Cast Away 2.9.7 released and other news from WBC

Happy Holidays everyone!

Cast Away 2.9.7 has been released. It fixes a problem which could have caused Cast Away to get stuck in testing mode if not properly quit. Please see the version history for details.

We here at WBC have been very busy the last couple of months, but promise a number of updates to follow in the next several weeks.

We've updated all the alternate download links on this site, which had expired due to changes over at Apple's MobileMe. If you encounter other dead links, please report them, as one kind visitor did.

Speaking of changes at MobileMe, as many Mac users know, Apple's making a big push to get people to update to the new MobileMe Calendar system. If things work as you like them now, we'd recommend not being too hasty about this. it involves some major changes under the hood, and you might find compatibility problems.

We are aware that OmniGrowl is not fully compatible with with the new Calendar system. Making it so is a short-term priority, and we're working on it. We appreciate your patience.

There are other changes in the works that will affect OmniGrowl as well. Today it was leaked that Yahoo plans to "sunset" or "merge" a number of its services, included Upcoming. OmniGrowl provides local event notifications using Upcoming. So if it turns out to be true — and it's still too early to tell what will happen with Upcoming — either that feature will disappear or we'll need to find a comparable substitute. Suggestions are very welcome.

As for iDupe, we're working on some issues related to NAS volumes. If you use iDupe and have your music on a NAS volume formatted as FAT32 or NTSF, we'd like to hear from you about testing.

As for ThinkArch, we are waiting on MicroSoft to fix some issues involving Outlook 2011 to begin making ThinkArch compatible with Outlook. As it stands so far, it's simply not possible due to the limitations.

Finally, some of you may be wondering if we have any plans for the Mac App Store. Frankly, we haven't decided at this point. Our model is an old-school shareware model, where software is priced cheaply and people pay when they're happy. That's quite far from what we understand the Mac App Store model will be: focused on impulse buying and quite a controlled user experience. And of course given fees paid to Apple, prices would have to go up quite a lot. We invite your comments.