This bugfix release contains several fixes for Mac OS X Leopard that are mostly related to Apple’s software update. Also, the crash reporter now works on Leopard, so please continue to use it.
But that’s of course not everything we’ve been working on. For the next preview release of AppFresh, we worked on major improvements to both the interface and AppFresh’s internals. Have a look:
→ AppFresh Development Preview 5 Bugfix Release 5 (Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5)
You’ll notice the three-pane layout, which will fit nicely into Leopard’s overall UI, but which will also mean a usability improvement for our Tiger users. Another important thing is that we’ve removed most modal dialogs and instead chose to go with a status progress indicator at the bottom of the window. Under the hood, we improved multithreading so AppFresh should be faster and also more responsive for you.
New features of the upcoming Preview 6 will include a more advanced grouping of applications, a customizable application categorization, an improved Microsoft update checking mechanism, installing applications from your iusethis.com profile, a new download manager and much more.
November 12th, 2007 at 5:29 am
The new interface looks very nice. But some minor changes would make it fit in even better with Leopard:
-The selection in the sidebar when inactive should be a light blue like in iTunes 7 and go grey when the window is inactive.
- The numbers in the sidebar should be in blue rounded boxes like iTunes 7.
- The folders in the sidebar should be the ones from Leopard.
- The sort by bar should be a light grey like the find bar found in Safari 3 on Leopard.
- The scanning applications bar would actually be more suited to be like the Mail Activity section in Leopard Mail.
November 13th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I’m getting a major error running this on Leopard:
If I make a change (set application as up to date) and try to quit i get this error:
Items cannot be deleted from availableReleases.
November 15th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Any ETA for Preview 6?
November 18th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Preview 5.5 is crashing on me at the end of checking applications. It actually gets to the very last one (179 out of 180 and 12 out of 13) and hangs there for a couple minutes, eating up all the CPU, then crashes.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
This program *rocks!* I guess with Time Machine the snapshot feature will be a lot easier, huh?
November 24th, 2007 at 12:33 am
I got the same behaviour, just different numbers, but also the one but last where it gets stuck.
Still, GREAT App
I can’t wait see it working !
November 25th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Great application
November 25th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Can you add a feature to where it will notice and disable AppTrap while it installs updates (and deletes old versions)?
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/10/apptrap/
Otherwise it tries to catch it as you delete it and delete prefs for those apps, which is obviously not what you want and annoying.
As well, there’s a typo on the iusethis pref page: “Search for *unkown* applications”.
November 25th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Me too…
November 25th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
In the UI it has a text string “Up to date” that shows under applications. Since it’s being used as an adjective shouldn’t it be “up-to-date” with hyphens?
I might be wrong.
November 25th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
This app crashes on my Macbook in Leopard
November 25th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
I have a similar crash to ones described here, almost finished counting apps and then crashes.
Running 10.5 on my macbook pro. Very interested in this app though to keep track of my software, so i’m happy to keep testing it as previews come available and provide crash reports etc.
cool
November 26th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Uses about 1.5GB on my machine with about 400 apps, causing it to become unresponsive. As reported before, gets stuck on last check (179 of 180)
November 26th, 2007 at 5:54 am
Appfresh missed at least half of my applications in my applications folder. I don’t think I’ll be using it.
November 26th, 2007 at 7:15 am
AppFresh Leopard Fixes - metaquark.de blog
November 26th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
This app rocks thanks for the update!!!
November 26th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
I agree with you. If all those visual enhancements were included, not only would it look like it belonged in Leopard, it would look like it was included with Leopard.
Keep up the good work!
November 27th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Crashed my Macbook Pro with 10.5
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Also getting stuck on the last app. In this case 127 of 128.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
I can’t get 5.5 to open on 10.5.1 on my MacBook – it worked in Tiger but it just bounces in the dock then I get SPOD for a second and then unexpected quit…
Pity because although not perfect I liked AppFresh a lot… hoping 6 is available soon and fixes the problem
December 6th, 2007 at 2:42 am
i tried it on 10.5.1 and it leaked massive amounts of memory. 1.5GB!
December 6th, 2007 at 6:49 am
My Leopard Server doesn’t like Aurora for some reason, I authenticate so that it will wake up my Mac, and it says that helper application fails.
I can provide pics and things… I’m willing to help test, too. I just look forward to waking up in the morning as my server does.
Karl
December 7th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Episode 64 of the PowerPage Podcast is now available. You can either download it from the iTunes Store or directly (1:30′31, 31.62MB, AAC). Your panel: Jason O’Grady, Rob Parker and Youngmoo Kim. Topics include: bumps along the road with Mac…
December 10th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Just a suggestion: could a “lite” version of AppFresh exist? I couldn’t see myself ever using 90% of the features that the rather overwhelming default interface exposes (snapshots, sorting by last used date, IUseThis, etc. — heck, I don’t even want to see apps listed if they don’t have updates available).
I certainly appreciate the extra work and functionality that’s being put into this product, but I think there’s also a demand for a simple, straightforward, resource-friendly update app that isn’t a dashboard widget. Just a thought; thanks for your efforts so far.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Is it my imagination, or is AppFresh trying to update apps in my Time Machine backup?
I’ve noticed other auto-updaters doing this (Pixelmator are you watching?)
December 19th, 2007 at 5:37 am
I’m having some problems with wrong versions being detected on several apps. Transmission is never the correct version, and it usually changes versions in Appfresh from time to time. Yesterday Appfresh showed that v0.95 was installed and today it’s showing 0.93 when 0.96 should be the correct one.
It’s also suddenly detecting the wrong version of CoRD.
Check here: http://ormgas.com/images/appfresh_weirdness.png
December 19th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
It looks like this was solved by resetting the list of installed versions. I’ll let it run for a couple of days and see what happens.
December 26th, 2007 at 3:16 am
This crashes for me on my MacBook Pro relatively quickly after it finished scanning for updates. I tried “Reset Version Information,” but that didn’t help.
December 26th, 2007 at 4:06 am
WoW!
I fixed my issue!
I had an app called MacDialer that was causing the problem with Appfresh. For some reason, Appfresh had trouble with that app. It was always the last one done and it left Appfresh in an unstable state. (Things slowed down and eventually crashed.) Once I deleted MacDialer (which I didn’t use anyway), I had no more AppFresh crashes!
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 am
When scanning for Plugins it would also be useful if it scanned “/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins”, since there is at least one plugin that I have there that I would like to know about updates to
January 9th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Same problem on Leopard 10.5.1 and MacBook Pro. Can find updates for Apple software but not for any Applications, doesn’t even list them in the main window.
January 10th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
This is a great App. I’m glad to see that you are still developing it!
The new UI is coming along nicely!!!
January 13th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Yeah, but where is it?
January 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I’m definitely looking forward to the next version of this. Looks like it’ll be very useful once it’s polished.
January 27th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
when? when? when?
the current “preview 5″ makes my syslogd go nuts and adds 100s of megabytes of data to the log files.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:20 am
This version misses a lot of applications that I have had to check/update manually. It missed updates to Transmission, Lux Deluxe, Password Wallet, Vienna, Flip4Mac, Quinn, and Pontoon.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:52 am
I love appfresh, I just used it today to update a ton of my apps that haven’t been touched in quite a while. But a few problems. First, will there be integration with other mac download sites in the future to retrieve updates as many of apps weren’t picked up by iusethis. Second, the parameters seem to be lacking, as I found that some updates were 10.5 only (on 10.4.8), so in the future, there should be a detection of what version of Mac OS X the computer is using before detecting broken updates. Third, there should be a list that should be exempt from update checking for one reason or another (don’t want to/can’t upgrade). Thanks again for the great app.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Great application. Keep up to work on.
p.
February 8th, 2008 at 5:08 am
Could there be a simple way to increase the font size for the release notes? They’re rather small on my display but I like to read them.
Looking good otherwise!
February 9th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Just to let you know that AppFresh has expired today ! The message is : “AppFresh expired : The version of AppFresh you’re using is expired! Click OK to download a new version”.
I have clicked OK and… no new version!
February 9th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Please download again. I pushed the expiration date, sorry for the trouble.
February 10th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Not a so great trouble! Thanks for the update!
Michel
February 11th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Still having trouble with the expiration date, even after deleting and installing the new copy off the website. Any suggestions?
February 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am
My version also keep saying it is expired. I have deleted and updated several times.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:45 am
We updated the app, so the file download now points to a different version, and so even if you’re behind some caching proxy you should get the most recent version. Unless your system time is way off, you really shouldn’t get the expiration message anymore. http://metaquark.de/download/appfresh-0.5.5.1
February 12th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Jippie! You’ve done it. It works again.
March 15th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Using the 0.6 preview on my MBA; very happy with the removal of the modal download dialog, and app downloading and installation seems solid so far. One issue I’m having right now is that the Update Inspector pane vanishes immediately after opening. No Console messages generated, no other indications of what might be going wrong, it just opens up and immediately disappears again.
Other than that, no issues noted so far. Great work!
March 16th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Matthew, perhaps this will solve the problem (the note was published with version 0.6):
Note: The underlying data model of AppFresh has changed significantly from previous versions. If you updated from an older version and experience any problems, please try cleaning the ~/Library/Application Support/AppFresh folder and restart AppFresh.