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Growl in Retirement

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Re: Growl in Retirement

#71

Post by sillysaurusx »

liquidise wrote: post #6

> 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 do you send a notification now without Growl? Each time I try to google for a tutorial, they all say “just use growl.” Ultimately I gave up and installed growl, and it works quite nicely.

I’d just like to pop up a notification programmatically via a bash script. :)

Re: Growl in Retirement

#72

Post by CDRdude »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #71
liquidise wrote: post #6

> 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 do you send a notification now without Growl? Each time I try to google for a tutorial, they all say “just use growl.” Ultimately I gave up and installed growl, and it works quite nicely. I’d just like to pop up a notification programmatically via a bash script. :)

You can make an AppleScript thing and call it from bash. I think this is the sort of documentation I used at one point: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

Re: Growl in Retirement

#73

Post by eyelidlessness »

pram wrote: post #65
eyelidlessness wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible Apple independently arrived at a design for how to present iOS notifications that just happened to resemble growl in every way... but it’s not likely. Growl was so pervasive before macOS notifications that it’s inconceivable to me that developers at Apple weren’t presenting it as a proven model.

Uh huh. This is ignoring that notifications were present in webOS, Android, Windows 7, and so on. Or were those able to independently arrive at the exact same design of a toast popup, and Apple uniquely owes the provenance of their toast popup to Growl?

Wow, everyone is so fucking combative and contrarian the last few days. Chill out, that's not what I was saying.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#74

Post by sillysaurusx »

CDRdude wrote: post #72
sillysaurusx wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you send a notification now without Growl? Each time I try to google for a tutorial, they all say “just use growl.” Ultimately I gave up and installed growl, and it works quite nicely. I’d just like to pop up a notification programmatically via a bash script. :)

You can make an AppleScript thing and call it from bash. I think this is the sort of documentation I used at one point: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

Thanks!

Re: Growl in Retirement

#75

Post by pram »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #73
pram wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh huh. This is ignoring that notifications were present in webOS, Android, Windows 7, and so on. Or were those able to independently arrive at the exact same design of a toast popup, and Apple uniquely owes the provenance of their toast popup to Growl?

Wow, everyone is so fucking combative and contrarian the last few days. Chill out, that's not what I was saying.

It seems to be exactly what you're saying?

Re: Growl in Retirement

#76

Post by armadsen »

CDRdude wrote: post #72
sillysaurusx wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you send a notification now without Growl? Each time I try to google for a tutorial, they all say “just use growl.” Ultimately I gave up and installed growl, and it works quite nicely. I’d just like to pop up a notification programmatically via a bash script. :)

You can make an AppleScript thing and call it from bash. I think this is the sort of documentation I used at one point: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

AppleScript does work well for this. It might also be nice for somebody to write a little UNIX-y command-line app that just allows you to pop up a notification, and potentially get a response to it. Maybe I will...

Re: Growl in Retirement

#77

Post by armadsen »

addicted wrote: post #62
pram wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I first got into the Mac eco system in the mid 2000s, so I don’t know the entire history of notifications there, but I remember that Growl was pretty much the defacto Mac standard by the late 2000s. Growl and a particular packaging software that provides auto updates had basically become a prerequisite for Mac apps at a certain point.

The auto updates software you're thinking of is Sparkle, and it's still going strong. Still by far the most common way for Mac developers to do automatic updates for apps distributed outside the Mac App Store. https://sparkle-project.org

Re: Growl in Retirement

#78

Post by armadsen »

pram wrote: post #65
eyelidlessness wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible Apple independently arrived at a design for how to present iOS notifications that just happened to resemble growl in every way... but it’s not likely. Growl was so pervasive before macOS notifications that it’s inconceivable to me that developers at Apple weren’t presenting it as a proven model.

Uh huh. This is ignoring that notifications were present in webOS, Android, Windows 7, and so on. Or were those able to independently arrive at the exact same design of a toast popup, and Apple uniquely owes the provenance of their toast popup to Growl?

Growl existed before webOS, Android, and Windows 7.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#79

Post by jevinskie »

addicted wrote: post #62
pram wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I first got into the Mac eco system in the mid 2000s, so I don’t know the entire history of notifications there, but I remember that Growl was pretty much the defacto Mac standard by the late 2000s. Growl and a particular packaging software that provides auto updates had basically become a prerequisite for Mac apps at a certain point.

The update framework is Sparkle and is still widely used. You’re quite right that these two frameworks made important chunks of app functionality Just Work.

Re: Growl in Retirement

#80

Post by armadsen »

crazygringo wrote: post #35
liquidise wrote: post #6

> 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 aren't really that many ways to do notifications. If you want something that pops up on a large screen but isn't overly intrustive, a rectangle with text in it in the corner next to a menu icon to control them is what you're going to come up with. And if you're Apple it'll be a rounded rectangle. And Apple absolutely did not rip off Growl "pixel for pixel", the visual styles are totally different. I don't know…

All great design innovations seem dead obvious in hindsight. But they're not.
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