Merlin Project 7.0
ProjectWizards has released Merlin Project 7.0, a major upgrade to the powerful project management app that adds support for macOS 11 Big Sur and brings new collaboration features. Users can now comment on activities, assignments, resources, and attachments, with the comments displayed in the last tab of the inspector as a conversation thread. The update also adds a new outline column for comments, displays a bubble symbol to denote whether comments are present in a row (coloring the bubble orange if there are unread comments), and renames the Warnings window to Notifications and uses it to display a list of unread comments.
Merlin Project 7 also now enables you to schedule automatic publishing with exports, updates the toolbar design in Big Sur, fixes a bug in projects created from XML files or templates that prevented list values from adjusting, and no longer displays features related to Merlin Server by default on new installations (turn them on by selecting the Show Merlin Server Features checkbox in Preferences).
The slimmed-down Merlin Project Express—optimized for home and semi-professional users—has also been updated to version 7.0 with Big Sur compatibility but does not receive the new commenting features of the full edition of Merlin Project. Both editions of Merlin Project now require 10.13 High Sierra or later.
An annual subscription to Merlin Project costs $149 via Project Wizards and the Mac App Store (the latter also offers a $14.99 monthly subscription), and a 30-day free trial is available for testing all functions. Current subscribers will receive version 7.0 free of charge as part of regular updates. Merlin Project Express costs $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year through the Mac App Store, and it’s also included in the $9.99-per-month Setapp service. Finally, the iOS edition of Merlin Project has been updated to version 7 with comment features, and it’s priced at $6.99 per month or $69.99 for an annual subscription. ($149 annual subscription, 28.6 MB, release notes, macOS 10.13+)
I see there’s another Mac App Store listing for this company, above. Has TidBITS ever covered this distinction between two Merlins?
Alas, no. But if someone wants to…
Both listings of Merlin Project are basically the same apps. One is distributed through our website at https://www.projectwizards.net/merlin-project and the other dis distributed through the App Store. In addition to the macOS version, an – almost – functionally identical version for the iPad, also called Merlin Project, has been available for a few years.
(Disclosure: I am the CEO of ProjectWizards, the maker of Merlin Project.)
Thanks for the details, Frank! It’s always great when someone from the company can weigh in with the precise answer.
(Tonya and I hung out with Frank at a MacTech Conference quite a few years ago. At the time, our son was in a Technology Student Association club that was building quite a few things and thus needing project management. For middle-school kids, needless to say, that was more than haphazard. We were amused to hear from Frank that project management is taught generally in the K-12 schools in Germany—seems like a good idea!)