There’s one more thing… I’ve been working together with Thomas Winkler and Maik Szmatulewicz on another Mac application called AppFresh which keeps all applications on your Mac up to date by checking the internet for new releases and makes downloading and installing them a breeze.
Today, we release a first development preview to hear what you think about it. It certainly won’t work for all of your applications yet (listing their state as unknown) and some edges may still be rough, but all in all it works quite well. Since the application has received no public testing yet it won’t download updates and overwrite your old applications but instead extract downloaded files to your desktop, so you can inspect the contents of the downloaded archives and manually drag applications to your Applications folder. This will of course get more comfortable with time.
Currently, we get the information on available updates from the application’s appcast feed (if it has one, that’s great) and additionally check the cool osx.iusethis.com which provides appcasts as well. For application-provided appcasts, we really like what Andy Matuschak has created with Sparkle, since Sparkle-compliant appcasts are our most reliable source of information by far.
You’re welcome to test the application and we’d be really happy to hear your feedback. Please comment on this post or send an email to appfresh@metaquark.de. Thanks!
Edit: Everyone who’s got problems with the stuck panel, please re-download the application.
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:42 am
I’ve been wishing for a software like this for years! It’s the “Apple Software Update” for all non-Apple software, right?
Expect some feedback from me soon…
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 am
I’ve added AppFresh to iusethis.com
You guys should go over there and claim it to make sure that all new releases are announced on iusethis.com
http://osx.iusethis.com/app/appfresh
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:38 am
Heya! Wonderful app.
I just want to make some feedback: look at screenshot.
http://hints.ru/screenshots/38247-screen.png
It has panel that titled as “Panel” and it just dont want to close
Every button i press doesnt seem to work.
But, guys, you`ve done great work!
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:54 am
AppFresh looks promising! A nice feature would be some kind of smart lists to manage updates like
Always update – applications in that list are automatically updated when a new update is available (but only if the application is not open), also nice would be the possibility to set rules like “update automatically but only “within current major” version (for example only version 1.x but not version 2.x and above)” and “only stable releases, don’t install beta versions”
Ask to/manual update- applications in this list are updated manually in AppFresh or AppFresh asks when a new update is available
Never update – applications in this list are never updated (there is already an option in AppFresh)
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:25 am
Vor gut einem Jahr hatte ich die zwei selbst für absolute Dashboard-Verächter empfehlenswerten Widgets ‘App Update’ und ‘Widget Update’ bereits im fscklog angeschnitten. Während sich die Softwareaktualisierung um alle Apps aus Cupertino kümmert, wacht App Update über die Aktualität der eigenen weiteren Programme und meldet sich (nach Wahl) regelmäßig, um auf Neuigkeiten
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:46 am
Thanks for reporting this bug. If it keeps appearing, please re-download the application; I fixed it.
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Some other bugs:
- Some of applications doesnt download at all. Opera for an example. It shows progress bar, downloads, but nothing on my desktop
- Some other applications (like iScrobbler) updates well, but AppFresh keeps showing them like old.
I had version 1.5, AppFresh told me that there is 1.5.3 out. I`ve updated it, but AppFresh still displaying it as old. Seems like i`ve downloaded 1.5 again, not 1.5.3.
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:45 pm
In this preview, the updates are downloaded to your Desktop and don’t overwrite your existing applications. Have you checked the “iScrobbler 1.5.3 Update” directory on your Desktop? What version has the downloaded iScrobbler application in this directory?
March 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
1) Opera folder (and some other) wasnt even created on my desktop
2) seems like AppFresh has downloaded iScrobbler 1.5 for me. Not 1.5.3.
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I noticed one problem – the Graphic Converter update page has an animation which didn’t disappear along with the rest of the webview and instead drew over the upper left corner of my display: http://improbable.org/chris/BugReports/AppFresh/StrayAnimation.png
I’ve noticed some version detection issues:
- Dominions 3 is misdetected as the demo version, which is up to 3.4, rather than the 3.0.6 version which is the latest update for the full version. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/illwinter/Dom3/6.htm (arguably the developer’s fault but there should be a way to manually mark an update as install)
- I have Growl 0.7.6 installed but AppFresh picked it up as 0.7.5 and wants me to update.
- Many applications have minor versions detected as available updates which aren’t detected for the app itself – e.g. HoudahSpot 1.4.9 installed versus 1.4.9.598 available. It’s not clear whether checking CFBundleVersion and CFBundleShortVersionString together would result in more problems, however. Other apps affected include ffmpegX, MarsEdit, NetNewsWire, Tangerine, VLC, and SuperDuper.
- BBEdit is listed as having an available update – it’d be nice if there was a way to distinguish between free and paid updates. This is academic, though, since I simply deleted it because I’ve been using TextMate.
March 24th, 2007 at 9:43 am
The version detection is not as easy as one might think, but its important to get to know about broken apps to improve our test cases.
Problems with version detection are most of the times related to errors in the app itself. For example does the growl package define version 0.7.6 in the Info.plist and 0.7.5 in the localized InfoPlist.strings, but we’ll fix this in the next preview. It’s a problem of merging both.
we’ll also have a look on the other apps reported. Many people are using the Report broken App feature, so we can have a closer look on whats the problem. Will be hopefully improved with the next preview too.
Your Graphic onverter problem is really weird, we’ll test that.
March 24th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Excellent app, really love apps that looks like this
Few things:
- Are you guys reading the “CFBundleShortVersionString” key in conjunction with “CFBundleVersion” at all? Shimo is reporting itself that 0.9.8 is installed. CFBundleShortVersionString = 0.9.8, but CFBundleVersion = 182. Thus I have 0.9.8.182 installed already, but AppFresh seems to think I have 0.9.8
Same sort of thing happening with Colloquy.
- Apps that include letters would seem to break the version check algorithm. Eg. VLC 0.8.6a is considered older than 0.8.6.
- Azureus has 3.0.0.8 installed, but I checked the plist, and it’s incorrectly set there. How would you fix such issues like this, where the devs haven’t updated their files properly? I know I can just “skip checking for updates”, but isn’t that a permanent skip?
- Apps like iStumbler call their releases ‘r97′, ‘r98′ etc. The plist identifies itself as ‘98′ (CFBundleVersion). The iStumbler appcast does correctly let Sparkle know it’s version 98. Perhaps a bug here, or a case of code sequence execution/priorities in the wrong order?
- Burn 1.7.12 installed, yet wants to “update” to 1.62. Must be related to the ‘1.7u’ version I suppose.
- Growl’s prefpane plist definitely reporting both CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion as 0.7.6, yet coming up as 0.7.5 in AppFresh, as mentioned above.
- “Queue ReportBroken completed” message rather obscure and “techy”. A thank you message is simple enough
Good work lads.
March 24th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
thank you for your detailed description…it is sure not really easy to get all those versioning right, since there are tons of different ways on defining versions and even some devs are doing it wrong as you mentioned too.
i guess with all the infos we are getting right now we’ll get the comparison better and better. in the next version sparkle comparisons are fixed. some more apps will be fixed as well.
the problem is not just CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion, its those and CFBundleGetInfoString and CFShortVersion in the localized InfoPlist.string. So we need to merge both plists to decide what to use.
Growl is not displayed correctly because the version defined in iusethis is set to 0.76 which is in comparison to 0.7.5 newer. there are problems if update infos on iusethis are incorrect. wrong versions, no versions or even broken download links. right now there is no fallback in appfresh to other sources.
March 25th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Great idea!!! Great App!!!
Still having some troubles (it crashes at the 140th app…) – Is there a way to submit reports?
Wrote about this app in my blog on Mac (in Hebrew) – hope it’ll get more people to try it out.
Jonas – thanks for all your apps!
March 25th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Please check out the new version that will be available within the next few hours. Feedback is always welcome. The new version will have the CrashReporter enabled, but you can always mail directly if you want.
I actually just “tryed” to read you article. At least my Hebrew is not the best
Thomas.
March 25th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
It appears that the program recognizes some application as “old” updates:
Growl (0.7.6) installed on my system was recognized as 0.7.5 for some reason.
VLC 0.8.6a was found to be old for some reason.
Xtorrent 1.0 Beta 35 is the latest update, but AppFresh said the latest one is 1.0.
Bugdom 2 was also incorrectly marks my version as 2.0.3, although I have version 3.0.5.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Recently I came across the hatom-sparkle project, that aims at extending Sparkle to support Microformats based appcasting. Even though, I am not sure if Microformats per definition are the best choice for enabling applications with auto-update functiona