MarsEdit 4.0
Big news today: MarsEdit 4 is out of beta and available for download from the MarsEdit home page and the Mac App Store. This marks the end of a long development period spanning seven years, so it’s a great personal relief to me to finally release it. I hope you enjoy it.
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After the trial expires, all features of the app continue to work except for actions that update published content on the web. […] Anybody who purchased MarsEdit 3 on June 1, 2017, or later, is entitled to a free update to MarsEdit 4. Anybody who purchased MarsEdit 3 earlier than June 1 is entitled to a discounted $24.95 upgrade. This applies to Mac App Store users as well! Because MarsEdit 4 embraces the Mac App Store’s in-app purchase model, the app can use a downloaded copy of MarsEdit 3 to validate a discounted or free upgrade to MarEdit 4, as appropriate.
MarsEdit is one of only a few third-party apps (along with BBEdit, LaunchBar, and OmniOutliner) that I’ve used nearly daily for the last 13 years or so. Here are the highlights of what’s new.
Previously: MarsEdit 4 Public Beta, Acorn 6 Public Beta, Omni’s IAP Trials and Upgrade Discounts, MarsEdit 1.0.
Update (2017-12-05): Brad Ellis:
Updated the MarsEdit icon for the latest release. Teal and orange, because I enjoy Michael Bay movies.
My blog doesn’t have a browser-based interface at all. None. Every single post goes through MarsEdit.
There seems to be zero info in the Mac App Store about how much the app costs.
Also quite surprised that “purchase a full license” is allowed in the description.
I’m constantly amazed at the tortuous purchase processes Apple is willing to put users and developers through instead of just providing the free trial mechanism that we’ve all wanted since day one.
See also: John Voorhees.
The basic premise — a native Mac blog editor that follows the basic layout and structure of an email client, remains as sound today as it did 13 years ago. MarsEdit is both great in terms of its integration with various blogging platforms and its integration with MacOS as a native app.
Movable Type, Blogspot, and LiveJournal are all still around, but today they’re dwarfed in usage by WordPress and Tumblr. It’s a testimony to the strength of MarsEdit’s engine-neutral design that it remains relevant today, despite a nearly complete change in the publishing systems people use to blog.
We are so used to these silos and these apps that are not compatible with anything, that we just accept it. But that’s how it should work.
You should be able to use multiple apps to post to different services. And that’s what’s happening with apps that are built with some compatibility in mind, especially on IndieWeb standards. That’s what’s happening with MarsEdit and Micro.blog, although on a much smaller scale.
Update (2017-12-07): Jeff Johnson:
As I suspected, App Store doesn’t show the price until someone purchases. Which is absurd.
Note that this is criticism of MAS and not of MarsEdit.
Update (2017-12-18): See also: Vector.
