Word on the streets is that a lynching party of unsatiated ShapeShifter addicts is forming. Here's a quickie status report. Short story long, the Tiger compatibility release'll probably be ready to rock by Monday.

Be sure to stop by our products page to grab the updates we released today.

Slava mentioned it earlier, but just to show what fine work Daniel does, check out a large version of our new Application Enhancer icon:

Ah the beauty of attention to detail. :) Fine work Mr. Goffin.

Lastly, Siracusa and I are on the same page regarding QT Pro. I paid for the first QT Pro version and wasn't thrilled, but I was willing. But each new time I have to pay to get my fullscreen back?!? You have got to be kidding me. After reading the rant on QT 7, offer your obligatory, "stupid qt pro punks", then read the rest of the article. As always, John manages to write a great review and highlight things you won't see mentioned elsewhere.

A next round of Tiger-related beta versions is ready for your testing:

http://www.unsanity.net/beta/windowshade-x-36b2.dmg

http://www.unsanity.net/beta/xounds-23b2.dmg

http://www.unsanity.net/beta/ape-15b2.dmg

http://www.unsanity.net/beta/apesdk-15b2.zip (for developers only)

Not much is significantly new, aside from Tiger compatibility, and Master Exclude List for the Application Enhancer - so you can add certain applications to not have any APE modules loaded at all.

Application Enhancer has a spiffy new icon by Daniel Goffin of idleware:

Please note these are betas, but we consider them to be release candidates to be released later this week. Please email me or post in comments if you notice any show-stopper bugs, and proceed with caution.

Thank you!

This is a relatively small update for Tiger compatibility. It also adds a French translation and adds a workaround to the fact FSResolveAliasFileWithMountFlags isn't thread safe despite the documenation for said function saying otherwise. It is definitely not thread safe. Nor is FSResolveAliasFileWithMountFlagsThreadSafe.

It's only 3.3.2 instead of 3.4 because it offers no significant changes over 3.3.1 other than Tiger compatibility and that compatibility actually caused it to lose a feature. The application menu as an icon no longer functions in Tiger. So for Tiger, that option is gone.

Update: I thought it might be funny to show what happened when we tried to re-enable the feature on Tiger. Please don't ask for this silly example to become a feature.

Update 2: Thanks to the superbly handsome Jason Harris, the icon is back. Note that it has less than stellar results for unbundled applications, I've only got two of those on my machine. Download the second beta^{the second} below.

FruitMenu 3.3.2b2

• Tiger Compatible.
• Mother Approved
• Worked around Mac OS X bug that caused a crash in FSResolveAliasFileWithMountFlags because it isn't threadsafe. Only affected a small amount of people.
• Addresses a problem that caused hotkeys to fail if a key was pressed immediately after an application was launched.
• Fixes some problems with saving registration information if the name required a unicode encoding.
• Added French localization by Bernard Rey.
• Snazzy new installer

Get it at http://www.unsanity.net/beta/fruitmenu-332b2.dmg (2.21megs).

This version brings in FontAgent Pro (FAP) support and Tiger support. If you don't have FontAgent Pro get it from http://insidersoftware.com/FA_pro_osx.php (a trial). If you don't have Tiger. Well, try it on Panther.

When you first start up this version in an app with FAP sets enabled and inactive previews on, you should see an unsexy FontCard icon in the menu bar and a progress indicator.

You can see some silly screenshots of the new FC here.

Things we need tested:

• Quark Support
• Flipping options on and off in the preference pane and making sure they are immediately available in the applications you're changing the settings for.
• Adding, renaming, or deleting items from FAP sets and making sure they are available in Applications immediately.
• Selecting inactive fonts in Applications and making sure they get activated and get selected. Note that auto selection won't work in Adobe apps for some odd reason (see the reason as listed below). Also, it might take a long time for the newly activated font to be selected. So try to test it with selected text. If it doesn't select it eventually, tell me immediately (send the font in a compressed archive and the name of the application it isn't working in to rosyna at this company .com).
• We need to know how you like/dislike the visual appearance of inactive fonts. And if it pleases you or not.

You can always tell whether or not you are running a beta or a final version of FC by the icon in System Preferences. If it is of a Teletubby, it is a beta. If it is the normal FC icon, then it is a final. Unless, of course, you are Canadian. Then the entire thing is flip-flopped around. If you are French Canadian, well... Then hot snow falls up.

If you have any crashing issues or stalls with this beta, please turn on logging in the FC preference pane, make the application crash, and email (see address above) the crash log and the console log (/Applications/Utilities/Console)

Version 1.3b3

• New installer.
• No longer even tries to select fonts that were just activated in Adobe applications. It won't work. Adobe applications build their new font menu *after* FontCard tries to select the font from the menu. This also prevented newly activated fonts from appearing in Adobe application's FC enhanced font menu.
• Caches the number of names a font has. This leads to a smallish speed boost.
  

Version 1.3b2

• Fixed a problem that prevented FontCard from "finding" an inactive font if the font had two PostScript names. Not even sure why that is possible. But whatever.
• Implemented "infinite loop" protection in the daemon. This is trigged by a bug in OS X that causes iterating font families to return the same font over and over again. It is bad.
• No longer launches the FontCard daemon if FontAgent Pro isn't installed.
• Now shows the active version of a font in FAP sets even if the font isn't being handled by FAP.
• I'm the real slim shady.
• No longer loads the FontCard daemon if WYSIWYG fonts is turned off.
• No longer puts script separators in font sets if sort by script is turned on.
• Renamed the "Group Uncollected Fonts" option
• No longer tries to adjust the index of popup items if the All Fonts option is enabled.
• Added Dutch translation by Dhr. Tom Klaver.

Version 1.3b1

• Added support for FontAgent Pro sets.
• Added support for displaying inactive fonts in FontAgent Pro sets.
• Appearance Manager Savvy.
• Tiger Compatible.
• Removed some redundancy when getting information about a font. This results in a very small speed increase.
• Now tries to use the file name of a font as the family name if the family name cannot be generated through other means.
• Added support for the font menus in the Mail.app preferences. FC will also work with other cocoa Applications that generate their font menus in a similar way.
• Now calls the main thread when determining whether or not to include OpenType fonts in the font menu. This ensures menus are populated on the main thread.
• No longer supports Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar version 10.2.x.

Get it at: http://www.unsanity.net/beta/fontcard-13b3.dmg (3.12 megs. FontCard went on the all Ice Cream and Chocolate Chip Pie diet)

Apple has a page on their Apple Developer Connection website entitled Meet the Engineers Behind Tiger. Problem is, not a single one of them is titled as a software engineer at Apple. They're all managers. And they're not exactly readily available at WWDC. The real, hard working engineers that actually write code for Tiger are readily available at WWDC. Extremely readily available. People like *** ****** and ****** **********. The real people that would actually be able to help you with your bizarre problems. The real people that could actually help you to understand why a certain API works the way it does or doesn't work the way it's documented (I'm looking at you, ******* ********). These are the real people that actually implemented the API. That actually coded the framework. The people you should love. The people you can actually get to go out drinking with you (even if you don't drink) and can fondle under the table.

Then again, I don't think any of the real software engineers at Apple would ever pose for a photo. And if they did, I doubt Apple would post a picture of a fat, horribly dressed engineer with food stains all over his shirt and pants. I've never met any software engineer (code monkey) as sexy as the managers depicted in the above link.

This was totally worth being the 400th post.

Update:Some of the people that are in the below photo (from Apple's site) are real engineers and some of them are nearly god like in awesomeness.

Update 2 (To the Extrem Max): macg pointed me to some WWDC "Engineer" Trading Cards which I think are just hilarious. I still think a certain developer at "Elgato Systems" (or whatever they're calling themselves this week) should make one for himself.

Sigh, I've been pining for the Treo 650 since the GSM version of the phone was released. I've been wanting to wait for the a Treo phone until it had bluetooth, which the Treo 600 did not have. I waited patiently because I could not live without iSync connectivity, Salling Clicker Love, and being able to connect to the internets when I do happen to have my laptop handy (like on a train from San Francisco to Palo Alto). Stuff like that.

I'm wondering many things before I give into temptation. Does anyone else have this phone? What are your experiences with Salling Clicker and iSync? Does the phone have any downsides whatsoever? How does the thing work as an actual phone? Has anyone tried using IRC from it and if so, how was it (a fellow "developer" had his Treo 600 at a macdev dinner and that's when I fell in love [with it, not him, I was already in love with him {that's not as funny as it should be if you don't know what I'm talking about or perhaps even if you do]]). And does anyone have experience with using the Treo 650 with T-Mobile in the states? Are there any problems or setup issues with using it with T-Mobile? My goals for this thing are as stated above and IRC. Although, I'll probably have to learn how to set up an IRC proxy server and make sure all connected clients get the same messages.

The things that disappoint me are the fact that it doesn't yet (and may never) have Palm OS Cobalt (6.x), which really turns me on. I'd really like to develop for a Palm device but the limitations in not having Palm OS 6 make it really, really hard for me to think about not having it. And the reason that I haven't considered a Windows Mobile device is the fact it seems really, really bloated and the devices do not work consistently as phones and T-Mobile has stopped selling them due to what seems to be this very problem.

So yeah, thoughs? Please note that I've never owned a PDA before, let alone a Palm-based one, so I have no idea what using one is like.