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A program called Psst http://www.satsumac.com/Psst.php should help a little.

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same happened to me the first time - basically everything stopped responding. but after i restarted, it worked perfectly fine, and is actually very useful.

and extending battery life...thats an idea i hadn't thought of. i'll go try it in lecture today

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are you nobody - too?

Green Monkeys!

Hey guys,

I'm the developer of Blitz (and Bokeh, and Freeze Frame...). I'm floored by the amount of response to Blitz being included in MacHeist. Freeze Frame never had this many people using it! I thought I'd help deal with some of the problems you guys are having.

Most of the "first launch" problems you guys are having (where you reboot to fix) may be related to a "feature" that may be more trouble than it's worth. In short, if you activate Blitz again after launch, it does a focus on the frontmost app. This was put in so that if you choose to include Blitz in the Dock, you can click it once to focus on the current app. But the problem occurs if you try to launch Blitz from the Finder after it already being launched -- for example, if you didn't see the menu item and double-clicked it again because you thought it didn't launch. Blitz will then focus, probably on the Finder, which is specially called out to not blur the desktop as with other apps. Hence, the confusion that results when something that gets blocked during focus suddenly doesn't work for no reason (Command-Tab, Dock, Spaces).

Long story short, it's a confusing first-launch experience, and I may either kill off the feature entirely, or just make it not work if the front app is the Finder.

For the poster who asked for a list of daemons to freeze: This won't happen. Freezing background processes is a *really* bad idea if you don't know what you're doing, and while some people do, Blitz is designed for everyone to be able to use. I don't want to deal with non-technical users freezing launchd or something.

To dmdzine, who called me "shady": I know some people have been confused over the many name changes this app has been through, but they really should be considered part of the same continuum. I'll try to explain. Freeze Frame was initially developed by me, and me alone. I, quite frankly, suck at design and layout. When I found a designer, the very talented Ollie Wagner, we set to work on creating a "Freeze Frame 2.0", but it was decided somewhere along the line that the current "picture" metaphor didn't really work, and we set to work on creating a new metaphor that better exemplified focus. Hence, Bokeh, a photography term referring to an image where the subject is in focus, and the background is heavily blurred. This name worked great, and our versions 1.0 and 1.0.1 were released under this name. (Incidentally, the term "bokeh" is where the flower icon comes from -- it's the symbol for macro mode on a camera, which is how you accomplish that blur). We made no secret of the fact that Bokeh was Freeze Frame 2.0, and that any purchased user of Freeze Frame (i.e., not MacHeist users) could e-mail us for a free upgrade.

However, it created a naming conflict with Alien Skin Software's Bokeh plugin for Photoshop, which was designed to do exactly that technique on Photoshop images. We worked out a cross-promotion deal where we would change our name in exchange for a linking on the Alien Skin site. We figured that anyone using high-end Photoshop plugins would love to use an app like Blitz anyway. Blitz and Bokeh are the SAME APP, and you'll notice that we even continued the numbering scheme from Bokeh 1.0.1 to Blitz 1.1. All licenses that worked for Bokeh transferred instantly to Blitz, without even needing to be re-entered. I don't see how that could be considered shady in the least. Heck, bokehapp.com even redirects to blitzapp.com now.

As for the crashes, please e-mail me crash logs! I'd love to fix this, but I haven't been able to reproduce them. Please include the name of the application you were freezing or focusing on, in case it's just certain apps.

I've already begun work on a free upgrade that fixes a lot of the other problems you had: the Finder bug above, the hidden startup window, and the whitespace bug with serial codes. It should be available sometime next week -- keep an eye out for it.

Finally, to the guy above me: *I* hadn't even thought of the battery life aspect to all this. I'm surprised I didn't connect that lower CPU use would obviously decrease battery drain.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope this cleared up a lot of the issues with Blitz. Thanks for the remarkable interest!

Geoff Pado

Awesome, it's cool to hear from the developer (it's almost a surprise that they're real people sometimes ).

I used to use Bokeh, but I never really saw a point to it, because I wasn't doing anything particularly power-hungry, but now that I'm working again, it's really handy. Renders are about 10-20% faster, which is great.

Thanks for including this app.

Another developer posting on the MacHeist forums. This is great. Thanks for following this, Geoff. Though I don't do a lot of processor intensive applications, it does happen, and I used Freeze Frame on occasion. Glad to see Blitz has the same genealogy. I feel better about using it, knowing that it comes from the same developer. And welcome to the MacHeist forums!!!

Sometimes I feel so blue
It makes me twitter.

It's got a nice feel, but if I get much more stuff that uses the menu bar, it'll probably end up leaving.

I've also been experiencing some bugs with this app. I kind of wished the 'free' stuff would already have this stuff fixed up, because they become worthless if they keep bugging out my mac.

It works but ... it will sometimes freeze up other programs forever, not allowing them to quit or switch to. Also sometimes the Cmd + Tab function will disappear. And I've also had to reboot.

hmmm...

I close my eyes to see.

Arclite: Thanks for posting, I'll send you info next time I get a bug.

keep the hard work coming.

I close my eyes to see.

Arclite:

It speaks volumes about a developer who checks the forums and responds to comments.  It says even more when one writes a response as detailed and as interested in yours.  I have to admit that while I downloaded Blitz because it was free from the loot, I had not really checked it out.  Other attention grabbers were at work.  Because of your post, however, I want to check it out.  Just thought you might want to know that.

There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those who read binary; and those who don't.

Great app! I use this a lot!

Akkku

tied it to cmd+option+B. so everytime i need to speed up a program or even just to blur out everything in the background and focus, just 3 buttons to press

dropbox referral link: https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTMxMTA5NDk

The problem with everything being greyed-out on my system was because it pops a window up underneath everything else asking if you want it to check for an update. If you minimize all your other applications, it should be there. Pick something from the window, and it'll function normally.

Arclite, it's great to see the developer of an app interacting with the users so actively.
I've been really enjoying Blitz - but mostly for suspending individual processes (I really don't see why Firefox should use any CPU at all when not in focus, and it often sits at 30-40%, the damn hog) rather than focusing on apps.

It would be great if you could cmd-click or somehow select an app in the drop down list to exclude it from being suspended (this seems more easily accessible and easier to modify than a separate whitelist). I know you can already click apps to toggle their state, but it would be nice to be able to focus an app using the shortcut while keeping itunes, finder etc. running.

I also appreciate your taking time to come and address some of the issues that we're experiencing with Blitz. Thanks for the app, I find it very handy!

- Brian

Blitz is a great app! They should make the Dock unfrozen by default though...

I agree: childhood should be a time of innocence, and Bambi's mother shouldn't die, and lap dances should be complementary after the fifth cocktail, but that's not the world we live in
-Charlie Harper

This program froze the first time I used it, worked well a couple of times, and then is consistently crashing/freezing again even after restarts. I would love to use this for online streaming videos, but it's just too buggy and unstable for my tastes.

this could make life a bit easier

The monster you created has returned... to kill you!

Thanks for this info   Will have to read up on this when I get a spare moment.  Meantime, an app that does the job without me having to learn anything seems good enough.  (I'm not so computer savvy that I know how to do this…) 

Me too

Dropbox referral link; SugarSync referral link

I would love to use Blitz, but the only thing it does is creating a Blitz.crash.log file when I try to open it. Would anyone be so kind to help me with this? I would love to try this app...

You're welcome to click my referal link:

http://www.macheist.com/bundle/u/89445/ (isn't it pretty? Click… click… click…)

Great app for working within Aperture. No more waiting for few seconds until freeze ended.

i'll have to wait to try this, and other apps, until I upgrade my hardware to handle an upgrade to Leopard. Right now I can only run Tiger. But, I still can't complain about free and discounted bundle apps, to be played with at a later date.

Referral link: REMOVED!! Got 2, Thanks to whoever used my link!!
Go Green Team / What do we get for winning?
"...and you may ask yourself, how did I get here?"
I know I do.

sounds like it will be great for rendering effects on movies

The only real knowledge consists of knowing you know nothing.

i use this at anytime i convert a video, seems to finish a little bit faster and time is money so this is really cool, also improves working with large images in photoshop...

Orange? Orange! ORANGE!!!! ,|..|

Is it just me or is Blitz? Everytime I focus or don't focus and I do CMD+TAB, my active app doesn't show up. Even after switching apps, the app I was in before doesn't show up still....

I love it!

Hello world, check my deezer playlist!
http://www.deezer.com/user/xlixells

I decided to not use Blitz, at least for now, as it is not of any use for me. But after reading your posting, I tested Blitz again and have to say. It is just you. If I suspend one program, I still can switch to it via ⌘-⇥, though the window does not appear, because the program is suspended. On the other, when I suspend a program ⌘-⇥ does no longer work. If I then click another programs window the focus is repealed and everything works as usual.

Do something healthy.
Stop eating too many Oranges!

Blitz is a godsend for those of us running old apps which use 100% of the CPU all the time (diablo II, I'm looking at you!).  I can now "pause" that app in blitz to prevent the lord of terror from eating my whole battery when I step away from my laptop.   It would be nice to be able to throttle an app's CPU usage, but as I understand it, that's not really possible.  In all, a great little utility with a couple uses.

In communist russia, the normal force pushes on you!

Blitz IS good

DropBox Referral: 2.25GB FreeSpace

Pretty cool little app definitely worth the price.

MacHeist3

I'm using Blitz and find it useful.
BUT...
It makes my dock go funny after using it.
Any new app that I open doesn't have a little light under it (or bounce) and if I close an app that was open before running Blitz the little light doesn't go away? Very confusing at times.
The only way I've found is to restart

Anyone else have this issue, any ideas?

if u use accidentally use blitz to focus on  itself, you will have a spinning wheel of death which make me restart my macbook and i uninstall it ever since.

So you blamed that on the software??? LOL

but it should have safety precaution procedure to prevent that (someone will do it sooner or later)

Thanks a Lot

Is there a way to focus on a process that doesn't have a UI interface associated with it?  I've got a particularly nasty mysql import (20M rows) that I'm working on and I'd love to focus all of my cpu toward.  I'm running the process from the terminal, but clearly blitzing the terminal isn't going to give me what I want 8P

I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the orange is gone.

It actually might. I dunno exactly how Blitz works but any MySQL that is started from the terminal is going to be a child process of the Terminal, and I suspect that's how Blitz sets priorities.

The fact that the only interface for Blitz is a menu extra is bad, bad, bad choice. It means that whenever the only running apps are all frozen, the only way to recover control of your Mac is to hard reset it.

Before you reply that it's not possible to freeze all apps, yes it is: focus on an app, then quit it.

I just did (by mistake) with WoW. and now, I'm stuck.

This is either a bug or a very bad misfeature.

Blitz needs a proper app with a window, and possibly also a way to throttle down an app without freezing it altogether (think renice).

Excellent app! Well worth the $

Well, I have been updating all of my Macheist apps, and I noticed that although Blitz says its "updated"... I have 1.0.2 yet the most updated version is 1.1

Same for everyone else? or does the Macheist license not go past 1.0.2?

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