The CocoaBots

Dropping out of Hyperspace, Captain

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:08:00 +1100

“Sensors show a Lion-sized asteroid off the starboard docking rings, Wookie. Time to abandon ship!” — Me, pretending to be all Star Wars-ey

Well, Mac OS X Lion has been out for close to a month now and for the most part it’s been a smooth ride (unless you left Hyperspaces installed — more about that below).

As I pointed out in my previous post, Hyperspaces didn’t survive the transition to Lion — I’m going answer some of the common questions people have been asking:

Why? Technically, why?

By far, the most common question I’ve been asked is “why exactly isn’t Hyperspaces possible under Lion?”. For the most part it’s genuine technical curiosity, so here goes. Note: I’ll use the term “Spaces” throughout the rest of this post to refer to a virtual desktop — they’ve been renamed to “Desktops” under Lion.

Under Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard, there was a simple set of AppleScript classes and commands that let you perform common tasks with Spaces such as:

Getting and setting the number of rows and columns of Spaces;
Enabling and disabling Spaces;

Under Lion, these AppleScript classes and commands no longer exist. According to Apple’s engineers, these commands were never formally documented and were therefore not supposed to be used as public API. Hyperspaces could get by without being able to turn Mission Control on and off (it’s not actually possible to do this under Lion), but without knowing how many Spaces are actually available there’s no way to know which Spaces can be switched to. Or how many Spaces to render in the Space Switcher. Or which Space settings I should keep in memory. It’s a massive hole in the app — without listing any other reasons, this one stops Hyperspaces in it’s tracks.

Reason #2 — Spaces no longer report sequential identifiers. Under Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard, each Space had an identifying number — these were between 1 and 16 (the maximum allowable number of Spaces). They were assigned sequentially, so that you knew without any doubt that Space 1 came before Space 2. Lion does not assign Space identifiers sequentially — they are also no longer numbers between 1 and 16. The numbers come through looking like 12360, 2092 and 11974. Perhaps there is some method that Apple uses internally to garner meaning from these identifiers, but my guess is that they’ve architected most of the system to not care anymore. Without these IDs making any sense, it becomes impossible to work out directionality between each Space. You can’t switch left or right if you’ve got no idea which Space sits to either side. I have seen a proof-of-concept workaround to this problem, but on it’s own it is not enough.

The more astute or technically minded readers may remember the bad old days of private SPIs, and the ever-infamous CGSPrivate header that used to be used by every virtual desktop app on the Mac. These SPIs would not really bring you any closer to a solution, and introduce potential instability and undefined behaviour. Hyperspaces had enough troublesome ties to system-level activities.

So what happens now?

We’re powering down the engine and putting Hyperspaces onto life support. There will be no further releases or updates, but I will continue to offer support for the foreseeable future. If you’re staying on Snow Leopard, you can still purchase a copy from our web store.

I won’t be releasing the code as open source at this point. Perhaps at some point in the future I’ll clean things up a little and put it out there.

What about that really annoying bug?

There are two bugs that I know of with Hyperspaces 1.1.1:

1. Hyperspaces goes into an auto-focus frenzy when launched under Lion

You should uninstall Hyperspaces before you update. I can’t release an update to address this problem mainly because it would not make it through the App Store review process due to the following policy:

2.25 Apps that do not run on the currently shipping OS will be rejected

Just remove Hyperspaces from your startup items before you upgrade to Lion. Yes, I do know there are only three of you that haven’t done that yet.

2. Hyperspaces loses all settings on reboot

There is one issue that has been plaguing users with the Hyperspaces 1.1 update: on some systems, Hyperspaces would appear to lose all settings. The good news is that there is a workaround:

Download this AppleScript, and expand it if necessary;
Move the file somewhere like your Documents folder, or your Applications folder;
Open up “System Preferences.app → Account → Login Items”;
Click the “+” button, then navigate to where you placed the “Launch Hyperspaces After 15 Second Delay” script, and select it;
Remove “Hyperspaces.app” from the Login Items list if it is still in there (this is critical).

The next time you boot your computer, Hyperspaces will wait a full 15 seconds before starting after you login. This seems to make things work as expected. This bug only seems to affect Snow Leopard users who have restored their current system from a Time Machine or backup.

Farewell, Gentle App

Hyperspaces was downloaded over 150,000 times over the last couple of years — it didn’t sell anywhere near that many copies, but it should stand as a shining example of following your dreams. Hyperspaces started as a quick weekend project, and snowballed into something that let me quit my day job and do what I love for a living.

You can rest now, little app — you’ve done well.

And with that, fin.

Lion: Natural Predator of Hyperspaces

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:56:00 +1100

I have some bittersweet news: many of you will have seen the keynote given by Steve Jobs at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) earlier this week. There were some fantastic announcements, including iOS 5, the (potentially) incredible iCloud and finally Mac OS X ‘Lion’. Lion introduces a brand new way to manage your application’s windows called ‘Mission Control’ — you can read more about Mission Control on Apple’s Lion site — it’s a great addition, and having used it I can honestly say that if you’re a Hyperspaces user under Snow Leopard, you’re going to love using it.

But I said ‘bittersweet’: Mission Control replaces Spaces entirely, and part of that replacement means that I cannot make Hyperspaces work under Mac OS X ‘Lion’. This isn’t a matter of skill, or fiddling about until things fall into place — the changes are such that it’s just not possible to make an application like Hyperspaces anymore. I can’t go into too much technical detail until Lion is actually released due to my agreements with Apple, but if you have access to Lion and would like more information about the change I’m happy to discuss it directly with you.

So I have two thoughts at this point:

I want to do the right thing by you — so I’m letting you know about this now, and not in a couple of months time when Lion is released. I’ll keep supporting Hyperspaces for the foreseeable future, so please don’t worry that you won’t be able to contact me for support — of course you can, please do!
I’m sad, but proud — Hyperspaces represents a couple of years of my blood, sweat and tears and I’m really proud of the app. I am disappointed that things have to end this way, without any warning for myself or for you, nor any way for me to have an effect on the situation. Thank you to everyone that has contributed to Hyperspaces in any way.

I am seeing this situation as optimistically as I can — with all the great announcements here at WWDC, I’m able to focus my time on producing a couple of great new apps that will be specifically designed for Mac OS X ‘Lion’ and iOS 5. More on those when there’s more to share.

Update: Hyperspaces 1.1.1

Tue, 10 May 2011 07:38:00 +1100

So the response to Hyperspaces 1.1 was fantastic — thanks so much for all the kind words and excellent feedback that you took the time to send. Being able to use different settings across all of your displays and spaces in Hyperspaces 1.1 seems to have made a lot of people very happy!

However — no app is perfect, and there were some annoying problems with Hyperspaces 1.1 that decreased the awesomeness by at least 35% (our science team gave me that number). I’ve been hard at work on an update that makes everything a little bit smoother, and irons out most of the problems that crept in to the last release.

Hyperspaces 1.1.1 is available for download now (Mac App Store customers, skip to the bottom), and includes the following changes:

Changing spaces is faster.
You can set the way that your desktop image scales (or tiles) under the ‘Images’ tab in the ‘Your Spaces’ preferences.
A refined user interface for selecting and editing your spaces under the ‘Your Spaces’ preferences — it should be much clearer which space you’re editing versus which space you’re on.
Additional options under ‘Your Spaces → Options’ to disable the actions performed when clicking and double-clicking on the desktop when icons are hidden.
Bugs that you guys reported have been fixed left, right and center.
Increased general awesomeness by about 35% (again, figures by our science guys).

Update me, update man!

Both the Mac App Store and the retail versions have been updated:

Check for updates from the retail version’s preferences; or
Visit the ‘Updates’ tab in the App Store app if you have the Mac App Store release.

I’m really happy with how this release has turned out, but I’m not resting on my laurels: I’m working toward another release a little later in the year (after I release a couple of currently-under-wraps apps from the CocoaBots’ secret base!).

Hyperspaces 1.1: The Next Generation

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:23:00 +1100

It’s finally here — boasting exciting new features, and a shiny new look: Hyperspaces 1.1 is ready!

What’s new?

Hyperspaces 1.1 is a major update to Hyperspaces that introduces the following new features:

Setup each display within each space individually. Have you ever wanted to have a different desktop image on each of your displays for each of your spaces? Go for it!
Shows the current space number in the menu bar — check out the gorgeous new icon!
Show and hide your desktop icons for each space — perfect for setting up a quiet space with no desktop clutter, or recording that on-screen presentation without the mess;
Show and hide the Dock for each space;
Setup more than one space at a time. Just hold down shift or command while clicking on a space in the preferences;
Preview your customisations right in the preferences;

There are plenty of other fixes and improvements, you can read about some of them in more detail on our Hyperspaces page — we really hope you like what we’ve done!

Download

You can download a demo of Hyperspaces 1.1 right now — it’s about 2.3Mb. Alternately…

Mac App Store is a go!

As of today, you have a simple choice — you can buy Hyperspaces just like you always have from our web store using PayPal, or — if you’d prefer — you can buy Hyperspaces directly through the Mac App Store.

Hyperspaces costs the same as it always has, and $12.95USD we think it’s great value. But we’d like to encourage more people to give Hyperspaces a go, so for the rest of the month of February, Hyperspaces will be available for $9.99USD from the Mac App Store.

Have at it, astronauts!

Hyperspaces 1.1 Public Preview

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:59:00 +1100

This has been a long time coming — I’m proud and nervous to finally show you what I’ve been working on for so long. But mostly I’m just excited!

Keep in mind that this is a preview — that means there are probably going to be a couple of rough edges. The deal is that I’m showing you this early with that understanding, and also the understanding that you’ll tell me when something goes wrong.

Barring any major issues, the plan is to release this to everyone next week (and submit to the Mac App Store at the same time).

Download the Preview

Download Hyperspaces 1.1 Public Preview (it’s about ~2.5Mb)

What’s New?

There are lots of changes (lots of changes), but here are the major new features:

Support for multiple displays — setup different customisations for each of your displays;
Setup multiple spaces at the same time — just like the Finder, you can shift or command click on more than one space at a time in the preferences;
Lots of bug fixes, optimisations and changes to the user interface that should make Hyperspaces a lot easier to use.

Reporting Problems

There are links in the ‘Help’ menu within Hyperspaces that will let you contact support — most of it ties back to The CocoaBots Tender Support Site.

The Mac App Store

I’ve had a couple of people ask me about my plans for the Mac App Store. I will be submitting Hyperspaces to the Mac App Store when Hyperspaces 1.1 is released. I need to make it very clear: Apple gives developers no way to transfer or transition existing licenses to the Mac App Store. If you want to manage your copy of Hyperspaces through the Mac App Store, you will need to buy a copy through the App Store. There will be no difference in function between the two versions, although the Mac App Store version of Hyperspaces will only run on Mac OS X 10.6.6 or higher — I’ll talk more about this in a future post.

I will continue to update the normal, non-Mac App Store version of Hyperspaces 1.x alongside the Mac App Store version until Hyperspaces 2.0 is released.

Disable the “swoosh” when changing Spaces

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 23:59:00 +1100

It’s finally over: I know a lot of you have been looking for ways to disable the “swoosh” animation when changing Spaces, and it’s now possible without a lot of mucking about (and you don’t even need Hyperspaces to do it!).

Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Copy and paste the following into the terminal window and then press enter:
defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock

There’s no step three. Your Dock will restart, and any time you change spaces — whether this be from within Hyperspaces or from the System — Spaces will no longer animate when transitioning to the new space. I’ve tested this under Mac OS X 10.6.5, but it reportedly works under 10.6.4 as well.

If you’d like to re-enable the “swooshing” effect:

Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Copy and paste the following into the terminal window and then press enter:
defaults delete com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off && killall Dock

Thanks go to Will Haslett for letting me know about this hidden preference.

Bad news, everyone: disabling space transitions is bad

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 23:04:00 +1100

Last time I posted… (months ago) I regaled you all with tales of how awesome it was to be able to disable space transitions using Hyperspaces 1.1. Well, it turns out that while the space transition is nixed, Exposé and the Dock both throw a wobbly like a 2 year old kid without their lollies. Here’s a video showing the effects:

Watch it one more time just to let it sink in. It gets worse if you persist and keep changing spaces this way — it’s like there’s a total disconnect between what Mac OS X is actually doing, and what the Dock and other applications see.

I know, it’s really sad — and I bet a number of you are asking aloud “Come on programmer man, this is fixable right?”. The short answer (to the best of my knowledge) is no, this isn’t something I can work around. And frankly, there are other features in both Hyperspaces 1.1 and the in-my-head-and-my-sketchpads Hyperspaces 2.0 that deserve the attention and time that I’ve given this feature.

I’m really sorry guys, it’s not often I post about big new features and given how long it’s taking me to get this release into your hands, the last thing I want to do is talk about taking features away. But as I said before: honesty is good, and a I like talking to you guys (even if it’s long overdue) — you’re great listeners!

Stability and simplicity are my goals for Hyperspaces 1.1. At this stage, I’ve seeded the 6^th beta of Hyperspaces 1.1 to my trusty group of testers. There’s been some great feedback so far, and I’m working on a final round of user interface revisions now that should make customising all of your screens an absolute blast. Once that’s done, I’ll send my little app off to the localizers for some language and region-specfic loving.

No promises on dates — I’m not a fan of being wrong all the time, and I’m still recovering from the less than fantastic parts of this year. What I can promise is that as of last week, Hyperspaces is my only focus until 1.1 is complete.

Oh, and to the commenter on my last post who asked if I was dead — reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. But I take the point — more news, more releases and more communication.

Hyperspaces 1.1: Disabling space transitions

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:49:00 +1100

I get a lot of requests asking if I know of a way to disable the built-in animated transition when switching spaces. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that there’s a magic setting you can flip, but I’ve just finished adding a new feature to Hyperspaces 1.1 that should make a few people smile.

So long as you use Hyperspaces to change spaces (and not the system hotkeys or system spaces overview), you can switch between spaces instantly in the new version. And yes, for those of you who have their eyes on the ball, this is the first step toward reintroducing things like this:

Custom transitions are one of the many things I have planned for Hyperspaces 2 — but more about that after you guys have version 1.1!

Why is Hyperspaces 1.1 taking so long?

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:26:00 +1100

Back in January, I posted a teaser of what’s coming in Hyperspaces 1.1 and threw it out there that I was aiming for a late March release. It’s the end of April now, and I haven’t posted a word since. I hope that by being open and honest about this that you will understand why things have taken a little longer than I’d talked about.

I don’t want to be one of those developers who goes silent for months at a time, leaving my users wondering what’s happening — so here’s what happened:

I’m not going to go into any real detail, but I’ve had three visits to the hospital in the last two months — only one of those was planned. I was sick enough to have set back my work on Hyperspaces a lot and while I’ve made some progress, version 1.1 still has some time left to cook in the oven. I’m back and working on Hyperspaces full time as of this week, so I should be able to show some good progress over the coming weeks.

To those of you that wished me a speedy recovery already — thank you — it made a big difference (hospitals are no fun at all!).

Macworld 2010 Indie Developer Spotlight

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:46:00 +1100

I’m a little tardy in posting this information, but The CocoaBots are participating in the Macworld 2010 Indie Developer Spotlight- this means you can get Hyperspaces for 20% off while Macworld is on!

You’d be silly not to take advantage and buy some of the other fantastic apps that are also participating — you can find a full list at Macworld’s site.

Update: the Indie Developer Spotlight is over for 2010 — thanks to everyone who bought a copy of Hyperspaces during the sale!

Hyperspaces 1.0.4 and the road to 1.1

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:36:00 +1100

Wow — what a month! 45,000 copies of Hyperspaces have been downloaded (that’s version 1.0.3 alone!), and from what I can tell, people love it. It has had great reviews on sites such as Smoking Apples and MacStories, and the feedback via Twitter has been really encouraging.

This post has a dual purpose:

To announce the release of Hyperspaces 1.0.4; and
To give a small preview of what’s coming in Hyperspaces 1.1.

Hyperspaces 1.0.4

This is primarily a bug fix release, but it’s a good one! There are lots of great fixes in here for users who are running Leopard — I know version 1.0.3 was a bit of a bumpy ride for you guys. Snow Leopard users should find that everything is a little smoother. The full release notes are available at the Hyperspaces release notes page, and you can download the new version by checking for updates within the app, or by downloading it directly.

What’s coming in Hyperspaces 1.1?

I’m not big on talking about features in upcoming releases — it generally leads to people getting too enthusiastic and wanting things before they are ready. On the flipside, it’s important to me that you guys know what you’re getting when you decide to buy a license.

Hyperspaces 1.1 is going to deliver some great new features and improve how you customize your spaces:

I speak your language

Localizing to different languages is a priority for version 1.1 — I’ve had lots of great offers to translate Hyperspaces to all sorts of languages I should take the time to learn.

Apply customizations across multiple spaces

You can now select more than one space at a time when you’re setting up your spaces. It works like the Finder — command-click will select individual spaces, shift-click will select the spaces in between whatever the previous and current selections are. This is worth the price of admission on it’s own — I often wanted to change the font I was using on my spaces and didn’t because it was just too much work. Now it’s as easy as pie!

Here’s a video showing the new behaviour in action:

Set customizations for every screen of every space

This has been the number one request since I first released a preview of Hyperspaces. Being able to set a different desktop image for every screen within each of your spaces means that you’re really only limited by how many desktop images you have. It works a lot like the system’s desktop picture preferences — a new window will pop up on each of your displays allowing you to setup your customisations. Here’s a quick video of that window:

“Ooer! When can I download it?”, you ask

There’s no release date yet. My goal is before the end of March, but I’m not committing to a date until I’m sure I can deliver. Everything you see in the videos above works as advertised, but things are bound to change — I’ll keep posting teasers to @thecocoabots on Twitter, so make sure you’re following if you want to stay up to date.

Engage the Hyperdrive, Wookie

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:32:00 +1100

Hello there, weary traveller — welcome to the only-just-furnished web house of The CocoaBots!

My name is Tony, and I’ll be your site captain for this flight. It won’t be a long read — 500 words or less, and clear browsing for the duration of this post.

Chances are that you’ve come here in search of or response to our first fully released app — Hyperspaces v1.0. Don’t let me get in your way, please download a copy from the shiny, starry page where it lives before you continue reading.

Got it? Great! It’s been a long time in the making, and I’m really excited to be finally releasing version 1.0. I really hope you find Hyperspaces useful & fun — it has made my Spaces a lot easier to mouse around!

But why do I want Hyperspaces, you say?

Hyperspaces gives you features that I think are integral to making virtual desktops useful. I’ve said before that Spaces is a great implementation of this age-old function, but it’s missing something really important: Context.

How many times have you found yourself working away in a bunch of different spaces, only to find yourself aimlessly flicking to find a lost window? I know it happens to me more often than I’d like — so Hyperspaces is my answer to that problem. It lets you give each space a name (and show that name in a bunch of different spots), and give each space a personality as well. Desktop pictures and colored tints make the experience feel more alive than the default Apple implementation. Core Animation helps to round it all out and make the transitions between each space fluid and smooth.

I’m working on Hyperspaces (and other unreleased CocoaBots apps) full time now, and I’m really proud of my first app. I’ve got some great features in development for the future, and plans that I am really, really excited about.

It’s a great time to be a Mac software company.