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August 30, 2004
Launch the Beta Battle!
Smart, "trainable", launching apps are becoming a mainstay in personal computing. These would be programs that allow you to do any number of tasks - launch a program, open a document, go to a website, send an email - by just typing a couple keys. For example, to start ecto (my blog-posting app), I press command-space then type "ec". Ecto matches, and off we go.
LaunchBar is the old man in this category on the Mac, and LaunchBar 4 has been in beta for quite a while. The up-and-comer is QuickSilver, which is still in a rather-stable pre-1.0 beta.
Yesterday, LaunchBar 4.0b8 "expired". That means it don't work no more. The LB betas had been free for use, whether or not you owned a LB3 license (I do). LB 4.0b9, immediately available, instates registration. If you don't own a LB4 license (even tho LB4 is still in beta), LB4 only runs in crippleware mode.
I don't pay for betas. (And this is from the man who upgraded to BBEdit 8.0 sight unseen today). Yesterday, I downloaded QuickSilver - which is quite functional and awfully pretty - as a LB replacement.
Apparently, as everyone got into work this Monday, they had the same epiphany I did - screw paying for a beta, I'll use the other app. By 9am Pacific, the QuickSilver site was offline - its daily bandwidth limit exceeded.
Now, I might still pay the reasonable $10 upgrade fee from LaunchBar 3 to 4. But I admit to being irked at a) being asked to pay an upgrade for the privilege of beta-testing and b) the complete lack of warning that we were going to paid-only beta status. Apparently, due to the load on the QuickSilver site, I'm not alone.
Posted by jim at August 30, 2004 01:54 PM