Musings from The Software Underground

Today marks the official launch of MacGourmet version 1, and the demo can now found on the MacGourmet download page. You can also now purchase MacGourmet either from the online store, or by using the eSellerate eCommerce module built into the application, which can be accessed using the "Buy Now!" buttons on the registration dialogs. More on that later.

MacGourmet is being distributed in a manner different from existing Advenio products. The unregistered version that is being made available for download today is a demo that allows 20 launches, or sessions, before expiring but there is no time limit on when those 20 sessions must be used.

During each session, all of the great MacGourmet features: creating new items, publishing your collection to your .Mac account, importing MasterCook recipes, etc., will be available for testing, though there are limits to how many times you each feature during each session. There are no limits imposed on the number of items you can add to your recipe box, so if you want to try adding 1000 of your MasterCook recipes, you can.

The downloaded demo can be converted to allow unlimited functionality by purchasing a registration from the online store, which will provide you with a registration code that will unlock all the features of the application, or by using the purchasing module built into the application, which will enter the registration code and unlock the demo for you automatically.

Today, we are also announcing MacGourmet.com, a companion site to the product that will feature weekly recipe selections, kitchen gadget reviews, wine suggestions, food news and much, much more. While MacGourmet.com will be targeted at users of the MacGourmet application, the content there should be of interest to gourmets in general.

In addition, we are also now making available a Yum! converter, in response to user requests, that allows Yum! text export files to be converted to MacGourmet import files. This is available on the MacGourmet download page as well.

To all of you that submitted feedback, suggestions, comments during the MacGourmet beta. I thank you. Some of your suggestions were added during the beta. The ones that were not are most likely on a list of things that will be added later. How much later? Well I can share some details of the tentative roadmap now:

The first update to MacGourmet will encompass some bug fixes and a bunch of smaller new features that didn't make it into the product during the beta for various reasons (mostly due to the the scope of the changes required). After that, there are a number of releases planned that will be based on specific features: Right now I can talk about specific releases for printing, shopping lists, nutritional information calculations, and better .Mac templates. Bug fix releases which include some smaller enhancements will be added as necessary. How soon can these updates be expected? Well that is dependent on a number of factors, including work on updating another existing Advenio product, SQLGrinder, which has been neglected for a while now, and the amount of time spent doing non-Advenio contract work to pay the bills and make ends meet. My hope it to balance all of these responsibilities and still produce regular updates to MacGourmet, so that the application is always moving forward and doesn't stagnate.