What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning I saw that the Growl Team had moved off their traditional web site download system of distribution to a more commercially-viable version on the Mac App Store. The $2.00 price was really just to be able to keep things going, and I can't grudge them that. They have made some major changes - like a complete re-write of the entire codebase. They are saying that it's all about Lion now, and Growl 1.3 is Lion-only.

Additionally, there's no more Preferences Pane - it's just an app, and there's a lot of plusses to that approach to be sure. It's easier to manipulate, easier to get through Apple App Approval, and easier to update. The downside is that the new version isn't totally backward compatible, and that means that several of my apps are not exactly working 100% right with this new version.

But they'll come in time.

I have questions about iMessage in iOS 5, but that appears to be an iOS-only feature. It would have been interesting to see Apple's take on Growl-like notifications, but that seems to be off in the distance. In any case, this is a less-intrusive way to put Growl notifications in the system. Very nice.

I just hope the other vendors notice this and update their Growl frameworks soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 at 9:20 am and is filed under Everything Else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.