Sugar Maple Software

I’m much too busy to publish my initial impressions of Leopard in a timely manner; so, instead, I’m publishing my thoughts after two months of living with the big cat. I’m going to cover a number of different aspects of Leopard, some major and some minor. I’ll start with the upgrade and a litany of issues and then comment on some surprises, both positive and negative.

As a regular users of NewsHawker, one of my favorite features in Leopard is Alex:

Meet Alex — a new English male voice that uses advanced, patented Apple technologies to deliver natural breathing and intonation, even at fast speaking rates.

Alex sounds great when reading feeds at high speaking rates.

If you’ve tried NewsHawker before but didn’t like the sound of the voice in Tiger, if you’ve now installed Leopard, it’s time to give NewsHawker another try with Alex. If you haven’t tried NewsHawker yet but have installed Leopard, now is a great time.

I still hope to gather my thoughts on C4[1] and share them. However, while I’m gathering, I’d like to redirect everyone to a thoughtful piece by Rich Siegel: Tumbleweeds and Used Car Lots. Pay particular attention to the section where Rich describes how the debates on the internet can easily deteriorate into a situation where the person who shouts with the largest megaphone, rather than the person with the best argument, “wins”.

Last night, C4[1] began. Wolf Rentzsch and Wil Shipley were the speakers. Wil was, well, Wil. Wolf’s talk was interesting and I found myself still thinking about it this morning. Wolf talked about the sea-change that indie developers are experiencing. He believes that indies have much more influence and power since platforms, languages, and interfaces have shifted from the large companies (e.g., Microsoft and Apple) to the web, resulting in a democratization. The lower cost of entry for developers is certainly an example of this trend. However, while I think we’re heading in this direction, we’re not there yet. …

Obviously, I’ve been using NewsHawker longer than anyone. I thought I’d share how I use it on an almost daily basis in hopes of providing potential uses that may not be obvious at first glance. …

At this point, for many who have downloaded NewsHawker, the 25 day trial period has elapsed. While I hope that many of you have sufficiently evaluated NewsHawker in the past 25 days such that you will soon be purchasing a license, for those of you that haven’t, you can extend your evaluation. A common complaint about a time-limited trial is that if you download the application, run it just a couple of times, forget about it for a while, and then later want to continue to evaluate the application, the trial has expired. I implemented what I call a 25 + 5 trial to address this criticism. The 25 + 5 trial consists of a standard 25-day time-limited trial with a one-time 5-day extension. The five-day extension begins when you choose. This can be immediately after the 25-day trial expires or months later when you rediscover NewsHawker in your Applications folder. You don’t need to send me an e-mail, lobby for an extension, and wait for a response; instead, you can extend the trial automatically. If you find this 25 + 5 trial helpful or have other complaints about this approach, please post a comment to let me know.

NewsHawker 1.0 has been released! You can now purchase a license for NewsHawker for US$19. You can also download a trial and give it a listen before purchasing. …

NetNewsWire 3.0d62 has been released. This release fixes the previously mentioned issue where the bodies of news items could not be retrieved by NewsHakwer: “Fixed a bug getting the description (content) of a news item via AppleScript.” So, if you’re addicted to the new NetNewsWire, you can once again have NewsHawker speak your news.

IronCoder V has been announced for 30 March through 1 April! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make time to participate again. Perhaps if inspiration strikes me after seeing the theme and API, I’ll throw something together. Regardless, this provides motivation to release NewsHawker before the competition so I can donate a license as a prize. Regardless of whether I do that, I encourage you to enter; you’ll learn something and have fun at the same time.

NewsHawker 1.0.0b3 is now available. The major new feature is support for the Apple Remote. This integration must be explicitly enabled in the preferences. Note that NewsHawker will only “listen” to the Apple Remote when it is the front-most application. This allows you to continue to use the remote in the standard manner when NewsHawker is not the front-most application. …