SMART Utility 3.1.1 is Out!

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013 | Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Support for (Some) External Drives

Thursday, February 28th, 2013 | SMART Utility | Comments Off

I have some great news. The OSX SAT SATA driver adds support for some external drives, connecting over Firewire, USB, or eSATA. I have tested it on a drive I owned, and it worked just like an internal drive

Supported external drives have been the number 1 feature request since SMART Utility’s release 6 years ago. I’m estatic that I can say its (mostly) supported. Not all drives will work, but the best way to know is to try. Just download the zip from that link, open up the .dmg, and install the .pkg. Many thank yous go out to kasbert who wrote the code.

Because its based on Apple’s code, it uses Apple’s public license. This means that in the next version of SMART Utility, I will include a way to install the driver. That will help so many people.

Look for that new version soon!

Update

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013 | Company News | Comments Off

Its been awhile since this has been updated- too long in fact. So I wanted to fill everybody in on the company.

SMART Utility 3.1.1 is well under development, and should be released next Tuesday Determinations about 3.2 are still a bit up in the air, but its mostly settled. It will probably be out in a month or two. (There may be a 3.1.2 in between). There are some great ideas for 3.3/4.0 which I’m very excited about- including an iPhone app!

There are some other products under considerations, but nothing solid as of yet. I’d love to have a second and third app to not only expand the company, but provide protection in case the market for SMART Utility shrinks.

That’s it for now!

SMART Utility 3.1 is (Finally!) Out

Friday, August 3rd, 2012 | Uncategorized | Comments Off

SMART Utility 3.1 has been released, which brings full support for Mountain Lion. There are also a few new features as well as bug enhancements.

Note that this will be the final version that will support 10.5 and 10.6.

Download for 10.5 (Leopard), 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 10.7 (Lion). and 10.8 (Moutain Lion)

Here’s the full release notes:

• Added email notifications for app and extra
• Added SMART Utiilty.log file to crash reports to provide more information
• Added Developer ID signing for Gatekeeper on 10.8
• Fixed a bug preventing the overall status from displaying properly on 10.8
• Fixed some other minor bugs
• Reorganized preferences window
• Reorganized Growl notifications (removed scan and update complete, added drive name and partitions)
• Updated smartctl engine to 5.42, which supports many more drives
• Updated Growl framework to 1.2.3, which fixes some bugs
• Switched to using GCC 4.2
• Dropped support for 10.4

Mountain Lion is Out!

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 | Opinion, Reviews, Story | Comments Off

I’ll have a detailed post in the next few weeks, but I’ve been running the developer previews and its pretty nice.

Also, SMART Utility version 3.1 will be out next Tuesday will full Mountain Lion support. Right now it sort of works- but it doesn’t display the PASSED/FAILING/FAILED text properly and it doesn’t support GateKeeper yet.

So check back next Tuesday!

Sometimes You Have to Cut Your Losses and Ship

Monday, June 25th, 2012 | Company News, SMART Utility | Comments Off

Its always difficult to step back and re-evaluate a project after working many hours on it. You don’t want to think you wasted all of that time, to throw it away. But sometimes you must think hard about what you are doing, and whether its for the best.

I reached that point over the weekend. SMART Utility hasn’t been updated in nearly a year, and that was not my plan. I had some contract work that took me six months, which ended in January. I began work on version 3.1 of SMART Utility, which had some major work required. I had a few medium features completed, when I started work on the major feature in April- a rewritten operation of the main window.

I wanted to have a version out by now, so that I could begin work on a Mountain Lion compatible version. And with the release less than a month away, I was stressing out about completing it on time. The new major feature was taking too long. And while it is going to be nice to have, its not a necessity. Getting SMART Utility working on ML is, however.

So I made a hard decision to stop work on the new feature. I branched off the code to version 3.2. I reverted the 3.1 code to the point prior to the work on the main window. (I love git BTW!) It wasn’t easy to decide to do that, but I felt relieved about doing so.

So I hope to have 3.1 out in the next week or so. Its a nice upgrade, but not what I imagined. But that’s okay, I know my customers will be happy to have a new version (with email notifications!!). And I can start work on getting it fully supported under Mountain Lion. I don’t know if 3.1 will be compatible with 10.8, or if it will require 3.2. That really depends on how much work is required. However, 3.1 will be the last version supported under 10.5. Version 3.2 will require 10.6.

So stay turned for more news!

Update on the Benjamin-Talk Show-Gruber Controversy.

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 | Opinion | Comments Off

So there has been more information revealed this week about the whole controversy which I posted about earlier. If you want a different summary, take a look here.

First, Gruber’s second episode of the Gak Talk Show he finally opened up about what happened. CandlerBlog has a post with a transcript that says

Dan, the co-host, is obviously very popular and extremely talented. He’s extremely good at what he does and I’m super proud of the work we did together. And I think we had lots of good shows and some great shows. Dan, the owner of a podcast network, I have longstanding disagreements with. Came to an end. Why did I take The Talk Show with me? Because I love it.

Candler is a little more deferential to Gruber, acting like now that Gruber talked about it everything is hunky dory. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

So what’s the disagreement about? Well, Gruber just posted a star story about the New Talk Show. In it he writes that he is selling sponsorships directly. As Space36 writes,

So it sounds as though the suggestions made at the time were pretty much accurate: a fundamental disagreement over the cut of sponsorship money, etc. with Gruber able to earn significantly more from the podcast by taking it to Mule.

CandlerBlog agrees. Which is interesting, but I think not that damaging to Gruber. While sad that Gruber was leaving behind a great show for more money, its not that rare, and in any case its not why this whole thing blew up. It was because Gruber and Benjamin said nothing when it happened, and then after fans starting reacting, Gruber and his cronies started attacking, insulting, and mocking the fans. That’s what drove people crazy.

Benjamin then pretty quickly put up a podcast response, and you can tell he he was blindsided and hurt by what was done. People latched onto that and the attacks and just went on the offense against Gruber. This lead to very bad iTunes reviews, and I’m guess poor sponsorship requests. The first two shows were sponsored without hearing the episodes, and most likely without the PR disaster surrounding the show. I know that Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software and Rogue Amoeba got hammered for their support (rightly or wrongly).

Since Gruber has shown he cares more about money than fans, this is a huge problem. So he was forced to respond for damage control. But just like any other scandal (think politician cheating, who denies it at first), responding this late makes it seem he only cares about fixing his image instead of sincerely caring about the fans. That’s what really damaged Gruber’s reputation.

If this post immediately followed up after announcing the new Talk Show, we all would have speculated, and if Gruber and his cronies did not respond harshly to the critics, this would have blown over in a day (which is really short in internet time). Instead, its almost two weeks late and its still being talked about.

This serves as a great lesson for managing splits and managing PR. Though it should be common sense, apparently its not. I think the three things to learn are:

1. Don’t attack your own fans who support you, even via advertising
2. Control the message yourself by releasing an honest statement, don’t let others speculate
3. Control the message early, not waiting until its a big drama

However, I’m sure Gruber won’t be the first to ignore that advice.

Keeping Out of the Sandbox

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 | Company News, Opinion, SMART Utility | Comments Off

With the impending sandbox deadline coming up (FOR REAL THIS TIME, YO!), I thought I re-visit my decision to keep SMART Utility out of the App Store, when it was announced. This was both a political and technical decision. The technical part was simple- it would take a fair amount of work to rewrite SMART Utility to meet the App Store rules. There would be features left out, or features that would be restricted (the menu item for example). And even with all of that, it still may not have been approved. I found all of that completely unacceptable. The sandbox restrictions are just the icing on the cake.

The political part was a little more complex. I do not like the idea of somebody else approving apps and deciding what my customers are allowed to see. I feel that curated apps can be a good idea- but I entirely disagree with Apple’s rules for curation. I believe that they should put every app submitted up, except for ones designed to cause damage (i.e. trojans). They should not restrict based on APIs or ideas. I would love to use the App Store’s features (Software Updates for example), but not at the expense of features. That is bad for my product and my customers. I will not stand for that. I also do not like the lack of trials, as well as paid upgrades for apps.

The sandboxing issue has also lead to some developers pulling apps. Manton Reese has decided to pull Clipstart. He has a followup about the lock in with the App Store, which helps reaffirm my decision to stay out of the App Store. Atlassian (who helped prompt Manton to pull his app) has also decided to pull SourceTree. He documents many, many issues with sandboxing. And check out the comments for more complaints (hey comments can be good, surprise!!).

And not only are good apps not available in the App Store (which is big problem for Apple), but as Brent Simmons says, it has a chilling effect by stopping developers from even thinking or developing apps for the App Store. As Michael Tsai, you don’t know what the costs will be ahead of time. You could develop a great app, only to have Apple change the rules.

This is bad for customers and bad for developers. Apple needs  new way.

Another Silly App Store Removal

Friday, May 25th, 2012 | Opinion | Comments Off

From Rogue Amoeba: Apple Has Removed Airfoil Speakers Touch From The iOS App Store

Seriously? Apple needs to get out of the curated app business. All it does is give them bad press. If we had a GateKeeper type solution on iOS devices, this wouldn’t be a problem.

My Take on the Gruber-Benjamin-Talk Show Drama

Friday, May 25th, 2012 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Last Friday the Mac Podcasting community exploded with the news that John Gruber had taken his podcast, The Talk Show, to Mule Radio from 5b5. Gruber had being doing The Talk Show for several years and over 100 episodes with Dan Benjamin, which runs 5by5. Suddenly, without explanation or warning from either of them, he stops doing it with Dan, and starts on his own.

It was mysterious that there was no new episode in two weeks, but that happens sometimes. However, listening to the last episode, it got a little weird with Gruber after Dan asked about t-shirts and about next week. Looking back, it does seem like something was amiss.

So in the vacuum of information, people started speculating, a lot of that was on Twitter. Gruber nor Dan responded, but the operating of Mule Radio, Mike Monteiro, started mocking people for their feelings about the change. Gruber’s wife joined in. Eventually, Gruber did a little mocking of his own. However, since Mike is a known asshole, it kind of makes sense that Gruber, who is an asshole in his own right, goes to a place called Mule Radio. There are a couple of great blog posts/forums here, here, and here with people explaining their frustrations.

I still don’t understand how insulting long term fans of the Talk Show gets them to listen to the new show, as well as brings in new listeners. Yes, its a free service, but its paid by advertisers, and the audience is subjected to them, and may even use their services. So is not necessarily free, and regardless, the listeners deserve an explanation. MacDrifter disagrees, but I like the response on CandlerBlog here and here. We welcome these people in our lives- and talk about them to each other and even to the hosts. They can think we don’t deserve a response, but if they want our attention (and money via advertisers) they should give us one.

Gruber has continue to remain silent on the issue (except for passive-aggressive posts and sweets). I think he believes this will all just go away. But I disagree. He has already split the audience. I won’t listen to his new podcast. Its not because he left 5b5, its the way he did it. He provided to notification, to his audience, and it seems like to Dan as well. He and his cohorts insulted his audience. This is what he should have done, but instead, he did the exact opposite.

However, Dan finally did respond. He shows what a class act he is. He understands the audience and his responsibly. It does sound like Gruber broadsided Dan with the move. Dan took pains to wish Gruber well, but we can tell it hurts him to talk about it. He expected that since it was their show, they would retire together. And he said Gruber could have ended it at any time if he was unhappy. But I think Dan, like the rest of us, didn’t like how Gruber handled it. It just shows how sad Gruber is. Its all about him- screw the audience and anybody else who gets in his way. But what do you expect when he doesn’t even allow comments on his blow.

So The Talk Show is no longer on my podcast list. I’m going to be added some more 5by5 shows to it, Build and Analyze, and possibly back to work.