I’m happy to announce the immediate release of our new game, 4 in a Row, which is available now on Apple’s new App Store. Although Milton Bradley made the game famous under the name Connect Four, the game itself is actually very old. It was originally called “Captain’s Mistress”, the rumor being that Captain Cook spent enough time playing it to cause the men on his ship to come up with the nickname.

I myself have had many a good time playing this old game, and I’m excited to be able to bring it to the iPhone and iPod touch. The project started out as just a bit of fun while I was experimenting and learning to program on the iPhone. As it began to take shape, I decided to polish it up and release it.

The one part that certainly works but could probably be improved upon is the AI in One Player mode, and it will be in a future release. In researching for this game, I discovered that the game has actually been “solved”, meaning that if you go first, you can guarantee a win. That means that it is possible to create a perfect computer player. I’m not sure if that level of AI will make it in to the game or not - I don’t imagine it would be very fun to play against.

I’m very curious to see how people respond to this game and the App Store itself. I’d love to hear any feedback!

Today, along with LateNiteSoft, I am happy to announce that Snapshot has found a new home. While it is a little sad to see one of our babies leave the nest, I believe this is good news for everyone involved, especially and most importantly Snapshot’s users.

Over the last few months it has become painfully obvious that time demands have caused some of our products to fall behind and not get the updates they deserve. Snapshot hasn’t seen a significant update in far too long, and the last thing we want to do is cause frustration for our customers. The new ownership of Snapshot will result in a renewed development that is sorely needed. As a Snapshot user myself, I can’t wait to see what the guys at Late Night come up with.

Of course we want to make the transition as smooth as possible. All current users will be able to continue using Snapshot. We’ll be helping out with support issues for the next while, to make sure no one gets left out in the cold. If there is anything else we can do - just drop us a line and let us know.

Here’s looking forward to a bright future for Snapshot!

Visit Snapshot at it’s new location here.

It’s been far to quiet around here for far too long, and I’m know that many people are wondering what the status is for On The Job 3. Some might say say that we’ve been saying it’s coming “soon” for a little to long at this point. Well, I would agree. The good news is that On The Job 3 is coming along nicely, and there have been no changes in our plans to release it as soon as it’s ready.

Just in way of explanation, the delay has been caused by a number of factors. Part of it is due poor estimates on the time it would take to implement some things, especially as the business side of running Stunt has started taking up more time, leaving less for the coding side of things for me personally. Leopard also ended up causing much more development work than I initially anticipated, especially in the case of Overflow.

In light of the delay, I have made a couple of decisions. On The Job 3 will be Leopard-only. By the time it comes out, Leopard will have been out for a significant amount of time that I believe most of our users will have had the chance to update. Going Leopard-only will simplify the code and allow us to speed up the testing phase once we hit beta status (of course, if there is a deluge of email expressing horror in this choice, there is an outside chance it could be reversed).

Upgrades will be free for users that purchased within eight months of the release date. This was originally going to be a smaller window, but I don’t want to leave anybody out that may have had the impression that their upgrade would be free when they purchased version 2.

Now, I know that I haven’t answered one remaining burning question: when will version 3 be released? Well, I’m going to leave that intentionally vague. I’ve learned my lesson. I will say that it is being worked on full time, and we want it out at least as much as you do!

Update: I just wanted to point out that everyone who purchased On The Job after seeing the “coming soon” banner will most definitely be getting a free upgrade, whenever the final release happens.

Just a quick note to let you know that the Stunt offices will be closed until the second week in January. We will do our best to get back to emails, but please expect delays. Have a happy non-denomintional holiday!

It’s the holiday season, and as you may have already heard, MacSanta is back. Use the coupon code MACSANTA07 today in our store for 20% off of all of our software, or MACSANTA07TEN until the end of the month for a 10% discount. Once you’ve finished filling up your stockings with our software, take a look at the list of other developers also offering discounts. There are new discounts offered every day, so you might want to check back or subscribe to their RSS feed.

Happy Holidays!

Ever since the Stacks feature of OS X 10.5 was announced, people have been calling it an Overflow killer. To be honest, we weren’t exactly sure how the new feature would pan out in comparison to Overflow. It sure looked similar enough in last summer’s WWDC Keynote presentation! Even more frustratingly, since we later had access to Leopard developer seeds and were under a non-disclosure agreement, we couldn’t talk about the finer points of how Stacks actually worked. Now that Leopard is out, we finally can!

One thing that you may notice is that Stacks actually takes away some functionality that use to exist. Previous to Leopard, you could place a folder in the dock and access its contents through the dock menu. In Leopard, this menu no longer exists. If you like this kind of quick menu-based access to your applications or documents, then it’s Overflow to the rescue!

Or, if you are using Overflow in the no-dock mode, you can access the same list from the status menu item.

As far as the rest of Stacks functionality, and how that compares with Overflow, it’s really up to you as a user to decide what workflow fits you best. There are definitely some minimal overlaps in functionality, but for the most part Overflow is as relevant as it ever was. Stacks is great for quick access to your Downloads folder, and it’s great not to have downloads cluttering up your desktop. However, it is still basically just a quick (although now more pretty) way to access folders you have stored in the Dock. If you want quick access to a customized list of items, and want to be able to drag and drop files onto applications or folders you’ve stored, then Overflow is still the way to go.

Happy Leopard Day!

To make sure everyone using our software has a smooth transition to Leopard, we have updated Overflow and On The Job to improve their compatibility with the new OS. The good news is that we didn’t even have to update our other two applications, Downsize and Snapshot, thanks to the great work of many talented Apple engineers. Those two applications should continue working just fine after the upgrade.

Even if you’re not upgrading to Leopard right away, the new updates fix a few outstanding issues, and are still definitely worth the download. Feel free to check out the change list for Overflow, and the (more extensive) change list for On The Job.

One small footnote - there is always the outside chance that there will be some lingering Leopard problems. While Apple gave developers preview releases of Leopard, we don’t get the final version to test on until it’s released to the public. Hopefully it won’t be an issue, but if there are changes that do affect our software, let us know and we’ll endeavor to get them fixed very soon.

We wish you all a merry, problem-free upgrade!

There were a couple of bugs that some users experienced with Overflow 2.5 that needed addressing, especially related to importing data from older versions of Overflow. Hence the quick point release. You can grab the new version here, or from the web page here.

If you were one of the users who experienced problems and your data wasn’t brought over from the last version successfully, you will have to quit Overflow, then delete this file before running the new version:

~/Library/Application Support/Overflow/data.overflowdata

(for the less technically minded reader, the ~ just means your home folder)

After that everything should be smooth sailing, but if it’s not, please send an email to support@stuntsoftware.com to let me know!

Just a quick note to mention that Overflow 2.5 is now available from our website. Version 2.5 adds a bunch of user requested features, such as:

• Dragging a file over Overflow’s dock icon now instantly opens the Overflow window to allow the file to be dropped on an application or folder contained in Overflow, making it an even more natural extension to the dock.
• The Overflow dock icon can now be hidden and replaced by a status menu item.
• The Overflow window can now be automatically positioned under the mouse when the hotkey is pressed.
• Items in Overflow can now be assigned custom names.

For a full list of changes, you can check out the changes page.

iPhone “SDK”
Web apps can’t use the iPhone’s multi-touch input method. That’s reason enough that web apps can’t be real apps on an iPhone.

Stacks
From a more personal perspective, the lack of a “real” iPhone SDK wasn’t the part of the keynote that left the biggest impression. Rather, I couldn’t help but notice that the new Stacks feature looked an awful lot like Overflow. It is cool that enough people know about Overflow that I’m not the only one that noticed though (a few people at the conference have asked me about it as well - thanks for your concern!). After thinking about it for a few days, I think that Overflow hasn’t quite been Watson’d. There is a lot of stuff that Overflow does that Stacks doesn’t, and I think there is a lot that Overflow can do in the future to continue to innovate (to continue with the general overuse of that term). I get the impression that Stacks are meant to be used as more of a temporary holding place, whereas Overflow is much more configurable, accessible via a hot-key, and not something that you’ll likely want to change the contents of every day. The intended use of each turns out to be only slightly similar. Really they are more visually similar than conceptually similar.

ADA
Also, congratulations to all of the Apple Design Award winners, especially Panic / Coda for Best User Experience and MacRabit / CSSEdit for Best Developer Tool, both of which I think are just awesome, extremely useful applications with great UIs. Sandvox from Karelia (who also created Watson) got the runner up spot for Best User Experience, and although I’m not a target user, it’s also a really nice looking app.