Movie Explorer 1.7: Touch Bar support
Version 1.7 of Movie Explorer gives you an extra reason to break your bank account, and to order the Touch Bar version of the new MacBook Pro. The Touch Bar gives you instant access to all frequently used commands in Movie Explorer. The Touch Bar is fully context aware and changes automatically based on the active view and the selected item within the view. You can start a movie, mark it as seen, add it to the Watchlist, open the Gallery, browse through all images in the Gallery, all with a single tap or swipe in the Touch Bar. It's really awesome.
We really like to receive your feedback on this new version, especially when you're a lucky owner of a new MacBook Pro. Please help making Movie Explorer more popular by leaving positive reviews in the Mac App Store and on MacUpdate. Thanks!
News Explorer 1.4: Workflow options, Touch Bar support
Version 1.4 of News Explorer adds some handy new features to automate and improve the reading workflow. The recently introduced Touch Bar of the new MacBook Pro is now fully supported by the macOS version.
New workflow enhancements
The following new features will speed up your reading workflow:
- You can now use the Mark All Items as Read command or the corresponding keyboard shortcut and toolbar button at folder level.
- Setting After marking all as read gives you the option Select next subscription or folder, which does exactly what it says. If you are in a subscription list than the next subscription list will be opened. And when you're in a folder, the next folder will be opened. It will also select the first item in the list. It works even better when combined with the global 'Unread items' filter. To get this behaviour you must open the Preferences panel (macOS) or go to the Settings app (iOS and tvOS), because the default option for this setting is Do nothing.
- When you're in the 'Unread items' list or when the equally named global filter is active, you can manually clear the items that you've just read with the Clear read items command. In macOS, you can use shortcut key C, in iOS you can use the new button on the bottom bar, at the right side.
- Setting After clearing read items works together with the new 'Clear read items' command. The default option is Select next item, but you can also opt for Select first item or Do nothing.
Touch Bar
With Touch Bar support for the new MacBook Pro you can perform often used commands without grabbing your mouse or without knowledge of keyboard shortcuts. The Touch Bar is also configurable, so you can determine for yourself which buttons you want to use with News Explorer.
Other improvements
- The set global filter is now saved across user sessions (macOS and iOS).
- The Resync all command is now available on all platforms.
- In the macOS version you can navigate to the next or previous subscription list or folder, using new menu commands and corresponding shortcut keys. These commands will also select the first item in the list.
- Also new in the macOS version of the new Preload in Browser command for news articles. This will load the related news article in the default browser, behind the News Explorer window.
- Added an option to update the Apple Watch data as part of Background App Refresh (iOS).
- You can now choose which subscriptions should be used for Background App Refresh (iOS).
Please read the News Explorer Help for more info about all new features and their settings.
We really like to thank all our customers for their valuable feedback. Please help making News Explorer more popular by leaving positive reviews in the Mac App Store, App Store and on MacUpdate. Thank you!
Movie Explorer 1.6: Frequently requested new features
Version 1.6 of Movie Explorer has just been released and is available for download or free update, right now in the Mac App Store. It contains some important highly-requested features and improvements.
New common features
- The language of the localizable data of movies and TV shows can now be set in the Advanced tab of the Preferences panel. Localizable data concerns the title, tagline, genres and overviews of movies, TV shows, seasons and episodes.
- A batch update function has been added to change the language of the localizable data. It can be started via menu Files > Update Localizable Data.
- Your media collection in the Movies view can now be sorted on title, director, rating, duration, release data and watched data, both in ascending and descending order. The sorting settings are part of the View Options, accessible via menu View > View Options.
- The search field works now on app level instead of view level. This means that the entered search string is now 'sticky' if you switch views.
- Added a context menu item View in iTunes Store for all media items, crew and cast members.
New TV Show Add-on features
- The TV Shows view contains a new treeview sidebar that let you quickly navigate through your TV shows and seasons. The visibility of this new sidebar can be toggled manually by using menu View > Show/Hide TV Shows Sidebar, or automatically by using the horizontal arrow keys on your keyboard while navigating between the new sidebar and your episodes.
- You can now add movies and episodes to a Watchlist. Use the context menu's of movies and episodes to add or remove items from the Watchlist.
- The filter sidebar and the global filter dropdown contain a new filter Watchlist.
- The content of the Watchlist is synced bi-directionally with Trakt.
- The Watchlist can be updated for all your TV shows by using menu File > Update TV Shows Watchlist
- Marking an episode as Watched will automatically remove the item from the Watchlist, and add the next episode to the Watchlist. This behaviour can be disabled in the Preferences panel.
- You can inspect the Trakt account used by Movie Explorer via menu History > Trakt Account Info.
- Your media collection in the TV Shows view can now be sorted on title, rating, first air date, last air date, seasons count and episodes count, both in ascending and descending order. The sorting settings are part of the View Options, accessible via menu View > View Options.
- The app icon will now show a badge with the number of unwatched movies and episodes. This can also be disabled in the Preferences panel.
Other improvements
- A setting has been added to the View Options of the Movies and TV Shows view to hide the rating stars below the media thumbnails.
- The media source location names are now editable. Just select a location in the sidebar and choose menu Location > Rename.
- The minimum screen resolution for the HD Video sidebar filter can now be set in the Preferences panel.
- Added an option to the same Preferences panel to hide all counter badges in the filter sidebar.
- Corrected a sync issue with Trakt related to watch progress set by other apps. The watch progress is now deleted when you mark a media file as Watched in Movie Explorer.
We really like to thank all our customers for their valuable feedback and patience. Please help making Movie Explorer more popular by leaving positive reviews in the Mac App Store and in MacUpdate. Thank you!
News Explorer 1.3: Background app refresh for iOS
Version 1.3 has been released for the iOS version of News Explorer. The main new features are Background app refresh and improved notifications.
- Background app refresh will periodically download news articles in the background and generate notifications, while News Explorer is suspended or when your device is not in use.
- Notifications has been improved with support for 'Mark as Read' and 'Mark as Favorite' actions. This works also on the Apple Watch.
- Pull down refresh has been added to the news articles list. This works similar to the pull down in the subscriptions list.
- An 'Resync all' option has been added, to resync all subscriptions in one go. This option is available in the Smart filters lists, by tapping on the refresh icon in the bottom toolbar.
Background app refresh and notifications can be configured in the News Explorer section of the Settings app.
News Explorer 1.2: Compatibility update for macOS 10.12, iOS 10 and tvOS 10
Version 1.2 has been released for all platform versions of News Explorer. It contains the following improvements:
- Compatibility fixes for the recently released platform updates for macOS, iOS and tvOS.
- iCloud synchronisation improvements.
- Fixed some navigation issues in the tvOS version.
Known issue with macOS Sierra
The current release of macOS 10.12 Sierra contains a bug that results in non-working settings synchronisation from macOS to the other platforms. This concerns only the Global settings of News Explorer. These are the only settings that are synced across all devices.
Do this to work-around the problem:
- If you use an iOS or tvOS version of News Explorer, then change the setting in that version. It will be synced correctly to the macOS version.
- If you only use macOS versions of News Explorer, but one of them runs on OS X 10.11, then change the setting on the older platform version.
- If you only use macOS versions of News Explorer, and all of them are running macOS Sierra, then you have to change Global settings by hand on all Macs.
We hope of course that Apple will address this problem as soon as possible.
News Explorer 1.1: Reader view, faster sync and a lot more
News Explorer has been updated to version 1.1 and contains a large number of new features, improvements and fixes. To get this update, just open the App Store app, go to the Updates tab and hit the Update button of News Explorer 1.1.
New features
- With Reader view you can download the entire original news article from the web, and read it in a clean and easy-to-read format. Works in macOS and iOS.
- Reader views can be automatically saved, reused and synced with your other devices, including Apple TV.
- Added an option in the settings to choose between Fast batch sync and Instant item change upload.
- Fast batch sync will sync news item changes as part of the periodical sync sessions. It will also skip downloading feeds from iCloud that doesn't contain any new or changed items. This approach results in most cases in much shorter sync times and way less internet traffic. This setting is the default setting.
- Instant item upload will upload every news item change to iCloud immediately after the change has been made, like putting an item to read. This was the default behaviour of version 1.0. The main advantage is that you don't have to worry about syncing your device first, when you switch to another device. You'll always see all your changes on your second device after syncing. However, syncing will take more time because all feeds needs to be polled in iCloud for changes, due to the lack of update statistics.
- Added support for Resyncing subscriptions with iCloud.
- The minimum number of notifications for being summarised can now be set, on macOS and iOS.
- Added support for opening the website related to a feed subscription. Not present in the Apple TV version for obvious reasons.
- New macOS features:
- Notifications in the notification center will now include images, when available. It can be switched off in the Preferences panel.
- Added support for drag-and-drop of OPML files and feed URL's.
- New iOS features:
- Added an option to open Safari controller in Reader View, when available.
- Added support for importing OPML files, for example from your iCloud Folder, Dropbox app or email attachment.
Improvements and fixes
- Fixed a crash caused by news articles with extremely long identifiers.
- Start date for feed downloads is now based on the last feed publishing date, when newer than the standard settings value.
- No annoying automatic deselection anymore of the current feed when in global unread filter modus, and the last item in the list is set to read.
- Improved support for RDF feeds.
- Improved support for feeds with incorrectly encoded characters.
- Improved support for opening URL's with invalid characters.
- Added and implemented setting “Use feed update interval data”. Some feeds indicate how often they are updated. This can be used to minimize internet traffic and to decrease sync duration.
- Added and implemented setting “Resync subscription list on startup”. With this, you can force the app to redownload all feed subscription and folder data, instead of just downloading the last changes.
- OPML import will no longer duplicate folders, when the existing folders have identifiers that are different from the title.
- Improved feed icon rendering.
More info can be found on the product page for News Explorer and in the updated Help page.
News Explorer: the all-new all-apple-platforms newsreader
News Explorer is world's first RSS newsreader that runs on all Apple platforms, featuring iCloud based sync. It's now available on the App Store of macOS, iOS and tvOS (Apple TV 4th generation).
Some unique features:
- Runs on all your Apple devices. Each platform has its own specially developed native app.
- Your news feeds setup, news items and their statuses are always in sync across all your devices.
- Synchronisation is based on iCloud, so there is no need to login or sign up. It just works.
- The built-in feeds search feature makes it very easy to add new feed subscriptions.
- News can be read by using the familiar list and detail view or via the all new timeline view.
More info can be found on the new product page about News Explorer.
Download Buddy 1.8.2 released
Version 1.8.2 of Download Buddy is a small update that contains the following changes:
- Fixed some small usability and GUI issues of the built-in web browser.
- Changed the default value for setting "Maximum retries after time-out" from 2 to 50.
Movie Explorer 1.5.1 released
Version 1.5.1 of Movie Explorer is a small bug fix release that contains the following improvements:
- Fixed an annoying excessive auto resize issue of the Sidebar and Inspector panels.
- Improved refresh of the Movies and TV Shows views after syncing with Trakt.tv.
- Enhanced display of original iTunes files in the Files view.
- Added a Duration column in the Files view. It was already part of the other list views, but not in the Files view, which was a bit odd.
- Deletion of files from the catalog is no longer allowed when scanning is still in progress. This prevents all kinds of nasty issues.
- Scrollbars in the main form are now forced to use the so called 'overlay style' when using a classic scroll wheel mouse. The app looked like crap when using an apparatus like the 11 years old Mighty Mouse.
- Solves an issue with unsharp grayscale flag icons on Retina displays.
- Episodes without a season title are now displayed with a default title.
- Added some missing genre icons.
That's all. Oh wait, another small detail. The main screen shot in the Mac App Store has been replaced by a slightly more juicy variant:
New app version reviewed by Apple within 3,5 hours!
This morning, I woke up and thought I was still dreaming when I looked at a message "The status for your app, Movie Explorer (802224528), is now Ready for Sale" on my iPhone. This new version had been uploaded to Apple last night, so receiving a message like this the next morning is really spectacular and nearly unbelievable. This is the activity log:
- May 10, 2016 at 01:28
- Ready for Sale
- May 9, 2016 at 23:36
- In Review
- May 9, 2016 at 22:10
- Waiting For Review
- May 9, 2016 at 22:07
- Upload Date
This means that the whole review process did not take more than 3,5 hours! Just a few months ago, it took at least a week to receive the 'In Review' status, and sometimes a few more days to receive the relieving 'Ready for Sale' message (or the dreadful 'New message from App Review', usually meaning the app is rejected). It seems that we're moving towards a semi real-time app review process, which is a good thing in my opinion.
This new trend is confirmed by appreviewtimes.com. The average Mac App Store review time is currently 1 day. This blow away the number one reason for some developers to leave the Mac App Store. I know it's naive to think that apps like Sketch will come back to the App Store (I really hate messing around with registration keys and finding the latest download somewhere on a developers website, when setting up a new Mac), because the're still some more frustration points to solve. Like the inconsistency and unpredictability of app reviews and the related rejection reasons for example, especially between apps of different publishers and platforms.
Movie Explorer 1.5 released
Version 1.5 of Movie Explorer is a rather big update. We have made some internal changes to make the app more future proof and to make it easier to add even more long wanted features. The user interface has been streamlined and the codebase has been stripped from deprecated elements. As a consequence the minimum required OS X version is now 10.10.
Watch history and Trakt.tv support
The following new features are added to the feature set of the TV Shows Add-on:
- You can now mark episodes, seasons, shows and also movies as 'Watched' or 'Unwatched', and sync them bidirectionally with Trakt.tv. Please visit the Trakt.tv website for more information and to sign up for an account. You'll need one if you want to use the sync feature. It's free!
- The thumbnails in the Movies and TV Shows view show a blue colored mark in the upper right corner, to indicate that they are 'unwatched'.
- The Movies and TV Shows views have now a History section in the Inspector panel. This section shows the last watched date, the number of plays and the play progress.
- When you use media players with Trakt.tv support, you'll see your watch activities and play progress reflected in Movie Explorer, thanks to the bidirectionally synchronisation with Trakt.tv.
- With the new Filter popover menu you can filter on 'Watched', 'Paused' and 'Unwatched'. This filter can be used together with the existing filters and search function in all views of the main window.
- In a new setting in the Preferences panel you can change the numeric badges in the sidebar, to show the number of unwatched files for each filter.
The integration with Trakt.tv will be intensified in upcoming releases of Movie Explorer. Please consult the Tips & Tricks page to learn how to use these new watch history and Trakt.tv features. The TV Shows Add-on is available as an In-app purchase within Movie Explorer. Learn more »
New core features
The following new features are part of the 'core' of Movie Explorer:
- Improved File properties panel in the Inspector of the Movies and TV Shows views, including display of subtitle languages.
- All file related actions, including rematching, can now be performed directly in the Movies and TV Shows view.
- Inspector Bar in the Movies and TV Shows views let you filter the panels in the Inspector.
- All director links are now clickable. You can now open directly the Info page of a director of a movie or episode.
- Implemented modern toolbar look for both the main window and the Info and Gallery panel window.
- Split Screen support has been improved.
- Support for scanning and display of external subtitle files.
- You can filter the displayed subtitle languages to show only the languages of your choice.
- An audio channels column has been added to the Files view.
Fixes and improvements
A lot of stuff has been fixed and improved:
- Dramatically improved performance of the Sidebar filters on the Cast and Crew views.
- Moving files within a Location, do no longer remove the related file from that same Location from the catalog.
- Improved memory management during scanning of files.
- Improved usability of scrollable content in the Inspectors and Info popup window.
- Matching a file with another movie will no longer remove the initial movie from other files.
- Fixed the swap of show name and episode name in the Match dialog.
- Fixed an issue where the grouping was incorrect when a filtered view of episodes is updated after a scan or sync action.
- Fixed difference between rendering of rating stars in the Sidebar and under the movie thumbnails
- When a view is selected via the Toolbar, then it will also now be selected in the View menu.
- Fixed enabling/disabling of IMDb context menu's in the Cast and Crew views.
- Added progress indicators on the thumbnails in the Gallery.
- Countless other fixes and improvements.
We hope that you like and enjoy using this new version. If you encounter any difficulties with this new version, then get in touch with us and we will try to resolve your issues as soon as possible.