CABEL  I promise you Coda has not been abandoned in any way.

As a small developer, it takes us a long time to create quality updates, particularly when we're working on larger, more substantial releases.

Since we released Coda, we've been updating it fairly frequently -- six releases in twelve months. We think that's pretty good!

All we can ask for is your patience while we work literally as fast as we can. Put simply: we don't want to sacrifice speed for quality, and we hope you agree.

Thanks,

Cabel  
(Version 1.1)

CABEL  kknopp:

If you feel CandyBar was overpriced when it was set at only $13 (!) -- well, I'd say it's probably not the program for you. I can't imagine what price you think it should be! There's literally no way we could price a piece of software at less than $13 and keep it active, constantly updated with new versions and new features, fully supported, etc. My apologies.

(Also, keep in mind: it is no longer "just a freakin' icon changer". We didn't want to raise the price without adding significant value to the program, new features, and great functionality, like Dock changing, large icon support, icon organizing, etc.)

Soothe:

It's a good point about Photoshop Elements. But it's a lot easier to develop and support two separate versions of an application at once when you're a huge company like Adobe -- and when your "cut-down" version costs $99! :)  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  HI RONL,

Don't misunderstand -- we definitely understand where you are coming from!

By the same argument, though, Adobe charges a lot of money for Photoshop, and I think a lot of that money goes to the cost of developing features I will never even remotely use or care about in a million years. That said, I would never try asking Adobe to make me a special, half-price version of Photoshop cutting out the handful of features I'll never use -- I just understand that while some features aren't for me, Photoshop on the whole is still a nice, useful program.

To boot, I've often wondered "who would ever want this feature?" before, only to find that, after using it, it's invaluable.

Even at a $25 upgrade cost, we really think the new features, of which there are many, such as 512x512 icons, full Dock customization, a brand new interface, icon quick look, etc., are well worth it. We hope that anyone who has the opportunity to try the CandyBar 3 demo will agree.  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  Mattly,

Then I have even more good news! You can download Pixadex 2 right here:

http://www.panic.com/pixadex/d/Pixadex%202.0.2.dmg

Where it's always been -- we have not taken Pixadex offline, we never had plans to take it offline, and we will not do so. This isn't a secret -- this is the URL we e-mail to any person who asks us where they can get Pixadex 2. (For the record, too, all versions of everything Panic has ever made of anything is available on our ftp site, ftp.panic.com.)

(Also, as a minor point, Pixadex cost $19 originally, not $14.)

So, I hope you can continue to enjoy Pixadex 2 into the future on Leopard! We absolutely don't want you to upgrade if you don't see a compelling reason to do so.  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  Warchild13,

I think you might have overlooked a couple of things I mentioned.

You say: "[Other companies] don't abandon their customer base with every OS upgrade." Good news! We don't either.

As I said, we released a major upgrade to CandyBar 2 to support Mac OS X 10.4 -- and it was TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE for all users, during the nearly three years that we released free updates. Similarly, Transmit, Unison, Coda, etc., all were updated to support Leopard, completely free of charge. And some of the changes weren't minor! CandyBar was our only, notable exception, due to the huge scope of changes we made.

As for changing your application icons by hand, you are more than welcome to do so! As a warning: if Apple enables the built-in code signing in a future Mac OS X minor update, your applications will simply no longer launch. This is what we're trying to safely avoid by disabling that feature until we get a sense from Apple of their plans.

(As for Unison showing the Purchase menu very briefly while it loads -- I suspect this simply a bug, and I'm surprised to hear that it's considered harsh or gets in your way. We'll look into it!)

Thanks again for your comments and feedback!  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  HI Mattly!

Good news! Pixadex is actually already Leopard compatible for the most part — although it doesn't support 512x512 icons. You should be able to continue to use PIxadex 2.2 in Leopard just fine, without needing to upgrade to CB3!

As for CandyBar 3, this more than just a Leopard-compatible update — it's a huge new product offering tons of new features on both the CandyBar and Pixadex sides. While the price has certainly gone up, and we apologize for that, we think the value you'll get out of the program will be well worth it.

Best,

Cabel / Panic  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  Hi Jeremy,

The upgrade price for CandyBar 3 has risen, because the full price of CandyBar 3 has risen as well. Although CB2 was indeed $13, it is no longer this price, as it has become a far more significant and full-featured product than it was before. The upgrade pricing is not as high as we normally offer, but this is a special case as we have merged two products.

I totally understand if you don't wish to upgrade! But I do hope you'll at least give the new version a try -- it's well worth it!

Best,

Cabel / Panic  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  Hi Kosovar,

While it's a sad to wish we go out of business (do you wish Apple goes out of business because they provide no upgrade discount at all for iLife / iWork every year?), I totally and absolutely appreciate and understand if you choose not to upgrade to CandyBar 3.

That said, CandyBar 3 is a far more significant product than it has ever been, and I do hope this comes across. And although you didn't ask for Pixadex -- there are a ton of features I didn't ask for in Photoshop! :) -- many customers who were initially skeptical of the Pixadex integration now tell us that they can't understand how they got along without it before.

I do hope that someday you can consider the $25 (or $19) upgrade to CandyBar 3, as I think you'll get more than your money's worth!

Best,

Cabel / Panic  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  Hi "Warchild13",

Thanks for your comments.

A couple questions. First, what features did we strip out of Pixadex and CandyBar 3? As best we can tell CB3 offers significantly more features than both programs had separately before, including complete 512x512 icon support, Quick Look, Icon Look, a whole new integrated interface, and much more. The only known removal I'm aware of is the "App Extras' section of CB2, which was cut due to incompatibility concerns with Leopard. Please let me know if there's something we're missing?

Furthermore, we did not disable CandyBar 2 — many people are still downloading/purchasing it today and using it under Mac OS X 10.4, and that's fine with us! Significant changes and new features in Leopard caused us to make CandyBar 3 Leopard-only, but CandyBar 2 continues to work fine under 10.4.

I'm truly sorry you don't think our upgrade path is sensible -- despite only being $13, we did provide nearly three years of free CandyBar 2 updates including, lest you forget, a totally free update to support Mac OS X 10.4.

We think you'll get well more than your money's worth out of CandyBar 3, but I totally understand if you disagree.

Thanks again for your feedback!  
(Version 3.1.2)

CABEL  Hey Frank,

I was talking with Julien, the LiteIcon guy, and he mentioned that he hadn't yet received any donation from you. Strange!

Since I'm sure you've just been really really busy and just totally forgot, I went ahead and donated $13 to him in your name. Hope that's cool.

Best,

Cabel / Panic  
(Version 3.0)

CABEL  Hi Leo!

Simply click the large "Restore Icons" button in the upper-right hand corner of the system view. That's all there is to it! Your icons will restore to normal, and you can safely remove CandyBar at any time.

Feel free to drop us an e-mail if you have further questions about how CandyBar works -- it's the quickest way by far to get help.  
(Version 3.0)

CABEL  Good question!

If you'd like to still use (or purchase) CandyBar 2 for Tiger, simply buy CandyBar 3 and drop us an e-mail. We'll send along a complimentary CandyBar 2 serial number you can use in the interim.  
(Version 3.0)

CABEL  I was referring to the original CandyBar 2 purchase price, which was $12.95. The upgrade price for CandyBar 3 is $25 -- essentially, the full price of CB3 minus (almost) half of the original CB2 price.

Allowing CandyBar 1 owners to upgrade to CandyBar 3 directly (skipping version 2) for the same price seemed unfair for those people who had supported us with CandyBar 2. Since CB1 was release a very long time ago, and I believe was even cheaper than CB2, we thought an upgrade path would be difficult to justify.

Like I said, upgrade paths are never easy... but I truly appreciate your thoughts.  
(Version 3.0)

CABEL  Thanks for your feedback!

If you bought CandyBar within the last two months we'll be happy to provide a free upgrade. Otherwise, the upgrade discount from CandyBar 2 to CandyBar 3 is almost half of your original purchase price ($12.95), which we feel is a pretty fair discount, but we're open to feedback as always.

Additionally, we removed the "Application" functionality from CandyBar 3 because of Leopard incompatibility concerns. We'd keep it if we felt we could do it safely -- but at this time we don't.

Finally, we feel that the integration between Pixadex and CandyBar is a huge deal, and not at all a "detriment" -- when you use the application for a while, we think you'll agree!  
(Version 3.0)

CABEL  Well, the briefly-posted earlier version of 3.5.4 won't launch on Intel machines -- so you'll know if you have it. :)

Otherwise, there were no other changes.

Still, downloading again is a good idea, just to be sure.

Thanks so much for your patience and understanding while we fixed this. ProTip: Last minute, incredibly minor changes to your code can bring surprising results!  
(Version 3.5.4)

CABEL  PROGRAMHAPPY: Transmit 3.5.3 should fix any issues you are encountering. Make sure to download the latest version -- we did a super-quick update on this one, totally our fault. :) Thanks for your feedback!  
(Version 3.5.3)

CABEL SASSER  To clarify some misconceptions:

- Transmit checks once a week to see if a new version of Transmit is available.

- Absolutely no personal information is sent, there are never any serial number checks. Only the version number is sent, and nothing else.

- We've added an option to Transmit's preferences to disable this check if you don't want it. (You may need to re-download Transmit to get it.) Just turn this check off -- we won't mind.

That's it.

Transmit does not secretly "phone home" to our servers with any personal info at any time. Period. Drop us an e-mail if you have any other questions, otherwise thanks for using Transmit 3!

Best,

Cabel / Panic  
(Version 3.0.2)

CABEL SASSER  Once again: there's no "secret phoning" (or else I wouldn't be posting here), no serial number sent over the network, no personal information transmitted at any time, nothing of the sort except for Transmit checking for new versions ever week.

If Transmit was disabled because you used a pirated serial number, that wasn't because of any kind of network check. I can't even imagne the number of people pirating Transmit, but it's actually pretty depressing. If people don't register Transmit, we won't exist -- period. Neither will Transmit. We depend solely on honest users, and that $30 goes a long way.

If I may, why not simply purchase Transmit? Then you won't have to worry about (NON-network) pirate serial number messages ever again.

-Cabel / Panic  
(Version 3.0.2)

CABEL SASSER  I guarantee to you, absolutely 100%, Transmit DOES NOT send ANY personal information at ANY time to check ANYTHING.

Transmit does send its own version number and the system version number -- and ONLY this information, guaranteed -- so that we can alert you of new versions of Transmit. This information is sent once a week. Transmit does not send ANY personal information at any time.

No serial number, no e-mail address, no license verification, absolutely NO personal information.

I encourage you to VERIFY this claim -- you will find it to be 100% true. (Or I'll eat my hat.)

If the version number checking is honestly of high concern, we will happily consider adding a way to turn it off in a future version. Please let us know via e-mail if this is something you would like -- it would be no problem to add.

Best,

Cabel / Panic (updated 8:15 PM)  
(Version 3.0.2)