I had lots and lots of conversations with the App Store appeal board, a plea for direct download customers to write to Apple and tell them they want the app in the store.
Apple rejected it for "interfering" with a standard system operation. What ultimately got me in was an email I wrote pointing out that the app PopClip (a great utility from @pilotmoon) was in the store and also enhanced a system behaviour.
Congratulations! What an awesome utility. Your demo video is awesome. More than happy to send you money for this. Would love to hear how you fare from all the attention!
Sure, here's a screenshot of my hourly report for the past day. Note that the site hasn't gotten much traffic in general since most people come to it directly through the App Store — that is, despite pretty decent sales, the site has historically only had a few hundred hits a day.
Just for reference since a lot of people get this backwards as you did, i.e. is Latin for "which is to say" (literally id est, "that is"), while e.g. is Latin for "for example" (literally exempli gratia, "free example"). There is another cousin which doesn't get so much use, namely viz., literally vide licit or "clearly seen", which is a sort of drop-in replacement for "namely" -- it's used to enumerate or clarify an indirect reference, as opposed to id est which clarifies an indirect implication.
Wonderful tool! I've been doing this with the help of steer mouse and a clipboard history tool.
Maybe a bit to much to ask for, but how many sales are you up on now?
I was fireball'd once as well. It was the most intense traffic I had ever gotten haha. Surprisingly my homebrew django blogging platform with zero caching whatsoever held up fabulously!
Eep — traffic it seems to come in spurts. I've got a RewriteRule to send people to the App Store when I notice it being particularly bad, but I prefer to keep the site up so people can see the video and try the trial. Thanks for posting this link.
It means that the window will be centered under where your cursor currently is.
If you're having trouble activating it, try drawing small circles with your cursor, rather than just shaking back and forth. Some people find that easier. (That being said, I developed it on a Magic Trackpad, so the shaking does work -- it just depends on your personal mousing style).
I'm also having problems shaking. It works 1 time out of 5 it seems.
How about showing the window if I don't move the mouse for 2 seconds instead? That'd be easier and a better UX IMO since it would mimic spring loading.
Congratulations - that is a seriously useful utility. At first I thought that holding down the mouse button wasn't that bad - but your browser tab demo absolutely convinced me (-:
Thanks for making this - anything that improves my Mac's drag&drop and copy&paste functionality is worth at least $5.
A tip that completely changed copy-paste experience in Finder is "Move item here".
Copy as usual (command-c) but instead of pasting (command-v) you do (option-command-v) and it will _move_ the item.
Such as huge time saver since I use to open two finder windows to accomplish the move since I'm quite bad at dragging with a trackpad.
Is this really dependent on any particular Lion feature? I was about to buy it but I'm still on 10.6.8 (never bothered to update to Lion because of the myriad annoying new 'features').
tl;dr: if you can make it work in 10.6.8, I think you might get some more $love$ from some of us.
If you're feeling adventurous, I've heard success stories from people manually hacking the Info.plist on the direct download version.
It currently doesn't require any Lion specific APIs, but I plan on updating it in the future to make use of the nice flocking icons while dragging, and that will require Lion.
I'll try the plist hack! Thank you for the tip. I think I can live without the flocking icons, but I suppose it's about freaking time I update my OS :)
This is a fantastic app, not just because of how much of a great utility it is (does anything like this exist for windows?) but the name is absolutely brilliant. Not only is it very easy to remember "Dragon Drop", it's also an excellent wordplay ("drag'n'drop"). The video is very good too. So wonderful, a perfect combination.
Thank you. Believe me, that video was the hardest part: a bad screencast is a terrible thing, but they're damn hard to do well. I think I spent about 4 hours on that sixty second video, and it means the world to me to know that it was well-received. Thank you.
A hack for getting good audio on screencasts: sit in a closet with a blanket over your head while you record the audio. It makes even a built-in Mac mic sound good.
There was an episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe was recording the narratives in a hotel room by simply going under the blanket of his bed with the microphone. I'm sure there was additional tweaking production value, but this is good advice!
The "shake" effect in Windows will cause everything but the active window to minimize - it's possible the action can be bound to other commands.
"does anything like this exist for windows?"
Not the exact same but if you start to drag then you can alt-tab to focus the application where you want to drop (if you can't see it already)
I just realised that with the new update to Alfred (it lets you drag out of the results bar), that this could be one of the most useful little utilities that I've invested in.
I just hope it works as I expect.
Navigating the filesystem is so 2011 :)
edit: would be cool if you could post an update here on just how you did after you were fireball'd _and_ HN'd!
are there any differences in terms of features between the Mac App Store version and the one you can buy directly from your site? curious if the "sandbox" in the Mac App Store caused any file system issues.
Right now, the two versions are identical (although their version numbers differ). I hope to keep it that way, but it may change once I submit a sandboxed version.
In general, the sandbox doesn't cause us any problems, because we already write our temporary data to the proper sandboxed location, and dragging a file into an app is one of the approved sandbox interactions. However, enabling the sandbox DOES break QuickLook icon fetching for some types of objects (most notably volumes, which show up as folders). This seems to be a bug in NSWorkspace that I hope will be addressed in the future.
Just bought it! Skipped the trial because the video demo was enough. You should really be proud. Works like a charm, somehow feels like a UNIX tool. Hope you get rich in exponentially faster increments of five bucks.
Congrats Mark! Looks like you'll surpass your 2013 goals before it even starts. I'm a very happy user of the app and have known Mark for years. He is awesome!
He has another really neat and surprisingly useful app on the AppStore: Lidpop - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lidpop/id441887602?mt=12 - "Lidpop makes your Macintosh play a sound when it sleeps or wakes up. Close the lid with a resounding clank or a happy slide whistle. Open it back up with a laugh or a whimsical chime — it's up to you. Lidpop brings a dash of personality to your computer."
When I open my Air, Scotty (Star Trek) says "Hello Computer" and when I shut it down, Vader (Star Wars) says "Nooooooooo." I know it seems trifling but always brings a smile to my face wherever I am, including work meetings.
Follow-up: another great sleep sound is Stauff's “Come baaaaaaaack” from the 7th Guest, for those of you old enough to remember double speed CD-ROM drives being exciting.
Not directly -- I never had the pleasure of using NeXTSTEP. To be honest, this idea has been in my head for a long time, just waiting for me to come up with a proper interaction modality. I'm my own app's #1 user. :)
Neat App. The most surprising thing about it for me was actually the name. Not that it was a cool word play, its just that I'm so used to the good names already being camped by completely useless crap that its weird to see a neat name and a decent app attached to each other.
This is a cool app. The functionality is not as extensive as this but Path Finder for Mac (Finder replacement) has a featured called "Drop Stack" which essentially allows you to pile files somewhere before you decide what to do with them. http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/
Having been a beta-tester of DragonDrop from the start, one thing I'd like to add is how important the concept of user-interaction truly is and how Mark really innovated in this regard. Lots of Mark's friends, including myself, suggested using one of the screen corners as a hot-zone. But since most people usually have other actions associated with the corners and the extra distance required to drag the icon far from the center makes the movement tedious, Mark kept looking for a better way to handle it.
He spent weeks & months trying out different UI and actions, finally coming up with the 'shake-your-cursor' action. It seems trivial now that you see it but it was something none of his potential users could imagine. And since then, he's been refining the app constantly to get it to its current state, including the rotating background and optimal thumbnail for a variety of mimetypes. I'm so glad to see the app finally getting the attention it deserves.
Reading the description, I felt that waiting for the overloaded page to load was going to be a waste of time. Having seen the video, I am contemplating tossing him some cash.
That wiggle makes all the difference. Come to think of it, I might unconsciously wiggle things while I'm trying to remember where I meant to drag them to.
Absolutely correct, the wiggle does make it happen. One of those "Why didn't I think of it" interaction technique.
Kudos to the developer. Just a (very) minor change will make it better for me: slightly less opacity for the pop up window. On an 11inch Macbook Air, I think it'll help. I just bought the app, it's fantastic and worth every penny.
My trick for more control on a Mac trackpad (the "magic" one at least) is to use the thumb for the click action, allowing you to hold it down whilst having full control of the pointer with a light touch of the index finger.
Congrats Mark! Looks like a few HN folks have already used this app in the past. How did you reach out to an audience to build up beta testers? And, more importantly, how do I make sure I'm on people's hit list for beta testing new apps?
I just Tweeted, and more importantly, managed to get some trustworthy tech folks to help out. One thing I can offer as a word of advice is to try to find smart users who aren't developers -- they're the perfect beta testers.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadI wrote this up a few weeks ago to help give other developers their own plan B in case of similar difficulties: http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-ap...
Apple rejected it for "interfering" with a standard system operation. What ultimately got me in was an email I wrote pointing out that the app PopClip (a great utility from @pilotmoon) was in the store and also enhanced a system behaviour.
Also: RSS where?
Summary so far: Daring Fireball's traffic is so intense that it's almost scary. :)
http://idisk.me.com/shinyplasticbag/Public/Pictures/Skitch/V...
Let me know what else you'd like to know. :)
Congrats!
Edit: here's an App Store link for people to check it out - http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/dragondrop/id499148234?mt=12
Is this useful on the trackpad? It seem to be about 50% accurate on my magic trackpad when shaking back and forth.
Also, what do you mean by "under the mouse?"
If you're having trouble activating it, try drawing small circles with your cursor, rather than just shaking back and forth. Some people find that easier. (That being said, I developed it on a Magic Trackpad, so the shaking does work -- it just depends on your personal mousing style).
I hope this helps. :)
How about showing the window if I don't move the mouse for 2 seconds instead? That'd be easier and a better UX IMO since it would mimic spring loading.
Thanks for making this - anything that improves my Mac's drag&drop and copy&paste functionality is worth at least $5.
tl;dr: if you can make it work in 10.6.8, I think you might get some more $love$ from some of us.
It currently doesn't require any Lion specific APIs, but I plan on updating it in the future to make use of the nice flocking icons while dragging, and that will require Lion.
"does anything like this exist for windows?" Not the exact same but if you start to drag then you can alt-tab to focus the application where you want to drop (if you can't see it already)
I just hope it works as I expect.
Navigating the filesystem is so 2011 :)
edit: would be cool if you could post an update here on just how you did after you were fireball'd _and_ HN'd!
Anything else you'd like to know about the traffic? Open kimono.
Cheers.
In general, the sandbox doesn't cause us any problems, because we already write our temporary data to the proper sandboxed location, and dragging a file into an app is one of the approved sandbox interactions. However, enabling the sandbox DOES break QuickLook icon fetching for some types of objects (most notably volumes, which show up as folders). This seems to be a bug in NSWorkspace that I hope will be addressed in the future.
He has another really neat and surprisingly useful app on the AppStore: Lidpop - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lidpop/id441887602?mt=12 - "Lidpop makes your Macintosh play a sound when it sleeps or wakes up. Close the lid with a resounding clank or a happy slide whistle. Open it back up with a laugh or a whimsical chime — it's up to you. Lidpop brings a dash of personality to your computer."
When I open my Air, Scotty (Star Trek) says "Hello Computer" and when I shut it down, Vader (Star Wars) says "Nooooooooo." I know it seems trifling but always brings a smile to my face wherever I am, including work meetings.
Note: my wake-up sound is currently the boot sound effect form OS/2 Warp 4, just because I love weird, retro-computing goodness.
Also, if anyone is suffering on a quest for "nooo", hint: vader_14.mp3
That is always a good sign.
He spent weeks & months trying out different UI and actions, finally coming up with the 'shake-your-cursor' action. It seems trivial now that you see it but it was something none of his potential users could imagine. And since then, he's been refining the app constantly to get it to its current state, including the rotating background and optimal thumbnail for a variety of mimetypes. I'm so glad to see the app finally getting the attention it deserves.
Drag, think... doh! wiggle, store. Dig, dig, find, unstore, drop.
That wiggle makes all the difference. Come to think of it, I might unconsciously wiggle things while I'm trying to remember where I meant to drag them to.
Kudos to the developer. Just a (very) minor change will make it better for me: slightly less opacity for the pop up window. On an 11inch Macbook Air, I think it'll help. I just bought the app, it's fantastic and worth every penny.
Not exactly the most novel thing...
I'm hardly a fan of Aero Shake though, wish they used the gesture for this on Windows. :-)
Then I watched the video and now I'm taking out my credit card. I want this. It is actually useful.