shinywhitebox

So, what's happening at shinywhitebox? OK - so perhaps this wasn't right on the tip of your tongue, or the very first thing you thought of, but I'm going to let you know anyway!

I start working full time at SWB on the 28th of August - so only a few days away now! This means that I can start working on the rather large bits of functionality that are difficult to do part-time. Also, I'm moving. Back to New Zealand. I'll be on holiday (in Canada) for almost all of October (there will still be some support), and will likely arrive in New Zealand early November. But the excitement doesn't end there, no wait! There's more! Then I buy a house. So I'm going to be a busy lad for the next while.

I'm glad to have fixed the issues as reported in 1.17 - they were really grating me. I couldn't believe that they had slipped by my testing, and were in the wild. Quite embarrassing really. At least they are fixed now.

I'm happy to report that the latest 1.17 build (not yet official, as I'd like to get some feedback first) resolves a few outstanding issues. Most notably the temporaryStorage bug (which would stop people recording if it was the first time they had used iShowU, a most disconcerting thing to have released), and further improvements in the audio code (various crashes were occurring).

I've placed the release on the download page - please, if you've been having problems - let me know if it works for you.

A few people have emailed me to tell me they have experienced a crash in iShowU. I'm wondering if more people are experiencing this, but just not letting me know? The crash log will contain a part that looks like this:

Thread 1 Crashed:0 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x9082068f CFDataGetLength + 171 ...ickTimeComponents.component 0x984f31d6 _SGAudioAppendPropertyToNotifyArray + 352 ...ickTimeComponents.component 0x984f874f sgAudioQTSGAudioContextPropertyListenerProc + 1143 ...ickTimeComponents.component 0x984e36f6 _QTSGAudioContextNotifyPropertyListeners + 2214 ...ickTimeComponents.component 0x984ecbf9 qtCoreAudioContextDeviceListenerProc + 2385 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x914688bc HALPropertyListener::Call(unsigned long, unsigned long, AudioObjectPropertyAddress const*) + 2166 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x914531a9 HALObject::PropertiesChanged(unsigned long.....

The important parts being CFDataGetLength etc, etc.
Of course, the 'Thread 1 Crashed' might read 'Thread 7 Crashed' or something else.

If you're experiencing this problem at all - I'd love you to get in touch. I've been working to find the solution (I may have found it this evening, it's an elusive and difficult thing to test since it's unpredictable), and I'd love to be able to fix the problem for you if it's getting on your nerves.

Well, after talking with many people, and doing a tiny bit more to the design, I've settled on the following icon:

I decided that I wouldn't put a capture rectangle, or other artifact on the desktop - purely to keep the icon simple (at 16x16, in the status bar, the last thing you want is additional complexity). I hope that it better conveys what iShowU is all about. I toyed with ideas that portrayed movie cameras, lenses and light - but they all ended up being more complex if a screenshot of the desktop was also included. I wanted to put the screenshot in because it's a nice physical link that everyone would understand.

1.15 is a maintenance release which includes some additional debug code (one or two users are experiencing an odd problem attempting to start a record session). Apart from these small changes, there are no new features that you need to be aware of.

I've attempted to implement some of the ideas given to me, with regard to the film based icons. Here's the result - one singular, and one in a stack.

OK - so what about these Icons? The first is a film strip, with a desktop picture that's in negative. The second is the same, but without the negative effect. I've shown both the icon itself (at 128 x 128), followed by what it looks like in the dock, and then what it looks like when you press Apple-Tab. Ugly? Horrible? Great? Nearly there? Would you prefer it over the existing icon?

It appears that some people find the new icon less than satisfactory. That's OK, I can understand that - I've been happy with it, but not ecstatic. Work is continuing on an alternative, but I had to do something as the icon I was using turned out to be used by an alternative mac product and they asked me to remove it. So if you're pulling your hair out and wondering to yourself "what was he smoking?" - don't worry, I'll create a better one.

A couple of users have reported Kernel Panics, when they press the Record button in iShowU. Art Belmonte (I'm sure he doesn't mind me mentioning him) kindly helped out by performing various tests, and together we were able to establish that the cause has something to do with large disks. In Arts case, he has a 500GB disk.

I've created a workaround for this situation until it can be resolved. I don't think it's going to be easy to resolve because it's a problem inside the kernel itself (if you're not sure what a kernel is, think of a iShowU as a small boat on an ocean. The kernel is in a deep part of that ocean). Anyway, back to the workaround. It's quite simple - but unfortunately, not entirely pretty. Create a sparse disk image using Disk Utility - and have iShowU record to that image.

I've posted a tutorial video on the site, for those less familiar with the Disk Utility program.