Hi,

just a little update: I have finally finished my master’s thesis  and will soon continue to work on BetterTouchTool, BTT Remote, BetterSnapTool, and maybe even Secondbar

Cheers,

Andreas

written by Andreas Hegenberg

I just replaced my complete Mac setup  from an iMac + Macbook Air to a Retina Macbook Pro + a Thunderbolt Display, which is a reallllly great combination. Unfortunately there are some apps that don’t support the retina mode yet. Eclipse is one of them.

If you have a retina Macbook Pro and want to use Eclipse or any Eclipse based application it will look quite ugly with current versions. A workaround (at least for the pixelated fonts) is to open the eclipse.app bundle and add this key to the Contents/Info.plist: NSHighResolutionCapable and set it to YES. (Easiest to do with a plist editor like the one included in Apples developer tools)

Because Mac OS seems to cache the info.plists you may have to logout and login again, or alternatively copy the app bundle and insert it again at the same location. Then delete the old app bundle.

This may also work for other applications where the “Open in Low Resolution” checkbox is greyed out if you right-click on an app and select “get info”. After adding this key to the info.plist of the app, the “Open in Low Resolution” checkbox will be accessible.

written by Andreas Hegenberg

I always hated this behavior of Preview: If I double-click  a picture in Finder the picture will open in Preview. But I ALWAYS double-click the wrong one and then I just want to cycle through the pictures of the folder in Preview in order to find the one I wanted… which unfortunately is not possible. (As far as I know)

So I just wrote a very little tool. It’s completely faceless and doesn’t do much, but I hope it’ll save me some frustration. This little tool has only one purpose, if you open a jpg or png file with it, it’ll open all the other jpg and png files in the current folder with Preview too. The one you double-clicked will be the selected one in Preview.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who doesn’t like the standard Preview behavior here, but you can download my little tool here (Lion only) if you want.

In order to use it, just rightclick a jpg/png file, click on “get info” and change the “Open With:” to PreviewOpenAll (see http://d.pr/acBA ) then click “Change All”

//edit, uploaded a new version, improved the ordering of the files in preview a bit.

written by Andreas Hegenberg

So Apple finally announced that all App Store Apps must implement a technology called Sandboxing starting from March 2012. Sandboxing is a technology which forces Apps to run in a box with a lot of restrictions. It’s a bit like on iOS where every App only has access to its own data. Apple claims it’s for security reasons…

So what? This means the App Store will be even more crippled than it currently is. Many Apps which are currently in the Store will cease to exist.

Here a few types of applications that won’t be allowed to the App Store anymore:

• Nearly every App which controls another App in any way. (so many little helper Apps will just be dead)
• Apps which help disabled people, e.g. screenreaders or tools that help with typing or mouse movements
• Apps that need to access files on the whole disk may eventually be forbidden too. (e.g. syncing or backup utilities)
• All Apps which use the Accessibility API
• All Apps which rely on Event Taps
• Apps that control specialized external devices
• Apps which listen to the Apple Remote Control (at least in the current implementation of the Sandbox)
• In many cases developers who want to keep their Apps in the App Store will need to cripple them and implement a really bad user experience.
• many more…

This means, BetterSnapTool won’t be allowed in the App Store anymore starting from March 2012. But don’t worry, I’ll continue releasing updates for all existing customers here if Apple really enforces Sandboxing.
I’ve been working on a new version of SecondBar, unfortunately this won’t be allowed either.

Also in my opinion Sandboxing causes a big security problem. If developers won’t be able to release security /bugfix updates for their existing applications anymore, all remaining bugs will stay there forever without any possibility to contact existing customers and warn them.

Sure you may say “ok, so distribute not over the App Store”. But this will become more and more complicated because most users like the App Store and Apple invests in marketing the App Store as “the only secure way to obtain software”. Also new technologies like iCloud are only allowed to be used for App Store apps.

Many, many developers don’t want Sandboxing and I hope Apple will listen to them and at least make it an optional technology.
Some people think Apple will enforce Sandboxing for all applications with the next major Mac OS X update. I doubt this very much, but if they do this it will be my last day on Mac OS. (this would kill BTT, too)

written by Andreas Hegenberg

I just found Totalfinder by Antonin Hildebrand : http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/ you should definitely try this. It finally allows me to have a finder that orders folders on top. Unfortunately it requires SIMBL and is alpha but I installed it and didn’t encounter problems yet.

One thing: it doesn’t harmony with the window moving features of BetterTouchTool (it works but only if you have enabled the “window under cursor” and then hover the top of the Finder window while moving the window).  Antonin already said he’ll fix it

I like having the folder on top sooo much

written by Andreas Hegenberg

A friend of mine (Christian Ziegler) just released a neat little tool called Core Renamer

Core-Renamer is a free and easy to use, lightweight filerenamer for Mac OS 10.5+. It supports basic renaming operations like delete, replace, insert on an arbitrary amount of files.

You can download Core Renamer here

written by Andreas Hegenberg

I encountered many freezes since I upgraded to Snow Leopard. (Beachball appeared for about 20 seconds and the GUI didn’t respond) Yesterday I found the problem. So if you have those freezes too, and you have installed Growl (maybe it came with Adium or something), deactivate Growl in your System Preferences or install one of the Growl betas.

//Update: Growl seems to be not the only problem. When using Safari freezes occur sometimes too… in /etc/log/System.log something like “INSERT-HANG-DETECTED” shows up. Hope they fix those freezing issues soon. Some people reported booting in 64bit mode solves the problems…

//Update: booting to 64Bit solved the freezing issues for me. (Hold 6 and 4 while your mac starts up, you can release the keys if the spinning wheel appears)

//See newer update at the end of this post!

For booting in 64bit permanently you have to edit com.apple.Boot.plist this only works if you have 64bit efi, to test if you have 64bit efi type this in terminal.app: ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

If you have efi64 you can make it permanently boot in 64Bit:

1. Open Terminal.app
2. enter: sudo pico /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
3. search for
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
4. replace it with:
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>arch=x86_64</string>
5. press ctrl+o
6. press enter

//update: a few days after booting in 64bit the freezes came back… but I think this finally did the trick : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411 Since I did this SMC Reset on my Macbook Pro 13″ (current generation) everything seems to work perfect (even Safari!!)

//update: in the meantime apple released the so called “performance update” which seems to care about the freezes too. If the last steps didn’t help you don’t bother installing it.

written by Andreas Hegenberg