Martian Blog

SlingShot and Lifeboat on Snow Leopard

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:50:00 +0000

Just a quick post to say that SlingShot and LifeBoat are both working great on Snow Leopard! Let us know at support(at)martian.com if you have any issues.

Losing the battles but winning the war

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:01:00 +0000

Wow.

Apple may have lost battles 1 (IBM PC + MS DOS) and 2 (Desktop GUIs) to Microsoft, but did they just win the war with their SDK?

Gartner says that 250 million or so PCs were sold in 2007. They also say that 1.15 Billion (with a B) cell phones sold in 2007.

In 6 months, Apple has built a smartphone sales share roughly equal to Microsofts' (28% of US smartphones vs. MSFT's 31% vs RIM's 41%).

Microsoft makes $1-$2 per unit for the OS license for Windows Mobile. They have no recurring revenue stream per unit. Apple is making a profit on iPhones plus reportedly getting an $8/mo/user kickback from AT&T in the US. One assumes they have a similar arrangement with other carriers in other countries.

Can Apple convince developers to build cool mobile apps? Yup. They've got a suite of truly modern development tools and a well-thought-out and documented platform for building them. Ever looked at Microsoft's mobile dev tools? Ugh. And Visual Studio targeting WM5 or 6 is a damn sight better than the BlackBerry toolchain.

More importantly, can Apple, by convincing folks to buy iPhones instead of iPods and instead of other smartphones, get to 10% of worldwide cell phone sales over time?

I think the answer might be Yes.

MacBook Air first impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:45:00 +0000

So, we were lucky enough to get one of the first MacBook Airs delivered to us on Monday.

First impression: holy crap, this thing is an amazing feat of engineering. It's more of an appliance than a laptop; it exudes the same kind of feeling as an iPhone. It's a purpose-created device, not a general purpose computer.

Speed? Yeah, it's not the speed demon a new MacBook Pro is. But I'm not at all sure that matters. With 2gb of RAM you get decent perf even with occasional use of VMWare or Parallels. I do wish I could throw 4gb into it, though, which would be my only real complaint.

For a machine to drag around an airport, or to carry to a cafe and hang out, it's truly wonderful. It's also decent as a developer's machine; no it doesn't compile things as fast as an 8-core Mac Pro but I can't easily carry one of those in my bag.

BTW, all the nonsense about EVDO USB modems not fitting is truly nonsense. My Sprint Novatel U727 fits just fine in the side slot, no extender cable needed.

My biggest criticism: no Firewire port. Not for the inability to import video; but for the lack of Firewire target disk mode, which always gets a "wow" from PC users and is truly a lifesaver when you need to rescue something off a machine.

He comes in peace

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:19:00 +0000

Big congrats to DCJ over at Red Sweater (our favorite color, of course) on closing his purchase of the awesome MarsEdit blog editor supreme. As you might imagine, we're big fans of the name, and we'll be happy to have him on our side the next time those pesky Venusians come by and get rowdy.

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 02:48:00 +0000

Midnight is approaching us fast here in Seattle, and for some of our customers and friends in other parts of the world, it's already happened.

2006 has been a great year for us -- we launched our first two products, SlingShot and LifeBoat. We gave away a bunch of money to worthy causes, in keeping with our goal of giving away 6% of our profits to charities, including $1350 in one day.

What will 2007 bring? For us, we're hoping for more of the same. I'm hoping to bring out some updates to our existing apps, plus we have an idea for a cool new app (they say the third time is a charm :)

Here's to hoping all of you have a wonderful, happy, and healthy 2007.

Childs Play Day

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:52:00 +0000

As you might know, as part of starting our little Martian venture we made a commitment to donating part of our profits each year to charity. We've been extremely lucky in life, and we like to give back.

So I'm happy to say that we're going to be participating in a "Child's Play Day" tomorrow, December 7. A number of Mac Indie developers will be joining together and donating all our sales for the day to the Child's Play charity, which tries to make the holidays a little nicer for sick children. We will be donating all the proceeds from tomorrow's (Dec. 7th) sales of SlingShot and LifeBoat.

You can find more info on the Child's Play charity by clicking here, and see a list of all the other fine indie Mac software you can buy on Dec. 7 to support this cause over at the Mac Iron Coder site.

LifeBoat!

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:30:00 +0000

We've got a neat new little product to announce! Martian LifeBoat makes it really easy to keep data backed up &mdash just plug in a USB Flash Drive, and it will automatically make a backup of whatever files and folders you specify onto it for safe keeping!

LifeBoat allows you to define "LifeBoats", sets of files and
folders that get backed up each time a particular USB Flash Drive or External Hard Disk is connected to your computer. The instant the specified device is plugged in, LifeBoat automatically begins the backup process.

This is an example of a developer building an app we wanted -- it's really neat to just plug in my USB flash key at the end of the day and be able to throw a backup of my most important stuff into my jacket pocket a few seconds later.

Check it out!

Radio Silence

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:41:00 +0000

So, it's been a while since we posted. A couple of things have happened, including a big office move, a birthday, some health issues, and, oh, Apple released iTunes 7.0.

A few users reported a couple of minor bugs with SlingShot when using it with iTunes 7.0, so we've countered with SlingShot 2.0.3...take that, darned bugs!

....and some thoughts on the next 6 months

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 06:22:00 +0000

And some thoughts on the future:

1. We've got yet another product in the hopper, this one's a small utility that we think a lot of people could use. We're getting close to done with the coding, and then we'll need some testers to play with it. If you're interested, drop us a line and tell us you're up for helping out the testing (it's called Martian LifeBoat btw, in case you were curious :).

2. Yes, it's true that iTunes was just the first example of "per-app" sync we want to do with SlingShot. You can probably guess at what the next app is, and that we'd like to support as many of the iApps as we can.

3. Coming up real soon is IronCoder v2.0, being run by the honorable Judge Gus. If you've ever dreamed of being adored by hundreds of hot mac indie groupies (betcha never thought there were any :) and generally worshipped for your mad Mac OS X coding skills, this is the contest for you. Also there's like prizes and stuff. :)

4. We're 6 months into this whole indie thing, and it's truly awesome. We owe a huge thanks to all our customers who make us feel great and who help us pay the bills a little.

5. Almost forgot -- part of our business plan is to help make the world a slightly better place, and to try and pay back a little of the good fortune life has brought our way. As part of that, we donate 6% of our profits every year to charity. We've got several ideas, but if you've got a charity you admire that you'd like us to consider, please let us know.

Ok, back to watching the fireworks!

A July 4th Update

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 05:57:00 +0000

Ahh, Independence Day....the best day of the year to kick back and take a little stock of where we've been over the last 6 months and where we're going over the next 6. So here's a couple of completely random thoughts about this year so far:

1. We released our first product, SlingShot, and lots of you have downloaded it -- and more people than we thought have bought it (thanks for that, btw :).

2. We've gotten to know a couple of other cool Mac indie devs, all of whom work on cool stuff and are really supportive of each other. It turns out the Mac community has more than just a great set of end customers -- it has a great set of developers too.

3. We did a really cool update to SlingShot a couple weeks ago that added support for keeping music synchronized between two computers...this was actually the original idea for SlingShot, but it turned out that the iTunes integration was such a bear that we decided to do something smaller for the first release. Fortunately, it seems like people really like this kind of per-app syncing, so we're going to do some more of it (more on that below).

4. Wow, support mail is tough to get through. Every time I read a mail from a customer I feel a little like we've failed them in some small way. The flip side of course is that when you can solve the problem you feel (just a little bit) like a hero :)

SlingShot 2.0 has landed!

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 07:36:00 +0000

We're totally thrilled to announce that SlingShot 2.0 is finally here!

The major new functionality is the ability to Publish and Subscribe to iTunes Playlists -- so you can sync and backup your songs between computers.

What's great is that this was the original genesis of the idea for SlingShot. I have both a desktop and a laptop, and whenever I go on a trip I like to update the laptop with the latest music I've ripped from my CDs or bought off the iTunes Music Store. But copying the files over manually was such a pain -- now it's a few clicks away. It feels wonderful to finally fulfill even a small vision for a product, and to have been able to do it in only a few short months.

Check it out and let us know what you think! Thanks especially to all the folks who helped beta test this new version for us.

P.S. Guess what's the next major feature we'll be adding for version 3.0? Hint: it might involve pretty pictures...

Countdown to 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 03:52:00 +0000

Finally we can get this monkey off our backs....SlingShot 2.0 is getting its finishing touches put on right now, and I must say, even from my biased perspective, it's going to be great!

The major new feature is something everyone who loves music and has more than one machine can use (hint hint). If you'd like to help beta test, drop us a line at support@martian.com -- we have free licenses for those who report the best bugs!

Happy Happy HappyApps

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 17 May 2006 06:58:00 +0000

Definitely check out WebnoteHappy from HappyApps -- a new app from a great new Mac indie developer, Luis de la Rosa. It's a neat way to keep all the cool stuff you find on the net organized....and if you use del.icio.us, it's the best way to work with your tagged sites.

Congrats to Luis on getting to 1.0!

Why BootCamp is Great for Mac Indies

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:47:00 +0000

Everyone has seen Apple's new BootCamp beta announcement, and it's left some people wondering what the effect on the Mac software market is. Maybe we're just totally blinded by our love for this platform, but we think it's great news for Mac OS X in general, and for indie developers especially.

BootCamp really widens the appeal of Apple hardware. The message becomes "You bought iPods for your kids (and for you). Try out our excellent, well-designed hardware too -- if it turns out you don't like our spyware-free and virus-free operating system, you can always install Windows."

As families plan to replace an aging (Windows) machine at home, now they can think about getting a Mac. If they're thinking about adding a second computer, a Mac makes sense now.

I won't even go into the number of education sysadmins who would love to be able to buy a single type of hardware for a lab or for faculty that could run both OS's. If the architects need Autocad from 10-11am, the machines can boot into Windows for that. If the film students need Final Cut Pro at 2pm, no problem...just boot into Mac OS.

So, back to the title of this post -- why is this great for indies? More people using hardware that by default runs Mac OS. If you believe that Mac OS X provides a better experience for the home user (we do), then you have to believe that of the people who come over to the platform through this announcement, a huge percentage will end up sticking with OS X. And those people are ripe to be delighted by the great work indies do.

Thanks to my fellow Mac "indie" devs

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 04:11:00 +0000

I wanted to take a minute here to publicly thank some of my fellow Mac independent software devs, who took the time to help out with suggestions and comments on SlingShot's UI. You can see the fruits of our implementing some of their suggestions if you download SlingShot 1.2.

One of the really great things about the Mac software biz is the willingness for folks to help each other out. We're not new to starting businesses, or to writing software, or to using Macs in our daily work, but SlingShot is our first Mac desktop application. The Mac indie community is filled with people who really try to encourage each other and share their knowledge and experience....it's really great to be a part of.

In particular, I need to thank Gus Mueller, Luis de la Rosa, and Christopher Forsythe, each of whom went out of their way to give us suggestions and constructive critique of our UI. Not only do these guys build cool software, they're classy dudes too. Thanks guys!

SlingShot 1.2 released

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 04:08:00 +0000

We've posted SlingShot 1.2 up to our site. This release features performance improvements, fixes serveral bugs relating to how SlingShot calculates the amount of data to transfer from Publisher to Subscriber, and, best of all, includes several user interface enhancements that really clean up the user experience.

Please check it out and let us know what you think!

SlingShot 1.05

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 02:42:00 +0000

We've released SlingShot 1.05 onto our web site. This release contains several fixes related to resource fork handling and publishing of folders with international characters in the names. If you're a SlingShot user, your copy will notify you of the update in the next day or so, or if you'd like to grab it manually, click here.

Maelstrom on Intel Macs!

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:09:00 +0000

Ok, this post isn't particularly about our products....but it *is* about running a small software shop. See, sometimes you have a bug you just can't figure out or a feature you just can't seem to get started on.

At those times, it's important to divert your focus onto doing something else, and let your subconcious chew on the problem a bit.

I use that as my rationalization when I fire up Maelstrom, the old Mac OS 9 game from Ambrosia Software. A couple of years ago they released it under GPL, and someone ported it over to OS X.

And now, thanks to the kung-fu masters over at Apple, I'm happy to report that the port runs great under Rosetta emulation on the new Intel macs! No need to lose one of my favorite ~~time wasters~~ creativity enhancers just because of a little thing like a processor switch!

So, go download it and start blasting some asteroids (you might spare the poor aliens who occasionally come along in the game, you know, in honor of your Martian friends and all).

Syncing folders on the same machine

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 06:31:00 +0000

A couple of people have asked if they can use SlingShot to Publish and Subscribe two folders on the same machine. The short answer is, "Yes!"

While it's true that the user interface on SlingShot is optimized for Publishing a folder and then Subscribing from another machine, there's no reason that you can't use it to keep two folders synchronized on the same machine.

Just Publish the folder as you would normally. Then, click the 'Subscribe' button and select the folder you just Published. Choose another local folder (maybe it's on your external firewire disk that you use for backups) for the Subscription, and then set how often to make the sync happen.

I'm going to be updating our home page and product FAQ over the next couple of days to make this feature more obvious...thanks again to the folks who wrote in to ask about it!

Today is a good day

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:44:00 +0000

You may have heard that Apple, in their (sometimes) infinite goodness, has offered to let developers trade in their "Developer Transition Kit" machines for brand new 17" Intel-based iMacs.

Guess what the FedEx man brought to my door this morning?

Is it fast? Whoa, nelly, it's fast.

I'm loading the Apple Developer Tools onto it now to see how it performs at my normal daily tasks (you know, taking my source code and telling me all the ways I wrote it wrong).

Running a Small Software Biz

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 02:53:00 +0000

I've had a couple of friends ask if running your own company is as "glamorous" as they've heard. It certainly can be fun, especially when you hear from customers that your software is "Awesome!" and "Saved my bacon when my hard drive died". I don't know how Edison felt when he first saw them putting up streetlights successfully in his town (and not that I'm Edison or anything), but I have a small inkling of how gratifying it can be to see people use something you crafted.

It can be a little annoying to deal with accounting, legal issues, and basically all the little things that go into running a business. But all in all, yeah, it's pretty amazing to work on a little team that builds awesome products that people seem to genuinely like. I wouldn't trade this job for anything else in the whole world.

SlingShot version 1.03

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 02:47:00 +0000

We've posted SlingShot 1.03 for download on our site this evening. It corrects several bugs that were reported by our customers, including situations in which filenames containing spaces would be processed incorrectly, and a bug with the handling of subscribers contributing updates.

If you have SlingShot running on your machine, it will check some time over the next 24hrs to see if there's a new version, and will prompt you at that time to download 1.03. Alternately, you can download it manually from our web site.

SlingShot and your Mac Firewall

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 14:49:00 +0000

A number of the support questions we're getting have to do with how SlingShot interacts with the Mac OS X firewall.

In order for Subscribers to connect over the network to the Publisher, they have to be able to get through the firewall. This means if you've got your firewall enabled (there's some kind of 'shields up' joke in there somewhere), you'll need to configure it on the Publisher to allow connections to SlingShot.

We've got detailed instructions (only 3 steps!) on our Support Page (under 'Networking Questions' click on 'What about Mac OS X's firewall?').

(If you're the kind of Mac user who eats firewall rules for breakfast, open TCP port 51114 for inbound connections on the Publisher machine and you should be all set).

What happened to the NetDrive?

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 14:27:00 +0000

Several people have written in to ask about a product called the "Martian NetDrive" that was on the market about 2.5 years ago. So we thought we'd post about it so everyone could have the scoop.

The NetDrive was a wireless hard drive — basically a small (and silent) fileserver that you could put on your wireless network at home and then access from your PC or Mac. The box itself ran Linux, and a bunch of people used their NetDrives as the basis for some pretty cool hacking projects.

While we can't go into all the specifics, if you're interested in such a device, we highly recommend the Buffalo TeraStation, which is a small home server. There is also the Kuro Box for more do-it-yourself types (you need to add a hard drive of your own and install Linux on that one). The Mirra is another nice home fileserver device, now offerred by Seagate.

As for us, we're sticking to software for now, which is at least lighter (no more backaches from lifting boxes for the FedEx guy).

Wow, such an awesome reception

noreply@blogger.com (Martian Steve) — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 14:18:00 +0000

When you launch a product, you're never quite sure what the market will say. You can do as much testing and talking to people about the product ahead of time as you want, but ultimately it's up to real folks -- customers -- to take a look and tell you what they think.

When we launched yesterday we had no idea what might happen, so, all we can say is, thanks for the warm reception for SlingShot! (Imagine a couple of Martians running around a small office being extremely giddy today :)