdfind -s 'DropboxConflicted' -onlyin "$HOME/Dropbox" Or, if you don't have a saved search, you can use Spotlight on the command line like this: mdfind -name "'s conflicted copy" -onlyin ~/Dropbox Option B) Use find. Call me an old crotchety Unix nerd (pause), but I still prefer the Unix find command instead of Spotlight. Asking Spotlight to look for something is like asking my 10 year old: if he comes back and says that he couldn't find it, I always wonder how hard he really looked. On the other hand: find ~/Dropbox/ -path "*(*'s conflicted copy [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]*" -print This always gives me reliable results, and it only takes a few seconds. But wait, there's more! The dropbox-launchd-conflicted-copy.sh script is "context aware." When it runs via launchd it gives you the Growl notification shown above, but if it on the command line, it will present you with a list of all of the conflicted files that it found. Just launch Terminal.app, type dropbox-launchd-conflicted-copy.sh and press enter. If you don't have any conflicted files, it will say "No conflicts found" and you can rely on launchd to keep an eye on it in the future.
Growl 2.0 works with Mountain Lion notifications
Good news for Growl users running Mountain Lion. The notification system has been updated to version 2.0 with support for OS X's built-in Notification Center. Now you can choose to have messages pop up in Growl or get pushed to Notification Center, keeping everything in one place. Also, Growl has support for more apps than Mountain Lion does, as it has been around for much longer. It's like getting Notification Center support for a whole lot of apps all at once. This update also supports Prowl and Boxcar, further enhancing your mobile notification options. This is a free update for current Growl owners. Newcomers will pay US$4.
Growl 2.0 SDK available, adds Notification Center integration
Growl has made its 2.0 SDK available, weeks after announcing that it planned to add a Notification Center action display to the program rather than letting it get Sherlocked by OS X Mountain Lion. The SDK also adds improvements to the Mist positioning system and various bugfixes. The 2.0 SDK and the older 1.3.1 SDK are both available through Growl's downloads page. [Via The Verge]
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me customize notifications
Dear Aunt TUAW, I have several Mail accounts. One for work, one personal, and one that gets a lot of junk. I like all of them to come into my Mail app, but I don't need a notification in Mountain Lion every time a piece of junk mail comes through. Is there a way to only enable notifications for certain accounts? Your loving nephew, Billy Dear Billy, Sadly, there isn't a way Auntie knows of to do this with OS X Mountain Lion tools, but why not consider using Growl instead? Growl is the spiritual grandfather to Notification Center. Auntie pinged Uncle Chris from the Growl Project to see what he recommended for you. He pointed Auntie this page, which offers a handy walk through plus an AppleScript that you can customize to your needs. Auntie asked him about Notification Center integration. He replied that the upcoming Growl 2 will be able to forward custom updates to Notification Center instead of using Growl's display. Thanks, Uncle Chris! Auntie brainstormed up with a new motto for the Growl project in appreciation: "Growl: Drinking Notification Center's milkshake since OS X 10.8." Hugs! Auntie T.
Growl 2.0 and Mountain Lion Notification Center: working together
Growl (US$1.99) is a favorite tool for many of the bloggers at TUAW. For those of you unfamiliar with Growl, it's currently the notification tool of choice for a lot of Mac users. When someone updates a shared Dropbox folder, for instance, or uses my name on the Colloquy IRC client, Growl lets me know by showing a floating window noting which app wants my attention and why. Sounds like Notification Center in Mountain Lion, doesn't it? Well, the developers of Growl announced yesterday that they'll be coexisting with Mountain Lion's Notification Center rather than suffer the fate of being "Sherlocked" by Apple (a term meaning that Apple builds functionality into an OS release or app that usurps the need for a third-party app). Growl's Chris Forsythe drew a roadmap for users and devs in a blog post yesterday, noting that "For Growl 2 we're simply going to add a Notification Center action display as well. This is going to make it easy for anyone who wants to see notifications in Growl, and also in Notification Center." A new architecture will let Growl 2 handle visual notifications and actions separately. Forsythe says "You could have a Smoke display, and the Mail Me action fire from the same notification if you want." Notification Center will only work with Mac App Store apps, while Growl 2 can allow apps that are sold externally and approved through Gatekeeper to enable desktop notification. [via MacStories]
Encrypted Text: Rogues can actually tank
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. In the original WoW beta, rogues were designed to be off tanks. Complete with a high dodge coefficient from agility and a buckler, rogues could survive quite a beating. Evasion was a tanking cooldown, and Vanish was a useful tank-swapping ability. Hunters worked similarly, also sporting bucklers and using Feign Death to lose aggro. Obviously, the developers scrapped both of these ideas before launch. During The Burning Crusade, Gaeowyn broke the combat table by achieving unhittable status with 102.63% avoidance and using it to successfully slay Illidan. After that, the crew slew Gruul with just five people while it was still relevant content. In Wrath, Jider abused Shadowstep and our amazing damage output to solo several Naxxramas bosses. The upcoming Mists expansion looks to again revitalize rogue tanking, with the advent of the druid ability Symbiosis and our bonus ability, Growl.
Musicality: AirPlay popular music services to enabled speakers
Musicality (US$9.99) offers one-app access to Pandora, Last.fm, and Grooveshark streaming music services. What's more, it adds in extra features that integrate with Growl notifications (so you can immediately see what song is playing, even when the app itself is hidden) and AirPlay. It's this latter feature that had me asking to take a look at the app. With AirPlay, you can stream your music from your computer to any AirPort Express, AirPlay-enabled speaker system, or Apple TV. Musicality offers separate destination and volume controls for each AirPlay destination it finds on your local network. If you wish, you can mute your computer and send your music exclusively to your AirPlay speakers. In my testing, the app worked exactly as promised. It took just seconds for me to create a new Pandora radio station and start it playing back on the (good) speakers attached to the Apple TV. Local volume control meant I could adjust that playback without having to stand up and walk over to tweak the physical knobs. Beyond AirPlay, the app seems to be a solid player. I admit my interests were pretty much limited to choosing music and playing them remotely and Musicality ably provided those features. Musicality also offers support for the integrated keyboard media keys found on most Apple keyboards and works without need for opening a browser. You can give Musicality a free try for 10 days via a time limited demo. If you like it, it's just US$10 to purchase. We were curious how the new Mountain Lion preview and its built-in screen streaming might affect the future of Musicality. TUAW contacted Industrious One Owner Jason Perkins. He told TUAW, "I've had a chance to check it out, and I am confident that AirPlay mirroring will not negatively effect Musicality in any way. Display mirroring isn't of much benefit to us, but our built-in AirPlay support continues to work great, and the new share sheets, notifications, and other new APIs will only make it better."
Best of 2011 Nominations: Best Mac Utility Apps
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. Today's category for Best of 2011 nominations is Mac utility apps. This category consists of many different apps if you take a look in the Mac App Store. Twitter is considered a utility, as is Dave Caolo's favorite app Alfred. Do you love Growl? It's also on the list. DropCopy Pro could be your favorite helper, or maybe Blotter enhances your desktop. There are a ton of utilities out there on the Mac App Store or available from other sources. Just leave a comment below with your nomination for the best Mac utility app of 2011, and if we get enough interest in a specific app, it'll be included in the voting in a few days. Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 9, 2011.
Growl developers describe the app's major changes
Growl, the notification system for Mac OS X, was recently updated to version 1.3. While "dot updates" to apps usually don't signal a major change, that's not the case with the latest version of Growl. In a post on the Growl blog, the team described the major changes that have taken place: Growl is no longer free. The app has a full-time development team, and all of the money made from the sale of the app on the Mac App Store goes toward supporting the continuing development. Growl is available for US$1.99, and the team reported that without moving to a paid app model, development would have ceased. It's still, however, an open source project. Growl doesn't have to be installed for you to get notifications. When developers update their apps to take advantage of Growl 1.3, Growl no longer has to be installed for users to get notifications. As the team puts it, "Think of these updated applications as Growl, and the Growl application as Growl Pro. The Growl 1.3 SDK includes a framework which can display a notification, even if Growl is not available." Growl 1.3 supports sandboxed applications. Sandboxing is becoming a requirement for any application on the Mac App Store, and would have broken Growl had the team not made changes. The team says that Growl 1.2 and earlier will no longer work with sandboxed apps. Out-of-date apps don't work with Growl 1.3. Some apps will need to be updated in order to work with the new version. Developers can contact the Growl team for assistance, and users can download Growl Version Detective to determine if an app works properly with Growl. It's still Open Source. The team says that Growl "will remain Open Source for as long as people want to be able to modify the code." The source code is available at their Google Code Hosting project under the BSD license.
Growl 1.3 now available on the Mac App Store
Growl, perhaps the most well-known and popular notification system for OS X, has just released version 1.3 as a Mac App Store exclusive. The previously free notification system has become a paid app with Growl 1.3. As Macstories points out, the reason the Growl team decided to make what was previously a free System Preferences pane into a US$1.99 app was so users would be provided with an up-to-date app utilizing the latest Apple technologies. So what's new with Growl 1.3? Almost everything. Growl has been rewritten from the ground up using a new architecture, sporting a new UI, and adding lots of features previous iterations of Growl never had. But not to worry, Growl 1.3 still retains everything you loved about Growl 1.2, they've just added a lot of cool new features to it. Among the coolest new features is a Notification Center-like Rollup window. The window, which is accessed from the Finder's menu bar (where you find Growl now), keeps a history of all your notifications that you've received from various apps that use Growl. This is especially handy when you're away from your computer and want to see what notifications you missed. Growl 1.3 is $1.99 in the Mac App Store. Users also can still download the free System Preference pane version 1.2.2 here.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: HardwareGrowler
Have you ever wanted to keep an eye on what's happening with the hardware on your system using pop-up notifications? Well a little known extra to a very well known program called Growl could be just the ticket. HardwareGrowler (HwG) comes packed with Growl in the "Extras" folder on the Growl disk image (as seen above) and can be installed just like any other application. Once up and running, HwG will notify you of any hardware changes to your system. If the MagSafe adapter gets yanked out or the power cuts out, HwG will tell you. If you plug in a USB drive or a network drive disconnects, HwG will let you know. In fact if anything changes behind the scenes on the hardware front HwG has you covered. It's a nice simple application that has no user-configurable preferences to speak of, simply launch and you're ready to go. If you want to change the style or sounds associated with the notifications all you have to do is change it in the Growl Preference pane. HwG has a persistent dock icon, but you can get rid of manually with quick tweak. So if you've been after a program to notify you if your MacBook gets accidentally unplugged, or you lose connection to a vital network or network drive, HardwareGrowler is a brilliant free little utility that you probably already have but just didn't know it. HardwareGrowler can be downloaded as part of the free Growl package from Growl.info. Thanks to miguelpontes for the suggestion.
Interview: Growl's project lead on coming to the Mac App Store
After the news yesterday that the popular notification service Growl was officially coming to the Mac App Store with the release of OS X Lion, TUAW tracked down Project Lead Christopher Forsythe and had a quick conversation about the reasons behind the decision and the future of Growl in general. Forsythe says that the change to the Mac App Store has been discussed "amongst ourselves for probably about two or three months now," and that using Apple's official store "just makes sense." Perhaps the biggest piece of news we learned from Forsythe is that in the Mac App Store, for the first time since its creation seven years ago, Growl will not be free. Devs working on the project are "still talking" about the final price, but "it most likely will be a dollar or two dollars at most," according to Forsythe. Some may turn up their noses at paying anything for the results of an open source project, but Forsythe says the reasoning behind the charge is simple: "I'm a grown adult," he says, "and my wife wonders why I spend time working on my open source project and not with my two-month old." For all the work Forsythe and his fellow devs have put into Growl, a few bucks seems little to ask. Money is also involved in the other main reason the team wants to move to the Mac App Store. If nothing else, they're offloading the issue of actual distribution to Apple. "We don't have to worry about supporting a download infrastructure any more," says Forsythe, "and that's huge for us." Currently, bandwidth for distributing Growl is all handed by CacheFly pro bono, but Forsthye has seen huge charges covered by them in the past, and the one time the project switched to Google Code, Forsythe says all of Google's bandwidth was eaten up in "a couple of hours, a very short period of time." Yesterday, we heard that some of the more technical Growl services would be dying off because of the switchover, but Forsythe says that's not exactly true. While perception has it that the Mac App Store is ruling out a few Growl services, many of the changes are just so he can focus his team on what customers actually use, and not as much on edge use cases. Services like GrowlMail and GrowlSafari won't be officially supported in the Mac App Store version, but anyone who wants to use those services will still be able to download a PKG installer from the Growl website and be off on their merry way. That's good news for average users like myself and others. Forsythe plans to put his team working on the core Growl app, and let other developers deal with the more complicated function and addons. As for developers of apps that hook into Growl, Forsythe says it's pretty simple: if anyone currently uses the Growl with Installer framework (which allows third-party apps to actually install Growl if users don't have it), they'll have to switch over to the one standard framework the app will be using. The Growl team has had a lot of complaints from users who believe Growl is spyware because a developer uses it to post less-than-helpful notifications ("It's really annoying," he says), so the new Growl framework won't actually install the whole app. The way it will work is that in the new framework, developers who want to use Growl without having it on the user's system will get a simplified version of the notification to run, with just one style in just one place on the screen. "So if the user doesn't have Growl installed," says Forsythe, "they can use Smoke notification in the top corner. If the end user wants to configure that, they'll need to install Growl." That seems like a good balance; it allows devs to take advantage of Growl and its basic function, then send customers on to the full app if they want more features out of it. Finally, Forsythe says that revamping the code like this is giving his team an opportunity to really focus on what they want Growl to be going forward. While the average user won't "miss anything," according to Forsythe, it's true that some services will need to be worked on outside the official Growl team. "If [a service] takes up the same amount of resources it takes to put a cool feature into Growl itself, I'd rather we put the work into Growl itself." That work means we'll see updates to the core app, like a new feature called RollUp that will help get rid of what Forsythe calls "screen spam." Instead of having your screen fill with a bunch of notifications, you'll get just one note after a while that will then expand out into a log of notifications you may have missed. That sounds great, and hopefully we'll see more helpful features like that going forward. Growl has been a solid addition to the Mac lineup throughout its history, and it's exciting to see the open source effort join Apple's official store. There will undoubtedly be some growing pains, but in general, this seems like an excellent move for Growl, and it should be a nice app to add to the Mac App Store's offerings.
Growl coming to the Mac App Store as a full application
Growl is one of my favorite things about the Mac platform -- it's a notification service whose customization and power is unmatched on anything I've seen in other operating systems. And it's going through some changes in the near future: Project Lead Christopher Forsythe has posted on the Growl Google Group that as of version 1.3, Growl will move from a notification service into a full app, mainly to be included in the actual Mac App Store. That has quite a few ramifications, both good and bad. The first is that Growl will be able to take advantage of everything the App Store offers, including ease of installation and upgrades, as well as discovery and any future features planned for Mac App Store apps. But the flip side is that anything the Mac App Store doesn't allow obviously won't be allowed in Growl, so those services (which currently include GrowlMail and GrowlSafari) will be retired completely. This also means that Growl will become an app only for OS 10.7+, so 10.6 (Snow Leopard, the current version) and earlier will not be officially supported. Forsythe says the Lion upgrade is relatively cheap, and it will help the app more to move forward with Apple's OS rather than have to deal with customers who don't upgrade. There's a lot to deal with here, and there will certainly be more issues and questions that come out as the new version enters the Mac App Store along with Lion. He also says that "these are not all of the changes coming," so don't waste all your shock right away on this one. I love Growl and plan to keep using it through the Mac App Store after Lion's release, but a lot of users who might depend on it for specific and edge case scenarios might be left in the lurch. We'll have to wait and see.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: UnPlugged
The Magsafe is a fantastic innovation, but it has made it slightly easier to disconnect your Mac from the AC outlet by accident without realising it. UnPlugged is a little free utility that notifies you via Growl when the power cord is disconnected. Now it's true that if you're running a portable Mac the screen is set to dim automatically on battery power by default, plus the power icon in the menu bar is set to change between a battery symbol to one with a AC plug. But if you happen to be running your Mac solely with an external display, it could be easy to miss the warning signs that you're now running on battery power. UnPlugged runs in the background keeping out of your way till its called upon. It'll also display updates on charge status, notifying you on changes in power percentage intervals, which you can set with a slider from 1% to 50%. Just like apps like DiskAlarm, UnPlugged doesn't do anything that Mac OS X doesn't do for you already, but it does make it more obvious and could be the alert you need to keep you from running out of juice when you thought you were plugged in. If you need a simple power notifier, give UnPlugged a whirl and download it for free from the Mac App Store.
iPhone receives push notifications from real-world mailbox
Sure, push notification is nothing new for iPhone users. But when was the last time that you received notification that real-live mail -- the kind made of atoms, not bits -- has shown up in your mailbox? One of the new evil geniuses at Make Magazine online, Matt Richardson, decided he'd like to get notification when the flesh-and-blood mailman delivers something to his mailbox. Using a standard USPS-approved mailbox, he installed a snap-action switch that signals when the mailbox door has been opened. That switch is connected via wire (yeah, I was also surprised that it wasn't wireless) to an Arduino. Some simple code watches for the mailbox door to be opened and closed, and then grabs a piece of PHP code from a web server that also has to be running. The PHP and web server are necessary since Matt is using the Prowl: Growl Client app (US$2.99) to get the push notifications. Prowl requires an SSL connection, which that Arduino can't make. As Matt notes, the end product is something that can send push notifications to your iPhone whenever some physical state changes -- when the garage door is left open, when home power usage exceeds a certain level, etc... Any switch or sensor connected to the Arduino can send a push alert. There's video of the construction and use of the setup on page 2. [Tip of the hat to Boing Boing and Gizmodo]
