Growl creator responds to Mountain Lion's Notification Center | Hacker News Reader

Growl creator responds to Mountain Lion's Notification Center

theverge.com

15 pointsshawndumas12 comments

I still feel quite bitter about the way Growl handled their move from a free, open-source app to the paid App Store version. I understand their desire to make money from their work, but they utterly abused their own notification system to incessantly remind me to upgrade. I had installed Growl on several family members' computers and it was quite frustrating for me to have to explain these messages and uninstall the software for them. It seems to me that requiring the paid version for upgrades and/or Lion compatibility and leaving existing versions unmolested would have been a more diplomatic approach.

I feel bad saying this, but I don't feel much sorrow over the fact that Notification Center will likely obsolete the product.

> It seems to me that requiring the paid version for upgrades and/or Lion compatibility and leaving existing versions unmolested would have been a more diplomatic approach.

They did handle the transition badly on PR grounds, but the way things actually were was very different: MAS's Growl application actually is mostly for configuration purposes, the new growl framework embeds the notification display in the apps themselves (see Mist) and you don't need growl at all to see notifications.

> I feel bad saying this, but I don't feel much sorrow over the fact that Notification Center will likely obsolete the product.

Notification Center is only for MAS applications, so non-MAS or cross (MAS and non-MAS) applications wanting to display notifications will still go through Growl.

This really isn't much of an article. How about we just link to the actual blog post[1] instead?

[1] http://growl.posterous.com/growls-response-to-notification-c...

It took me a while to actually find the response on The Verge's site. Here's the direct link: http://growl.posterous.com/growls-response-to-notification-c...

Customization and flexibility might save Growl. There will always be people who want to use different themes for their notifications (I personally don't like how the Notification Center ones look in screenshots I've seen).

I've never used Growl for more than 10 minutes. Last time I tried it a few years ago it didn't seem to work with some default (i.e., Apple) apps. I'm very much looking forward to notifications because they will have exactly that.

Yeah when I upgraded to Lion I stopped using Growl. The App Store version somehow screwed up support for the apps I used it for most. Having a simple API that all developers can hook into and not have to worry about Growl's bugs is a welcome improvement.

What interests me now is the possibility that Growl could act as a bridge to the Notification Center for the many non-Mac App Store apps and miscellaneous system/hardware events.

I’m not as confident as Growl’s developer that this would technically work, with Apple’s approval—at least not as smoothly as I’d hope (would “Growl” show as the app name instead?)—but I’m curious to see what’s possible.

If Apple really wanted to kill growl, they would have allowed non-appstore apps to use notification center. I think growl will survive this, but I'll probably uninstall growl as the apps that I want notifications for are already in the appstore. I'm sure there are a few others like me, but on the flipside, I'm also sure there are a few more diehard growl fans.

Summary spam.

http://growl.posterous.com/growls-response-to-notification-c...

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3605822 instead

Personally I think that Growl will soon be a thing of the past. It is hard to beat a well integrated solution that Apple provides.

Growl is in for a tough one here...

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