Growl coming to the Mac App Store as a full application
Growl is one of my favorite things about the Mac platform -- it's a notification service whose customization and power is unmatched on anything I've seen in other operating systems. And it's going through some changes in the near future: Project Lead Christopher Forsythe has posted on the Growl Google Group that as of version 1.3, Growl will move from a notification service into a full app, mainly to be included in the actual Mac App Store.
That has quite a few ramifications, both good and bad. The first is that Growl will be able to take advantage of everything the App Store offers, including ease of installation and upgrades, as well as discovery and any future features planned for Mac App Store apps. But the flip side is that anything the Mac App Store doesn't allow obviously won't be allowed in Growl, so those services (which currently include GrowlMail and GrowlSafari) will be retired completely.
This also means that Growl will become an app only for OS 10.7+, so 10.6 (Snow Leopard, the current version) and earlier will not be officially supported. Forsythe says the Lion upgrade is relatively cheap, and it will help the app more to move forward with Apple's OS rather than have to deal with customers who don't upgrade.
There's a lot to deal with here, and there will certainly be more issues and questions that come out as the new version enters the Mac App Store along with Lion. He also says that "these are not all of the changes coming," so don't waste all your shock right away on this one. I love Growl and plan to keep using it through the Mac App Store after Lion's release, but a lot of users who might depend on it for specific and edge case scenarios might be left in the lurch. We'll have to wait and see.
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Source: http://growl.info/
Growl is one of my favorite things about the Mac platform -- it's a notification service whose customization and power is unmatched on...
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David
This is good news! I'm not sure if the feature set will end up right but I'm very happy to see another app make it to the Mac App Store. Further throwing a couple of bucks the developers way is a smart way to support open source.
July 17 2011 at 10:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI will also be missing GrowlMail but for those of you just looking for a basic status notification for mail check out
http://loganrockmore.com/mailunreadmenu/ It's a pretty nifty free mail notifier that I've been using for quite a while now and it's always worked very well.
David
Maybe I'm nuts but don't most people have their mail clients iCon sitting in the system tray. That will usually tell you if mail is available. Yeah that means leaving the mail app running but there is nothing wrong with that.
Sadly this isn't a big concern for me anyway as I handle the vast majority of my mail on either the iPhone or iPad these days. My Mac mail clients are lonely! This brings up an interesting question; is growl for iOS possible with this change In direction?
If you're looking for a GrowlMail replacement, you can try Herald:
http://erikhinterbichler.com/software/herald/
It will be Lion compatible.
Good as Growl is, the truth is that Apple should have built a proper notification service into OS X years ago, that all applications can access through a simple API.
July 07 2011 at 2:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySomething tells me it's coming.
July 09 2011 at 1:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI think this is great for existing users, and it will open up Growl to a ton of new users. This expansion could help other developers see the need to add Growl support into their apps. Win-win I think.
Personally, hwgrowler and growlmail don't bother me, but it sounds like these guys have that taken care of.
I say keep up the good work.
Hoping that HardwareGrowler doesn't go away either. Please. work on some kind of way to make GrowlMail work. Please.
July 07 2011 at 12:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWe're not getting rid of hwgrowler if we can help it.
July 07 2011 at 1:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI absolutely love Growl and I'm excited about this. Thanks to Christopher for popping in here and answering questions too.
July 07 2011 at 10:43 AM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down ReplyI already miss GrowlMail like crazy having just upgraded to 10.7 GM. I hope GrowlMail lives on!
July 07 2011 at 8:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI'm going to be putting it up on github in a semi-official capacity.
(I work on Growl.)
Couldn't they just host the growl extras such as mail, safari, itunes, hardware etc for those that want them and just have the main growl app on the app store?
For me, and I dare say many, many others I am dismayed at this news and the mail and safari extras are the main reason I have growl installed. Without them there's little point in having it installed.
It's too big of a distraction to Growl itself to continue to do that. Those extras were going even before we started on about mas.
Chris
I could never seem to get Growl set up to work properly... Maybe a tutorial will be added into the App Store submission. (fingers crossed).
-Chris
http://friendsofmac.net
Email me and let's figure out why it doesn't work.
chris@growl.info
Chris
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