Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Pear Note 1.2.1

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

A new version of Pear Note, 1.2.1, is now available. While this is primarily a bug fix release (with lots of bug fixes), there is also a bit of new functionality. Specifically:

  1. Pear Note now shows video and jumps around the timeline even when you’re not recording or playing. This should make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for without hitting play, though it may take a little getting used to.
  2. There are new zoom capabilities for the slides and video windows. You can see these under the View menu when one of these windows is active.

Enjoy!

Inspiration is everywhere

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Daniel Jalkut, the developer behind Red Sweater Software, has a great post up about how he’s inspired by the success of the folks at Panic. Panic has become one of the best known names in independent Mac software for good reasons. They make excellent software and really listen to their customers. I personally am a big fan of Coda, which I used to build this website.

While I take inspiration from Panic, they seem so far off that it’s sometimes hard to identify with them. Daniel, on the other hand, is a great inspiration for me. He’s built a successful one-man business on top of some great apps. He is known throughout the Mac community for quickly responding to user needs and he just makes you want to use his software. So, Daniel, you are an inspiration to me. I look forward to the day when Useful Fruit Software elicits the respect that Red Sweater Software does today. I hope that one day Pear Note can be the first thought that comes to Mac users when looking for note-taking software in the same way that MarsEdit is the first thought for Mac users looking for blogging software.

Useful Fruit is growing well, which is inspiration in and of itself. Stories like these of those companies a little further down the road combine with this inspiration to really get me excited about the future. I hope I can continue to use people like Daniel as a guide to help me know when I get off track (and feel free to let me know if you see me doing so). Despite what you see on the news, the future is bright.

Pear Note 1.2

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Pear Note 1.2 is now released! There are lots of changes to talk about, but I’ll focus on a few of the highlights here.

 

  1. Improved highlighting during playback. Now not only is the character itself highlighted when it was typed, but the entire current word is underlined in blue. This underline stays around, so you always know where in the recording you are.

    new blue underline

    New highlighting

  2. Improved video device support. Pear Note now supports a lot more video cameras, including DV camcorders and many webcams that utilize third-party drivers.
  3. High quality video. Pear Note now supports 640×480 video recording.
  4. Auto-scrolling. Simply check the auto-scroll box, and the text view will ensure that every time a character is highlighted it is visible by scrolling to make it visible.
  5. Playback context buffer. When clicking on text to navigate around a recording, Pear Note no longer starts playing exactly when the character was typed. Instead, Pear Note starts a few seconds before it was typed to give you a bit of context. By default, you’ll jump to 10 seconds earlier, though this is configurable in the playback preferences.

Pear Note in print

Monday, April 13th, 2009

The Mac Gems article on Pear Note that Macworld put online in January is in the May issue of Macworld magazine. If you want to check it out, it takes up most of page 40. I want to again thank Dan Frakes of Macworld for his great review.

Pear Note 1.2 coming soon

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

Just wanted to let everyone that’s eagerly awaiting Pear Note 1.2 know that it is coming soon, likely in 2 weeks or so. If you’re not eagerly awaiting it, you should be. Pear Note 1.2 will have a ton of new features that you’ll hopefully enjoy. These will include major improvements to the video system providing higher quality video recording as well as support for a ton of new devices (including DV cameras), auto-scrolling, starting playback from a few seconds before a character was typed when clicking the text, less transient character highlighting during playback, and a number of other features. If you want a taste of it now, you can check out the current betas. Otherwise, stay tuned for all the new goodness.

Pear Note 1.1.3

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Pear Note 1.1.3 has now been released. It is primarily a bugfix release, and includes fixes to a number of things including exporting audio/video and recording. Also, with Pear Note 1.1.3 anyone can now subscribe to beta updates if they wish by selecting them under Preferences. I do ask that you let me know if you’re using beta releases so I can add you to the list and notify you of anything if necessary.

Anyway, update and enjoy.

Pear Note is a Mac Gem

Friday, January 30th, 2009

For those who haven’t seen it, Dan Frakes of Macworld magazine wrote about Pear Note in his Mac Gems column a couple days ago. It was a great article, and he probably explains Pear Note better than much of the documentation on this site. He also had some very good critical points, many of which I’ve heard before from all of you. Rest assured that Pear Note is in very active development, and I hope to have most of the issues Dan raised addressed by the release of 1.3 later this year.

Beta testers wanted

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

Up until now, beta testing of Pear Note has consisted of occasionally throwing a build at friends or fellow Mac developers and asking them to play with it or wandering down to the local Apple store to test builds on differing hardware. Thanks to a couple of you alerting me to license validation problems (and if anyone else has this problem, I’d love to know if the latest beta build solves it for you), I’ve realized that there are now way too many users of Pear Note for this process to be sufficient. So I’m now seeking beta testers from all of you users. If you’re interested, please drop me an email (as always, chad@usefulfruit.com). You’ll get access to features early, with the slight risk of getting access to bugs early as well.

Anyone willing to submit a bug report for any problems they find is welcome to become a beta tester. I’d especially like people that have webcams around, as I hope to increase the number of webcams supported by Pear Note in an upcoming release. That said, don’t let not having a webcam hold you back if you’re interested.

The word notes

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

The word notes has been terribly overused. As I try to tell people about Pear Note, particularly those that are more technically inclined, I find that I continually have to differentiate it from other “notes” apps that have nothing to do with the traditional act of taking notes. The most prevalent of these are what I call shoebox apps. These are apps that you can throw things into (text, media, websites, etc.), possibly categorize them in some way, and find them later when you need them. These range from simple apps that are a repository to drop things in to more complex apps that automatically categorize and map items out for the user.

Additioally, there are sticky notes programs, which are designed for short little blurbs, rather than taking notes on a lecture or meeting. There are journaling programs and even audio recording apps that all use the notes name. And of course there are apps like Pear Note (though few) that are designed to be used to take notes in classes, meetings, conferences, and the like.

Unfortunately, I don’t see this changing at any point. Users will keep searching for notes apps and have to sift through all of these different kinds of programs before finding what they’re looking for. Of course, if you’re reading this then you’ve likely already gone through this and found Pear Note, or maybe you just happened upon it at some point. Either way, spread the word about Pear Note to your friends so they don’t end up with the wrong sort of notes app.

Pear Note is an Apple Staff Pick

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

I was very happy to check out Apple’s downloads site this morning, and find that Pear Note 1.1 has been awarded a staff pick. I have no idea how this is awarded, but I’m very glad to see that the folks at Apple enjoy Pear Note as much as you guys do. Thanks, Apple!

Staff pick on Apple downloads

Staff pick on Apple downloads