MacGourmet News

I know, it's been a while since the last preview, but I've been hard at work on the iPhone version of MacGourmet, believe me. Contrary to what you may think, developing iPhone apps that sync with desktop applications is no piece of cake. Apple doesn't give us any way to easily pass information back and forth between the two platforms, which means that as developers, we are all forced to come up with our own ways of doing things. The iPhone also has many limitations, and very different ways of doing things from how we do things on the Mac.

To sync data right now, developers really only have two options: One is to sync with a web site. That's great if you already have an existing, scalable, and compatible web site out there, not so good if you don't. I'm a Mac developer, not a web developer, so that wasn't a great option for me.

The other option is to use Bonjour and a wireless connection to swap data between the iPhone/iPod touch. This also isn't an easy path, as it requires knowledge of networking and streams programing. It also requires the user to have a wireless network, or at least a wireless capable Mac.

For MacGourmet, I've chosen the Bonjour/wireless path. This is definitely going to be a limitation for some at first, but I had to choose one. I expect connectivity options to change or expand in the future though.

In the interest of time, the first version of MacGourmet: To Go will only offer one way syncing of data for your recipes, wine notes and cooking notes. You will, however, be able to create and edit shopping lists on the fly as well as sync them from your Mac. Why this limitation? Time. Syncing is incredibly difficult. Apple does it, and even they can't seem to get it right (if the information that regularly gets messed up on my phone is any indication). If the first version included full blown on-phone editing, and back and forth syncing support, the release would take much, much longer. I think that the first version will hopefully meet the needs of most people: the ability to take the recipes, notes and shopping lists that they have entered into MacGourmet on their Mac, with them.

I still don't have a release date for the app. I wish I did, and I'm working on getting it out as soon as I can. These things just take time, and I don't want to rush things just to get something out. It's also not the only thing I'm working on of course, as MacGourmet continues to see development, bug fixes, etc. and takes a significant amount of my time each day.

[You can find the first preview post, if you haven't seen it yet, here: MacGourmet:To Go Sneak Peek]

MacGourmet 2.3.5, another free, minor update is now available.

This update fixes the web importers for FoodNetwork.com, YahooFood and Epicurious.com. For a full list of changes, please see the release notes.

As always, MacGourmet can be downloaded from the MacGourmet download page. MacGourmet Deluxe can be downloaded from Mariner's download page.

I also just noticed that Cook's Illustrated completely redesigned their web site, so I plan to update that importer, assuming their changes allow it, as soon as I get a chance.

FoodNetwork.com just redid their entire site. I'd like to update the importer for the changes, but they still seem to be in the process of changing things, so until their changes "settle" I have to hold off on making a new importer, otherwise I'll just be doing work for nothing.

It doesn't look like the new format is too complicated, so once I'm confident in things, it shouldn't be too bad to release a new importer for it. Stay tuned here for updates.