Note this article is intended for developers and may be of limited interest to our wider client base.

Last week saw the release of Cornerstone, a new Subversion GUI client for the Mac from Zennaware. After initial testing, I am quite excited about Cornerstone, as it breaks new ground for Version Control Graphical Clients.

Historically, graphical version control clients have simply put a GUI on top of the command line tools. It is disappointing that there is little or no thought given to the problems that developers want to solve with their source control systems. Developers of these applications seem to completely forget the issues they themselves face.

Cornerstone’s most impressive feature and one that I have discussed extensively in the #macsb IRC channel is it’s timeline. You can easily go forward and back through the history of a file and see changes for each subsequent version. Whilst this falls short of my wishes for a source control timeline, it is a massive step in the right direction.

Cornerstone’s source code diff tool looks great, but still cannot identify when a method has simply moved within a file. If you change the method as well as move it, which is quite common, the changes are not clearly highlighted in Cornerstone, Xcode or any other diff tool I have come across on the Mac. I had already decided that a future version of Differencia will act as a source-code aware diff tool.

Whilst there are a long list of feature requests I have already for Cornerstone, after only a day’s use, it is a huge relief to find that someone is taking source control seriously.

Apple has clearly focused a lot of effort on targeting the iPhone at the enterprise market. A significant amount of emphasis in the iPhone 2.0 update is towards features demanded by existing and potential enterprise clients.

The iPhone will undoubtedly be a success in the enterprise market. Anyone who doubts that is kidding themselves or trying to downplay the iPhone for marketing their own products.

The question is whether success with the iPhone will lead to increased enterprise Mac sales. There has been a long debate as to whether the iPod Halo effect exists. Will there be an Enterprise iPhone Halo effect.

The key factor is that enterprise IT departments will have to purchase Macs and learn Mac development tools to develop custom, internal, iPhone apps. Whilst many enterprises have a small number of Macs in their design, web and media departments, having Macs in their IT departments is much more likely to lead to a wider uptake of Macs.

Although administration and development functions are normally quite separate in enterprise IT departments, administrators are going to make considerably more effort to better integrate Macs into their environment for IT users, than for design or media users. Once IT administrators are confident that they can integrate Macs into their infrastructure, the door is opened for wider scale adoption. With significant misgivings over Vista, readily available Mac VM software and continuing Windows security concerns, removing the biggest barrier to entry – a Mac cynical IT department, will lead to a significant increase in the number of Macs in enterprise.

There is another key user group that will help to drive adoption – gadget hungry executives. As key executives increasingly purchase Macs for their own use, they will demand full access to their corporate infrastructure. Again IT departments will prioritise keeping this user group happy, further weakening barriers to entry.

Combined with the “one” feature of Snow Leopard being better Exchange integration, Apple stands well placed to take advantage of a “perfect storm” of iPhone developers, executive decision makers and a weakened Microsoft to finally make that breach into the enterprise computing market. The question is whether they will listen to enterprise demands for the Mac, in the same way as they have listened to their iPhone demands.

It also opens an opportunity for Mac software developers to develop enterprise class business software, a market segment where the Mac currently suffers. Products like Differencia will hopefully be well placed to help Apple win new business.

I have had to do a quick emergency bug fix release of Differencia.

There has been a long outstanding issue with licenses not being recognised when Internet Sharing is enabled. It was brought to my notice today that the new release was sometimes not recognising licenses on Intel based Macs as well.

This release fixes both these issues.

The official press release for Differencia 1.1 can be found here:

DayTime Software announces Differencia 1.1 for Mac OS X

DayTime Software is happy to announce that Differencia 1.1 was released today, including support for IIF and Fixed Width files, a new Collated Results view and extensive printing support. Performance in this release is also significantly improved.

It is a free upgrade for all existing users.

We have now discontinued our introductory price of $29.95. New users can purchase from the DayTime online store for just $39.95.

I’ve made some update to the website, hopefully making it more useful for existing and potential customers.

• The Differencia application help is now also available online
• The screen shot gallery has been revised to take you through the work flow for using Differencia to diff / compare files
• There is a new Use Cases page giving examples of what Differencia can be used for
• Also added a Release Notes page. There is also a new blog category, specifically for release notes.
• There are also some cosmetic changes. For example, the gallery’s lightbox is now easier to navigate and better matches the overall website design.

Please feel free to explore the updated website and let me have any feedback for making the site more useful.

I believe that Differencia is a truly unique diff tool for the Mac, and want to make its home on the web equally useful for its users.