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30 Most Recent RSS FeedLeopard
Visitors' Operating Systems
I've been keeping an eye on Google Analytics to track the operating systems of visitors to help me determine who I should be writing AppleScripts for. Looking at August 28 (SL's debut) thru September 20 (about 90k visits):
- Intel 10.6 - 44.38%
- Intel 10.5 - 43.91%
- PPC 10.5 - 4.0%
- Intel 10.4 - 3.04%
- PPC 10.4 - 2.84%
To put a finer point on it, here are the stats for the week September 13 thru September 20 (about 25k visits):
- Intel 10.6 - 52.24%
- Intel 10.5 - 36.54%
- PPC 10.5 - 3.83%
- PPC 10.4 - 2.90%
- Intel 10.4 - 2.72%
I think I can pretty much drop explicit support for Tiger and PPCs. Snow Leopard adoption appears to be somewhat brisk, which is fine by me because I've been writing stuff on two machines running Leopard and Snow Leopard respectively and it's making my brain hurt.
Target QuickTime Player by application id
If you've got a script that needs to target QuickTime Player in Snow Leopard you probably really want to target "QuickTime Player 7". Otherwise, if you target "QuickTime Player" the QuickTime Player X app will run and it doesn't have the AppleScript Goodness like QTP7. However, if the script also has to run in Leopard, you have to target "QuickTime Player"--without the "7". But you don't need to write two scripts.
In OS 10.5 and later you can target an app by its application id. I remember seeing that in the AppleScript Release Notes for 10.5 thinking "Hmm. Now how can I use that" and never really thought of anything. Until I needed to access QTP in both 10.5 and 10.6.
This tell block:
tell application id "com.apple.quicktimeplayer" -- do something in QuickTime Player end tell
...will target "QuickTime Player" in OS 10.5 and "QuickTime Player 7" in OS 10.6. The application id is the same for each, so it makes no difference what their names are. And the AppleScript architecture is virtually the same in both operating systems. (Remember that "QuickTime Player 7" is an optional install either during installation or from the "Optional Installs" folder on your installation disc.)
"QuickTime Player X" is a drastically different version of the player app and scripts written for QTP7 will not play well with it. However, it is scriptable to a modest extent. Its application id is "com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX" in case you need to target QTPX specifically.
Site Stats Point to Future
Over the past few weeks I've been mulling how to proceed with development of my shareware apps, and, I suppose, AppleScript development in general. With the imminent release of Snow Leopard, which can only be run on Intel Macs, I have been researching who the audience for this site is.
According to Google Analytics, over the past month (July 10 through August 10) 90.53% of Mac visitors have an Intel Mac, 8.73% are on a PPC, and the remainder are characterized as "not set". (update: I probably should have included originally that this site had 87,347 Mac visitors in that time.)
Further, of the Intel users 92.54% are on Leopard, 4.58% on Tiger, and the remainder either on 10.6 already or "not set".
So I guess there may not be that much to mull. I'll keep you posted.
UPDATED: Join Together v5.1.3
Join Together has been Leopardized and updated to version 5.1.3. Along with compatibility with Mac OS 10.5, I've also added a new icon, a "Comments" tag entry for the final joined file, and a "Check For Update" menu option--you'll want to be using this in a few weeks ;)
Dupin v1.1 Released - Ready For Leopard
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes has released Dupin v1.1, the iTunes duplicates manager. Dupin is an application that assists with locating, sorting, filtering, and deleting duplicate tracks in iTunes.
See Dupin in action. Watch the Dupin video tutorial presented by ScreenCastsOnline.
Updated in version 1.1:
- Compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
- Remembers last selected playlist in playlist popup and in "Selected to Playlist..." panel
- Added option during Purge to remove tracks just from the selected source playlist
- Fixed issue with inaccurate examination of "Movies" master playlist
- Fixed issues with playlist popup display
- Minor performance fixes
This update is free for registered users.
With Dupin you can:
- Quickly find all sets of duplicate iTunes tracks based on your choice of criteria
- Select the "Keeper" tracks from among a number of duplicates automatically using a variety of versatile filtering options
- Purge duplicate tracks from iTunes and send files to the Trash
- Manage intentionally duplicated tracks
- Copy tracks to new iTunes playlists
- View duplicates in non-loaded libraries created with iTunes' multiple library feature
- View duplicates in iTunes libraries on other machines on your local network
- Sort tracks and view track info
- Export a list of duplicates to a text file
- Locate tracks in the Finder and in iTunes
- Audition tracks
In addition, Dupin features:
- Familiar iTunes-like interface
- Robust Help
- Ample keyboard shortcuts
- Visual progress feedback during operations
- Customizable toolbars
- Optional update checking
Got Your Spots On?
If you're wearing your Leopard PJs today in anticipation of being an early 10.5 adopter, I'd appreciate hearing about any incompatabilities you may detect using scripts from the site. I can tell you right now that apps like Join Together, Dupin, and iTunes Library Manager will not work under Leopard. However, I am simply waiting on results from a few beta-testers before I release Leopard-compatible versions of those apps, and that should be within a few days.
