Universal Appeal
January 27th, 2006Today I’m posting two updates: a minor revision to FastScripts, and a major version upgrade to Clarion.
In addition to more tangible features, both FastScripts and Clarion are now Universal – tested on a Core Duo iMac. To Apple’s credit, I spent more time getting to the iMac (I don’t own one yet – waiting impatiently for the MacBook Pro) than I did testing or fixing bugs. The only issue encountered turned out not to be an Intel issue at all, but rather a gcc 4.0 bug fix that causes a serious incompatibility with some gcc 3.3 code. Everything else “just worked.” Go Apple!
This long-awaited update brings a new icon and a massive overhaul of the preferences system. With the addition of named settings, you can easily switch between dramatically different setups from the main quiz window. By defining custom configurations, your practice time can be used to focus on the specific timbres and tonalities you need the most help with.
FastScripts (and FastScripts Lite!) received a couple usability improvements:
- The “merged folders” behavior of the script menu can now be disabled. This can be helpful for keeping the system-installed scripts visually separate from user scripts.
- Selecting a folder from the script menu now opens that folder in the Finder (or Path Finder).
Though I don’t have my Intel MacBook Pro yet, I’m sure that once I do I’ll start resenting developers who haven’t “gone native” very quickly. Here’s to hoping I haven’t gained any Intel-owning enemies over the past few weeks! The next beta release of FlexTime will also ship as a universal binary.
