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TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 1 February 2016

Tweetbot 2.3.3 — Updating the user interface to align more closely with Twitter’s display guidelines, Tapbots has released Tweetbot 2.3.3 with Hearts replacing Stars and Likes replacing Favorites. The popular Twitter client also improves handling of view sizes when using a single column in full screen, asks you to turn on iCloud Drive if it isn’t enabled, properly copies and pastes image files from the Finder into a compose window, fixes a bug that would scroll past partially visible tweets when using Shift-Space/Page Down, and improves window size handling when dragging multiple images into a new tweet window. ($9.99
new from the Mac App Store, free update, 11.5 MB, 10.10+)

Read/post comments about Tweetbot 2.3.3.

Little Snitch 3.6.3 — Objective Development has released Little Snitch 3.6.2, fixing a memory leak in Little Snitch Configuration and an incompatibility with the Little Snitch Installer in some older OS X versions. The update to the network monitoring and diagnostic utility also fixed an issue that could cause the Connection Alert to become unresponsive, improved the Installer to reliably terminate Little Snitch Configuration during installation, and fixed a rare issue that could cause a kernel panic. Shortly after this release, Objective Development released Little Snitch 3.6.3 to fix a bug causing the Little
Snitch Uninstaller to crash. ($34.95 new, free update, 21.3 MB, release notes, 10.8+)

Read/post comments about Little Snitch 3.6.3.

Printer Drivers for Gestetner, Lanier, NRG, Savin, and Xerox Printers — While we don’t normally cover printer driver updates in the TidBITS Watchlist, this week’s releases from Apple merit inclusion, given the added support for new printers from Gestetner, Lanier, NRG, and Savin (all of which are owned by Ricoh), as well as Xerox. Apple also released updated drivers for Epson, Infotec, and Lexmark. The downloads include the latest printer and scanner software for OS X 10.10 Yosemite, 10.9 Mavericks, 10.8 Mountain Lion, and 10.7 Lion (it’s unclear why Apple doesn’t mention 10.11 El Capitan in that list). To see if OS X drivers are available for a particular printer or scanner (drivers should be installed automatically when the device is connected to your Mac), check out the full list of currently supported models found at this Apple Support Web page. (Free, various sizes, 10.7+)

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Lightroom CC 2015.4 and Lightroom 6.4 — Adobe has released the standalone Lightroom 6.4 and Lightroom CC 2015.4 (available as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan), the latter of which gains a new Boundary Warp feature. For use with stitched panoramas that have non-rectangular boundaries, Boundary Warp analyzes the boundary and warps the image so its edges fit a rectangular frame (check out this Adobe blog post for some visual examples of using Boundary Warp).
Note that Boundary Warp is available only for Creative Cloud members, and is not part of the Lightroom 6.4 update.

Both of Adobe’s professional photo cataloging and editing applications also gain tethered support for the Nikon D5500 and Nikon D7200 models, fix an issue that prevented Nikon cameras from tethering in OS X 10.11 El Capitan, quicken the speed of the panorama merging process, add a preference to prevent accidental “speed swiping,” improve thumbnail updating when copying and pasting settings in the grid view, ensure successful Auto Sync of settings when using smart previews, and add support for Fujifilm’s recently announced X series cameras. Lightroom CC 2015.4 and Lightroom 6.4 can both be downloaded via Help > Check for Updates. ($9.99 monthly subscription or $149 for the standalone app, free update, release notes, 10.8+ for Lightroom CC 2015.4 and 10.9+ for standalone Lightroom 6.4)

Read/post comments about Lightroom CC 2015.4 and Lightroom 6.4.

Mac App Store Update for OS X Snow Leopard — Apple has released Mac App Store Update for OS X Snow Leopard, which installs a renewed intermediate signing certificate that enables Snow Leopard users to continue to purchase new apps and run any previously purchased apps that required verification. The update also includes improvements to Mac App Store alerts. It’s nice to see Apple not hanging Snow Leopard users out to dry when the Mac App Store’s certificate changed. (Free, 3.5 MB, release notes, 10.6.8+)

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BBEdit 11.5 — Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 11.5 with over 150 additions, refinements, and fixes. The venerable text editor updates the Find Differences feature with a streamlined dialog box, a new folder-comparison option (which lists only items in the results that exist in the two selected folders), a new Differences setting in Text Colors preferences, and Synchro Scrolling turned on by default for Differences windows. These changes are highly welcome for those who use Find Differences frequently.

The update also brings the option to use iCloud Drive for sharing application support and setup items (as well as using it for a shared backup folder), adds Start Speaking and Paste & Match Indentation commands to the Edit menu, splits the Un/Comment command into two commands (Un/Comment Lines and Un/Comment Block), indicates documents with unsaved changes with a ring around the close widget in the sidebar, improves performance in the computations for soft-wrapping text, and fixes a bug where autosaved document data would be lost if the application crashed or was forcibly quit. The lengthy release notes are as helpfully descriptive as ever, and include the occasional bit of snark that Barebones has become known for.

Did you know that you could set BBEdit up to use the Escape key to trigger completions? That’s OK, nobody else did either.

BBEdit now requires OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks or later, and it is fully compatible with 10.11 El Capitan. ($49.99, free update, 11.6 MB, release notes, 10.9.5+)

Read/post comments about BBEdit 11.5.

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