Why have you made changes from version 2?
• Simplicity and elegance: I’m always looking for ways to make my apps more elegant and easier to use for my user
• App Store: the App Store rules are great for users but they impose some strict regulations on us developers and that has meant that one or two features had to be removed, which is good for all of us in the long run
What are the major changes?
• It is now easier than ever to create a job
• It now starts and stops jobs automatically when saving and there’s no need to log out/log in (you can now only edit and create jobs for the current user)
• You can now choose to work on jobs outside the default folder (however they need to be saved in the default folder to start automatically)
How do I stop a job?
The easiest way to just stop a job is just uncheck everything under “When” in the job and then just save it. If you want to permanently delete the job you can do it with “Delete Job” in the File menu.
Can I create a job for every user?
No, the Mac App Store rules forbid that you escalate privileges so you can’t save a file for every user, only the current
Can I run a job as root?
No, there is no way to run it as root by using Lingon to comply with the Mac App Store rules. But what you can do is create a new but before you save it you choose “Copy Plist to Clipboard” in the Job menu and the press Cancel.
Then open Terminal and make sure that you are an administrator. Write:
sudo pico /Library/LaunchDaemons/<your chosen name>.plist
and then enter and then paste the contents from Lingon. Then press ctrl-x and choose to save it. Then you need to load it manually with this command:
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/<your chosen name>.plist
Why does my job disappear after a restart if I don’t save it in the default folder?
Lingon 3 only looks into the default folder ~/Library/LaunchAgents but you can quickly open any other job by using Open or Open Recent or using App Exposé.
Why are there two apps/versions of Lingon?
It is not possible to have two versions of the same app on Mac App Store. So that’s why I had to release it as a new software. I need to keep the old version around for those millions of people who have not yet updated to Lion and are still using Snow Leopard.
Lingon 3 also uses Lion-only features which is why I can’t have the same version for both Snow Leopard and Lion. Of course one can argue that one shouldn’t have a Lion-only version but I think it is more important to use the very best design for the new product and spend less time making compromises to keep it compatible with both.
I have already bought the earlier version, is there an upgrade price?
Mac App Store doesn’t allow special update prices for those who have bought an earlier version but what I have done is kept the price ridiculously low so it wouldn’t hurt too much to buy version 3. And the price has always been much, much lower then it perhaps is worth (at first I thought about selling it for much more but I want my users to be able to afford it easily and then be able to afford possible coming major releases - all version 3 updates will be free).
Some apps have free updates “forever”, why doesn’t Lingon have that?
First see above but then it also different approaches to licensing. Some prefer to have a steep introductory charge and then free updates, other prefer to have it really cheap but then major updates will cost a small amount.
