Xounds 2.1 is out.

Features:

• Updated for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.
• Added the volume slider to control the volume of the Xounds sound effects. (woohoo!!)
• Added support for Rogue Amoeba's Detour v1.2.

more info

Hi,

It's been a while since I posted anything to the blog. There are many reasons for that, and none are related to the fact I am bored of blogging or anything close to that lines.

The main reason was a lot of hassle with getting an office set up. We're a small company, spread all over the world (well, OK, across USA and Russia ;), and we all depend entirely on Unsanity and how well our products do, as we don't have side jobs or anything like that (I ocassionally do some side projects, actually, but only if they are interesting and not taking me down for a long time... See MUMenu for example). So our future is dpenedant on how will we perform as a company... Lately we've been doing some reorganizations on the Russian side and now I am working in an office, rather than from home. We have hired a new programmer, so the office is 2 (or 3, when Pavel, our lead beta tester, comes over) geeks sitting together mashing buttons and listening to all sorts of weird music.

The result? We will be able to deliver better products and a more reasonable pace, and develop new ones. We have a few more products in our minds scheduled for implementation, and now it is finally possible to break out of the update loop for a few hours per day and work on something new.

Regarding Panther updates on my side... Xounds 2.1 will probably be out tonight, or tomorrow. FruitMenu is still in the fixing (I have to resolve the contextual menu modules issue), so my best guess would be probably beginning of the next week for the release. Sorry for keeping you waiting for so long!

I'll be more frequent on posts from now on again, now when the office is set up and running... ;)

Not quite a haxie. But I present the Menu Extra Enabler 1.0.1 Beta. There is nothing super about it.

Please test it. No matter what version of Mac OS X you are running.

Version 1.0.1

• This is not a bug fix. Panther introduces a Keychain Access menu extra (Open /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access then open the View menu and choose "Show Status in Menu Bar"). Oddly enough, even though this menu extra comes from Apple is not "Apple approved" so it installs something called Enable.menu that enables the Keychain menu extra but disables all third party menu extras the next time the user logs in or reboots. MEE now prevents Enable.menu from loading (but does not prevent the Keychain Access Menu Extra from loading). In other words:
• Fixes incompatibility with Enable.menu

Those great folks over at MacUpdate have added a special subcategory for ShapeShifter. So you can now track the latest released themes that are compatible with ShapeShifter. They will appear on the front page just like the other updated software as well as on their own subcategory.

The subcategory is located at http://www.macupdate.com/utilities.php?sub=10

So, if you're an artist and you have a .guiKit or .dlta theme ready to rock, submit it to MacUpdate via the submission form. And if you're a user with a passion for themes, check out the category every once in a while.

So um, VT, do something equally cool for us? ;)

After massive amounts of keyboard bloodying, I'm proud to announce the release of Unsanity's ShapeShifter, the first true solution to Mac OS X theming.

From the Read Me:

ShapeShifter is a revolutionary new product that lets you change the overall appearance of your Mac using 'themes'. We're not talking about just desktop backgrounds and icons here, we're talking about everything - the look of windows, menus, buttons, absolutely everything. You don't wear the same clothes everyday, your house doesn't look exactly like your neighbor's - why should the computing interface you use everyday be any different. You personalize your physical workspace to suit your tastes and whims, so why not your Mac?

With ShapeShifter, you can:

Change the overall appearance of your operating system safely, quickly, and reliably

Experience things that haven't been possible with Mac themes before

Quickly preview themes without actually applying them

Use Jaguar themes in Panther effortlessly

Install different themes for different users

Keep your themes wherever you please on your hard drive

Add and remove themes effortlessly

Check out ShapeShifter's Homepage

Here is a super alpha build of Menu Master.

- Completely rewrote menu handling. This may break apps that used to work with Menu Master. This may fix apps that didn't. Old preferences are not carried over. New preferences will not appear in the preference pane.

It does not yet work with InDesign. That's the reason for this alpha. I do not want to have to spend all that time on making InDesign work just to find out there is some major logic flaw in Menu Master that would cause it to be rewritten.

Only the APE is included. If you do not know how to install it, this download is not for you. If you do not know how to use Menu Master, this download is not for you.

By the way, due to the menu rewriting, Menu Master now (should) work in the Application menu. So now you can finally remove that lame shortcut for Block Pop-Up windows. Seriously, what lame person decided Command K would be a good shortcut when Command L takes you to the address bar? They are RIGHT next to eachother. I cannot say without embarrassment how many times I have accidently hit command k when I meant to go to the address bar.

A huge post about Japan is forthcoming. It will explain all.

Email me at my name at unsanity.com. That's .com.

Hrphm, smartgirl63_\@yahoo.com

Edit: Ya know... it might help if our server understood .sitx... Does now.

Take a gander (wow, now there is a sweeet word!) at this thread:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=189036

I found it to be interesting anyway....thought I'd share. ;)

I've been meaning to blog about Panther for a while. This has been done all over the web already, but if just for my sake alone, here is:

Random Panther Thoughts in NPO:

• Panther is Fast - There is an immediately noticeable speed increase in Panther. Of course we all love that. :)
• Smooth Scrolling - It's not perfect, but I find I like it much better than without. My eye seems to not get lost as easily while browsing a long web page in Safari.
• Exposé - Very cool! No question about the wow factor on this one. I love showing it off to my PC friends. They wonder how to do that on their Windows machine. I just laugh. :) Now I just have to actually use it...thus far I never remember to use it when it would actually improve productivity instead of kill time wow-ing others. ;)
• Postfix - I was happy to see Apple included postfix and made it very easy to enable and start using. I have yet to get it configured exactly how I want, but most users don't try to use it to send to their mailing list either. ;)
• Mail - I switched to Mail.app for my email needs in 10.2 on my office machine. I continued to use Eudora at home. Now I admit I've gone completely over to Mail. The Panther update to Mail is a huge improvement for my needs. The speed is definitely my favorite new feature. I deal with a large amount of email, and Jaguar Mail was painfully slow at fetching email.
• Bluetooth - Okay, so this one is not necessarily Panther, but since the first time I used Bluetooth was on my G5 under Panther, I'm putting it in this post! I used it to transfer files and apps to my Palm Tungsten T. Wow, very cool! I love wireless! There is just something inherently cool about not having any cords or wires and adding a new time killing game to my Palm. :)
• System Profiler - It's about freakin' time! That thing was so dog-slow before that I dreaded any circumstance that made me have cause to launch it. Vastly improved both in speed and interface.
• Disk Utility - Not much of a fan. Early in the seed process, I couldn't find my trusty Disk Copy, and it surprised me to find the functionality had migrated to Disk Utility. A friend who is new to macs tried to use it to burn a CD and was pretty confused. I don't think that was a wise move.
• Preview - Well, it's fast and improved in about every way. Great stuff.
• "New" Aqua - It really has grown on me. My first impression was not good. (WWDC Developer Preview) But after using it for a while, I find that I much prefer it over the Jaguar Aqua.
• Networking (Finder) - Wow, it sucks. This thread at MacNN talks about many of the same issues I have had.
• Finder - I won't bother to go over what's new, but I do like it better than the "old" Finder. Not anywhere near perfect, but it's improved imho.
• FUS - With all the fuss about FUS (haha!) if you haven't tried it out, you should. I don't share my computer with other users (greedy I am), but I still find the need to switch to other user accounts fairly often. And that cube thingy makes Fast User Switching a joy.
• Stability - Last and definitely least, is stability. For some odd reason, I have had three complete freezes (OS 9-ish!) and one no-wake-from-sleep. I did not have these problems before with Jaguar. At this point I am not blaming it on Panther. I tend to test a bunch of alpha software and do various other mean things to my computer, so it may be my fault. More time and investigation is required.

So if you can't tell, overall I really like Panther. I think Apple has done a great job with it. I still wonder at a whole bunch of things they could or should have done. Why the option to make icons in the Dock semi-transparent when they're hidden is not a standard option the the preference pane is just one example. The Dock feels aged now. It hasn't had any major changes in too long. Plenty of room for improvement there Apple, get on it! ;)

Now for that elusive Apple branded two-button mouse...(don't flame me, I want it and nothing anyone says it going to change that!! ;) )

UPDATE: I just crashed the Finder in 10.3 and got a chuckle...there was no "submit a bug report to Apple?" option as there usually is. I guess they don't want *that* many reports coming in. ;) Oh, and yeah, it was while trying to connect to my office mac from home that it "beachball of death"-ed me and then crashed completely. It connected fine, but timed out while trying to browse. I still love Panther btw.

I've been working on the Panther update for FruitMenu, and was planning to add an option to invoke a screen saver from the menu, so you can assign a hotkey to it and whatnot.

Sadly, it appears that this feature will have to wait because I've accidentally stomped on a Panther bug with that. Since many of you are developers, I figured I'd share the problem with you so you don't step in the same pile as I did.

I have filed a bug on Apple's Radar. Quoting myself:

If I use Terminal or LaunchServices to invoke ScreenSaverEngine.app in /S/L/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ to activate screen saver, and "Require Password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver" option is set in the Security preference pane, I get a black screen when I try to wake the system up from the keyboard. Normally, the screen goes black and raises the password request dialog when the above mentioned option is enabled, but in this case, the screen goes black, like it should, but the dialog never appears. The only way to exit from the situation, it seems to me, is SSH in and kill the WindowServer or a related process.

* STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Enable "Require Password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver" option in the Security preference pane.
2. In Terminal:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine
3. Screensaver will launch.
4. Try to exit the screen saver by pressing a key on the keyboard or moving a mouse.
5. The system will result in a black screen.

Apple's Developer Technical Support acknowledged the method descibed above is indeed the correct way to invoke a screen saver, and also confirmed the bug. So if you need to invoke a screen saver, be aware of the problem (exists in the Panther 10.3 7B85). As for me, I'll have to comment out the "Lock Screen" feature until it is fixed, to not cause the confusion among users.

And to answer your question, "When is the Panther update?", I'll answer "Real Soon Now". =)