Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 3:05 p.m.
I am both proud and saddened to announce that I will no longer be the developer of Schoolhouse. Several months ago, I began working full-time at Apple as a Software Integration Engineer. In accordance with Apple's employment rules I cannot develop Schoolhouse any further as it presents a conflict of interest between Apple and myself.
I will therefore be handing Schoolhouse to Thomas Lister (@sayo), who I trust can take it to heights even greater that I thought possible.
In short term, the Lion compatibility update (3.2.2) has been submitted by Thomas and is now pending with Apple's review team. As soon as they approve it, you should all have happy Macs again. :)
Goodnight and good luck, my friend.
It was fun.
Friday, July 22nd, 2011 at 7:21 p.m.
I am currently aware of an issue in Mac OS X Lion that prevents Schoolhouse from functioning properly. Unfortunately, I cannot do anything until Apple approves an update to come for Schoolhouse. I'm currently waiting for this, but have heard no timeline as of yet.
Sorry guys, hang in there...
Logan
Thursday, January 6th, 2011 at 1:04 p.m.
Schoolhouse is now available on the Mac App Store! And even better, it's available for an introductory price of $4.99!
Download Schoolhouse on the Mac App Store
You must be running 10.6.6 to have the App Store.
If you have bough Schoolhouse already without the App Store, you will not be able to use the store for automatic updates. Updates will be delivered in-app just as they always have.
If you choose to purchase the app from the store, you must first drag Schoolhouse to the trash so the store recognizes that you don't have it installed.
Friday, November 12th, 2010 at 1:08 p.m.
Schoolhouse 3.2 is now available via auto-update and the website. This version fixes a lot of long-standing bugs and adds a few nice little details, like a score column for the list view and QuickLook for file attachments, as well as a new Class Schedule view that lets you enter your schedule and see it by week and month, as well as mark class sessions as cancelled on certain days.
Friday, October 22nd, 2010 at 10:12 a.m.
Posted a quick update to Schoolhouse this morning that fixes a pesky bug that occurs when switching the course for a task when viewing the current course. Get it via the Check For Updates... menu item in the Schoolhouse menu.
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 at 1:57 p.m.
Schoolhouse icon in the Lion demo
Engadget
Pretty cool. A few people pointed this out to me. The Schoolhouse icon is on one of the the home screens in the demo. Next to last icon in the next to last column in the next to last row.
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 11:23 p.m.
Graphic property of Ars Technica
Ars Technica, the wonderful tech website, saw the sadness in many a Mac developer's eyes when Apple decided to restrict the Apple Design Awards to iPhone and iPad apps only. As such, Ars Technica decided to hold a little awarding of their own.
In the form of the Ars Design Awards for Mac OS X.
The coolest part of this, for me? Schoolhouse is nominated in the "Best Student-Created Application" category. I'm very humbled and excited. It's such a good feeling to see something you've created respected enough to attain a place in the nominations. Among the other candidates are, of course, some of the best Mac apps out today, including Transmit, Pixelmator and Dropbox.
This should be a fun and welcomed replacement for our development community's efforts.
Thanks, Ars Technica!
Update: It's also come to my attention that Schoolhouse is featured on MacAppStorm today in their 20 Time-saving Mac Apps for Teachers. More awesomeness than I expected.
Update: I WON!
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 12:39 p.m.
Today I pushed Schoolhouse 3.1.2, which fixes an outstanding issue with MobileMe syncing not properly handling the Course Folders introduced in 3.1.
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 11:52 a.m.
Today I'm pushing out Schoolhouse 3.1, the first maintenance update for Schoolhouse 3. This build adds several features that were highly requested, including the aforementioned course folders and a new, more powerful calendar view that is more akin to iCal.
Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 2:56 p.m.
I've been working now and then on Schoolhouse 3.1, for those of you who keep up on these kinds of things. I'm interweaving my dev time with my school projects and my part-time job, but I do have some small amounts of time every few days to get some work done.
So what changes, you might ask, are going to be in it?
Well, first off, is an autosaving feature. I've had several people email me about situations where they leave Schoolhouse open constantly and have accidentally let their batteries die, and thus, since Schoolhouse never closed, nothing was saved. Autosave will remedy this by saving automatically every few minutes if things change.
Next is Course Folders. They will work similar to how Terms did in Schoolhouse 2, in that courses can be grouped into Folders. The folders can represent whatever you choose: semesters, quarters, majors, professors you like vs. professors you hate, whatever.
Those are just two features that are going to be in Schoolhouse 3.1. What else is in store I'm no revealing yet.
Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 1:58 a.m.
I am proud to (finally) announce the release of Schoolhouse 3.0. This version is a major update, and introduces a completely new foundation to Schoolhouse.
Schoolhouse 3 is Shareware. Yes, I've moved to the paid model. *screams*. Well, we all have to eat, right? And it is at a reasonable price, in my opinion. $14 and you have the app. That's a lot less than most of those fancy to-do managers that are in the $50 to $80 range. I mean, we're students, right?
So, new features? First are Appearance Rules. They work like Mail's message rules in that they define how tasks in Schoolhouse appear (bolded, italicized, colorified, etc.), and are definable using a nice interface in the preferences.
Second is Websites. You can add websites to your courses or library, and access them directly in Schoolhouse. It's quick and easy for course websites that you look at frequently.
Next is MobileMe syncing, for those who have multiple Macs. Turn it on in the MobileMe system preference pane.
Another great new feature is a quick entry pane, which has become a popular trend in to-do apps. You can define a shortcut key in the General preference pane.
That's four cool new features, but you should download the app to check them all at.
Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 6:01 p.m.
Today I released Schoolhouse 2.2, an update that is long overdue. This update fixes compatibility problems that have cropped up in the latest Leopard updates, as well as some other outstanding issues. Along with bug fixes, Classcasting has been removed. Your library should upgrade just fine, and if you have any issues feel free to contact me and I'll try to help. I realize I've been particularly silent on Schoolhouse (as well as my blog) for three weeks shy of a year now. I can only ask my readers and users that you forgive me. I am working my way back to my projects and am continuing to work on the future of Schoolhouse. I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 12:13 p.m.
So as many have noticed, 10.5.2 broke Schoolhouse in a way. Some actions cause beachballing (the spinning color cursor) on Intel Macs running the Leopard update. I'm trying to figure out exactly what is causing it, but in the meantime, one user pointed out that if you Get Info on the Schoolhouse app in the Applications Folder in the Finder, and Select the Rosetta option (to force the app to run in PowerPC compatible mode), it works fine. This is a temporary solution for everyone who can't access there stuff anymore. In the meantime, I wanted to point out that I am trying my best to work on Schoolhouse. As you hopefully understand, schoolwork takes priority every time, and the past couple weeks I have been swamped with work. So Schoolhouse is coming along (including hopefully a fix for 2.1), but I can only work on it when I have the time. I love it, it's my wonderful own project, but I have to focus on homework and studying when I need to.
Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 1:39 p.m.
Yes, it's true. I have been working on the next generation of Schoolhouse. Now that the semester is over, I have a lot more time to devote to it, too. While I won't go into a whole lot of detail right now, since it's still in development, I do want to talk about a couple things. Number One: I am planning for it to be Leopard-only. This is mainly because there is so much in Leopard (developer-wise) that I would love to take advantage of. This includes Core Animation and the Calendar Store framework. Yes, you heard that right. The Calendar Store. (That's iCal's database for those who don't know.) I'll leave it at that. Number Two: As I was talking to a developer friend of mine, we realized that Schoolhouse will need a new icon to go along with the update, and to be 512x512 for Leopard's new resolution independence. While I was comfortable with what I came up with for 2.0, I feel that the icon design would be better fit to someone else for such a big (and let's face it, important) icon. So...I thought I'd throw it out there to see if anyone reading my blog wanted to take a whack at making a new icon for Schoolhouse. For a new icon, I was thinking maybe a literal schoolhouse, viewed perspectively from above like Pages and Keynote's icons. I just like that look on the Leopard dock rather than the tilted Mail style. But it doesn't have to be a literal Schoolhouse, any idea that an interested party can come up with I would be interested in. If you want to try, just make a mockup, whatever you think, and shoot me an email with it. If I like the design, I will be glad to honor you in the about box. Yeah, the financial situation forbids me from hiring an actual graphic artist for this.Well, that's it for now. I will continue to give hints about Schoolhouse 3 as I continue development, and it's progressing fast. As always, ideas and suggestions are welcome.
Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 9:50 p.m.
So I'm sitting at work today, and I get an email from one of the users of Schoolhouse. They are like..."Great software, and congrats on getting into the new issue of Macworld!"
...WHA? I don't take Macworld anymore, needless to say. So after work I lead my roommates on a voyage to find a copy. Borders. They have to have it, right? Not a single copy. I don't know if they just don't take it or what. Finally I find it at Safeway. Sure enough, I'm in there. One of the 63 Great Mac Downloads reviewed this month. I get four out of five mice. Pretty awesome!
So thanks to the people at Macworld for the mention. I've never been in a magazine before...
Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 4:39 p.m.
So Donations are back up on the Schoolhouse site. I know what you're thinking. OOOH, Now he asks for money. But honestly, it's there to use if you want to. Schoolhouse is donationware. If you like it, and would like to support me a little, you can donate. I write Schoolhouse for two reasons. One, I wanted to learn to program, and Schoolhouse was my first big project. Second, I feel that college students spend enough money as it is on books, tuition, alcohol...wait, that's not supposed to be in there...who wrote that?! Anyway. So there you go. Use as directed, if a rash occurs, stop taking immediately and consult your physician.
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 7:41 a.m.
I was pleased to hear recently from one of the web developers from Apple's website. He said that he recommended Schoolhouse to the guy who manages the Featured Downloads area, and low and behold, the next day it was the Featured Download! This is an awesome thing. It shows off Schoolhouse to anyone who visits the page. Also, I couldn't help but notice that after I updated Schoolhouse to 2.1 it showed up in the Top 20 list...as number 4! Just behind iTunes, QuickTime, and WMP. Who could have guessed?
Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 6:11 p.m.
I have just released Schoolhouse 2.1, an update that addresses several issues I have received comments about. Included in this version is support for multiple instructors and occurrences for courses, a new week view, the ability to hide weekends, the ability to ignore empty kinds instead of assigning a value, and a lot of bug fixes.
Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 9:04 a.m.
I was very proud to hear that Schoolhouse was featured on two very prominent blogs, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) and Lifehacker. They both give great reviews for Schoolhouse, and since then I have received about 10 times as many emails about feature ideas. Talk about publicity! Anyway, I would like to thank the people at both of these for offering a review and helping to further get Schoolhouse into the mainstream. Links to the sites are below.
http://lifehacker.com/software/college/download-of-the-day--schoolhouse-2-mac-248705.php
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/04/schoolhouse-2/
Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 10 p.m.
Ah, I do love Spring Break. Time off from homework, stress, and the weather is starting to get nice. It's not surprising that all I have done is sit around and do...well...nothing.
I'm kinda looking forward to going back to KU. I miss the atmosphere more than the homework, mind you, but still. I feel like there is so much more I could be doing going out and having fun instead of sitting home all day watching reruns of Stargate SG-1. Seems like this year's Spring Break was kind of lame. My friends and I have been talking about taking a trip somewhere next year, or even next semester on Fall Break, say to Cali. It'd be around $1,200 each (flight, hotel, meals, nightlife, etc.), but I think for a college life it'd be worth it to experience more than Kansas has to offer.
I've been seriously thinking about studying abroad in an upcoming year or semester. I think somewhere like Italy or elsewhere in Western Europe would be incredible. I don't know...do they even have programs for Programming majors for study abroad? I know they do, it just doesn't seem as flashy as say Architecture.
As for the developer side of my persona, I'm working on an update to Schoolhouse that should cover some bugs and add some features. On the bugs side I hope to have isolated the crash when assigning a course to an item, this was reported by a few people. Also the importing feature has been updated to support import of legacy data from other apps, namely Assignment Planner and Task List. Also I'm working on iCal and iPod Syncing. I hope to have the update ready within the next week or so.
Well, that should catch things up nicely. A month of my life in a minute and a half, and my kingdom for a Dr. Pepper.