So far under testing SMART Utility is fully compatible with Intel Macs running MacOS 26 Tahoe. This includes the external driver!
However, for M1, M2, M3, and M4 Macs running MacOS 26 Tahoe, it should be compatible but not the external driver.
SMART Utility is fully compatible with Intel Macs running Mac OS 13 Ventura. This includes the external driver!
However, for M1 & M2 Macs running Mac OS 13 Ventura, it should be compatible but not the external driver.
This information is way later than it should have been!
SMART Utility is fully compatible with Intel Macs running Big Sur. This includes the external driver! It was fully compatible by Beta 10, and the initial release (11.0) was the same.
Both SMART Utility and the external driver were also tested on 11.1, 11.2, and now 11.3, and the compatibility remains. The only issue that arises is on reboot, you may have to unplug and replug in any external drives to get them to show up.
However, for M1 Macs running Big Sur, it should be compatible but not the external driver. We just received our first M1 Mac here (a Mac Mini) so we will be testing soon.
Likely it will require version 4.0 to be native, based on some code we need to update. That should be released soon however!
SMART Utility 3.2.6 has been released, which adds full support for Catalina.
NOTE: This is the last free version. Version 4.0 will be out soon, and will be a paid upgrade, unless you purchased after May 1st, 2016 and then it is free.
NOTE: This is the last version for 10.9 (Mavericks) and 10.10 (Yosemite). Version 4.0 will only support 10.11 (El Capitan) and above.
Download for 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.12 (Sierra), 10.13 (High Sierra), 10.14 (Mojave), 10.15 (Catalina)
Here’s the full release notes:
– U
– Enabled notarization
– Disabled “Buy” options until new purchasing system is ready
– Fixed a bug where outputting debug messages preferences would not properly change state
– Fixed a couple interface bugs with the French translation
– Fixed some formatting issues with Help
– Updated to Sparkle 1.23
They seem to release these twice a year or so, which is actually awesome. Their current post has some fascinating numbers. I’m surprised and shocked the WD Reds did so terribly. Looks like my next NAS drives will HGST NAS 4TBs (Amazon affiliate links). Anyway, check out the numbers for yourself.
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:
It seems every year or so the high and mighty tech writers come out with anti-comment posts. And just like last time, I’m here to defend them. The current anti-comment post comes from Matt Gemmell.
He lists a lot of the benefits, but they don’t seem to come close to over riding the best reason to have comments- further the conversation. Oh sure HE benefits a lot, and HE can participate in the conversation, and that’s his right, but NOBDOY else can. That’s a huge dent to the interactive web.
Not everybody can have a blog, and very few people will have more than a few token followers on the blog or twitter. So very few people see the responses, very few people will be prodded to think critically, or learn more information. All those are bad things.
Bloggers who don’t have comments turned on are sheltered, and so are their audiences. Its hurts the readers, and it doesn’t help the bloggers become better. Comments are not shouting matches, not if they are run right, and blogs without comments are not a curated conversation- because you need to have more than one person in a conversation. Those bloggers need to wake up.
Luckily, those selfish bloggers are few and far between, and there are great ones like GigaOm out there. Somehow I missed two excellent articles about comments on GigaOm. The first one explains that comments are perfect, but they are still a necessary part of a good blog. I love this paragraph here:
That said, however, not everyone has a blog, and not everyone is on Twitter or Facebook. One of the benefits of having comments is that they are open to everyone — although that is obviously part of what can make them so noisy as well. The barriers to entry are low, and so there are plenty of “drive by” comments and trolling. Having people respond on their own blogs or on Twitter and Facebook can also fragment the conversation on a topic, making it difficult to follow and causing potentially valuable responses to be lost or not recognized properly.
The most compelling reason to have comments is that you actually care what other people think. It’s true, as Siegler and others argue, that readers can find other ways to comment: they can post a remark on Twitter with a link, they can do the same on Facebook or Google+, they can send an e-mail, or they can write a response on their own blog. But doesn’t that make it even harder for a blogger to find and respond to all of the thoughtful comments, since they will have to check all of those other sources? I think in most cases, bloggers who shut down comments don’t do this — they simply don’t respond.
Check out this excellent article about using SMART Utility to check out your HD. It is part of a series of articles on how to fix a slow running Mac.
It starts with the App Store itself. The Close, Minimize, Zoom buttons (red, yellow, and green) are in a none standard location. It looks ugly. There is no title bar, and the toolbars are an ugly monochrome. This is just as bad as the new iTunes (vertical stoplight buttons, monochrome sidebar, nonstandard scroll bars).
Next up is the new Twitter for Mac app. Its not surprising its ugly, and its UI leaves much to be desired- its descended from Tweetie for Mac. That was one of the worst Twitter applications. It took a couple of versions to support Growl, and to send a tweet it was Shift-Enter which was incredible frustrating and stupid. See this post for more on that.
Back to Twitter- it has nonstandard stoplight buttons (sound familar?). It has no Titlebar OR toolbar- so how the heck does one move the window? By the ugly black box on the right. The font is in Helvetica, rather than the proper Lucida Grande. The new Tweet window is draggable by the bottom, and is not attached to the main window.
Because Apple has led the way with their bad UI design, other apps have also taken that approach. What a mess. For more on this, check out this post from Tim Morgan.
I’ve had a few weeks to digest the Mac App Store, and what it means for SMART Utility, as well as any future apps. The Mac App Store has all the same benefits and issues as the iPhone App Store. Selling an app just got so much easier. No more worrying about setting up a store front, worrying about payment processors, serial number systems, or bandwidth hosting. Its great for the customers too- easy installation, easy updates, and no more serial numbers.
But it also comes with problems, the biggest of which is the restrictions. Even if I wanted too, I could not sell SMART Utility in the app store. It violates a number of rules, and version 3.0 will violate more. I don’t like giving control of selling to another company. And I will also lose my connection to my customers- as Apple does not release that information.
I’m sure the store will do great, but I’ll be happy to continue to sell my app the old fashioned way.
