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Devlog
Permanent Eraser 2.5.0
Sat, 11 December 2010 23:58 | Permanent Eraser
Three and a half years after the initial work began, Permanent Eraser 2.5 has been completed. Permanent Eraser finally includes Help files and Preferences, greatly simplifying the process to change the available settings for the application.
Yesterday, 33 RPM 1.1.7 was released, featuring some minor improvements and refinements.
Permanent Eraser 2.4.2
Sat, 12 June 2010 22:00 | Permanent Eraser
For the first time in over five years, Edenwaith has released two products on the same day. In addition to the release of EdenList for iPhone, Edenwaith is also releasing Permanent Eraser 2.4.2, which includes a number of bug fixes and improvements.
Today, Edenwaith proudly announces its first mobile application — EdenList for iPhone. EdenList for iPhone is a light-weight list manager, ideal for quickly jotting down ideas, items to buy, movies to watch, or keeping track of general notes. EdenList can run on the iPhone or iPod touch and requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later. And for other iPhone developers who might be curious, yes, EdenList was approved in 7 days or less. Just a couple days shy of seven years since its first release, EdenList has finally reached the 1.0 milestone. EdenList 1.0 now shares the same file format that will be used for EdenList for iPhone. While the EdenList project has had several starts and stops over the years, the upcoming EdenList for the iPhone helped revitalize the project, for both desktop and mobile computing. On Earth Day for the past several years, Edenwaith has made an announcement, and today continues that tradition with the announcement of EdenList for iPhone. In January 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone — the first and only phone I have ever wanted. Fourteen months later, Apple made the iPhone even more appealing by releasing the iPhone SDK, opening the gates for a new and enticing platform for software development. This not only paved a way for new software, but also helped to breathe new life into older projects. After experimenting with other "to do" applications for the iPhone, none of them felt right to me. This provided for the opportunity to revive EdenList and bring it to the iPhone (and iPod touch). EdenList is currently in development and is expected to be available in Summer 2010 (pending Apple's approval for inclusion to the App Store). Below are two screenshots from the current incarnation of EdenList for iPhone.
Today 33 RPM 1.1.6 was released, featuring several new features and an important fix for a nasty crash which appeared for Snow Leopard users.
33 RPM 1.1.5 was released today, which includes a number of fixes and improvements to the program.
While this version was mostly a maintenance update to fix a variety of issues, the next planned update (33 RPM 1.1.6) should include a couple of new features. During the development of Permanent Eraser 2.4.1, part of the development work went off on a tangent which became a new tutorial called FolderSize. FolderSize is a small utility program which compares the efficiency of three different methods in calculating the size of a folder and its contents. Today Edenwaith released Permanent Eraser 2.4.1 which focuses on speed improvements, bug fixes, and new features.
There is a long laundry list of other changes and improvements which haven't been mentioned here. Last Friday, the final version of 33 RPM 1.1.4 was released, which corrected a number of issues which appeared with Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard". Apple, Inc. should be lauded for doing what few software companies rarely do — take the time to step back and refine their current product. However, in their efforts to tweak and optimize Mac OS X, they made a number of smaller changes which has caused an even greater number of issues (and resulting headaches) for other developers. Several of Edenwaith's products have transitioned between Mac OS X upgrades without any issues, yet Mac OS 10.6 has brought forth the largest number of new issues of any version of Mac OS X to date. Much of 33 RPM 1.1.4 focused on conforming the program to Snow Leopard's peculiarities. Some of the changes make little sense, but occasionally Apple is forcing developers to clean up their code and conform more tightly to their method of programming. Here was an odd message that appeared in testing 33 RPM in Snow Leopard when selecting a song from the Open Recent menu:
This message was an obvious fallacy, especially since 33 RPM went along on its happy way to play the song. Yet, this error never appeared before in any previous version of Mac OS X. The answer came down to how NSApplication's method Permanent Eraser 2.4.0 was released today, which also marks the third anniversary since Permanent Eraser 2.2 was released. Even though it has been two and a half years since the last significant version of Permanent Eraser was released, the version that was released today has been in a lengthy beta stage that would rival the beta testing of Google. Shortly after the release of Permanent Eraser 2.3.2, work began on Permanent Eraser 2.5. Initial plans included adding a System Preference pane to control the preferences for Permanent Eraser. Unfortunately, including a System Preference pane might have involved packaging Permanent Eraser with an installer, which was not an optimal choice, since not all programs also include an uninstaller. Those plans were put on the shelf to make way for development of 33 RPM and the not-quite-as-ambitious Permanent Eraser 2.4. From August 2007 through 2008, nearly all development efforts were put into releasing and evolving 33 RPM, with only several digressions taken to work briefly on other Edenwaith products. Finally, full attention turned back to Permanent Eraser to tend to the completion of the next version of Permanent Eraser, which had been floating in a Developer's Limbo for far too long. The most dramatic changes from Permanent Eraser 2.3 to 2.4 appear to be mostly cosmetic, but much like Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the largest changes were underneath the hood, laying a new foundation for the coming year(s). With great hope, Permanent Eraser 2.5 will not take nearly as long to complete. It is foolhardy to make promises which may not necessarily be able to be kept, but the promises of what Permanent Eraser 2.5 will contain should be even more enduring. The release of Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard" last week has caused a flurry of activity for Macintosh developers as they prepare their applications for Apple's latest operating system. The story has been no different at Edenwaith, where our applications have been checked against Snow Leopard. Listed below are any known issues that have cropped up with Edenwaith's products and Snow Leopard.
If you discover any issues with our products which have not been listed here, please contact us. For the past six years, Edenwaith's home page has remained fairly consistent in its appearance and function. Today, the home page has undergone its most significant upgrade in years, eliminating all tables by relying heavily upon more modern CSS-driven layout. The form and function have been altered slightly, but it is what lays underneath that displays the real changes. Things have been cleaned up and slimmed down by separating the structure and design into their constituent parts. One of the most "interesting" things about the redesign was building the page so it looked and worked well for all major web browsers. Things are certainly better than they were ten years ago, where Netscape and IE took their own ways in displaying web content. Whereas Safari, Firefox, Opera, and their related brethern play nicely together, IE6 tends to break things. If a web page is massaged just right, then IE7 will render a page properly, but if not, then it will revert to IE6 mode, which can cause complications and limitations. It will be interesting to see how long web designers and developers decide to support IE6. IE6 is still used by a significant number of people that it cannot be dropped just yet, but perhaps by 2011 (five years after IE7's arrival), it will be time to retire support for IE6 and support the current browsers of the times. In addition to today being Earth Day, it is also (coincidentally) the first anniversary since 33 RPM's release. Unlike previous product releases, 33 RPM had a much more proactive and aggressive development cycle after its initial release. Since it was released a year ago, there have been six additional updates, which far surpasses the one or two updates a year that many of Edenwaith's older programs would receive per year. 33 RPM is still in an infant stage, but there are a great number of features planned for future releases. The most requested new feature, being able to export or save a song, is in the works. It is coming, but there is no expected release date for when it will be available. We want to ensure that this is done correctly. Thank you to everyone who has tried out (and purchased) 33 RPM. Now, it's time to go plant a flower and hug a tree. Yesterday marked Edenwaith's first official foray into iPhone development. A new tutorial has been posted, detailing the construction of a simple flashlight application, called Taschenlampe. Taschenlampe is not an officially released product, it is merely an example program for the purposes of the tutorial. However, this is just the beginning for several iPhone-related projects which are in the works. It was an exciting and interesting time during the early days of Web development, where Internet Explorer and Netscape vied for web browser dominance. Due to the early chaos of these early years, standards were not on the forefront yet, but it was more interesting to see how each browser could top each other with unique tricks and effects (Although, some claim that the tag should have never come into being.) Fast forward a decade, where renewed competition amongst several browsers (currently, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and IE, and their related brethren) is forcing a stronger standard how web pages need to be developed, display, and react. We are likely closer to reaching a set of browsers that are pretty well compliant for the first time, but this might be soon changing with advances in browsers like Firefox and Safari which will herald in the next era of the Web with HTML 5 and CSS3. The Edenwaith website has gone through several iterations since its inception in February 2001. While another complete overhaul of the site is awhile off still, the home page has undergone some significant changes, in both the way it is constructed and how it displays information. Table-based layouts are quickly becoming an archaic method to construct web pages, and such this site is also taking steps towards moving to a stronger CSS-base and eliminate tables when not necessary. There is still the occasional viewer who is using Netscape 4 or IE5, but it is time to move on and support the browsers of today. If you are using a Webkit-based web browser (Safari, OmniWeb, Shiira, or Chrome), hover over the product titles in the middle of the page, and they will display an impressive transitional background fill, just one of the many hopeful tricks we will see more of in the approaching years. The first recorded ideas for GUI Tar came about in July 2002, shorterly before its sister application Untar was released. A year and a half after its inception, GUI Tar 1.0 was released. Unfortunately, GUI Tar's progress has not always been overly rapid, but this has dramatically changed since the release of GUI Tar 1.2.0 several weeks ago. In the course of a half month, GUI Tar has seen three updates (versions 1.2.0, 1.2.1, and 1.2.2). The last two patch releases have made some minor additions and improvements to the application. Today, GUI Tar 1.2 was released, which adds zip compression capabilities and a console log, a feature that Untar 1.3 has had for several years. By adding the console log, this brings GUI Tar up to feature parity with Untar. Since GUI Tar now matches its sister application Untar in all features (and then some), the time has come to retire Untar. As it has been mentioned here before, Edenwaith is scaling back on the number of projects it will work on. Since all of Untar's functionality is redundant to what GUI Tar can perform, it does not make much sense to expend the time and energy to support two similar programs. Untar will still be available for download and is licensed under the GPL, so anyone can take the source code and use it for their own needs. In late 2007, the decision was made to narrow Edenwaith's focus on a select few products. 2008 was evidence of this new strategy, with nearly all attention paid to the release and continued development of 33 RPM. 2009 has already jumped to a good start with the release of 33 RPM 1.1.1. Right now is a flurry of development, as several projects are being worked on, including updates to 33 RPM, Permanent Eraser, and perhaps even an older project or few. Edenwaith is proud to announce the release of Permanent Eraser 2.3.4. This version re-corrects an issue where Permanent Eraser would stall after deleting around 250 files. This issue was originally thought to have been corrected with Permanent Eraser 2.3.3, but later testing revealed that this nasty bug had not been entirely squashed. The 2.3.x line of Permanent Eraser will be the last versions of Permanent Eraser to be supported on Mac OS 10.2 "Jaguar". Even during the testing of PE 2.3.4, special considerations had to be made so the application would still run properly on Mac OS 10.2. Edenwaith has a number of products which started during the early days of Mac OS X, and we try to offer legacy support for them as long as possible until those systems' limitations hamper the evolution of our products. Even though this was a small patch release, I am very proud of this application. Each update to Permanent Eraser tries to be ever more sleeker, faster, and more perfect than before. Not only does PE 2.3.4 work even better than its predecessors, but it managed to shave off a couple thousand bytes in the process. Yet, progress has dug its claws into Permanent Eraser, which will drag this program into the future... Today marks the release of 33 RPM 1.1, which features the following:
The first several updates were spaced apart by about a month, but this one took a little longer to complete. Product roadmaps are helpful in providing for some guidance, but the direction a product takes can quickly take another path. The original plan for 33 RPM was to add video playback, but that idea was shelved when the focus changed to add the capability to save out the changes of a song. After several months of researching how to save out a song with the changes applied resulted in being a much trickier problem than had originally been expected. This is certainly a big feature to be added to a future version of 33 RPM, but it will likely require some extensive recoding of 33 RPM. Instead of spending more time going nowhere fast, 33 RPM reverted back to the original plan of adding video playback, along with several other new features which are mentioned above. Even the best laid plans are easily lead astray, which sometimes leads to misdirection and delays. It does not make software development the most favorable of environments, but that is often the nature of the beast. Since August of 2007, nearly all attention has been placed on the development of 33 RPM. This past April, 33 RPM was finally released after many years of being in an embryonic state, but the progress has continued with a new update each following month. While this intense focus on 33 RPM is noted, it has taken away time from other Edenwaith projects. 33 RPM has a long way to go before it becomes a more mature product, so the focus will still be on 33 RPM for quite awhile, but it is getting time to mind the other "children". Between September 2006 and May 2007, Permanent Eraser experienced a flourish of rapid development (undergoing seven releases), but since then, there has been only a single update. Despite the slow down, Permanent Eraser has remained one of Edenwaith's most popular applications. Permanent Eraser 2.3.3 was never planned, since its features were originally planned for Permanent Eraser 2.4. However, a couple of necessary fixes and improvements needed to be released, and Permanent Eraser 2.4 was still far from being complete. Fortunately, this was the right choice to make, since Permanent Eraser 2.4 is still in an alpha stage of development. A functional version of Permanent Eraser 2.4 has been running for the past several months, but it will continue to be fine tuned and perfected until it is released later this year. Considering that the time between PE 2.1.2 and PE 2.2.0 was eleven months, it isn't new for extended periods of development to take place (and then perhaps followed by a burst of development). After Permanent Eraser 2.4, version 2.5 is planned, and that will likely be the end of the 2.x line for Permanent Eraser, to be replaced by Permanent Eraser 3. 33 RPM 1.0.3 was released on Saturday 26 July 2008, which corrected several small issues. Considering the reviews I've seen competing products receive, I've been expecting to hear much of the same "but QuickTime can do the same thing" type of responses. Well, wait no more, since 33 RPM has received the first of such a complaint. A harsh complaint, but at least they compared 33 RPM up against QuickTime Pro, and not just the player. 33 RPM and its ilk have similarities to QuickTime, but QuickTime is a more general program, whereas a program like 33 RPM has a more focused view on what it is trying to accomplish by being an efficient and useful tool for changing the pitch and speed of music to aid in transcribing music. Now, on to 33 RPM 1.1 and Permanent Eraser 2.4. After a little further tweaking of this custom blogging system, it can now display all current entries, or even display just a single entry, which is useful when perusing the articles from an RSS reader. After experimenting with a WordPress blogging system for several months, I found it did not meet my needs. There are certainly some cool things that can be done with WordPress, but the lack of control, reformatting of my posts, and severe database lag made it a lot more difficult than it was worth to me. So here we are again, back to a more traditional appearance, with our own customized devlog. 33 RPM 1.0.2 was released today, which includes several small features and application stability. Here's what is new:
With the first two patch releases complete, it is time to make headway toward version 1.1 by adding more major features. It has been several weeks since 33 RPM 1.0 was released, and the overall result has been pretty positive. Considering that 33 RPM is Edenwaith's first for-pay product (all other products are freeware), I was not quite sure what to expect, but I prepared myself for the potential onslaught. Good News, Bad News SalesConsidering that all of Edenwaith's products are freeware, every new paid license that comes in is a blessing. THANK YOU to everyone who registered 33 RPM. I have read some horror stories where someone spent years working on a project to only end up selling six licenses. I'm happy to report that 33 RPM has surpassed this initial milestone (so, that's at least seven license), but still a very far cry from being a working income (more like pizza and pez money for now). Another thing to note: even when your product has been released, don't expect the orders to immediately pour in -- it might take a few days for people to evaluate the product and decide if it is right for them. The only real downside that I did not originally expect was the low conversion rate. Compared to what other small Mac companies have reported, approximately 3 - 4% of the people who downloaded an application eventually paid for the product. 33 RPM's conversation rate has been less than 1% up to this point. Not that I am disappointed with any of the sales, I just was not expecting the conversion to be lower than I estimated. However, this is just the initial release, which hasn't garnered much attention yet, and there are many, many more features to be added in the future. Which leads to the next point... The Future 33 RPM, a new music transcribing utility for the Macintosh, has been released today. 33 RPM 1.0 is the culmination of development over the past three years. While proper development started several years ago, the idea of 33 RPM has lingered around even longer. Very early experiments of 33 RPM started out as Carbon or Java-based applications, just right around the time when Mac OS X was introduced. Technologies morphed and evolved over time, and 33 RPM became a Cocoa-based project. However, it is not the underpinnings that is the core to this program. 33 RPM is far from the first pitch and speed changing application, but the programs that were available just didn't quite feel right. Too many of them felt like a dated program that was still clinging to its 90s ways. Leave Windows 95 and OS 9 interfaces to the yester-decade. 33 RPM is not just about working well (very important, of course), but also looking good, as well. A lot of time was spent towards making an interface that is clean and simple, without having to sacrifice the flexibility and power. At a later date, there will be a postmortem entry about the various changes 33 RPM went through. It's a tremendous relief to have the initial version of 33 RPM finally out the door. There are many, many improvements waiting to be added which will be the fodder for the future incarnations of 33 RPM. Every couple of years, the technology world shifts enough to disrupt the current inertia of the lumbering beast. This change presents an opportunity for the smaller, sprier developers to leap ahead of the pack and get a piece of the pie before the dinosaurs of the industry realize that somebody is eating their lunch. The introduction of Windows 95 and Mac OS X were defining moments where existing developers had to decide whether they were going to stick with the older systems (DOS and the Classic Mac OS), or if they were going to leave it all behind, and become a pioneer into the new, unexplored frontier. And that brings us to the recently revealed iPhone SDK. The iPhone certainly has great potential, and after trying to work with my last set of cell phones, the iPhone's simplicity makes it even more appealing. After watching the presentation of what the iPhone SDK could do, this lit my mind afire -- it literally kept me up at night, fantasizing about all of the potential programs that I could write. We are all sitting on an untapped gold mine, and thousands of others realize this fact. The questions will be: Who will be first? Who will be the best? What new ideas will emerge? Looking at the current line-up of Edenwaith's applications, some would translate well to the iPhone, while others would not fit in too well. EdenGraph would be a decent candidate, whereas GUI Tar likely would not. EdenList would just be yet another to-do list manager, so it would not be worth the time to rewrite for the iPhone. [Note: How wrong that last statement proved to be!] However, I did not even initially consider Edenwaith's current offerings when considering interesting projects to work on. Instead, I went back to what started it all for Edenwaith: Games. The use of the iPhone's accelerometer has especially intrigued me, bringing up ideas of the Antwerp Maze in Quest For Glory 4, or the hand-held steely-ball mazes. At this time, these are merely ideas, so one could expect anything from Absolute Nothing to Finished Product. Today, a new product by Edenwaith has been announced: 33 RPM (formerly NMP). 33 RPM focuses on the practicing musician, which allows one to easily change the pitch, speed, and loop any QuickTime-compatible media. If you have QuickTime-compatible plug-ins such as Flip4Mac WMV Player or Perian, you can also play any additional media that those plug-ins support. 33 RPM is the effects-changing media player for 2008 with its simple, but modern, interface. But underneath this straightforward appearance is the power of Mac-based technologies: Carbon, Cocoa, QuickTime, Sparkle, and more... 33 RPM will be released in the second quarter of 2008 and will initially cost $12.95 USD. A lot has been going on at Edenwaith, with the new devlog, several upcoming website changes and additions, plus the continuing march to release version 1.0 of the New Mystery Product (NMP). Consider this to be the announcement to the announcement of NMP. Within the next month, NMP will be finally revealed, with its expected release to be a few months afterwards. Please visit on or around 22 February 2008 to see what we will have in store. Welcome to the new developer's log. 2008 will bring a number of new changes to Edenwaith.
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