SNERDWARE  I've generated 2 new versions of Fan Control, one for the Intel-based iMacs and one for the MacBook/MacBook Pro which has some extended control capabilities over the original Lobotomo Fan Control version. For screenshots and (free) downloads (with source code) see:

iMac Fan Control

Extended MacBook/MacBook Pro Fan Control

The iMac version allows separate sensors to drive the control of each of its 3 fans and the extended MacBook/MacBook Pro version allows fan-control via the CPU and/or GPU temperatures (useful if you play games on your laptop). There are also some other minor enhancements (see the ReadMe files).

I've also tried to make it easy to adapt the source code for other systems ... e.g., a version for the Mac Pro that uses different sensors to control different fans (or groups of fans).

Hope these are useful to others.  
(Version 1.2)

SNERDLY  

Here's the current status as of 2006-Apr-10:

I've removed the temporary Hotmail account I made available ... but only because the proper Snerdware support channels are now being dealt with ('though there's a bit of a backlog!). Thanks to the people who took the time to help us help you.

If you've updated and are still having problems, it's important that you follow the steps outlined in the Knowledge-Base entry titled I've installed a

Groupcal 3 update and I am still having problems ... what now?.

Problem reports can be created and monitored via Snerdware's support page. As required, some of these reports will find their way to development and some of the interactions will be directly with the development team.

We have made significant progress since our new development team took over the development of Groupcal 3 one month (and 3 releases) ago. Groupcal 3 is now beginning to work reasonably well for many of our customers. However, there are still some of the more esoteric features that we've not yet "worked over" and some of the more obscure problems we've not yet fixed ... but we will!

With the myriad of capabilities across Exchange and iCal, Groupcal does a surprisingly complex job—as some of the real-life setups and situations show. I want to reiterate a hearty "thank you" to the multiple customers who've been working with development to help track down some of the more difficult and obscure problems.

Bryan Derman

SNERDLY  Further to my posting below, this announcement will help you understand the current situation:

Groupcal 3

---

We wanted to let people know where we are, at this point, and to thank our customers who've been working closely with us over the past few weeks to help us resolve the issues with Groupcal 3.

Groupcal 2.x has been a great product and has developed a very satisfied customer base and a solid reputation for its capabilities and responsive support.

OS X 10.4 introduced an important change that, while good for Groupcal in the longer term, required a major set of changes before Groupcal could work with Tiger. In an attempt to expedite the work, Snerdware contracted additional development resources. Unfortunately, that situation did not produce acceptable results and, after an extended effort, Snerdware has now replaced those development resources with a new development team and has rededicated itself to producing a version of Groupcal 3 that maintains the high degree of quality you've come to expect from previous Snerdware products.

We have a high degree of confidence in our new development team and their ability to deliver a solid product to our customers. The new team started work in March and has already completed its second bug-fix release. Given the complexity of the code and the products involved, we have been very pleased with their initial progress.

The on-going development strategy is to focus on the most prevalent problems and, as each significant issue is fixed, produce a release along with clear information about what's been fixed. To that end, we've already done the work to streamline the release process and have added a detailed version-history page at http://www.snerdware.com/groupcal/history.php that's linked to the Groupcal product and download pages. The team has also added some capability to Groupcal to allow customers to capture troubleshooting information. We plan to add more such capabilities as we address additional areas within Groupcal.

While we know that Groupcal and Snerdware's reputation has been tarnished by both the length of time it took to release Groupcal 3 and the quality of the initial release itself, we are now working hard towards regaining our good standing. Having said that, we know what counts at this point is actions and not words.

We feel confident in the new development team as they've already demonstrated that they have both the enthusiasm and the capabilities required. We can promise that we will correct the deficiencies with Groupcal 3 as quickly as possible. We believe that there are 3 or 4 weeks of work remaining to address the remaining issues we think exist in Groupcal 3 at this point.

We are very fortunate to have various customers who are willing to participate in helping us identify and solve problems. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort they spend doing so.

Jacob Swed

CEO, Snerdware, LLC.  
(Version 3.1)

SNERDLY  I lead the development team that is now responsible for development of Groupcal 3. We took over Groupcal 3 on March 10.

Since then, we've set up the development and test environments and put out 2 releases ... but there's more work to do (in fact, we'll likely do another release this week - 2006-04-04).

I'm not going to try to solve the previous support issues, but I have setup a hotmail account as bed421 att hotmail.com. I'll keep that account until it starts getting spammed, then I'll close it.

If you are having problems after installing the current Groupcal version shown here, please send an email to the above-mentioned account and I'll respond from a proper snerdware.com address. Be sure that you don't spam-filter my response.

B. Derman  
(Version 3.1)