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Next Version of Growl To Add Notification Center Support

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Apr 12, 2001
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The developers behind the popular notification service Growl plan to actively develop the application going forward, even as Apple includes a similar feature -- Notification Center -- in OS X Mountain Lion.

Growl's lead developer Chris Forsythe explained in a blog post that Growl will be embracing Notification Center rather than trying to compete with it or shutting the project down. Part of the reason for this is that Notification Center will only be accessible by apps sold through the Mac App Store -- standalone apps offered through a developer website won't be able to access the Notification APIs.

Writes Federico Viticci for MacStories:
The introduction of Notification Center won't necessarily "sherlock" Growl as a notification alternative for Mac users and developers. While Notification Center will undoubtedly provide an excellent native solution for developers of Mac App Store apps -- ultimately serving the average user with a notification system that works out of the box, -- Growl will still remain a capable third-party app that offers fine grained controls over notifications with several customization options.
Click to expand...
One particularly useful new feature, called 'Mist', that Growl is planning revolves around making life easier for developers. The Mist API allows developers to implement one piece of code that will send notifications to Growl, if it's available, and Notification Center if it isn't. Growl has delivered one piece of code to support both its own notifications and Apple's Notification Center.

Growl developer Chris Forsythe:
The one thing that has kept me up at night since the 10.8 release was announced, is that I really want to be able to help developers transition from Growl to Notification Center on their terms. We could have taken an aggressive stance and said "No, Growl is more awesome!", but at the end of the day that isn't us.

Here's the important takeaway. I said this same exact sentence 73 times. I'm going to say it 73 times more today. "It would be irresponsible for us to not support NC and abandon our developers, so we're going to embrace it." And that's just what we're going to do.
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Growl is available for $1.99 on the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]

Article Link: Next Version of Growl To Add Notification Center Support
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/13/next-version-of-growl-to-add-notification-center-support/
OldSchoolMacGuy

OldSchoolMacGuy

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Seems the Notification Center basically kills most need for Growl. More developers will likely use Notification Center than Growl.
 
Stella

Stella

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Apr 21, 2003
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Does this mean that non-MAS applications can use growl in order to post messages to the notification centre?

If so... sounds great.

Personally, I prefer the non MAS version of growl; it has a Preference pane.... reduces overheads for one.
 
coder12

coder12

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Jun 28, 2010
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We've already been able to do this with Hiss since the first DP of ML. It's useful for now, but eventually there will be no need as support for NC grows.
 
Stella

Stella

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coder12 said:
We've already been able to do this with Hiss since the first DP of ML. It's useful for now, but eventually there will be no need as support for NC grows.
Click to expand...

Non MAS applications cannot use NC. The API is restricted.
 
krishatesworld

krishatesworld

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If they followed Apple's ruthless business strategy, they would send out cease and disist letters and file intellectual property lawsuits in every country they do business.
 
zorinlynx

zorinlynx

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May 31, 2007
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Cougarcat said:
They can use local notifications. It is push notifications that are restricted.
Click to expand...

Yep. I heard this rumor too, and got scared that Apple was going to start imposing severe restrictions on what non-app store apps can do. Turns out it's just push notifications, which makes sense since you're using Apple's servers.
 
xpower180

xpower180

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Using ML DP4 I'm already disappointed how restrictive NC can be... Growl let's me get notifications from my Twitter timeline, not so with NC even though ML has built in Twitter integration.
As an end-user I want to be able to tailor my notifications and Growl let's me do that.
 
R

rmwebs

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Apr 6, 2007
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xpower180 said:
Using ML DP4 I'm already disappointed how restrictive NC can be... Growl let's me get notifications from my Twitter timeline, not so with NC even though ML has built in Twitter integration.
As an end-user I want to be able to tailor my notifications and Growl let's me do that.
Click to expand...

Its still a pretty early build...you'll see it expand once the API is opened up.

Growl will be dead once ML is released. The developers knew that, which is why they coincidentally started charging for Growl as soon as Notification Center was announced. Cant blame them though.
 
Sky Blue

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dfs

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Third party apps

I have been very unclear about how, or whether, NC would work with third-party applications? Will it always work only with Apple ones? Or, like the autosave feature introduced in Lion, will it require specially rewritten apps? Then it would take months or years before my apps become NC-friendly, right? Whereas the obvious advantage of Growl is that there is already a comparatively large library of Growl-friendly apps. So it's easy to predict that Growl isn't going away soon. The best and most useful thing the Growl team could do for the Mac community would be somehow to manage things so that all Growl-friendly apps. could work in NC in their present form.
 
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