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Purchase an upgrade to version 4
for Intel & Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 10.14 or later; macOS Sequoia compatible.
for Intel & Apple Silicon Macs running Mac OS X 10.11 or later
6th November 2024
The new version makes a few changes to preempt potential certificate problems come January 2025.
20th March 2024
The new version fixes a minor incompatibility with macOS Sonoma.
22nd February 2024
The new version fixes a minor log editing bug.
18th January 2023
The new version fixes a rare double logging bug.
22nd September 2022
The new version fixes a minor bug affecting the objective replacement tag in the notifications.
8th August 2022
The new version introduces a new way of managing tasks inside, or even outside, of the app through Objective Parsing.
This allows you to define multiple tasks in advance by writing them down in a simple: {textual description, number of minutes , @tags} format and parsing that text to set the objective, duration and tags.
You can do this in any plain text editor, word processor, note taking app or web todo list manager, including the Later Pad inside of Vitamin-R.
For full details watch the new Task Management in Vitamin-R: Parse Clipboard YouTube video.
29th June 2022
The new version add the option to always skip breaks.
8th June 2022
The new version adds the option to always skip logging.
11th May 2022
The new version fixes a minor bug with the Things todo list manager integration.
14th April 2022
The new version fixes a bug affecting the break duration control.
2nd February 2022
The new version links to the new Deep Dive Tutorial Video.
15th December 2021
The new version refines the window resizing behaviour.
7th December 2021
The new version provides keyboard shortcuts to rate your concentration level directly from the keyboard.
30th November 2021
The new version by default waits 2s before focusing the objective field in the Rate Time Slice screen to avoid accidental overwriting. This behaviour can be disabled in the command window or the objective field options.
25th November 2021
The new version improves support for custom pad colors.
19th November 2021
The new version fixes window positioning problem at startup.
17th November 2021
The new release fixes an issue with the new manual log entry addition feature.
10th November 2021
The new release fixes three post-release issues:
3rd November 2021
Version 4 is a major new release adding the keyboard-centric command window, a new (optional) minimalist interface, log editing, manual log entry, support for longer time slices, a return of the dock-less mode, and a user interface refresh.
26th October 2021
The new version fixes all known bugs.
12th October 2021
The new version:
6th October 2021
The new version fixes a crashing bug in the profile setup screen.
5th October 2021
The new version brings back dock-less operation and makes improvements to the new command window.
27th September 2021
This fourth beta adds the ability to create new log entries & delete existing ones. It also improves the command window experience when drilling back out of a sub-menu.
21st September 2021
The new beta displays shortcuts in the command window and (finally) allows logs entries to be edited.
15th September 2021
In this release, the command window shows all keyboard shortcuts in order to make it easier to learn them by heart.
A number of new keyboard shortcuts and menu items have been added to streamline everyday usage, and a few minor bugs have been corrected.
7th September 2021
This is the first public beta of the up-coming version 4.
8th, 6th, 3rd November 2021
Minor fixes to prepare for the new version 4 release.
16th August 2021
This a minor maintenance update.
10th August 2021
The new version fixes a minor bug.
12th February 2021
This fixes a cosmetic bug with the log book pad.
10th February 2021
The new version displays a more attractive preferences pane on macOS 11 Big Sur.
10th December 2020
The new version resolves a screen fading issue affecting only M1 Macs.
2nd December 2020
The new version resolves another M1 related problem.
24th November 2020
The new release fixes a bug that affects only M1 Macs.
30th October 2020
The new version delivers native Apple Silicon support and Big Sur compatibility.
17th September 2020
The new version fixes statistics on macOS 10.11 and makes a few minor tweaks.
18th June 2020
The new version modernizes the CSV output and the Things integration.
3rd June 2020
The new version solves a rare timing problem that could cause Vitamin-R to start a new time slice upon waking your Macintosh from sleep.
13th May 2020
The new version adds menu item and shortcuts to make it easier to start an informal break.
29th April 2020
The new version now sorts tags alphabetically.
18th February 2020
The new version improves the trial experience and makes some internal improvements.
26th November 2019
This release optimizes some defaults settings for an improved experience.
7th November 2019
This new release makes a great many under-the-hood changes to eliminate a crash affecting many users of recent Dropbox updates.
It has gone through a total of 10 private beta releases and I have worked together with a small number of affected users. The issue now appears to have disappeared, but should you experience any crashes please contact me directly at reiff@publicspace.net.
At the same time, this version also completely re-implements the global shortcuts feature in order to make it easier to adopt macOS 10.15 Catalina's new hardened runtime.
17th October 2019
The new version is a recommended update for all users and fixes a crashing bug.
4th October 2019
The new version adds full macOS 10.15 Catalina compatibility.
12th June 2019
The new release enables the standard controls of the main window.
14th May 2019
The new release fixes a bug affecting software update preferences.
3rd April 2019
The new release brings back the screen fading visual effect with a new implementation that works properly on macOS 10.14.4.
31st March 2019
The latest release fixes a crash under macOS 10.14.4.
7th March 2019
The new version adds the ability to customize where the main window appears when the icon in the menu bar is clicked.
19th February 2019
The new version fixes a bug that would cause links to Things tasks to fail to open.
2nd January 2019
The new version prevents accidental overtyping of objective when rating a time slice.
13th December 2018
The new version fixes a minor bug.
19th November 2018
The new version fixes a minor bug with a control that did not work properly.
13th November 2018
This is the biggest update of Vitamin-R to date and features a host of new and improved features.
23rd October 2018
This is the first release candidate for version 3.
22nd October 2018
This new beta focuses on the interactivity of the duration controls, right click menu, OmniFocus 3 integration and minor Mojave optimizations.
15th October 2018
The new beta changes the way that the time slice extension works and makes some cosmetic improvements on Mojave.
9th October 2019
The new soft break feature makes the arrival of the break less disruptive by giving you up to 30 seconds to finish what you were doing.
When the optional soft break feature is switched on, you will hear two tick sounds that announce the end of the time slice. Vitamin-R will then wait for you to stop typing or moving your mouse for 3 consecutive seconds before starting the break. A tock sound announces the end of the time slice. If you do not stop working, the break will be forced after 30 seconds.
The new version also makes a number of smaller improvements, especially for macOS 10.14 Mojave.
25th September 2018
The new version makes the Things, OmniFocus and Hit Box integrations Mojave-compatible.
24th September 2018
The new version fixes some Dark Mode issues on macOS 10.14 Mojave, as well as some audio issues.
17th September 2018
The new version now correctly focuses the note pads when invoked via keyboard shortcut and fixes a pomodoro style break selection bug.
10th September 2018
The new version fixes all known problems with the beta:
4th September 2018
The new version makes a number of large changes, so please let us know if we have broken anything by mistake!
28th August 2018
The new version:
22nd August 2018
This is the first public beta of Vitamin-R 3.
Vitamin-R 3.0 for macOS with a streamlined new user interface and much more is now available for download.
Version 3 is a paid upgrade but is free if you buy now and have bought after the 1st of January 2018.
You can install version 3 side-by-side with version 2 and it comes with its own 14 day trial. Click Here To Download
13th November 2018
The new version tells users that Vitamin-R 3 is now available.
22nd August 2018
The new version tells the world about version 3.0 going beta!
24th July 2018
The new version contains yet more fixes for recent macOS security changes.
26th June 2018
The new version fixes a problem that caused some statistics from not refreshing correctly.
23th April 2018
The new version fixes a problem that could prevent statistics filtering from working correctly.
29th March 2018
The new version restores compatibility with the latest version of OmniFocus.
A recent OmniFocus update made changes that caused Vitamin-R to be unable to automatically mark OF tasks as completed.
Please note that the changes may require you to update to the latest OmniFocus version. If you experience any problems please contact support@publicspace.net with as many details as possible.
Also note that only the Pro edition of OmniFocus supports third-party scripting, so Vitamin-R cannot mark tasks as completed if you are using the OmniFocus standard edition.
13th December 2017
The new version fixes a bug in the default objectives dialog.
24th October 2017
The new version fixes a minor issue with the sample AppleScript file.
21st September 2017
This new version further bullet-proofs the unlock code mechanism.
28th June 2017
The new version is a maintenance release.
22nd June 2017
The new version adds compatibility with Things 3.
25th March 2017
The new release adds a hide button to the touch bar and fixes a few minor bugs.
2nd March 2017
The new release fixes a problem that would prevent the preferences dialog from appearing.
1st March 2017
This new version adds touch bar support for the new MacBook Pro touch bar models.
6th February 2017
The new version improves keyboard navigation.
17th October 2016
This version rolls back the new swipe implementation using the new macOS navigation controller.
There appear to be UI problems on El Capitan and potential crashes when people use keyboard navigation really, really fast. I knew it was a big underlying change with plenty of risks, but I felt confident that I had tested it sufficiently and it is essential for moving the tool forward. I guess I am not a fast enough swiper.. Sorry guys!
17th October 2016
This release fixes hot key functionality that we broke during the previous release's extensive refactoring. Sorry!
12th October 2016
This release features a completely re-implemented navigation through the workflow using modern macOS technologies.
After we were concentrating on other products over the summer, Vitamin-R development is now once again fully under way!
26th April 2016
The new version fixes a bug that could cause the main menu not to appear properly on some systems.
8th March 2016
This latest release adds the experimental ability to execute AppleScripts at certain points to facilitate the integration with other tools.
Full documentation is available in the Help Book and by using the associated ? button in the Integrations tab of the Preferences.
17th February 2016
This is the first time that we ship Swift code in a production version of any of our tools.
We also make a few minor UI tweaks.
2nd February 2016
This release fixes a software update vulnerability in the Sparkle framework that was exposed on the 29th of January.
28th December 2015
The new version delivers minor bug fixes.
24th November 2015
The new version features an improved mailing list opt-in interface and is the first to be built with our new in-house component framework.
28th October 2015
This new version fixes a crash-upon-start issue with 2.33. Sorry!
28th October 2015
This new version fixes an auto-update bug on Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
24th September 2015
This new version is built with Xcode 7 and updates the Mac App Store receipt checking.
2nd September 2015
The new version fixes a startup bug affecting some users.
26th August 2015
The new version provides improved Mac OS 10.11 compatibility.
6th August 2015
The new version improves the installation experience.
21st July 2015
The new release allows for default time slice and break duration of up to 60 minutes
7th July 2015
The new release avoids accidental termination of the program during time slices or timed breaks.
16th June 2015
The new release adds wider support for speech tags in the notification system.
12 May 2015
The new release adds support for the iPad version of Vitamin-R for iOS.
14th April 2015
The new release delivers a number of bug fixes:
3rd March 2015
Delivers a minor bug fix.
20th January 2015
This version now analyzes the custom speech notification messages to choose an appropriate voice for English or non-English languages.
5th January 2015
The new version fixes a problem where the text to speech feature would use international voices to speak English text.
This release requires Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
9th December 2014
This release requires Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
We took the unusual step of requiring the latest version of Mac OS X so early in its life cycle because previous versions of Vitamin-R made heavy use of custom drawing and much of its aesthetics clashed with the new "flatter" Yosemite look & feel.
Custom drawing also comes with a cost in terms of development and maintenance effort, effort that is often better spent on feature development. Previous versions of Mac OS X did not offer any standard controls that were suitable for a HUD-style application such as Vitamin-R, but Yosemite adds its own "vibrant dark" material and controls, which provide a more unified user interface experience, so I am keen to adopt this as early as possible.
Users of older Mac OS X versions, can obviously still download, use or purchase earlier versions.
18th November 2014
This release requires Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
In this second beta for the new Yosemite look & feel, we have fixed a number of minor bugs introduced in the previous version.
31st October 2014
This is the first release that requires Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
We took the unusual step of requiring the latest version of Mac OS X so early in its life cycle because previous versions of Vitamin-R made heavy use of custom drawing and much of its aesthetics clashed with the new "flatter" Yosemite look & feel.
Custom drawing also comes with a cost in terms of development and maintenance effort, effort that is often better spent on feature development. Previous versions of Mac OS X did not offer any standard controls that were suitable for a HUD-style application such as Vitamin-R, but Yosemite adds its own "vibrant dark" material and controls, which provide a more unified user interface experience, so I am keen to adopt this as early as possible.
Users of older Mac OS X versions, can obviously still download, use or purchase earlier versions.
13th August 2014
This release fixes:
5th August 2014
This release fixes a sorting bug in the Log Book.
31st July 2014
This release fixes a minor menu bug.
30th July 2014
This release fixes a Mavericks bug that could make Vitamin-R's menu bar disappear.
29th July 2014
This new version requires Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
This release lays the groundwork for the upcoming Mac-to-iPhone sync feature and fixes a minor bug.
12th June 2014
This new version requires Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
This release includes a number of bug fixes and minor improvements:
13th May 2014
This new version requires Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
This release adds support for Mac OS X Reminders. You can now select reminders that are overdue by less than 24 hours or are due within the next 24 hours.
They appear in the "Target" popup menu in the "Define Objective" step. Selecting them will insert their description as your current objective.
Reminders are great because they can be captured on any Mac OS X or iOS device and are synchronized to all your devices automatically. You can use them to create a working set of objectives for your day by scheduling them as being due for today.
This current version does not yet mark your Reminders as complete when you finish working on your time slice. We are working on this and we should be able to ship this feature in the near future.
7th April 2014
This new version requires Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
This release implements a set of new experimental behaviours designed to make it harder to just "forget" about Vitamin-R.
"Behaviours" were originally scheduled to be released with version 2.0 and allow Vitamin-R to provide situation-aware guidance based on the time of the day, the day of the week, which programs are running, keywords in your objectives, previous concentration levels, etc. While such a feature is potentially of great benefit, it also runs a high risk of being annoying if not done right. The line between helpful and obnoxious is very thin and we decided on a more progressive and experimental roll-out.
In this first stage, the behaviours are limited to popping up unobstrusive reminders when you appear to have forgotten all about Vitamin-R and it is quite easy to completely miss their existence.
Just in case, the reminders do start to annoy you, you can easily switch them off in the preferences. Please also do let us know at reiff@publicspace.net. We always appreciate your feedback.
25th March 2014
This new version requires Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
This release replaces our custom notifications with Mac OS X native notifications.
28th February 2014
This release fixes a number of issues introduced through the migration to the modern ARC architecture.
26th February 2014
This release fixes a problem with the notification preferences pane.
11th February 2014
This new version is the first to require Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
It fixes a rare bug with the Calendar integration that would cause slow performance for users with a lot of repeating events.
21st January 2014
The new version moves to the new Automatic Reference Counting memory architecture.
24th October 2013
The new version addresses an issue on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks installations with multiple displays.
22nd October 2013
The new version delivers improved support for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
9th September 2013
The new version delivers support for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks multi-screen setups.
You can now use re-dock the Vitamin-R popup window to the menu bar on either monitor by clicking its icon.
23rd July 2013
The new version ensures that visual notifications are transparent to mouse clicks.
25th June 2013
The new version handles the addition or removal of external displays more gracefully, preventing the pop over window from becoming disconnected from the menu bar icon.
18th June 2013
This release makes it easier to join our new opt-in mailing list.
4th June 2013
We are excited to announce that Version 2 of Vitamin-R is now available.
Version 2 is a paid upgrade, find out more on the brand-new website or check up your discounted upgrading options.
24th April 2013
This version delivers compatibility with Things 2.2.
9th April 2013
This version fixes two minor bugs:
Several users on Mac OS X 10.8.3 have reported crashes with "data detectors" switched on in the "Now & Later Board". This is a Mac OS X problem that we can't do anything about, so as data detectors are a very minor feature they are now switched off by default for new users.
If you experience crashes under 10.8.3, you can switch off data detectors in the "Now & Later Board" tab of the "Preferences..." pane.
This version also fixes a problem with the <Minute...> tags in the speech notifications.
19th February 2013
This version fixes the order in which entries appear in the Log Book.
31st January 2013
This version adds support for the MindWave Mobile brain-computer interface headset.
8th January 2013
This version fixes a rare startup bug related to third party disk drives.
4th December 2012
This version fixes a few UI quirks.
16th November 2012
This version fixes a workflow bug.
24th October 2012
This version makes a number of minor bug fixes.
25th September 2012
This version provides in-line search for the Now & Later Board and fixes a minor bug.
22nd August 2012
This version improves integration with the Mac App Store version.
If you have downloaded version 1.87 during the two hours it was up, please update to this version in order to unlock your application correctly.
22nd August 2012
This version improves integration with the Mac App Store version.
30th July 2012
This version makes a few minor improvements, including experimental support for NeuroSky's MindSet brain-computer interface and Retina application icon.
This release is compiled against the 10.7 SDK, a change forced by the fact that Apple's Xcode Developer Tools for Mountain Lion ship without a 10.6 SDK. This should not impact 10.6 Snow Leopard users, but the current release does appear to be broken on Mac OS X 10.6.
We are investigating, but for now Snow Leopard users should revert to version 1.85, available from the product home page.
23rd July 2012
This version fixes a high CPU usage problem during time slices and makes a few minor user interface improvements.
5th July 2012
This version fixes a high CPU usage problem on 32-bit systems.
29th June 2012
This version fixes a bug that would prevent the Now & Later Board from appearing.
25th June 2012
This newest version adds fully optimized Retina graphics for the new MacBook Pro models.
The release also makes numerous minor improvements, including
15th June 2012
This latest release fixes a "jumping" shadow display issue.
5th June 2012
Minor fixes:
24th March 2012
The new version features a rewritten Help book and fixes a number of minor issues:
6th March 2012
The new version adds warnings before time slices expire.
24th January 2012
The new release refines the visual notifications to provide improved feedback during task execution.
3rd January 2012
The new release adds built-in visual notifications to provide improved state feedback.
You can still switch to Growl-based notifications in the "Notifications" tab of the "Preferences..." dialog.
14th December 2011
This new version adds an "hour of the day" chart that allows you to visualize how your concentration levels vary over the course of the workday. Use this new feature to better organize your work day and take full advantage of your "best" working hours.
22nd November 2011
You can now use a 5 finger swipe instead of clicking the "Go Back" or "Continue" buttons.
11th November 2011
This release disables the optional new dimming feature when window auto-hiding is switched off.
8th November 2011
The new version adds the ability to optionally dim the screen before the end of a time slice or timed break.
26th October 2011
The new version fixes minor issues with the duration sliders.
18th October 2011
 |
This latest release adds experimental support for NeuroSky's $99 MindWave brain wave sensor. Currently Vitamin-R includes experimental support for:
For more information, consult our MindWave page. |
26th September 2011
The new version refines the noise machine controls.
7th September 2011
The new version adds the ability to automatically close all open Finder windows at the beginning of a time slice to reduce distracting clutter.
9th August 2011
The new version adds the ability to exclude specific applications from the "Eliminate distractions" step.
19th July 2011
The new version adds advanced customization of Growl notifications.
28th June 2011
This new version adds integration with Potion Factory's The Hit List to do list.
The integration is the same as that already offered for Cultured Code's Things and OmniGroup's OmniFocus:
Beta Testers Wanted!
If you are interested in doing some beta testing on Vitamin-R, please contact me directly at: reiff@publicspace.net.
You will from time to time be sent links to pre-release versions of Vitamin-R and be expected to provide insightful feedback ranging from "it's just crashing" to "perhaps this isn't really the way to do it at all, why don't you consider..".
7th June 2011
This latest release adds support for using Vitamin-R the Growl Notification framework.
This is currently switched off by default, so if you want to use this feature you need to activate it in the Notifications tab of the Preferences dialog ("Vitamin-R" -> "Preferences...").
Full documentation is available in the Help book ("Help" -> "Vitamin-R Help").
17th May 2011
The new release
10th May 2011
The new release
3rd May 2011
The new release fixes two issues:
27th April 2011
In the "notification" section of the preferences you can now specify separate sounds or voice messages to be played when:
19th April 2011
The new version extends the range of possible time slice and timed break durations from 2 to 60 minutes.
12th April 2011
This new version overhauls the preferences dialog and adds new voice and sound notification behaviours.
29th March 2011
This new version introduces tags to Vitamin-R.
Tags are simply labels associated with your time slice. You enter them at the bottom of the objective field and separate them with commas, semi-colons or by pressing the tab key.
Tags are logged to your log book and Vitamin-R helps you by offering to auto-complete previously used tags.
A simple use of tags is to associate multiple time slices with the same "project". Just use the project name as the tag.
Vitamin-R's support for tags is still at its very beginning. In fact you can do little besides adding tags, visualize them in your log book or export them via the CSV (command separated values) feature.
Rest assured that tags are an integral part of the future of Vitamin-R and that they will quickly become much more powerful. In the coming weeks a new "reporting" feature will be added that will give you statistics about time slices filtered by tags.
The main use for this will be to find out how much time you have spent working on time slices associated with tags. So go ahead and tag time slices with project and/or client names as of now and very soon, you'll be able to use the information in billing your time to your clients!
10th March 2011
Version 1.56 fixes a crashing issue.
Version 1.55 fixes a minor cosmetic issue that caused the Help menu to appear twice.
Yesterday's version 1.54 delivers the long-awaited customizable workflow that allows you to switch off the parts of the workflow that you may not be interested in and decide what happens for the decision steps that are skipped, e.g.
This will be of particular value to those who want to implement the more rigid Pomodoro Technique workflow that dictates the length of the "pomodoros" and "breaks".
You can customize the workflow from the "Preferences..." dialog.
9th March 2011
This new release delivers the long-awaited customizable workflow that allows you to switch off the parts of the workflow that you may not be interested in and decide what happens for the decision steps that are skipped, e.g.
This will be of particular value to those who want to implement the more rigid Pomodoro Technique workflow that dictates the length of the "pomodoros" and "breaks".
7th March 2011
This release adds support for custom Dropbox folder locations.
2nd March 2011
This release fixes an issue that prevented users from switching to dropbox cloud synching of their log books before they completed their first time slice.
23rd February 2011
This new version now supports log book synchronization between multiple Macs, so that you can work on multiple machines but have a single log book and produce statistics based on your work in multiple locations.
The new mechanism is based on Dropbox and will require that you create a free Dropbox account if you do not yet have one.
You can activate the new synchronization service via the "Sync" tab in the Preferences... dialog. Full documentation is provided in the Help book (choose "Vitamin-R Help" in the "Help" menu).
Please contact us if you experience any problems.
20th February 2011
This is a minor bug fix relating to the automatic software updating system.
18th February 2011
This is the first Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard-only release of Vitamin-R.
Dropping the Mac OS X 10.5 backwards compatibility has allowed us to clean up the code, use more modern build tools, make the download smaller, and most importantly, we hope that this move will allow us to further speed up the development of the tool.
We usually support the current version of Mac OS X and one previous version to allow customers plenty of time to upgrade.
Apple has, however, made a number of moves in the last few weeks that make it harder than ever to maintain backwards compatibility. The Mac App Store requires that code be targeted to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Apple's XCode 4 development tools that have gone to Gold Master last week have dropped the Mac OS X 10.5 SDK and PowerPC support entirely.
Vitamin-R was developed from scratch for Snow Leopard using many Snow Leopard-only APIs. Shortly after its launch last April, we got so many requests for a Leopard-compatible version that we spent some considerable time creating a backwards compatible version. At the time, it looked as if this was going to be a one-time investment and as long as we didn't use any further Snow Leopard-only technology we would be fine. Unfortunately, the reality was quite differentt and a good 90% of all bugs that we've squashed in Vitamin-R this past year, were Leopard-only bugs and almost all of them due to Apple's implementation of the Objective-C 2.0 64-bit garbage collected architecture that was introduced in Leopard not quite being up to scratch until Mac OS X 10.6 came out. As a result we have spent endless hours trying to find fixes and workarounds for these problems and we've ended up spending nearly as much time on fixing these Leopard problems as in moving Vitamin-R forward.
In other words, the time has come to get ready for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and drop Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility a few months early.
Obviously, the current, 1.48 release will remain on the website indefinitely and we've made sure that the auto-update feature won't overwrite your current version with an incompatible Mac OS X 10.6-only version by mistake.
7th February 2011
More Mac App Store-related fixes.
This is also probably going to be the last Mac OS 10.5 Leopard compatible release.
4th February 2011
This new version allows the console output to be suppressed by deactivating it from the "Miscellaneous" tab of the "Preferences..." and fixes a problem with preferences not been saved correctly due to recent Mac App Store changes.
2nd February 2011
This new version further improves keyboard navigation and alerts trial users to the absence (due to Apple restrictions) of dockless operation from the Mac App Store version of Vitamin-R.
29th January 2011
This new version makes it easier to purchase from the Mac App Store.
26th January 2011
This new version makes substantial stability improvements on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
26th January 2011
This new version restores software updating and resolves a startup problem on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, both related to Mac App Store changes.
25th January 2011
This new version includes a number of minor bug fixes:
19th January 2011
It is now possible to adjust the duration of a time slice during the time slice.
6th January 2011
The new version:
3rd January 2011
This new version delivers a number of bug fixes and minor improvements:
As mention in passing above, we are working on Mac-to-Mac synchronization of log files using the free Dropbox service. If anybody is interested in beta testing this feature please contact us at: support@publicspace.net
7th December 2010
The new version allows the logs to be exported in CSV format.
Comma-Separated Values (CSV) is a standard data exchange format which is supported by most spreadsheet, data analysis, billing and database programs.
You can perform an export by selecting "Export to CSV file..." in the "Logs" submenu of the "Tools" menu. Full documenation of the used format is available under "Vitamin-R Help" in the "Help" menu.
30th November 2010
The new release adds a new week day statistical chart, which allows you to become more aware about how your ability to concentrate evolves over the course of the week.
24th November 2010
The new release replaces the Adobe Flash-based charting feature with an HTML 5-based implementation.
16th November 2010
The new release adds the ability to visualize statistics about your time slices using the new "Statistics Window" available under the "Tool" menu or by pressing Command-1.
The chart displays both the total time worked on time slices over various periods and your concentration levels during this time. More information can be found in the Help book available under the "Vitamin-R Help" item in the "Help" menu.
This is but the first of many charts and analysis options planned for future releases, but already allows you to detect patterns, such as your most productive days of the week, compare your concentration levels over the course of week, etc.
As such it's an invaluable resource for learning more about your own work habits and making changes to how you work and how you plan your week. Expect much more in future releases.
5th November 2010
This release fixes a bug introduced in Tuesday's release that could cause the main Vitamin-R window to appear with a zero width on some Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard systems.
2nd November 2010
This release focuses on consolidating the vast array of changes and enhancements made to the tool in the first 6 months after its initial release in April 2010. In fact, the frenetic pace of development resulted in no less than 32 updates and have transformed the tool from an innovative experiment into a day-to-day work horse.
Many of the changes are "under the hood", but result in a much improved overall user experience. Rough edges, especially in the window management have been removed, inconsistencies in behaviour between the various modes that the tool can be run in (as a full application, a dockless application, with or without automatic window hiding, etc.) have been removed, disparate internal structures unified, keyboard-only operation has been streamlined, menus consolidated, etc, etc.
All in all, this latest release is a solid foundation for the improvements planned for the next 6 months of continuous development.
We hope you'll enjoy using it.
12th October 2010
The new version provides a host of minor enhancements.
6th October 2010
This new version provides integration between Vitamin-R and our new Noise Machine product.
Noise Machine is a white, pink and brown noise generator and soundscape player designed to help you mask distracting noise and produce an ambience suitable for concentrated work.
It comes with 17 additional high quality soundscapes:
Best of all, Noise Machine is free for all registered Vitamin-R users.
Vitamin-R can play the sounds contained in Noise Machine automatically when a time slice starts and stop it when the time slice is over, via the "continuous sound" option in the "Preferences...". You can also manually activate the sounds in the "Noise Machine" section of the "Tools" menu.
Noise Machine does not need to be running for this to work, but it will need to be installed in the Applications folder and you do need to restart Vitamin-R after installing Noise Machine so that it can detect the sound files.
We hope you enjoy this new feature.
28th September 2010
The new version adds an improved version of the noise machine included in version 1.29:
11th September 2010
This is a fix for a situation where you potentially had to click the unlock code link twice in order to unlock the program.
7th September 2010
This release improves support for Francesco Cirillo's Pomodoro Technique by allowing you play a continuously ticking clock sound during your time slices.
The Vitamin-R productivity system and Cirillo's Pomodoro Technique have much in common and many Pomodoro users are using Vitamin-R to implement a more flexible version of this technique. Cirillo advocates the use of a continuously ticking clock to focus attention on the task at hand and to "condition" yourself to concentrate as soon as you hear the sound.
Version 1.28 also includes a basic white, brown and pink noise generator.
We are working on a standalone noise generator called "Noise Machine" which will be released in the next few weeks. It will also be able to play a variety of "soundscapes". Most if not all of its features will be integrated directly into Vitamin-R as well and "Noise Machine" will be free for all Vitamin-R owners. It will unlock automatically if it finds an unlocked version of Vitamin-R.
25th August 2010
This release adds sound and speech notifications during and at the end of timed breaks.
Tip: If you have not yet tried timed breaks, please do. They provide a good way of enjoying a guilt-free break while making sure that you get back to work within a reasonable amount of timed. They only need a little getting used to while delivering great benefits.
18th August 2010
This release simplifies the way in which the duration of a timeslice is reported in the user log to avoid confusion.
12th August 2010
This release (hopefully permanently) fixes a intermittent crashing bug affecting some Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard machines, caused by a memory management problem in the Mac OS X 10.5 text system.
5th August 2010
This release fixes a problem where the sound preferences would not work correctly.
4th August 2010
This latest release brings back the log book feature introduced in version 1.22:
The new version also adds:
30th July 2010
This latest release fixes a crashing bug with the previous release.
The Log Book feature which caused these crashes has been removed until the problem can be fixed properly.
If you have already auto-updated to version 1.21, you will need to manually download this version from the web site to replace the old version. Sorry!
28th July 2010
This latest release adds a log book that allows the time slice logs to be consulted more easily.
You can reach this feature via the Command-L keyboard shortcut or under the "Log" menu.
22nd July 2010
This latest release make a number of improvements and refinements:
15th July 2010
This latest release fixes a bug with the unlocking mechanism introduced by the Things integration.
13th July 2010
This latest release delivers the much awaited integration with Things from Cultured Code.
It is also now possible to dis-able the auto-hiding of Vitamin-R's the main pop up window.
6th July 2010
This latest release fixes minor issues with the keyboard navigation and operation as a dockless application.
29th June 2010
The new release features numerous refinements of the text editing features and improves OmniFocus integration.
24th June 2010
The new release prevents accidental deletion of now & later board sheets.
22nd June 2010
The new release allows for greater control over text editing features:
Reminders are now also played during time slice extensions and a Leopard-only crashing bug has been fixed.
15th June 2010
This release focuses on the Now & Later Board.
Some people have expressed confusion about the strikethrough text trait and felt that it had become "sticky". The new release makes it much easier to understand what is happening and how to get out of the "strikethrough" mode. The main text traits (bold, italic, underline and strikethrough) are now displayed in a mini text toolbar at the bottom of the window. This makes it obvious which text traits are currently active, and allows them to be toggled on and off more conveniently.
In addition, two new items were added to the gear menu to facilitate working with the strikethrough text trait. "Make Plain Text" strips the selection of all text traits and "Strikethrough" toggles the trait.
8th June 2010
This release adds the Command-Up Arrow shortcut key for accessing the "gear" menu quickly via the keyboard.
1st June 2010
This release allows the tool to run as a "dock-less" application being accessible solely via its menu bar status item and its global keyboard shortcuts, thus making it much less obtrusive as it does not appear in the dock or the Command-Tab application switching list.
Click the (R) icon in the menu bar or press Control-R to activate the application. Right-click the (R) icon to bring up the main menu.
If you prefer working with a "full" application that presents a menu bar, a dock icon and appears in the Command-Tab application switching list, select "Run as Full Application..." from the "Gear" menu.
17th May 2010
This release fixes the global Control-R shortcut.
17th May 2010
This release fixes a bug that affects only users who have chosen to remove the "Start Timed Break" shortcut.
17th May 2010
This release fixes a bug that affected the later pad keyboard shortcut and its customization.
11th May 2010
This release delivers an integration with OmniGroup's popular OmniFocus to-do list manager.
Vitamin-R is designed to complement traditional to-do list managers and enrich them with better support during actual task execution. The integration allows tasks to be dragged and dropped directly from OmniFocus into Vitamin-R's "objective" field where this will create a clickable link that brings the user straight back to the task in OmniFocus. These links are included in the time slice log files created by Vitamin-R and remain clickable.
When a time slice whose objective is linked to an OmniFocus task is logged as "completed" in Vitamin-R, the item will automatically be marked as completed in OmniFocus.
This behavior can be switched off from the Preferences dialog.
Similar integrations with Cultured Code's Things and other to-do list managers are planned for future releases.
This is a fairly big release that delivers a number of usability improvements and cosmetic changes.
We have changed the default "pop-up" window style to more closely resemble the Mac OS X Snow Leopard dock menu "bubbles" complete with rounded corners, transparency and white outline.
Better still, we have provided you with extensive control over how the pop-up window is drawn. Select the "Appearance" item in the "Vitamin-R" menu and you will be furnished with controls allowing you to change the window background color and opacity, the rounding of the corners, the insets, the size of the "top arrow", the borders, the gradient, etc.
If you preferred the "old" more rectangular style, it's easy to imitate it with the help of the appearance panel.
We'd love to see what you come up with so, please feel free to send screenshots of your own creations to support@publicspace.net. We are thinking about adding a few "user presets" so if you want to share your creations, please do not hesitate.
On the usability front, the biggest improvements center around keyboard control. You can now control the entire application without taking your hands off the keyboard.
| Command-Left Arrow Command-Backspace |
Go the previous screen |
| Command-Right Arrow Command-Return Command-Enter |
Go to the next screen |
| Escape Command-W |
Close the pop-up window |
| Control-R | Toggle Vitamin-R |
| Tab | Next field |
| Shift-Tab | Previous field |
| Control-Tab | Next field when in text field |
| Control-Shift-Tab | Previous field when in text field |
In order to be able to tab through all controls, you will need to switch on "Full keyboard access":
The other major improvement in this new release is that it is now possible to pause time slices.
Other changes include better menu bar item tracking, minor bug fixes, tweaks, etc.
Fixes a few more teething problems:
Major changes to the Now & Later Board and the FastType feature:
Workflow changes:
Version 1.03 fixes Leopard compatibility that was briefly broken in version 1.01 and 1.02 that were uploaded earlier today; if you have already downloaded 1.01 or 1.02 on a Leopard machine, you need re-download and install the application via drag & drop. Sorry!
This is the first of a series of hopefully quick releases that try to sort out some teething problems with version 1.0.
This release:
This is the first full release of Vitamin-R.
It would appear that the iCal integration introduced in version 0.8 yesterday is causing high CPU usage on some machines.
This release disables the feature until the problem can be properly analyzed and a full fix can be released.
This is the first release candidate for version 1.0 of Vitamin-R.
The release adds a new feature for managing to-do lists within the now & later board.
In practice this works better than adding the checkmark (type done' ) at the end of the line, because it's easier to see, not to mention more satisfying than just deleting the line.
The new version also:
The performance analysis and statistics features are not ready for prime-time yet, but will be rolled out shortly after the upcoming 1.0 release.
The new version adds more sophisticated time controls allowing you to easily judge how a time slice fits into your schedule.
On Snow Leopard, the time control shows calendar events around the current time slice to provide a better context for your decisions.
The new version also:
Your feedback is always important but especially crucial at this stage of development, so please do not hesitate to contact us at: support@publicspace.net.
8th April 2010
We are quickly approaching version 1.0, so there are plenty of refinements in the latest update:
2nd April 2010
New release in this release:
31st March 2010
This new release:
30th March 2010
This new release features a complete user interface re-vamp based on early customer feedback.
The wordy interface is replaced with a streamlined menu bar pop-up that is somewhat reminiscent of the iPad menus. We feel that this has made the whole user experience much more intuitive as it is much simpler to figure out what is happening at the moment and what options you have.
29th March 2010
This release fixes a start-up bug on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
29th March 2010
This release fixes a start-up bug that affects some systems. Apparently we have run into a limitation of the ShortcutRecorder framework that we are using.
Meanwhile, the main feedback we have received so far is that the interface is too wordy and thus feels clunky and overcomplicated.. so we are currently busy re-working the interface to bring it to minimalist perfection. Work is going very well and we think you'll love the sparkly clean new style. We sure do. Expect a first glimpse later this week.
26th March 2010
After the first fews days of public testing, the consensus amongst testers seems to be that the program is already stable and has caused no major problems, so we are dropping the "beta" and are going for the pre-release countdown.
The current version number basically means "stable enough to work with on day-to-day basis, but some features are not yet 100% complete". Expect a 1.0 release in the next few weeks.
Overnight a crash report relating to Apple Data Detectors in the Now & Later Board reached us. Data detectors are Apple’s wizardry that detects phone numbers, addresses and dates in your text documents and brings up options like creating an appointment in iCal, etc. They can be very handy which is why I switched them on, but they have never been very stable on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to address the problem because the crashing code is all Apple's and all third party developers can do is to switch the feature on or off.
While investigating the problem, I came across lots of crashes in Mail.app on Leopard, so it looks like the data detectors simply are not working that reliably on Leopard.
As a result, the 0.1 release of Vitamin-R switches off the automatic data detection on Leopard by default. Data detectors remain switched on in Snow Leopard. Whichever platform you are on, you can manually switch automatic data detection on or off in the Preferences dialog. This may lead to the occasional crash on Leopard, but this is probably a very rare problem.
In my experience, people are very reluctant to report problems or give feedback on pre-release software, assuming that the developer must be getting tons of reports of the problems that they experience. Unfortunately, this also means that it is not uncommon that no problems are reported in beta testing and then when the 1.0 release comes out, everybody goes “I can’t believe that still haven’t fixed this!”.
So please, please. Report any problems you encounter.
We can only fix problems that we know about!
25th March 2010
This second beta streamlines the workflow so that you can start a new time slice as soon as you have completed the previous one without having to take a break in between.
Taking regular guilt-free breaks is still important, but there is no point in forcing breaks when none is needed.
The new release also fixes a bug where Vitamin-R would quit instead of hiding.
24th March 2010
This is the first public beta release of our new productivity application.
