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AppEar Launch. Need Beta Testers Please!

A

aperfecto

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 30, 2006
12
0
Edinburgh
Hello,

I have just launched my first application called AppEar and I am looking for help with Beta Testing. If you could, it would be much appreciated. The application is free and can be found at www.macrohard.info. It is in an early stage (to the point that there is no preferences window yet), but that and many more enhancements will be coming very soon!

The story goes as follows. I studied physics and was constantly told how great linux is with the "Apt-Get" command line tool. So, as a mac fan, once I finished my degree I decided to learn c/objective-c. I then began building an application that would mimic Apt-Get... Thus meaning that this "Amazing" tool was also available for the mac. It is not a command line Application but rather a graphical version and has around 1500 applications that can be searched and downloaded. More will be added! AppEar will also keep track of third party and apple applications installed on the computer.

I am very keen for feedback! Please help!
 
I think we do...

As mac users we have a choice of un-installers and we have AppFresh (which is a great application) for keeping our third party apps up to date.

BUT, wouldn't it be cool to be able to download applications from one application? To track updates from one application? To un-install applications from one application? In short, full package management!

I like that idea. AND it is very very popular on linux distros. I constantly see linux people touting this feature and questioning why something similar is not available for the mac! So now, I am making it available. Bit at a time! Of course... I did only start learning cocoa in August, so it has taken me a while to put together something worth releasing for testing. But now I can start charging down a list of features!

What you think?
 
Interesting. If only it didn't just fire up Safari and start downloading the app I only wanted to update. :p

For the app to be truly useful for me I want to be able to be able to see a list of all the apps I can update, choose some and click update. I then get a progress bar or few followed by a notification that my updated apps are now ready to use. :)
 
... The truth is that was a quick fix... (fewer lines of code! ;)).

I agree with you! I will deff. be starting work on that soon!
 
Awesome. Should be good by 1.0 ;)

Possibly point apps like Quake 4 to a demo.

Oh, and Terminal. Has Apple *ever* updated apps like Terminal individually? Possibly by default hide all apps you have that are up to date.

That being said, I've been entertaining myself for the past 10 minutes clicking between Apple and third party applications that I have, and watching Terminal fly around. It's in different spots in *both* pages for some reason. If you click between them fast enough it kinda wobbles. :D That alone is worth the download. :)
 
lol. It is in both Third Party Programs and Apple Programs under the My Programs item?

Hmmm... That shouldn't happening. lol. Will need to look at that. It isn't doing that on my machine. :confused:
 
Perhaps a little more info in the updates section such as size of download and version numbers.

And I think this is coming with 10.6 or sooner. Apple is laying the foundations with application signing and will be rolling out a test of this with the iPhone and are testing the integration of this into the OS with the printer drivers.
 
Yes, only 10.5... Sorry. I may begin to build a Tiger App once I have a feature complete Leopard App (I originally started the project on Tiger).

Size of downloads may be a small problem (the App runs of iusethis json downloads). But I have implemented the version column. I will look into the size of the downloads soon!

I guess at the moment this is really a watch this space! I should have an update available in around a week! See how many features I can get through by then (don't hold your breath... hehe).

If any applications are not picked up then let me know. Also, any strange occurrences like Terminal being in both Third Party Applications and Apple Applications, let me know!

Thanks Guys!
 
Apps not being picked up

0xED
AppEar (;))
Corel Graphics suite
Handbrake
Key Codes
Klix
MailUnreadStatusBar
Master Key
MenuCalendarClock iCal
OpenMark
TestDisk

Would it be possible to look into tying it in with other sites such as macupdate like the widget AppUpdate. Come to think of it isn't there already a very similar application out there somewhere, can't remember the name.

Slight oddites

Pages is in My Applications rather than apple

There is a blue background around Exif Untrasher in your program where there isn't one in Finder
Picture 1.png

Slight glitch around the Pages icon
Picture 2.png
 
Are you running pages 06? I think I know why that may be happening.

The Icons are downloaded from iusethis but I can certainly look into retrieving them from disk instead!

The application I know of is AppFresh. I am really hoping to aim more at a full package management suite (i.e. you can search, download, track updates and un-install programs).

Thank you so much for your time by the way! I will be working on fixing those problems tomorrow!
 
Pages 08 but it seems that there is another problem with that on my system that may be causing your application to flip out. For some reason Pages 08 seems to get corrupted and I have to reinstall it every now and again and when I just checked it had done it again.

Appfresh is the one I was thinking of.

Will AppEar be able to install the applications automatically rather than just download them for you.
 
Yes. I intend for it to download it, give you feedback as to how far along it is and then launch the installer (/move the downloaded app) to the applications folder. Running it through safari was a quick fix (as it happens to be only 5 lines or so of code... ;) ). I just needed to get some feedback to make sure I am still on track :).

Re Pages - Basically, AppEar checks the info.plist to see if the application is made by apple. I will build in a few more checks and we can see if that will fix it!
 
Is that supposed to be implemented in this version as it didn't run any of the installers for me

Re Pages, in my messed up version there is no info.plist so t is a specific cae related to something funky with pages on my system rather than a bug in AppEar.

Why AppEar?
 
Nope, not implemented in this version. But coming soon!

AppEar as it listens for updates to applications... and when available, they appear. Or when you search for them, they appear etc. etc.

Ahhh, the no info.plist will deff screw with AppEar. Does that not also mess up the Finder?
 
Hi, I have not been able to find bugs with your software. I was wondering if you could tell me how you listed all of the apps from your server like that, i am making something completely different, but i still want to list things off the sever. Is there any way you could post some example code or tell me how you did it?
 
Sure Thing

I will be making the source available for AppEar soon (I want to tidy it up a little first) but for the moment this is what I do...

You may be able to get at the information you require by using a parse (this sends information through a delegate, so make sure you implement the delegate methods from NSXMLParser) e.g.:

NSString *mainPage = [[NSString alloc] initWithString: @"http://www.macrohard.info"];
NSURL *parseURL = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString: mainPage];
NSXMLParser *parse1 = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithContentsOfURL: parseURL];
[parse1 setDelegate: self];
BOOL done = [parse1 parse];
done = NO;
[parse1 release];
[parseURL release];
[mainPage release];

Failing that you can use some string methods:

NSString *pages = [[NSString alloc] initWithString: @"http://www.macrohard.com"];
NSURL *currentURL = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString: pages];
NSData *aPacket = [[NSData alloc] initWithContentsOfURL: currentURL];
NSString *xPage = [[NSString alloc] initWithData: aPacket encoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding];
NSArray *splitPage = [xPage componentsSeparatedByString: @"<"];

I then search for specific terms (such as "version" as I know that the version number will be in the next position i.e. if "version" is found in m, I know the version number is in m+1).

If you are using Leopard there is also the new pubSub framework. This allows you to easily parse RSS feeds which you may find useful. I haven't played with it all that much yet, but I was certainly planning on switching to it if possible!

If you need some more help then just ask me! :D
 
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