A while back I mentioned a known bug in Alarm Clock that had been really bothering me. The problem occured when the application attempted to play a song that was protected, and the user wasn't authorized to play it. When this happened, QuickTime would pop up a dialog box prompting the user to authenticate, and the alarm would fail to play. Granted this happens very rarely, and probably only affected a few users, but the fact that it might bother even 1 user is enough to keep me up all night working on it.
Well I'm proud to announce that I found a solution for it, and this is no longer a problem as of version 2.4.1. In fact, I tested this problem on my main 2 competitors' apps, and both of them failed. So it looks like I may be the first alarm clock app to solve this little dilemma.
And while the above paragraph might sound like I'm tooting my own horn, my biggest goal is to improve the overall reliability of software alarm clocks. Not simply mine, but all software alarm clocks, especially on the Mac platform. After all, the reason I made my own alarm clock in the first place is because I wasn't satisfied with the reliability of other products on the market. And I'm guessing that my competitors probably read this blog, so this will help motivate them to solve the problem in their own software, giving all of us (no matter what product we use) a more reliable application.
And the other fix I made is a little embarrassing.
I somehow forgot (or deleted it at the last second) the CFBundleName key in the info.plist file of the application. Generally this isn't a big deal at all, except that the Sparkle (auto update) framework relies on this key to function properly. So the auto update feature in version 2.4 is broken. So users will be notified there's an update, and they'll have a button that says "download and install"...except it won't work! The download will work fine, but it will fail to properly install the application! And so users will be left with a broken application on their computer! Oops! (ouch).
Well I've fixed the problem, but users will have to manually download version 2.4.1 from my website.
When they're notified that there's a new version available, the release notes tell the user that the auto update feature is broken, and it provides the user with a link to directly download the file.
My apologies for this goofup! The auto update feature should work flawlessly in the future.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I discovered Alarm Clock a couple of weeks ago and I use it daily (or so ;). It's great piece of software : simple, yet powerful abnd very elegant.
To be perfect, I would appreciate the ability to add a text to a specific alarm. It would be useful when you have several alarms going on the same day (10:00 call boss, 11:00 meeting with Jane etc.) or for planned alarms.
Apart from this, it's very good job.
Please release a update to support the new apple remote, thank you.
Post a Comment