Growl 1.3 Changes
Growl will become an application. This fits into the [Mac App Store] rules more than anything else we’re doing. […] Anything which does not go into the Mac App Store will be retired.
Via Jesper, who has two posts commenting on the changes:
My fear is not so much that the S.S. App Store will be the only way that Mac software will be offered overnight, but that the App Store, by its existence, will force people into confining to new, artificially restrained definitions of what Mac software is.
I am very sad to see GrowlMail die.
The problem of Growl now is that they are a de facto 'consumer app', as opposed to just an app for geeks, simply from the fact that all these big apps like Skype or DropBox use it. I do think that a pref pane is anyway quite confusing for most users of this app. Kind of sad, but the reality it seems, is that the Growl developers are happy to move in that direction because of support issues, and some overhead in many details, like having 2 frameworks to maintain, Sparkle maintenance, and more.
Yes, the Mac App Store artificially restrains the definition of what Mac software is, but then anyway, anything outside the concept of an App was always very confusing to most users, I would argue.