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TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 24 November 2014

DEVONthink/DEVONnote 2.8.2 — DEVONtechnologies has updated all three editions of DEVONthink (Personal, Pro, and Pro Office) and DEVONnote to version 2.8.2. The three editions of DEVONthink now support indexing files and folders stored in iCloud Drive, add several options to the preferences, optimize the appearance of HUD panels in OS X 10.10 Yosemite, and improve the termination of background tasks on quit. In addition, all three editions address an issue with importing plain text notes from Yojimbo, timeouts when importing large Word or
OpenOffice documents, and an autolayout issue in 10.9 Mavericks caused by encrypted PDF documents. DEVONthink Pro Office also improves startup speed and overall performance of OCR background tasks in Yosemite. (All updates are free. DEVONthink Pro Office, $149.95 new, release notes; DEVONthink Professional, $79.95 new, release notes; DEVONthink Personal, $49.95 new, release notes; DEVONnote, $24.95 new, release notes; 25 percent discount for TidBITS members on all editions of DEVONthink and DEVONnote. 10.7.5+)

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Mactracker 7.4.1 — Ian Page recently released version 7.4 of Mactracker, which adds detailed information about the recently released iMac with Retina 5K display (see “The Retina iMac: It’s All about the Screen,” 31 October 2014) and updated Mac mini. Mactracker 7.4 also added details on OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X Server 4.0, the Wi-Fi and cellular models of the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, the first- and second-generation Apple Remote, and multiple radio antennas (MIMO) on Wi-Fi base stations. It also added support for Yosemite and now requires 10.7 Lion or later. Shortly afterwards,
Page updated Mactracker to version 7.4.1 to add details on the most recent OS X and iOS releases, plus update support status on the latest vintage and obsolete Apple products. Mactracker 7.4.1 is not yet available from the Mac App Store. (Free from Mactracker Web site or Mac App Store, 37.3 MB, release notes)

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Evernote 6.0 — Redesigned to be aligned more closely with the look and feel of OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Evernote 6.0 also brings speed improvements and a variety of new features. Version 6.0 of the information management app adds resizing capabilities to images and tables in the note editor (the latter of which also adds configurable background colors and border styles), redesigned note editor checkboxes that are easier to click, and support for using Spotlight to search notes. Mac App Store users also receive the new Work Chat feature (released with Evernote 5.7, which never made it to the Mac App Store), which enables you to
share notes and notebooks amongst colleagues with read/write collaboration capabilities, as well as hold back-and-forth chat discussions within Evernote. To send a note to a colleague, click the Share button in the top right corner of the note editor to open the Work Chat dialog. To see your full list of discussions and start new conversations, press Command-Option-0 or select View > Work Chat from the menu to open the Work Chat pane. (The Evernote for iOS app has also been updated to version 7.6.2 to take advantage of the Work Chat feature.)


Evernote 6.0 promises to triple the speed of synchronization, with Evernote Business users and those with many shared notebooks seeing the biggest improvements. Evernote now also syncs notes instantly so they’re immediately accessible on your other devices, reduces launch and quit times, and reduces energy consumption when the app is idle. Evernote Premium users receive the new Context feature, which displays notes, articles, and people related to what you’re working on as well as provides views of related articles
from The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, Evernote Premium’s Presentation Mode has an improved look with screen-edge to screen-edge and new table styles. Evernote 6.0 now requires 10.7.5 Lion or later.

After installing Evernote 6.0 from the Mac App Store, you’ll be required to sign back into your Evernote account. Several users on the Evernote user forums (such as this thread) have noted that the note editor displays a blank area rather than the selected note after installing Evernote 6.0 from the Mac App Store. I experienced this as well, but restarting my Mac (as others in the threads have noted) returned Evernote 6.0 to displaying notes as expected. (Free from Evernote or the Mac App Store, 61.8 MB, 10.7.5+)

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SpamSieve 2.9.18 — Michael Tsai of C-Command Software has released SpamSieve 2.9.18, which adds support for Apple Mail in OS X 10.10.1 Yosemite. The spam filtering utility also adds preliminary support for the recently released Outlook 15.3 (available as part of Office 365; see “Microsoft Outlook 15.3 for Mac,” 2 November 2014). Additionally, the release improves the speed and reliability of the Apple Mail — Discard Spam script for large mailboxes, improves error reporting when the disk is full, improves recovery from incorrect launch agent file ownership, updates the
toolbar and disk image icons for Yosemite, and works around a problem that caused SpamSieve to freeze at launch on Yosemite. ($30 new with a 20 percent discount for TidBITS members, free update, 14.9 MB, release notes, 10.6+)

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Mailplane 3.3.3 — Uncomplex has released Mailplane 3.3.3, which adds support for the Todoist task manager. To create a to-do item from Mailplane once the Todoist app is installed, choose Edit > Save to Todoist (select a range of text to avoid copying the entire message into the to-do). The update also returns the red alert color to the menu bar status item if you have unread messages, fixes high bandwidth usage and Alias download locations on OS X 10.10 Yosemite, fixes a hang if trying to print an image from a Google Drive preview, and addresses some crashes. ($24.95 new, free update, 34.3
MB, release notes, 10.7+)

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