- “★★★★★” , exclaimed MacFormat to Unison 2!
- Then, MacUser said “★★★★★” to Transmit 4! (But with mice.)
- ArsTechnica nominated Transmit 4 for their first-ever Ars Design Awards!
- We love documentaries. We love Winnebago Man. Win-winn. (Language!)
- Like trains, history, and Japan? Kenichi recommends the The Railway Museum.
- Cabel is thrilled there’s a new Divine Comedy album. (UK only. For now!)
- Finally, Wade reminds us: the Flyers made it to the Stanley Cup finals.
Archive for 2010
Quick Notes #4
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010New Goods: Locke’s Lions Shirt
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010A while back, we blogged about the official Panic basketball team, PS 208 Locke’s Lions. As well as helping them buy some equipment, we also whipped up a fancy-pants crest design for their jerseys.
Many of you asked the obvious (to you, but somehow not to us!) question:
“When can we buy these shirts?”
Answer: right now.
Printed on amazing-feeling (and slightly costlier) indigo-colored American Apparel 50/25/25 tri-blend track shirts, these are some of the nicest goods we’ve ever made.
Even better? A portion of each sale goes straight to the team.
We’ve only got a small sample quantity in stock right now, but we’ll backorder them so you’ll be able to place an order no matter what: if they run out, thanks for your patience while we print more.
Hit the Panic Goods and help us continue supporting the team. It’s a win-win-win-win. (That last win is the Lions winning their way through the season.)
The Best Award
Monday, May 24th, 2010This came in the mail today.
May 11, 2010
Dear Panic folk,
When Apple announced that only iPhone apps would be eligible for the Apple Design Awards this year, I was pretty shocked. Every so often we wonder if Apple has forgotten about the Mac in favor of its iPhone OS devices. I really don’t think they have, but when they do something like this, it’s… well, a bummer. It does seem like most of the new cool apps coming out are iPhone-based, because while where are a lot of fantastic Mac apps, pretty much all the bases are covered at this point.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Transmit 4 just came out, so the timing is less than ideal.
I’ve been using Transmit since version 2. Before it came along, I had nothing but neutral feelings towards FTP programs. The best I could find was Fetch, and it, frankly, was terrible. I’m not exaggerating in the least in saying that Transmit has changed the way I work, and every version has just made it better. In addition, I could never live without CandyBar, and I love what you guys and The Iconfactory did when it was merged with Pixadex.
All this praise leads me to why I made this ridiculous box. Transmit 4 was a long time coming, and it was well worth the wait. The UI is possibly the best on the Mac, Transmit Disk has instantly proven invaluable to my work, and even the purchasing page on your website is gorgeous. The progress bar and transitions on the credit card icons were something I’ve never seen, and it proves that no developer pays attention to detail as much as Panic.
So for whatever it’s worth, since Apple cancelled the chance for you to win something that I have little doubt you would have won, I humbly present you with, again, this ridiculous Faux Apple Design Award.
And also some Pretzel M&Ms, because Cabel’s lamenting over the empty store display on Twitter made me sad, and I wanted to make sure he got to try them.
Anyway, thank you for all that you guys do, and I look forward to seeing what you come out with next.
Michael Salbato
We are very lucky to have such nice users.
QA Lead
Friday, May 21st, 2010We don’t open the gates to Panic Towers often. “Hire only when you absolutely need to,” we say.
Well, it’s time. We need to!
Up until now, Panic has depended on fantastic beta testers (nearly 500 bugs filed and fixed during Transmit 4’s dev cycle), the coordination of our brilliant support and engineering teams, and great user reports, to make our software awesome.
But as our apps get more complex — this is good, as we like making meaty things! — we realize a full-time tester could help everyone.
We are looking for an experienced QA lead.
The ideal candidate will be the foundation of our QA efforts. Ideally, we want somebody with experience who will:
- Take charge of formalizing our QA processes
- Construct and execute rigorous test plans
- Triage and verify incoming bug reports
- Confirm bug fixes developed by engineering
- Liaison with user community on vague issues
- Be familiar with automation and scripting tools
- Enjoy pursuing and solving problems every day
This position is in Portland, Oregon.
Sound interesting? E-mail your resume to us. If we’re interested, we will send you additional details and possibly schedule an interview.
While we can’t write back to everyone, we thank you in advance for your interest!
An Apple //e, an iPad, and Jed
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010We get e-mails:
From: Stewart Smith / Stewdio <stewart@xxx.org>
Subject: panic office photos
Date: April 30, 2010 7:44:43 AM PDT
I just saw some photos of your office and couldn’t help but notice an Apple //e. I have an odd request. Back in 2005 I created a music video for the band Grandaddy by programming a text animation on an old Apple ][+. You can see the video here.
So for my request: would you do me the honor of running the source code on your old Apple //e and sending a few pictures? (Or even posting them to your Flickr?)
I imagine you could load the code onto the old machine by using my “cassette tape” source code file. The source code package is here.
Sounded like fun to us. Just one problem, though: we knew we had to load Stewart’s “cassette tape” source into the Apple //e’s audio input. But we didn’t exactly have a cassette deck lying around.
What did we have? An iPad.
It’s an obvious solution in retrospect, but there is something very unreal and amazing about tapping a button on a multi-touch screen and watching an Apple //e fill up with data — to quote Andy Baio, “that’s like WALL-E connecting to EVE.”