Super innovative, internet-organized, open source project ahead of its time. I have a special place in my heart for it, too — back when I first started working for myself, and at home, in ‘06-07, I would run Twitteriffic with every incoming tweet posting to Growl. The frequency was low enough that this was not a distraction and every tweet was meaningful. At that time, pretty much all of my followed accounts were also indie, work-at-home Mac devs, and it was a virtual water cooler of sorts. Really was a huge part of me adjusting to working alone and working at home, but still feeling part of a group as the notifications faded by...
Growl in Retirement
21–30 of 245 posts
Re: Growl in Retirement
#22Pour one out for a fondly remembered enhancement to Mac OS X. In a somewhat similar nostalgic vein, I remember haxies… https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Haxie …and as linked in the blog post, Adium. https://adium.im Seemingly indispensable apps/applets/desk accessories that were either made unworkable by security changes, Sherlocking, or just the changing services we use. (Just look at those Adium services, and wistfully…
Oh Haxies, I remember writing run-time patches (aka, cracks) to bypass licensing/registration for several pieces of software. There was a common framework, whose name no eludes me, that could be almost universally patched giving access to tens (100s?) of software.
AquaticPrime perhaps?
Re: Growl in Retirement
#23> Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X They are right to say this, as the current Notifications system in OS X is ripped nearly pixel-for-pixel from Growl's implementation a decade ago. Like Spaces, Quicksilver, Cover Flow and others, Growl paved the way for a lot of the usability enhancements OS X gobbled up in recent years. Apple folks: take note. These are r…
How should Apple have handled this? Maybe insisted on acquiring the Growl company? I don't think Apple should have just avoided building Notification Center, since that's a big net benefit for everyone. If an acquisition is rejected/infeasible/not applicable/etc, then I'm not clear on the right thing to do. Acquisition might have been possible with Growl, but for some other cases there's not even a company to acquire…
They could license the IP to forestall copyright/patent challenges and motivate creative devs, similar to security bug bounties.
Re: Growl in Retirement
#24This illustrates how in proprietary and centrally-developed software, once the owner decides to integrate or replace something, all alternatives are eliminated, usually quickly, in this case in several years. Compare with GNU/POSIX/Linux, where you can still make a comfortable environment for yourself without Wayland or systemd or whatever it is you don't like, and replacements still continue to be maintained and dev…
This seems to be more of an illustration of the “platform owner copied and obviated your idea, so what’s even left to do?” problem.
That's exactly my point. There is a platform owner.
Re: Growl in Retirement
#25Big props to Growl. I remember it being all the rage in terminal emulators back in the day.
Thanks for all the work that was done - it was well appreciated.
Re: Growl in Retirement
#26> Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X They are right to say this, as the current Notifications system in OS X is ripped nearly pixel-for-pixel from Growl's implementation a decade ago. Like Spaces, Quicksilver, Cover Flow and others, Growl paved the way for a lot of the usability enhancements OS X gobbled up in recent years. Apple folks: take note. These are r…
Is this actually true? Notifications were in iOS way before OSX, and it seems like that is the actual implementation that eventually made its way into Mountain Lion.
I mean, Toast notifications weren't even invented by Growl. It was nice software but this seems like hyperbole lol
Re: Growl in Retirement
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh Haxies, I remember writing run-time patches (aka, cracks) to bypass licensing/registration for several pieces of software. There was a common framework, whose name no eludes me, that could be almost universally patched giving access to tens (100s?) of software.
AquaticPrime perhaps?
Ah, I think so!
Re: Growl in Retirement
#28> Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X They are right to say this, as the current Notifications system in OS X is ripped nearly pixel-for-pixel from Growl's implementation a decade ago. Like Spaces, Quicksilver, Cover Flow and others, Growl paved the way for a lot of the usability enhancements OS X gobbled up in recent years. Apple folks: take note. These are r…
Do people get tweak-y with their systems as much any more? I used to get extremely into customizing Mac OS (as in, Classic Mac OS), and early versions of OS X and iOS during the jailbreak salad days. Now, not so much. I tend to run closer to stock, and not deal with the system constantly changing and deprecating my tweaks. Is that because I am old, or is it less common now? (Not a rhetorical question, I really don’t…
There are a lot of people customizing their OS X experiencing (including custom window managers). See here for some examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/search?q=mac&restrict_sr=o...
Re: Growl in Retirement
#29> Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X They are right to say this, as the current Notifications system in OS X is ripped nearly pixel-for-pixel from Growl's implementation a decade ago. Like Spaces, Quicksilver, Cover Flow and others, Growl paved the way for a lot of the usability enhancements OS X gobbled up in recent years. Apple folks: take note. These are r…
There’s one issue, which is that of “Sherlocking” a third-party solution with a first-party implementation. Then there’s another, which is having an open enough system to support such innovations in the first place.
Something like Growl, or f.lux (mentioned down-thread) could never have come about if macOS had been as restrictive as iOS. I have little doubt that we’ve missed at least a few such innovations over past decade, especially on the iPad, due to this.
While the Mac will likely never, despite some tireless predictions, go fully locked-down, little things like the deprecation of kernel extensions will chip away at this from the Mac side as well. Market-driven innovation and platform control are a difficult balance, but they are ultimately a zero-sum game.
Re: Growl in Retirement
#30> Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X They are right to say this, as the current Notifications system in OS X is ripped nearly pixel-for-pixel from Growl's implementation a decade ago. Like Spaces, Quicksilver, Cover Flow and others, Growl paved the way for a lot of the usability enhancements OS X gobbled up in recent years. Apple folks: take note. These are r…
Is this actually true? Notifications were in iOS way before OSX, and it seems like that is the actual implementation that eventually made its way into Mountain Lion. I mean, Toast notifications weren't even invented by Growl. It was nice software but this seems like hyperbole lol
FWIW, Growl predates iOS
Edit: also, IIRC Growl was originally called "Notification Center", which is the name that Apple later used for their implementation of similar features
Double edit: I should've RTFA which mentions my fun fact