VersionTracker Pro 4.0fc1
MacUpdate Desktop 4.2.2
I find it hard to believe that these are the only software available on OS X that will keep track of the versions of all the other software on your machine. It seems like such a fundamentally useful utility. Using them requires pro accounts, at Version Tracker that's about $50/year (which seems kind of expensive to me ...maybe if they'd break that down by per month, or per usage it would be OK), MacUpdate is about $40 for the software, which includes the $20 pro account, a little more reasonable, but posted reviews make it sound like it doesn't work as well as VersionTracker Pro.
Is anybody using either of these? Does it work well?
Apple sometimes will alienate developers by incorporating some function into the OS, thus eliminating the need for third party software (Konfabulator comes to mind). This is one space where I wish they would. Seems to me there should be a server implementation of this type of software that will check and inform on multiple client machines as well.
If anyone knows of a utility that will do these simple tasks (find all the applications on your computer, report the version you have, and querry some version site, retrieve version information, and inform you of which software has updates available), please post!
Also, other than Softpedia (and Mac OS X Downloads), I'm unaware of any other site that has version info for OS X applications. Any know of others?
system_profiler -detailLevel full > profile.txt
in Terminal will help gather all Application data to one place (can someone help with a pipe that will filter out everything else? I'm worthless with grep...
)
Also, I've found VersionTracker Sherlock Channel 1.0 very useful... saves a step.
Does coding something that will do what the version applications do sound difficult? Even if all it does is list what you have, and if there is a newer version available (but doesn't try to download or install a new version), could an AppleScript (or any other kind of script) relatively easily be "thrown" together that would accomplish something similar? (I don't code).
There's an app called Renew that I hear is very useful: requires a subscription tho.
I'd like to see about that... but its tough to find. Any ideas?
Free membership to new members for 2006 (January only)
Which includes the use of MacUpdate Desktop
It uses the paradigm of a watch list, which you have to add applications to be watched to... I think this is an unneccesary step... Its capable of finding all applications, I'm not sure why it doesn't just do that. Well, you can always select all the applications in the Installed list and add them all to the watch list.
I've been using this for a few weeks... and it works reasonably well.
I thought I'd post again to push this to the top of the Active Forum's list to let people know... time's almost up! Get your free memberships now!